For graduate students interested in an academic career, Professor Lennard J. Davis recently offered some excellent advice in the Chronicle of Higher Education. That advice included the following:
I tell my students to plan their dissertation committees with the job search in mind. They should pick professors who not only are skilled in the field of the dissertation, but who also have national and international reputations. Letters from those professors will count a great deal. And as these things go, letters from full professors will count more than letters from associate professors, and so on down the line.
Note the emphasis on reputation and hierarchy. Professor Davis, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is refreshingly honest and would make a good adviser for that reason alone. Even better, all of his degrees are from Columbia. Unfortunately, the most understanding professors with the time and willingness to shepherd you through a graduate program are rarely those with the biggest reputations and most fashionable credentials.
I have the hardest time convincing my grad school pals that institutional rank/pedigree matters. They've drunk the academic meritocracy Kool-Aid. It's a hoot to listen to them rant about how their undergrad students all think they're living in a Horatio Alger story, then these same grads can't understand why alumni of our mid-range state school mostly end up adjuncting or doing VAP jobs (if they are lucky), while students from the higher ranked schools (and presumably with mentors with better pedigrees) scoop up the good T-T jobs. Sociologists are simply adorable.
ReplyDeleteYes, both your supervisor's academic status within the discipline and the school's academic status -ie is it a Tier 1, 2, 3 or a Tier 4 university? (Tier 1 is the highest and Tier 4 is the lowest)affects your ability to get funding for your degree and the opportunities once you've finished your degree. It is important to consider both teh status of your intended grad university as well as your intended supervisor.
ReplyDeleteActually, pedigree is less rigid than you might think. I went to an Ivy League school for my Ph.D. and in my fourth year on the market, not only do I not have a tenure-track job, almost none of my friends do either.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous 6:46 That sucks, but that's not what this post is about. The academic job market is tough for everyone, but it's tougher for people who didn't go to top-tier graduate schools. And it's toughest for people who didn't go to top-tier graduate schools and also didn't have advisers who are well known and well respected in their fields. That's not to say that Princeton grads whom Anthony Grafton advised are guaranteed jobs, just that they have a better shot than any old history PhD advised by an associate professor of the State University of Nowhere Special.
ReplyDelete"@Anonymous 6:46 That sucks, but that's not what this post is about."
ReplyDeleteYeah @Anonymous 6:46, try to stay on topic, ggeeeeez
Actually, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the names of successful job candidates are being pulled out of a hat.
ReplyDeleteThere's a further refinement to the pedigree notion that no one else has mentioned yet. It isn't necessarily (or solely) the institution itself; it can also be the school or program within the institution. For example, Indiana University isn't an Ivy, but it has one of the best schools of music in the world, and people doing the hiring in the performing arts know this. It also has (or had; I'm not really up on it any more) one of the best German departments in the country at the graduate level, and again, this was known to German departments and hiring committees at other schools. In that respect, it's kind of like choosing an advisor--it's less about the institution than about the individuals with whom you will be able to study once you're in.
ReplyDeleteI know that's true to some extent (if you are hiring for creative writing you want someone who got their MFA at Iowa, not an Ivy). But that's also what folks in my department keep telling themselves: "Our dept is well-regarded in X subfield--we gotta shot!" They're still losing jobs to candidates from institutions that are higher ranked.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Nothing in this game is a sure shot. It's just one more factor to take into account.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that getting all of your degrees at Columbia will land you at an urban public campus like UIC tells you something about the job market, and this prof probably got his job when times were a lot better than they are now.
ReplyDeleteOn this april 1st, reason number 53: You Lose your Sense of Humor
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true (at least in my esoteric field). I've had two jobs in my field in the last 13 years. My adviser's name is definitely what got my foot in the door for the first job - more so than for any course I taught or paper I published in graduate school - and even for my second job, four years later, my adviser's name still carried a great deal of weight. I would not recommend any undergraduate student enter a PhD program in my field unless they're offered the chance to work with someone recognized as an expert, who has reams of publications after his or her name. Generally those people tend to make good advisers - and are good at raising grant money for their students, too - but I'm sure the lesser-known advisers might be just as good at teaching. In some fields, though, the pedigree (yours and your advisers) really is everything.
ReplyDeletethis post is total bs. i have never heard of this on a hiring committee ever. maybe that's the way it is in the states. never happens here.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where Eris is writing from, but believe me, this isn't BS in the States. It's standard operating procedure.
ReplyDeleteLooks like things are hot in the U.S. Thank God phds are very few in Africa.
ReplyDeleteIf they don't already have a Wikipedia page (that you didn't write), then scratch them off the potential advisor list.
ReplyDeleteThis is so smart on. A key piece of research to do even before you go is to identify the tenured faculty member_S_ in your area of interest and then examine their record of placing advisees. If the department can not help you with that, move on as fast as you can. I also would advise ensuring that there are adequate backups...for if the rock star you started with leaves there he may not take you with him/her.
ReplyDeleteDoes pedigree also count in industry or are job connections more important?
ReplyDeleteConnections are WAY more important. And job experience. I'm only 26, but even at this point when I've looked for a new job, the interviewer looks at my resume and asks me maybe one question about college (and even then it's more about what I learned than where I went, or maybe some chitchat about the geographic area if he or she has been there) and then fifteen about what I've done in the years since. And the main reason I'm sitting in the interview is that I used to work with someone who used to work with someone who is looking for someone, and got a recommendation.
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