An analysis of faculty jobs in higher education administration

An offhand remark on my part that 80 percent of faculty jobs in higher ed were in student affairs led me to wonder whether that was actually true, so I did a little data gathering and crunching. 

For my data, I used ASHE Listserv. Not all openings are posted here, but the majority are, and I felt that any missing jobs would be likely missing at random (or that they were aimed at an inside candidate, but that there was no reason this would occur in any subspecialty more than another).* I only included faculty jobs at colleges and universities, excluding graduate assistants, post-docs, adjuncts, deans or above, and jobs at think tanks, states, or other policy bodies; I excluded jobs outside of the United States and Canada. I excluded jobs that were specifically K-12 but included jobs that were open to either K-12 or higher education scholars. 

I then categorized the searches by specialty, which was easier in some cases than others. “Any,” in some cases, means “a very wide range of specialties, although not literally any,” and in others it means quite literally any. (Examples of the former: “Our preference is for applicants who have experience in higher education administration especially in the areas of academic advising, assessment, leadership, organizational development, or student development,” and “Expertise appropriate for doctoral level teaching in one or more of the following areas:  (1) Quantitative methods applied to institutional research, evaluation, and/or assessment; (2) Leadership in universities and community colleges; (3) Higher education policy; (4) Student learning and academic persistence in higher education.”) In some cases, ads may be incorrectly specified as “any,” if the college chose to only list a speciality in a full ad on their own website. Thus, the number of “any” searches is likely slightly overstated. Additionally, some of the “Methodology” searches in particular were not limited to higher education but also included P-12.

I noted the rank of each position and whether it was tenure-track. In some cases, this was not specified; I assumed ranked professor positions were tenure-track unless the ad stated otherwise. Additionally, ads were grouped by start date, using the semester rather than the month. At this point, it looks like we’ve seen the last posting for “fall 2016,” so I excluded any posts for 2017 start dates.**

Here’s what I found:

Posting date

Unsurprisingly, most ads run in the first few months of the fall semester. There is a lull at the winter holidays, with ads picking back up in February and March. A few run into the summer. 

Rank

One in five postings was non-tenure-track. It’s hard to tell from only three years of data whether the jump from 9 non-TT for 2014 to 22 non-TT for 2015 is statistically significant.

38% of jobs were at the assistant rank with 23% at assistant/associate, and 11% open. Scholars at the beginning of their careers, in other words, can apply for about 3 out of 4 positions, without even considering lecturer/visiting positions. Only about 1 in 4 ads were relevant to scholars at the full professor rank. 

Specialty

This is the question we’re here for, and I’m rejecting my hypothesis that 80% of openings are for student affairs, even without running any statistical tests. (Sorry, guys.) Only 19% of jobs were focused on student affairs. While this was the largest speciality, and while many of the “any” specialty ads are likely available to student affairs specialists, it is still nowhere close to 80%. The second largest specialities were methodology (these postings were particularly likely not to be limited to higher education scholars) and leadership.

A degree of subjectivity on my part was required to categorize some of these postings, but it’s safe to say the frequently requested specializations are student affairs, methodology, leadership, policy, and community colleges. Of course, if you're a scholar focusing on urban education, you don't necessarily need to despair - 41% of jobs were open to nearly any specialty. That said, that theoretical openness may not translate to an actual willingness to hire a historian, etc.

Discussion

Everyone feels that their topic is given short shrift (go ahead, find me a scholar who feels their area gets enough sessions at ASHE), and as someone who isn't in student affairs, I have fallen prey to this same error. 

It's clear that student affairs is the most commonly requested specialty, but it's impossible to tell from this data how this compares to the number of scholars in each area, or to tell how open search committees are to various avenues of research - no doubt there are unstate preferences in the minds of committee members.

Notes

*This assumption may be untrue if jobs in student affairs are likely to be posted with NASPA or ACPA instead of ASHE. Also, it’s not clear to me why ads for a K-12 scholar would run here at all, but there were a few.

**Further methodological notes: Ads that ran twice were only counted once, using their first run date. There is no guarantee that all these positions were filled, or that they were filled with faculty in the desired speciality. If the ads did not specify a start date, fall of the next year was assumed. Data was pulled only from the ads; some ads may have directed readers to an announcement on the institution’s site with more details, such as specialization. I began with the first ad that contained a fall 2014 posting and stopped with the last one that had a fall 2016 posting. A few weeks are missing: Some of those were holidays, with no listserv messages, but it’s possible I am missing as many as five weeks of data (11/14/13, 7/10/14, 7/17/14, 7/2/15, and 11/5/15).

There but for the grace of dog

I wasn't a fan of this blog post on telling would-be grad students not to go to grad school, because I think it unfairly conflates giving realistic advice with victim-blaming. But I did like this quote:

"What, prey tell, are those would-be English PhDs supposed to do? Journalism? Ha! We know they can’t do law school! Publishing? Not even worth joking about. Secondary school teaching? Not now, after NCLB/Michele Rhee/budget cuts/TFA/Scott Walker have all had a go at teachers."

