Should R1 postdoc selection committees be more open to a wider variety of candidates?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Practically speaking, why are (mostly R1) postdoc selection committees not more open to the prospect of hiring VAPs, lecturers, or even t-t asst. prof. to their attractive postdoc positions when these folks have shown research aptitude on top of their teaching work? Why are the common candidates for most postdocs fresh graduate students who just had all the time in the world to do research?

This seems like an easy place where an equity problem could be effectively dealt with in academic philosophy. Let those folks who have taught, and who would value time to work on a research project, be considered seriously for your positions! [I think the APA should get on top of this, developing their own postdoc for those coming from teaching positions.]

The following strikes me as a worthy new perspective for postdoc committees to take: 'hey, look at this person's CV: they're on a 4/4, but they're getting research done; and oh look at their research proposal! It seems like with a full year or two for work, they have a really interesting project they could get off the ground. Let's consider them'. Whereas this does not: 'Oh look, here we have a fresh graduate student who looks to have been in a fellowship heavy PhD program. Oh, and seems they've already managed an article in PPR and Nous. Better give them another year to write even more'.

This is an interesting query, as I seem to recall coming across some research showing that it is very hard for academics to "move up" in the academy, i.e., from an initial placement at a SLAC or R2/R3 to an R1. Given how much luck seems to be involved in initial job placements (many have called the academic job market something of a lottery), it could be good for the discipline to reflect on and potentially address the situation in the way the OP raises. Then again, I'm not sure what the APA might do, or indeed, what anyone might do above and beyond "changing minds" through drawing attention to the issue. I also wonder whether, given all of the other serious issues facing higher ed, addressing these issues might seem to many like a pretty low priority.

What do readers think? 

Comments

[Pure teaching is a trap if one wants some research]

A similar point to consider is how difficult being in a pure teaching position can be, and furthermore how no one (except probably university leadership) benefits. So I did a pure teaching position for a year, and very luckily, I immediately got a real job half way through. I looked rather productive, but those were the articles accepted prior to getting the teaching job.

During that year, I basically could do no research. All my time was course prep, teaching, marking. Worse, as I couldn't decide which courses to teach, I couldn't align the work I do for teaching with the research I'm good at.

After starting the real job, I suffered roughly a full year of 0 papers accepted, as, well, there were no meaningful papers submitted during the year of teaching. I think I have now finally recovered, building up my submission and acceptance numbers after starting the real job.

And of course, during the year of pure teaching, I couldn't focus on teaching. All my attention was on job application, trying to squeeze in some time to read something that I might work on in the future, being grumpy and resentful, and preparing for interviews. I just didn't want to help students, as there is a clear conflict: the more time I spend on them, the less time I had for my own future.

It probably helped the university to save money though.

[Anony]

@Pure teaching is a trap if one wants some research

I think that you got your point across way better in your chosen user name than in your actual post. Contrasting pure teaching jobs with 'real jobs' is ridiculous. Teaching IS the real job that a great many of us are hired to do. I have been almost exclusively in teaching-only positions for over twenty years, and I much prefer that to the time I spent in research-heavy jobs.

To each their own, of course. If you prefer research-heavy jobs, that's great for you. But teaching-only jobs are real jobs. And I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of philosophers make more real-world impact through their teaching than through any research they ever do.

[Chris]

I'm sure this varies from post-doc to post-doc, but the big one that we have at my university explicitly puts into the criteria that one not have received a PhD too long ago. (24 months, to be exact). So it can't, e.g., typically be someone's "second" post-doc (unless the first was just one year), or if someone has been VAP-ing, etc. too long.

(It also prohibits anyone from receiving the post-doc who already has any kind of tenure track job).

If such criteria are common (and these criteria are not set by the Philosophy department, but by the University), this may explain why R1 post-docs often seem to go to those coming fresh out of a PhD program.

[Missed the Boat]

This post resonates with me. After completing a 2 year post-doc, unforeseen family circumstances required me to take a stable alt-ac position in a particular city for a few years. I've continued to write and publish consistently in my spare time ever since, and would now benefit considerably from being able to apply for a post-doc as a means of re-entering academia, but I'm too far out of my PhD now to apply for most of them.

[The "Unreal" Professor]

I agree with Anony that characterizing teaching-focused jobs as somehow unreal and in contrast with "real" research focused jobs is actually quite offensive to those of us who see teaching as central to our vocation as a philosopher. It also perpetuates the stereotype that people in teaching positions can't or don't do good research, which is simply not true.

This also seems to undermine the OP's question: Why shouldn't people who don't have "real jobs" (and instead hold primarily teaching positions) be supported in their research endeavors through post-docs, etc.?

[Bill V.]

Post-docs are such a tiny fraction of the philosophy job market, I think I agree with Marcus that we have bigger problems to fix as a profession.

