Comment on the current academic job market.

December 5, 2008 10:41 PM

Comment on the current academic job market, and the likelihood of scoring a tenure-track position in the Earth Sciences.

I'm currently an undergraduate considering a career in academia. I'm interested in a post-secondary teaching career in the Earth Sciences (especially in Meteorology/Atmospheric Science).

Many, including my own instructors, however, are indicating that these jobs are in relatively short supply and are very, very difficult to obtain. Is this really the case? How much competition is there for these positions? Please comment on what to expect in the current academic job market.

posted by capitalist.pig to education (13 comments total)

For polisci, there's the Political Science Job Rumors board. Perhaps a similar site exists for the fields you're interested in?
posted by PueExMachina at 1:22 AM on December 6, 2008

In the humanities/social sciences the current job market is very tight; I think the same is true of the natural sciences. In academia in general the trend for many years has been for adjunct use to rise at the expense of tenure track positions (see Marc Bousquet for a view from the humanities), and the current financial crisis has seen many universities (even the wealthiest) slash hiring as they expect budgets to decline sharply next year in the face of lowered endowment income, less state support, or debt troubles. Some long-time observers are very pessimistic .

That said, I don't think that all this bad news should necessarily be a deal-breaker for you. Average time to degree in the natural sciences is a shade under five years (at least at my institution...humanities subjects tend to run more like six or seven), which means the hiring situation could be better by the time you have your PhD in hand. I don't ever think academia will be an easy job market, but I expect it won't be as bad in five years as it is now. Any "job rumors" boards you look at now will be reflecting the current financial clusterfuck and won't necessarily be indicative of what you'd be looking at once you reached the market.

Another thing to consider is that you are looking at a growth field. Climate change is one of humanity's biggest challenges, and there will doubtless be jobs and increased funding available not only in academia but at NOAA, the UN, and various private outfits who want to tackle it. (I remember a friend in the UK financial regulatory services saying that they took on more new hires than ever before this past year...I suspect that climate change will do the same for environmental regulatory bodies and atmospheric/climate scientists.) An industry job would be a pretty nice fallback position if the hunt for tenure is too difficult.

If you have the skills, you can get into a program that funds your graduate work, and you're interested in the science, I think I'd go for it.
posted by col_pogo at 3:37 AM on December 6, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Tenure track jobs have always been scarce and difficult to obtain on purpose.

It's a risk you have to take if you want to be in the field. Your strategy is all about pricing and mitigating that risk, not eliminating it (because that's not possible). Most people would (I think) tend to find the risk generically less in earth sciences than in pure sciences or humanities, due to the healthy growth potential alluded to by other posters, but that's no insurance by any means.

The American education system deliberately produces more PhDs than there are tenure-track positions and directly equivalent non-university roles (government and private lab jobs with a strong and stable career path, for example).

People will talk for no end of time about why that is, but part of what I find interesting is that there are other graduate programs where the reverse is true. Medicine, for example, intentionally produces far fewer graduates than there are residency slots, which has fueled a massive export business (Americans going to foreign medical schools) and import business (non-Americans getting visas to come here to practice.) It's harder to say whether law or business school fall, in part because the line between being in the club (a good post-graduate job) and not is a lot more fuzzy than that applicable to PhDs.
posted by MattD at 5:02 AM on December 6, 2008

You are asking for a prediction of your employment prospects seven, eight, or more years into the future. It's like asking about the price of oil then -- we can point to current trends, but beyond that it is just a guess.

One really important thing to look at is whether your field has any demographic bulges in it -- did a lot of departments expand rapidly fifteen years ago or so? If they did, then those profs are going to be retiring about when you would be graduating, and life might be golden. Conversely, if they did their expanding two years ago, they might be fully staffed and not hiring when you get your phd. Take a look at some departmental websites, and see if there are any strong patterns.

As long as you are entering a fully-funded and well-ranked program, and you strategically position yourself all the way through for academic jobs (eg publishing, presenting, choosing your adviser, choosing a good research topic, etc), your situation won't be that risky. But if you take out loans, go to a program that isn't very respected, or make poor strategic choices, you may be facing a far tougher situation at the end.

Make sure to read a few books like Getting What You Came For, and the previous AskMe's on this subject.
posted by Forktine at 5:57 AM on December 6, 2008

Nthing the silver lining of going on the job market some years from now, but I'd point out that there will probably be a backlog of people vying for better jobs (or a job at all) after a recession. Also, a difficult job market today translates into higher application rates for grad school. In decent times, you expect to see recent college grads moving into entry-level jobs, but those jobs are more scare as people reluctantly choose to be underemployed rather than unemployed. The market is shedding rather than adding jobs, hence sheltering in a grad program becomes appealing for people accustomed to the student life. You also get people (like me) who head from corporate jobs back to grad school for retraining when their company goes through downsizing. Bottom line: brace yourself for the challenge of getting into a decent program with funding.

I'd make two further observations: (a) expect that you'll have to work your way up the ladder in academia, as in any field. You might not get a tenure-track job fresh out of grad school, but don't lose heart. Keep grooming the CV and angling for the next move; (b) you might not have a lot of control over where you live, especially at first. You go wherever the best job happens to be. I knew this going into it, but it's hard.

It's not for the faint of heart. I heard lots of nay saying, but I still think it's worth it if you enjoy research and teaching. Best of luck capitalist.pig
posted by woodway at 7:25 AM on December 6, 2008

You might check out this FPP on the blue that was posted a couple of days ago.
posted by elfgirl at 8:22 AM on December 6, 2008

I liked teaching when I was in grad school, but I eventually decided I'd be happy in a full-time research position, and I haven't missed teaching. We joke where I work that "You're so good that you could probably get a faculty job!" I think we have better lives than most faculty do.

