Q: How often do people hired for one-year replacement positions end up being hired into the TT position? Is there any reason to be optimistic? Or should one-year appointees plan on moving somewhere else after that year?
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Hope, Anxiety, Dashed Dreams, Moving Boxes, and Renting Your Furniture By the Month.
Q: How often do people hired for one-year replacement positions end up being hired into the TT position? Is there any reason to be optimistic? Or should one-year appointees plan on moving somewhere else after that year?
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Sadly, yes: my experience says that you will be let go, no matter how good you are. Use the year only to improve your CV; expect little more from the school, and don't waste too much effort investing in the school unless you are given specific reason to hope for a specific, advertised job opening.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you are given such hope, keep in mind that no one person (at least no one person with whom you're going to be interacting on a regular basis, and, in a well-run university, really, no one person) has the authority to hire you. In fact, no responsible person (fellow faculty member, department chair, dean, etc.) should offer such encouragement; if they do, chances are about 99 to 1 that the statement reflects badly on their judgment.
DeleteIt often depends on the nature of the appointment. My first and second one-yaer appointments were for sabbitical replacements, so I had no illusions of being hired on. Certainly moving every year is a pain in the ass but the experience and professional contacts that I made were very valuable and helped me land a TT job.
ReplyDeleteReplacements are usually terminal, because they are replacements. If they are replacing someone who has left and running a search while you are there, then you can apply, but the odds are against their hiring you.
ReplyDeleteWhat everybody else said. Plan to be job-seeking next fall, and moving next spring, and budget your money and your time accordingly (including making a careful comparison between local cost of living and the offered salary, especially if you're unfamiliar with the area). In fact, if you're moving to get to the one-year position, don't even go unless you have a clear plan for what you'll do come May 2014 if you don't get an academic job, at the visiting institution or elsewhere. Also, think seriously about how disruptive moving twice (and, if relevant, creating a bunch of new syllabi, assignments, etc.) will be to your research program, any family commitments you have, etc., etc., and weigh that against what one year in the offered position will add to your c.v. Finally, take your own temperament (especially the extent to which you thrive on novelty vs. familiarity) into account. It may well be worth it, but accepting the position is not a no-brainer, no matter what your dissertation advisor(s) and the placement officer in your grad department may assume.
ReplyDeleteI've only had a single one-year appointment that I accepted to move close to my PhD School while finishing up my dissertation. I had hoped it would turn into more than that, but even though I interviewed for the job, I didn't get it (they had already viewed me as simply the 'filler person'). Luckily, I didn't limit my hopes to that one place and already had another job secured.
ReplyDeleteI hope you like the place and they like you and that it turns into more so you don't have to move, but I wouldn't unpack boxes anytime soon.
Keep in mind that while some one-year app'ts are sabbatical replacements, in some disciplines an increasing number are "permanent temporary" positions - that is, the department in question ALWAYS has a few one year positions, a permanent body of lecturer spots that are not TT but not going to go away in a year, either. Several people I know have gotten these sorts of jobs and been able to hang on to them because finding someone new is a pain in the ass for the department, too, and they don't want to go through that process unless you're just not working out.
ReplyDeleteOne scholar of my acquaintance had a job at an R1 for two years because he taught classes they liked and got along with the department - he stayed until he got a better job, basically. I knnow of two other colleagues at R1s in similar positions. Just because they aren't REQUIRED to keep you from one year to the next doesn't mean they don't have incentives to do so, if you're not just a sabbatical replacement.
However, as the long-time holder of a job that meets this description (and yes, they are proliferating rapidly; my university now has 30% full-time non-TT faculty, and I don't think we're all that unusual), I'd still urge caution. Such jobs are definitely better than adjuncting, but they're also dead ends (seductive dead ends, especially if you're just graduating, but dead ends nonetheless). Even if, as is the case at my school, there are multi-year contracts and some sort of non-tenure promotion track involved, teaching loads tend to be high, salaries lag way behind TT ones (necessitating summer teaching, which eats still more into writing/research time), and participation in governance tends, in all practical terms, to be nil (in fact, TT professors at NYU, which, if I'm remembering the story correctly, has a very high percentage of such faculty, just voted to deny full-time contingent faculty a vote in their decisions, because they felt contingents were becoming alarmingly numerous -- if you're on a campus that subscribes to the crampicle, you can see the story here: http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Faculty-Minority/137945/ . If not, you'll hit the paywall.)