Not that long ago, it was generally agreed upon that if someone had a college degree and was even marginally able to get along in society, they'd be able to make a decent living. There was no guarantee of riches, but you'd be able to own a car, eventually buy a home (at least if you didn't live in New York), and have kids. Now, even The New York Times recognizes that only half of college grads are finding jobs that require a diploma.*

What about the traditional professions - law, medicine, clergy?

This morning, Inside Higher Ed reports on the dismal job market for law school graduates. The market for clergy is even worse -
two graduates for every position, although there are positions open because the churches are tiny and can't afford to pay anyone. Physicians are actually doing all right, although there are fewer rich-doctor positions than there were in the past.

You might say, in that case, forget college. Before you do that, look at this chart.

So you can be a doctor, and there are still jobs in the sciences. Of course, while it might work for any one person to go into those fields, they can hardly absorb the entire supply of unemployed and underemployed Americans.

In this environment, it might make as good economic sense as anything else for a young person in need of work to say, "I'm chucking it all and surfing in Bali." At least, that is, if they don't have student loans. Or, "I'm going to go Occupy Wall Street." **

We're in a new era of constant insecurity, so anyone who tells a young person, "It's your own fault for going into creative writing/law/whatever," should be whacked with a large stick and summarily stuffed into an anti-aging machine to be forced back to the age of 18. And if that's not enough to depress you, go here.

Something is going to have to give, but I don't know if it's going to be Occupy grown large, the education credential bubble bursting, or a crisis of consumer confidence.

* Let's ignore, for the moment, the shakiness of defining jobs that "require" a college degree, and let's just assume that jobs that ask for them actually do require skills learned in college.

** Except, interestingly, for this generation there doesn't seem to be the kind of generation gap that would fuel protest. That's a whole other other post.

Job, found

This fall I will begin a position with LIM College in Midtown Manhattan as an assistant professor of management.

Jobs

Assistant Prof in Higher Ed, Old Dominion University.

Asst/Assoc Prof of Higher Ed, George Washington University.

Job posting

Assistant professor in higher education at the University of Arizona.

New jobs

Jobs have been posted at:
University of Louisville;
Oregon State University;
Georgia Southern;
SUNY Buffalo.

Jobs

Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education Administration/College Student Personnel, the University of Tennessee.

Maybe I've been falling down on posting open jobs in the field. Thing is, this year the majority of the postings I'm seeing are looking for a specific subfield rather than being open. There's been several for student affairs or community colleges.

Jobs so far

It feels like there are a lot of job postings this year that request a specific area of specialization ... like not mine. Today alone the ASHE listserv included ads for faculty studying community colleges, student affairs, and access.

My vague sense was that last year a lot more jobs were open specialty.

Jobs

Hey look, Vanderbilt is hiring. But they wouldn't be looking for me, even if they wanted to hire their own graduates.

Roundup post

It's official: This fall, I will be working two jobs at Vanderbilt. I will be TAing Organization Theory classes, and I will be working on assessment projects in the Office of Greek Life.

Last weekend I had to do something I'm not fond of - perform. My capoeira group played in front of the audience for Shakespeare in the Park, so there I was. Luckily, there are no photos of my doing anything other than playing an instrument.

My yoga teacher is opening her own studio. Nashville people should check it out.

Job market again

Here's another PhD seeking employment and staring the reality of the job market in the face. (I was with her right up until the end, when she promises to tell us in future columns how we can stand out in the job market. Where, exactly, did she get this expertise?)

Your career

There's a lot of pondering in the academy about how the faculty identity can swallow up your personal identity (and whether this is a good thing or not). One thing that is clear is that, at least during your graduate education the pre-tenure years, work is not a 40-hour-a-week proposition. Part of the fair exchange for this is that, having earned tenure, one has job security.

But tenure-track jobs are disappearing, our present economy exacerbating the trend. Someone told me there were only six tenure-track positions advertised in philosophy last year. Six! Better prepare for an alternate career, I think. But there's something a wee bit discouraging about learning your last five or ten years of preparation for a career were a waster.

"A waste?" I can read the op-eds now. I have read them. "A PhD opens plenty of other doors. Students just aren't aware of them."

Maybe in other times and places. But the idea that there all these alternatives out there, now, in this economy, is balderdash. Education is a field that has always had a plethora of alternatives to faculty jobs, such as working as an analyst for a state or research firm, or working for a national organization. Now the economy has taken its hit there, too, and there are a lot fewer of those openings than in the past. Available graduates are beginning to stack up like cordwood at the PhD level, just like they are at the baccalaureate level.* Imagine what it's like for the philosophers.

