Christmas Eve Number Crunching

Before I had a chance to get a post up about it, I saw some fellow Smokers in the comments over that-a-way engaging in some job market accounting. I need a quick break from syllabi planning, so I'll join:

588 applicants to the Open/Open job at Boise State. 588. That's 238 more than the number of applications to the Open/Open job at Coastal Carolina, which I already thought was sort of staggering.

That makes the over 750 applicants to Duke's Writing Program from across the Humanities actually seem quite small. Given that the MLA has predicted a 35% drop in the English job market last year (putting the decline at 51% over two years), you might think the applicant pool would be larger to these and similar positions.

Maybe us philosophers aren't applying en masse to the positions and that's keeping the numbers down. But, when there was only about 250-300 positions advertised in the JFP this year, including Humanities/Teaching Fellowships, we should be applying to anywhere that would consider giving us money.

You know, money we could use to recoup some of our ridiculous job market expenses. Really? $148 per night? And travel expenses? Say, on average $250. And, the amount spent on 46 apps sent (for me) via Interfolio on a conservative estimate of about $10 per app? Shit, son.