DeleteThe problem with these jobs (and I speak as someone who's trying to figure out what to do 12 years into one) is that they're just good enough, in terms of pay, benefits (at least in my case), and feeling like a real part of the university that it's easy to get hooked. But they're not career-track, and it's very easy to look up in middle age and realize that (1) you're not really going anywhere (even if you just got a "promotion" to Contract Associate Professor -- yes, that exists, as does Contract Full), (2) you won't be able to retire at anything resembling a "traditional" age if you don't start making -- and saving -- more money, and (3) your job -- which is vulnerable to reorganization, cost-cutting, MOOC mania, and other whims of administrators/legislators/edupundits -- may well not last even until you're retirement age (and the closer you get, the harder time you'll have finding other even equally remunerative work).
So, maybe, if you can do it while teaching the course load involved, take this kind of a job under the scenario Wylodmayer describes -- until you get a better one -- but also set a limit for yourself of how long you'll stay in the job (or how much you'll need to publish each year, what kind of raises you'll need to get, etc., etc.), and have a Plan B (and C and D and so on).
So, on renewable full-time one-year positions, my advice is similar to what I said above about non-renewable visiting jobs: take the job (and keep the job) only if, at the end of the year (and each succeeding one), you are convinced that you will be *more* marketable than you were at the beginning. Otherwise, consider pursuing any non-academic options you're considering now (not after several years of becoming less and less marketable in academic terms, and more and more discouraged).
Contingent Cassandra raises some excellent points, but let me note as a counter-point that the putative disadvantages of a contract job that she enumerates put you no worse off than a private sector job (unless your degree is in STEM) and working even a contract job is likely to make you more employable in the next job cycle than working a non-academic job, ceteris paribus. In other words, unless your field is one where the prospective non-academic job would either notably more money or notably raise your marketability, there's likely nothing else about the non-academic job that would be better than even the contract job.
DeleteI know only 2 people that did, myself and Al from Alpaca Falls....oh wait..
ReplyDeleteSeriously? It seems to be pretty rare. Don't count on it, but if the spot will be opened to a full search after a year then take the time to learn the ins and outs of the department and gather as much inside info as you can. You can better tailor your application (should you decide to apply) to the needs of the department beyond those mentioned in the vacancy notice.
Too Soon!
DeleteGenerally speaking, the one-year visiting ass proffie does actually have a better chance of getting the TT position; it just doesn't seem like it. If you're the oyVAP and you have "only" a 1-in-25 shot at getting the TT the following year, that seems pretty awful. But it's ten times better than the 1-in-250 shot that outside candidates have.
ReplyDeleteAnd what Cassandra said about the disruption to your research program is practically inevitable--unless you are someone like Paul Erdös. He had the right temperament and a nearly infinitely portable "lab."
So much depends on their situation, and you won't know that for real until you've been there a bit. In the first month you might get an inkling.
ReplyDeleteBut for now, just take it, do a great job, be present but not cloying. If you really like it there, let the right people know how much you're enjoying, NOT just the classes, but the people, the town, etc.
Exactly what Darla said. I'd also add that you've got to fire up a few majors, too. Nothing has been more convincing to me than a major coming by and saying, "Hey, that new person is great!"
ReplyDeleteI currently have a renewable one-year contract that will never lead to TT, because my specialty is technically outside the department's purview, but they need warm bodies to teach sections of Guinea-Pig-Juggling 101, which I taught in grad school despite being a Hamsterologist, and of the Introduction to College-Studenting core requirement, which includes the opportunity to teach some Hamsterology for a whole week each semester.
ReplyDeleteNearly all departments maintain a small herd of such people, because TT lines are hard to come by. Pay and benefits are fairly good, but the teaching load is too high and grading-intensive to leave much room for research and publishing, and in my case, the classes are only tangentially connected to my chosen field, so really, it's a trap. However, to limit the damage Contingent Cassandra notes above, my position has a built-in expiration: after a specific number of years, the university requires departments to offer TT (not likely for me, as discussed) or to let their contact people go -- and replace them with somebody just like them.
One occasionally meets the living dead, former full-time contractors who either have used up their allotted time or have not been renewed on an administrative whim, despite the wishes of their department, and now linger on as hungry ghosts, teaching part-time for about a third of the per-course pay. It's best not to make eye contact with them, lest their curse fall upon you.
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ReplyDeleteUsed Moving Boxes