Perhaps what OP's request comes down to is just the idea that Philosophy needs more research fellowships for early- and mid-career folks. I agree with that. (Post-docs are conceived as being training opportunities for folks fresh from the doctorate, of course; It is a model we adopted from the sciences, where that sort of training is much more common.)

There are already some research fellowships available. NEH, Templeton, NSF, Mellon, Humboldt, ACLS, others. The trouble is, competition for these few opportunities is so high that the evaluation criterion isn't "good proposal and shows research potential" but "excellent proposal and excellent research track record." I haven't thought much about it, so I don't know how to create more of these opportunities so that the evaluation standard could come down to more mortal levels. Who would fund it, and why?

A strategy for folks in teaching positions who want to try for large grants that would pay them for a year of research, is to "snowball": Get a small internal grant at the place where you teach, a course release or something. Get a successful publication from that. Use that success to apply for a small external grant; get a successful publication from that. Rinse and repeat, laddering up to ever-larger grants.

Your university's office of research administration (whatever it is called) will have resources to help you find opportunities, write proposals, submit applications, etc. (Sometimes, they are so used to working with the sciences that they won't be familiar with the humanities opportunities, but they will try.) Start the process about a year before the grant deadline. Writing a good proposal for a major funder is at least as much work as writing an article for publication, maybe more.

Even excellent proposals from people with excellent track records often don't get funded. But since evaluation committees prefer to bet on "sure things," you can demonstrate your sure-thing-edness with a record of successful grants. (FWIW, even that is no guarantee. I have $3.8 million in lifetime grants, about $3.6 million of that for federal grants for student success programs when I was in administration for a decade. Even with that, plus a book and 14 articles, so far my attempts at large grants like NEH have been unsuccessful, though I did come close with a "recommended but not funded" on an NSF philosophy of science proposal once.)

[Pure teaching is a trap if one wants some research]

Pick on the language if you like, but if you want the clarification, here it is: fixed-term teaching with no prospects of permanency is a trap. It is designed to make you exploitable, make you unable to find a more stable job in the long run, and furthermore makes it so easy for the university leadership to cut your position whenever they feel like it in the name of "sustainability."

[David S.]

My theses gather dust on the shelf,
While I teach others to find their true selves
Somebody's gotta do it
I know my place

[Cap]

@missed the boat: the 'must be

[Anony]

@Pure teaching

You are describing almost every job in the actual world. Just because there are some jobs in academia that have special permanency perks, it does not mean that every other teaching job is some terrible situation.

[Cap]

@missed the boat: the 'must be no more than x years’ rule might not be hard and fast. Last year I was on the panel for a postdoc fellowship (a research-only postdoc at an R1). Our ad had such a rule. One potential applicant who was in a situation like yours simply emailed explaining it and we were very happy to make an exception for them.

[Fair]

People should resist thinking that the way to solve a problem in the profession is to get the APA involved. They are supposed to represent the whole discipline, which includes religious and secular schools, private and public schools, etc. The organization has become too politicized. I just stopped my membership after 25 + years. But I am not leaving the profession.
About the issue of opening post docs to a wider range of candidates ... this seems wrongheaded. If post docs are like jobs (which they are), then they should go to the most qualified. And it seems misguided to be distributing these with an eye to considerations that are largely irrelevant to the job.
Indeed, I do believe that other things being equal, when two candidates (A & B) are applying for a job, and they have comparable research records, but (B) has had a measurably larger teaching load, then (B) is more deserving than (A).

[Cap]

@Fair,
Why on earth should jobs, postdocs or otherwise, simply go to the most qualified, as opposed to someone who needs it more or will benefit more from it compared to other candidates?

[UK Based]

hey, look at this person's CV: they're on a 4/4, but they're getting research done; and oh look at their research proposal! It seems like with a full year or two for work, they have a really interesting project they could get off the ground. Let's consider them'

FWIW, this is the approach that I know we take at our university (top, but not Oxbridge, in the UK). We've hired a number of people on permanent research and teaching (i.e. tenured-equivalent) jobs that had been teaching fellows for a number of years (including myself). In search committee meetings, I've seen a lot of cases where we think that someone that has been in research-only roles for a few years has not produced enough and have rejected them in favour of someone whose been teaching lots but has an equal or only slightly lower publication record.

I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere, but I do have the sense that there is more recognition than there used to be of putting publication records in context through thinking about what the roles before were.

[Derek Bowman]

Perhaps I'm projecting too much of my own psychology onto others, but proposals/discussions like this strike me as something like the 'bargaining' stage of grieving. Whatever way we might imagine adjusting the attitudes, preferences, and prejudices of hiring committees, the guaranteed outcome of the current system is that many well-qualified candidates will be denied access to desirable positions.