To get a job in philosophy

11:00 AM | Labels: Job Market

Carolyn Dicey Jennings has done amazing work running the numbers on Tenure-Track hiring this year. Here is her report (emphases added):

Overall, what are your chances of getting a job as a philosopher? Well, if we just look at overall numbers, there are 139 jobs (188 including post-docs) and around 800 estimated candidates. That is, over 700 candidates applied to Barnard, so I am conservatively guessing around 800 candidates total. Thus, overall prospects are at around 24% chance of getting any job, 17% chance of getting any tenure-track job, 6% chance of getting a ranked tenure-track job.

What if we add data about your PhD granting institution? Well, for American institutions we can use the NRC numbers on average numbers of PhDs granted from 2002-2006 to estimate the number of candidates from each school on the market and compare that to how many people from that school got jobs. The numbers from this are reported to the right. *NOTE: I only report the top 66 institutions ranked by the NRC, according to the 5% R score. Thus, when I say "ranked by the NRC" I mean "ranked 66 or above for the 5% R rankings of the NRC."

On average, the ranked NRC schools granted 3.9 PhDs each year from 2002-2006. Thus, something like 257 ranked graduate students can be expected to be on the market from the United States in any given year. 132 of the successful candidates were from NRC ranked institutions (101 of successful tenure-track candidates were from NRC ranked institutions, and 27 of successful ranked tenure-track job-getters were from NRC ranked institutions). Thus, one's overall chance of getting any job (post-doc or tenure-track) coming from an NRC ranked institution may be as high as 51%, 39% for any tenure-track job, and 11% for a ranked tenure-track job.

What if we add information about your gender? The top 66 programs I selected from the NRC data had an average of 29% female graduate students in 2005 (and 20% female faculty). Thus, around 75 women from ranked departments are likely to be on the market at any one time. 7 NRC ranked women got NRC ranked jobs, and 33 NRC ranked women got tenure-track jobs in general. Thus, if you are a woman from an NRC ranked department looking for a ranked job, your chances might be around 9%, whereas if you are looking for a tenure-track job in general they at are around 44%. If you are a woman from an NRC ranked school looking for a post-doc, be advised that only 15% of ranked women achieved post-docs this year (5 out of 34 ranked post-doc achievers), whether or not the post-doc was itself ranked. Because of that fact, the chance of a woman from an NRC ranked department getting a tenure-track job or post-doc is about the same as for a man from these departments: 51%.

Means and Medians

1. The mean worldwide Gourmet ranking of the PhD granting institution for those who got a tenure-track job(rank=25) is significantly lower (p=.01) from those who got a ranked tenure-track job (rank=20). Miss Median Job-Getter comes from either Texas or U Chicago, whereas Miss Median Ranked Job-Getter comes from Berkeley.

2. Using Kieran Healy's rankings of areas of specialization as they contribute to the overall Gourmet ranking (ranked from 1-12, M&E to Continental), the mean specialization rank for those who got a tenure-track job (rank=5.2) is significantly lower (p=.01) than for those who got a ranked tenure-track job (rank=4.3). Miss Median Job-Getter does Political Philosophy, whereas Miss Median Ranked Job-Getter does Philosophy of Mind.

3. Those ranked institutions offering post-docs and fellowships (rank=18) have a significantly higher (p<.00001) mean worldwide Gourmet ranking than those ranked institutions offering tenure-track jobs (rank=36). Mr. Median Ranked Post-Doc was hired by UCLA, whereas Mr. Median Ranked Job-Getter was hired by UC Irvine. (Moreover, 2/3 of tenure-track jobs are unranked, but only 1/3 of post-docs are unranked.)

4. Those institutions offering post-docs and fellowships (16% women) hire significantly fewer (p=.01) women than those institutions offering tenure-track jobs (35% women). There is a non-significant difference between the numbers of women hired by ranked and unranked institutions (35% unranked TT, 39% ranked TT, 16% unranked PD, 15% ranked PD).

5. The mean number of peer-reviewed publications for those going to ranked tenure-track jobs was 3 (Median=2), whereas the mean number for all post-docs was 2 (Median=2).

Correlations

6. The most substantial correlation is between the hiring institution rank and PhD granting institution rank, at .3 (a mild to moderate correlation). That is, the higher your PhD granting institution is ranked the higher your hiring institution will be ranked.

7. I also found a negative correlation between PhD granting institution and number of publications (-.17: the lower your PhD granting institution is ranked the more peer-reviewed publications you have) and between gender and number of publications (-.21: if you are a man you likely have more publications than if you are a woman). Some caution is needed here because I only looked up the number of peer-reviewed publications for those getting ranked tenure-track jobs or (ranked or unranked) post-docs. Thus, to get one of these you may have needed more publications if you are from a lower ranked institution and fewer publications if you are a woman.

Comparison with the NRC Rankings

If you do the same thing for the National Research Council’s “R” and “S” Rankings (100 Philosopher Survey), some interesting things happen. For “R,” Miss Median Job Getter comes from UPenn and Miss Median Ranked Job Getter comes from Syracuse. These are Johns Hopkins and UCLA, respectively, for the “S” Rankings. More interestingly, there is no significant difference between ranked and unranked departments preferences in area of specialization, both of which come to a mean rank of around 5.

I then looked at the National Research Council reports for number of PhDs granted between 2002 and 2006, and then compared those averages to the number of successful candidates (post-doc or tenure-track job) to yield a ranking of schools. Interestingly, this ranking correlates equally well (both have a coefficient of .3) with the NRC “R” rankings and the Gourmet rankings. (I also computed the “S” rankings, which do slightly less well, with a coefficient of .25.)