Jobs

With the job market gearing up again, I've been thinking about the recent graduates in my field and what they've chosen to do. In no particular order, my compadres include:

• a researcher at a think tank in DC
  
• an administrator in a higher ed advocacy group
  
• institutional researchers (two)
  
• a professor, not of higher ed, at a community college
  
• professors, of higher ed, at flagship state schools (two)
  
• an administrator for a denomination's higher ed board
  
• a state higher ed coordinating board researcher

The thing is, as far as I know only one of the folks who is not a higher education professor even considered applying for faculty jobs. It's not that they wouldn't have been competitive, either. A few more interesting data points: All of the faculty members are single and childless. A couple of the women only considered jobs in their spouse's city of employment. Several women were adamant about wanting "a normal family life" or "a job that gets left at the office."

The thing is, in education there are a lot of other possible careers other than "professor." It's not like a PhD in philosophy. Still, I've been surprised by how many bright, promising graduate students are not considering or seriously pursuing the faculty role.

Jobs

University of Houston: Assistant/Associate Professor - Educational Psychology. For those of you not in the field, it's unusual for a higher education job to be in a department called educational psychology. Usually, it would be in an educational policy and leadership department, or maybe adult and lifelong learning, or occasionally at a center for higher education. Despite this nomenclature, the opening has little to do with psychology.

Job search supply and demand

Interesting article on hiring in political science. Lots of what is covered is similar to education. What struck me, though, was this:

Several chimed in to say that they agreed that it would be far more humane to such individuals to be honest after two years, rather than letting them face a long time in graduate school to be followed by potentially fruitless job searches. Graham Wilson of Boston University said that most programs have "moved away from the tough evaluation" after the second year of a doctoral program and that they should return to a frank discussion of potential at that point.

When I was applying to PhD programs, there were two programs I was most serious about. One is the kind of program they are discussing above. Recent graduates made it clear that they brought in more students than they intended to graduate and then sorted after arrival. The other is the program I am in now, which intends to graduate everyone it admits. It doesn't always work; students still choose to leave - or are counseled to leave, particularly after comprehensive exams. Still, I think the overall numbers would show a difference in attrition.

It surprises me, then, that the third option of being more selective up front wasn't discussed as an alternative. Do admissions committees just not think they have enough data to make valid predictions about success? Do they count on a minimum number of students (or TAs) for some reason?

Rock Island State Park

In the gorge
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

Oops! I thought I had posted this, but I didn't.

Last weekend we camped out at Rock Island State Park - the one in Tennessee, not the one in Illinois. The camping spots are nothing special, and there aren't any long hikes. (The longest one is Collins River Trail, which is three miles and not especially interesting.) However, it makes up for that in beauty.

This photo is from the Caney Fork Gorge trail. You start at the Twin Falls Overlook and take stairs down to the gorge. This photo was taken near the base of the stairs. From there, you head downstream in the river, hopping rocks and occasionally getting wet, until you get to the big waterfalls. At the falls you can swim and generally frolic. After the fact, someone told me there were a lot of snakes in the water, but we didn't notice any.

We also hiked the Eagle Trail, a short hike I've done before. It goes through attractive woods to end up at Blue Hole along the river. There are a lot of other things to do - boating, tennis, ping-pong, horseshoes - we went swimming on the swim beach, and a couple of friends took their kayaks out.

The park proved to be the perfect place to relax for the weekend. If I wanted to do hardcore hiking, there are other places I'd recommend over it - Frozen Head would head up the list - but Rock Island is nice for relaxing or keeping a family with diverse interests happy.

The job season has now begun

University of Missouri: Assistant, associate, or full professor with expertise in higher education leadership and/or policy.