Grappling with the COVID-era job market

In the comment thread on my post on publishing advice for grad students and other early career people, a grad student writes:

As a graduate student, I do appreciate the time and effort made to help us figure out how to best go about trying to publish papers. My biggest concern is that such posts utterly fail to take into account the current moment. Maybe such advice will be applicable in the future (we can hope!), but for right now, I'd love to see advice that explicitly takes into account the fact that the academic job market has simply collapsed.

This is a great point, and I'd love to offer more posts and discussion how to grapple effectively with the post-COVID reality. I just haven't been quite sure how to do so. I'm definitely open to suggestions! One graduate student planning on defending their dissertation made one suggestion, namely:

I just mean it could also be good to talk about the nuts and bolts of building a plan B.

For example: if I have to devote half my working hours now to developing a set of skills for plan B, as I in fact am, which of the more purely academic skills should get cut first, that are also the least likely to just totally tank my prospects (however antecedently dim) of getting a job in academia?

For me, I've basically leaned into the research and forsaken any hope of developing a compelling teaching portfolio.

My research habits have also changed. I've gone more in the direction of, write and try to publish papers I'm excited to write, don't worry about the bigger picture or how this stuff hangs together. Because all indications are that I've got maybe 18 months left in this profession, and none of that big picture stuff will pan out.

You can hopefully see how serious, and scary, these sorts of decisions can be.

I wonder what readers think: first, on the nuts and bolts of preparing for a plan B, but also, second, on whether this person's decisions are good ones.

I myself don't have any advice on the nuts and bolts of building a plan B. But I have a few thoughts on the other issue. Personally, I think the decision to focus on publishing stuff you're excited about is a great one. It's more or less the strategy that I adopted when my time on the job market looked like it was running out--and it not only made philosophy again; I started publishing a lot more than I ever did before. My rationale was basically this: "If I'm going to flunk out of this profession, I might as well go down doing work that I enjoy and believe in." It was pretty transformative, and I've never looked back.

On the other hand, I'm a bit less sure about this individual's decision to lean into research and forsake any hope of developing a teaching portfolio. I think whether this is a good decision probably depends on three things:

1. Whether the academic job market is likely to be equally catastrophic in future years.
2. Whether this person is willing to stay on the market beyond this year.
3. Whether they are interested in community college jobs.

On (1) & (2): given that effective vaccines seem to be on the horizon, and people are likely to be vaccinated en masse, it seems to me highly likely that the academic job market will recover. Of course, this job market was already brutal before COVID, but that's a different story. The point is, the market seems to me like it is likely to recover pretty significantly--so if this individual's decisions are predicated upon the assumption that the market is going to be consistently like it is this year, I think that may be a bad bet (one anecdote: it looks like my department will probably hire a tenure-track person once COVID is resolved--and I expect many other universities are waiting to do hires as well). So, it seems to me, if this person is willing to stick on the academic market for at least a couple of years after their defense, the drastic decisions they are making now (focusing on research rather than developing their teaching portfolio) might be really short-sighted.

On that note, it's worth thinking about (3): community college jobs. As this discussion revealed, community college jobs can be really great; you just need a wealth of teaching experience (and ideally, experience teaching at a community college) to be competitive. I personally know a few full-time tenure-track faculty at community colleges, and they love their jobs (seemingly more, in fact, than some of the faculty I know at 4-year universities). Moreover, from what I have heard, community colleges are expected to flourish post-COVID. During times of economic uncertainty, people seem to flee 4-year universities for community colleges, and so the latter are likely to need more faculty, not fewer (indeed, I've already seen some of my own students say they are taking time away from university during COVID to take community college classes for economic reasons). So, it seems to me, if this reader is seriously interested in an academic job and they might be happy with a CC job, their decision to lean into research at the detriment of developing their teaching portfolio seems like it could be doubly short-sighted (though, of course, they might not want a teaching-heavy CC job).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Also, if any readers have any suggestions for other topics the Cocoon might cover to address the first reader's concerns (how to better help early-career people in the post-COVID reality), I'm all ears!

Comments

['that' grad student]

First and foremost, THANK YOU for giving time and space to this question. I think the more attention we can bring to this question, the better it will be for grad students, especially for those going on the market soon (such as myself).

One minor quibble I have is with the thought that, with a quick vaccine, the job market will get back into shape rather quickly. My guess is that *most* graduate students will try to wait out the collapsed market (myself included). This means that when colleges and universities and colleges start hiring at their pre-COVID numbers, there will be three to four times more qualified candidates than there were pre-COVID. In response to this uniquely challenging market, grad students may again be tempted to wait it out. However, the more people who actually do, the longer it will take for the market to go back to pre-COVID levels.

That said, I do think things will eventually get back to the earlier normal. In the meantime, though, graduate students will be in a unique sort of conundrum. This will be especially true for those graduate students are least able to simply wait until (whenever) things calm back down (non-traditional students, students with less funding, etc).

This is why I'm particularly interested in this topic. The OP's approach of maximizing research time is interesting, perhaps for personal enjoyment more than marketability. I'm also interested in the possibility of modifying one's research agenda as to be more palatable to think tanks and other non-profits.

Anyway, I will be thinking about this topic for a while, so mostly THANKS for giving it attention!

[Defense on the horizon]

Thanks so much, Marcus, for sharing your thoughts to my inquiry and opening up the discussion! I really appreciate it.

As for factors 2 and 3 in my own case: I would have to answer no to both. Given my personal life and financial constraints, 2 is not really an option. And, regarding 3, I have to admit that I have yet to fall in love with teaching. It could be due to lack of experience, but I don't think that possibility is live enough to stick around long enough to find out.

As for factor 1, I think there's more reason to be pessimistic than you allow. (We're talking about this a bit over on Helen's post.) I think a vaccine will not allow the job market to recover to anything like previous levels, except, maybe, perhaps, in the very short term. I think longer-term trends are all bad. Here's an article (not by me) that articulates a lot of my worry:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/scott-galloway-future-of-college.html

I've also discussed this with another person who I trust knows what they're talking about, and they broadly endorsed this article.

[assistant prof]

I would question the assumption that community colleges are faring better right now. The data I was able to find shows that they are actually doing far worse than 4-year colleges -- a 22.7% drop compared to a 16.1% drop nationally for incoming freshmen, and a decrease of 9.4% overall compared to a 4% drop nationally.

https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/blog/fall-2020-undergraduate-enrollment-down-4-compared-to-same-time-last-year/

[Marcus Arvan]

grad student: You're very welcome! Feel free to let me know if there are other issues you'd like to see discussed. You can always comment or email me any ideas, and I'd be happy to run threads discussing them.