I hope you do pursue academia. Good luck!
posted by lukemeister at 8:32 AM on December 6, 2008

I'm currently an undergraduate considering a career in academia.

You have a very long time before you need to worry about jobs in academia. For now, the best thing you can do to get there is keep your GPA high, look for research assistant jobs (they are good for your cv and will help you make a case for getting into grad school).

Forktine makes one good comment, that the prediction you are asking for is impossible to make. It is a waste of time to research trends in individual departments, especially for you (and especially this early). New positions don't always replace retirements. And just because a department hired two years ago does not mean that won't hire again this year. There are many other factors involved.

I'm interested in a post-secondary teaching career in the Earth Sciences (especially in Meteorology/Atmospheric Science).

You have to be a little bit more clear on this bit. Are you interested in teaching but not research? You do realize that most R1 (research/teaching) universities do not offer tenure-track positions for teaching only, right? They actually hire on quality of research/future promise, even if the candidate has no prior teaching experience. Yes, you have to write a teaching statement but it matters very little in this case.

If you want a teaching only job, then are you thinking a community college/small liberal arts school (some of these also have a research requirement)?

Then yes, you're right, these jobs are indeed competitive. There is no way to predict what the market will be x years from now. I plan to start applying for tenure track jobs next year and I am not sure what to expect. Yes I know there will be fewer jobs but I may be the best candidate for one of those jobs so it is impossible to tell.

Please comment on what to expect in the current academic job market.

The current job market is not your job market. So stop worrying. For now work towards your next goal, graduate school. Do well and worry about the market when the time comes.
posted by special-k at 9:01 AM on December 6, 2008

I'm a second year graduate student in the humanities and, if I've learned anything over the past year and a half of graduate school, it's that I can't let the job market dissuade me from doing what I want to do. If you really want to spend a lot of years studying earth science, then do it, regardless of the job market. You have to do it because you really want to, not for a future reward that may or may not actually exist. There is absolutely no job security in the academy and, if current trends persist, that may not really change. That being said, there *are* people who get jobs in the academy, even in the humanities. I just think that it's really important to have your own reasons for wanting to pursue a PhD outside of a career path / the job market. The people that seem to succeed tend to be the people who really want to do the research for its own sake.
posted by aether516 at 9:10 AM on December 6, 2008

You might want to check out the BLS occupational outlook for atmospheric scientists (and scroll down to find links to the related positions as well). If you haven't already, go beyond your textbooks and check out the leading scientific/academic journals in the field(s) you're interested in. Even if you don't understand half of what they're talking about, if you read any of it and go, "whooooahhh! cool!" then that might help you feel more confident about pointing your path towards grad school. Having a good feel for your passion for the subject field (rather than any particular *outlet* for that passion) means you'll know you have options no matter what.
posted by shelbaroo at 10:32 AM on December 6, 2008

Right now, a lot of universities are considering or have already implemented a hiring freeze. My alma mater has had one for six months now; the community college I work for has basically said no new full time hires. Public schools are feeling the pinch because real estate tax revenues are down. Private schools are seeing their endowments drop in value. The credit market falling apart means the new soil research lab may not have a decent market to sell to issue bonds for, etc. Fortunately, as an undergraduate, you've got some time between now and PhD-land. Plus, there are places outside academia that hire people in your field, and the federal government based isn't as economy driven. So you face less competition and more opportunities than what we shall call the worst case scenario.

Depending on your time to B.S. graduation, you may end up getting your fill of student contact as a paid Teaching Assistant in grad school. Most tenure-track positions are research oriented, with teaching as a duty not a privilege. What you're asking for basically does not exist. If you're afraid of research, hopefully a PhD will cure you of that phobia; if you really want to teach, well that's subject to the enrollment demands of students. Interestingly, our Geology courses look pretty damn full for next semester. Of course, there's nothing on offered on the subject of weather or atmospheric science; I suspect Geology fills a lot of student's graduation requirements while minimizing the amount of math needed. Plus, we're a community college, not a research Uni.

People are saying to ignore the short term, which is a really good point -- academia can cut back or not hire, but after a few years, there's going to be a built up demand for new hires to accommodate growth. Hopefully by the time you have to apply for a faculty position, the world will be a different place.
posted by pwnguin at 3:17 PM on December 6, 2008

I'm in this field, but not in the academic side. The bad news is there are more meteorology/atmospheric science graduates at all levels than there are jobs. If you look at this, table 3 shows that the number of B.S. degree recipients that go on for advanced degrees has been on the increase. The good news is if you are motivated to go down the tenure track path, you'll be ahead of those who are in grad school mainly because they couldn't find a job after their bachelor's.

So, yes, it will be very very competitive. However, if you have an intense interest in the field and the motivation to make yourself stand out from the crowd, it can be done. A lot will depend on what topic you pick for your thesis/dissertation and if you want to lean more towards the research or the teaching side. Like others have said, it will take a while to get your MS/PhD, and by that point there could be some positions open as the baby boomers start to retire.

Good luck.
posted by weathergal at 7:21 PM on December 6, 2008

The Modern Language Association sent this message to members on 15 Dec 08:

While colleges and universities have relied for decades on a faculty mix that has included full-time teachers, long-term part-time teachers, and teaching assistants, the accelerating trend toward covering large segments of the undergraduate curriculum by using non-tenure-track teachers instead of tenured and tenure-track professors is changing the character of the faculty and the educational experience of students.

This may or may not be the case in your field, but the report might be of interest to you anyway.
posted by woodway at 7:19 AM on December 16, 2008