If I don't find a faculty-or-reasonably-equivalent position, there are jobs I could get - jobs that ignore my five years of PhD study or my seven total years of graduate study. If I take one of them, I displace someone else who has the minimum qualifications. It's a game of dominos.

But why give up? There are some jobs out there. I just have to be the one to get one of them. And to do that, all I have to do is let my academic identity swallow up my personal identity. No guarantees, of course - I could end up in adjunct-land, working 80 hours a week and being eligible for food stamps. Does this strike anyone else as a risky gamble?

In today's world, no one's job is secure. I'm watching my dad's company decimate its employee ranks (after turning a profit in the last fiscal year, a near-miracle for a luxury-goods retailer in 2009), and even if the laid-off can find another job, it won't be in the same geographical area, and the mass firings have made it impossible to sell a house - so how do you move? "The American Dream" of home ownership is an albatross for those people.

Sooner or later, most of us will lose our jobs or have to substantially retool our skills, whether we want to or not. And we're being told that, the "competitive" candidate will be the one who devotes 110% to his or her work identity, and not just in academia. This is the economy that Generation Y, which has been announcing for years that it won't accept anything less than work-life balance, is graduating into. This is the economy that Baby Boomers, after a lifetime of work, are being laid-off into. This is the economy that Generation X, never idealistic to begin with, has been struggling to make a secure living in. We are all scrambling to prove we deserve our piece of the ever-shrinking pie. (Grapes of Wrath, anyone?) Or we retreat into the fantasy of self-employment via Etsy, the under-40 woman's equivalent of hoping to make it in the NBA.

There are days I'm tempted to end the all-or-nothing gamble, skip straight over the game of dominos, and go straight to the nearly inevitable end game - and take their jobs. Hell, if I do it early enough, maybe I can at least get a book deal out of it.


* This is one reason that saying everyone needs to go to college for economic reasons is so horribly flawed. The jobs that require that education just aren't there.

Jobs

Wow, jobs for next fall are already starting to show up. So here goes:

Open-rank tenure-track position at Texas Tech, specializing in community colleges.

Assistant professor at the University of Hawaii.

Non-tenure track assistant position at Michigan State University. State also has open-ranked tenure-track positions open, but these don't seem to be posted (they're on the ASHE listserv).

Research scientist at the University of Illinois, studying graduate student issues.

By the way, I promise to eventually do a round-up of this year's job search. In the meantime, you can read someone else's.

Jobs

Assistant prof in organizational leadership at Azusa Pacific. (The title is business-y, but it requires a higher ed PhD.)

Jobs

Florida International University - Assistant/Associate Professor of Higher Education.

I can't find a good link, but there is a Visiting Assistant Professor position at the University of Southern Mississippi in their student affairs program.

Jobs

Assistant professor of higher and postsecondary education - University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Assistant/associate professor in adult education and higher education leadership - Oregon State University.

Teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State University. (I can't find a stable link to this job, but it's teaching 5 courses a semester in a distance program, non-tenure track.)

Job updates

No, I don't have a job. Yes, things are happening. But this post is about other people.

Several of my friends at Vanderbilt (or formerly at Vanderbilt) are on the market, and congratulations to them for getting jobs at the University of Southern California, Cumberland University, and the University of Tennessee!

I was chatting with a friend in K-12 about opportunities this year. He interviewed at some pretty darn good schools. By contrast, there were no top ten higher ed programs with assistant professor positions this year, and I think that there were no top twenty jobs available, either. (Just to reiterate: At the assistant professor level, which is what I am eligible for.) This is just an illustration of how the first faculty job someone takes is only partially influenced by the opportunities available, which are somewhat random.

Job news

I just got my first of these letters for the job season:

"Thank you for your interest in the higher education position in [Department X]. I regret to inform you that funding for position has been withdrawn because of the continuing budgetary restraints encountered by [our fair state]. Please be assured that withdrawal of funding for this position in no way reflects on the quality of your application."

I'm actually surprised this is the first letter I've seen like this; last year there were quite a few more. But it's good to know they don't want me to feel responsible for the recession.

A long and winding road

For those of you not in academia, I thought it might be interesting to see what a job interview for a faculty member is like. It's a long process. This following is a distillation of a schedule for one of the searches our department is running this semester:

Day 1: Dinner with the search committee.
Day 2: Breakfast with two faculty members. Four half-hour meetings with four different faculty members. Lunch with three more faculty members. Four more half-hour meetings, three with faculty and one with the dean. Late afternoon, the job talk. Dinner with two more faculty members.
Day 3: Breakfast with yet another faculty member. Lunch with students. Meeting with department chair.

Except for a three-hour gap the last morning, there aren't any real breaks in the schedule - there are a few 15-minute gaps between meetings. Long enough, if things are running on time, to use the restroom, but not enough to clear your head or stop being "on." This schedule is pretty typical, although sometimes the first-night dinner is dispensed with.

Jobs

Appalachian State: Assistant Professor in Higher Education, Adult and Developmental education.