Academic Job Market Research Articles

Obtaining Academic Employment Within the U.S. Context: The Experiences of Strugglers

In the present study, we explored the experiences of Ph.D. graduates in navigating the U.S. academic job market. Using interpretative phenomenology and interview data from 15 Ph.D. graduates, we found that while pursuing academic positions, the Ph.D. graduates faced concerns about the best-fit qualities, negotiated their failures with a flexible mindset, and introspected to restore their academic identity. These internal struggles suggest the challenges of validating doctoral employability in a highly competitive academic job market. This paper discusses the findings and offers recommendations for further research and for doctoral students/graduates and academic institutions.

Alternative-academic careers of LIS in China: Trends, challenges, and opportunities

This study investigates the state of alternative-academic careers (alt-ac) in Library and Information Science (LIS) within China, based on the transformation of the LIS academic market over a 5-year span (2018–2022). The study employs a unique dataset of job postings collected through first-hand field investigations and meticulous manual preprocessing. A comprehensive analysis of the dataset was conducted using a combination of the BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model for named entity recognition, social network analysis for examining interdisciplinary interactions, and descriptive statistics for characterizing the distribution and trends of alt-ac positions. The results reveal that alt-ac positions account for 48.3% of the total demand in the field, distributed across nine categories: academic research institutions, government departments, military organizations, public libraries, and others. Each category exhibits unique developmental patterns. Over 20 distinct alt-ac roles were identified, such as data librarians, competitive intelligence specialists, transformative OA agreement negotiators, and scholarly communication experts, highlighting the ongoing emergence of new positions in response to institutional evolution. Descriptive statistics showed that the demand for alt-ac positions was notably concentrated in economically advanced regions, with the East China region accounting for 32.58% of the total positions, surpassing the proportions in North China (26.22%) and South China (13.86%). Social network analysis revealed substantial interdisciplinary interactions between LIS and other areas, such as computer science and public administration, suggesting potential opportunities for collaboration and competition. The findings emphasize the growing significance of alt-ac in China’s LIS field and provide insights into the dynamic landscape of the academic job market, offering implications for LIS education and workforce development strategies.

Mental health and early career adaptation challenges of Chinese returnees and Korean ambitionists among the STEAM doctoral cohorts in the post-pandemic academic job market

ABSTRACT This longitudinal study presents a critical phenomenological comparison of mental health and early career adaptation challenges encountered by Chinese returnees and Korean ambitionists in the post-pandemic academic job market. They were international doctoral candidates in American higher education pursuing academic careers in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) but failed to secure tenure-track faculty positions. Consequently, all Chinese returned to their home country, while all Koreans remained in the United States. Findings demonstrate that both groups commonly experienced racial trauma, career anxiety, and ambiguous loss, albeit within each group’s diverse circumstances and immigration status, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study suggests implementing trauma-informed care within the chaos theory of careers. Therefore, this study calls upon the global public, intellectual societies, policymakers, and counsellors in comparative and international education to develop appropriate coping strategies and provide these emerging scholars with mental health counselling and career support services.

Self-presentation and social networking online: The professional identity of PhD students in HCI

The number of research doctorate degrees awarded by US institutions per year has increased steadily over the decades. However, the academic job market is also becoming more competitive, and doctoral candidates often face difficulties in developing a professional identity and making career-related decisions. In this study, we investigated PhD students' professional identity formation with regard to their usage of social networking sites (SNSs). Through semi-structured interviews with 16 students in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), we found that self-presentation and online presence in the online community were considered necessary. Students' perception of using SNSs for professional activities was impacted by their peers and faculty. SNSs helped students gain information and support from online communities and also reflected their professional identities. The results present insights for transforming doctoral education and preparing students for diverse career options in today's economy.

A Snapshot of Academic Job Placements in Linguistics in the US and Canada

Abstract Most people working in the field of linguistics in the US and Canada have an intuitive sense of who the “major players” are among PhD-granting linguistics departments. Our analysis demonstrates that the frequently-perceived hierarchy of linguistics programs is indeed correct. Drawing on publicly available information from Winter/Spring, 2019 on faculty at all PhD-granting linguistics programs across the US and Canada, we use social network and heat map visualizations to demonstrate the existence of an extraordinarily strong and relatively stable hierarchy of programs whose graduates dominate the linguistics academic job market. A secondary finding is that many of the top programs are characterized by gender imbalances. We argue that the top programs’ tremendous influence on the job market as a whole affords these programs the ability – indeed, the responsibility – to take the lead in effecting positive change in the field's hiring patterns more broadly.

How to Choose an English Doctoral Program: A Guide for Women, First-Generation University Students, and Their Mentors

Featuring data from a nationwide survey of English faculty in Canada, this study focuses on the reasons that faculty offered for choosing their respective doctoral programs. This analysis pays particular attention to gendered disparities in participants’ responses and to disparities associated with parental educational level, two variables that sometimes intersect in striking ways. This investigation explains why some reasons that women and first-generation university students provided for their choice of doctoral program can increase a student’s chances of entering a poorly ranked program. Employing previously unprocessed data from Statistics Canada, this article also presents information to help would-be PhD students who are women, first-generation university students, or both make more informed decisions about where to pursue doctoral study to be more competitive in the academic job market if they aspire to be professors. This article is simultaneously designed to increase faculty mentors’ understanding of the problematic logic that women and first-generation university students may use when selecting their PhD programs so that such mentors can better address these students’ misperceptions about doctoral studies and the profession.

Predoctoral publications and academic career: a systematic review and future directions

ABSTRACT Publishing prior to completing graduate school is increasingly institutionalised through institutional policies in ways that pressurise doctoral students to publish as a graduation requirement or encourage them to do so to gain advantages in the academic job market. However, no systematic review of the role predoctoral publications play in shaping future career has been undertaken to date. This paper summarises and synthesises findings from studies examining the association between predoctoral publications and career outcomes while also outlining a research agenda to increase our understanding of how predoctoral publications influence scholars' future career.

Australian PhD graduates’ agency in navigating their career pathways: stories from social sciences

Despite limited opportunities for tenured academic positions, the number of PhD graduates in Social Sciences has steadily risen in countries with developed research systems. The current literature predominantly portrays PhD graduates as victims, either of the higher education system or of their own optimism in pursuing an academic career. This paper takes an alternative stance by spotlighting the agency exhibited by PhD graduates in Social Sciences as they deftly navigate their career pathways amid the constrained academic job market. Specifically, we adopt an ecological perspective of agency to explore how PhD graduates in Social Sciences exercise their agency in navigating their career from the beginning of their PhD candidature until up to 5 years after graduation. We employ a narrative approach to delve into the employment journeys of twenty-three PhD graduates. Within this cohort, we select to report four participants from four Australian universities, each possessing distinct career trajectories. Our analysis highlights agency as the link between various personal and institutional factors that shape our participants’ career trajectories. Based on this finding, we offer recommendations for practice and policy changes that appreciate PhD graduates’ agency.

ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR: INTERROGATING THE RISKY HIRE NARRATIVE IN STEM FACULTY CAREERS

Many faculty members believe that the racial demography of their disciplines afford highly qualified, racially minoritized scholars more power in the academic job market. As such, search committees may not offer faculty positions to candidates from these groups because they perceive them to be high risk and difficult to retain. One often cited study debunked this myth, showing that highly competitive racially minoritized candidates did not have more offers; however, the study was published over two decades ago and the narrative still remains. Using publicly available data from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, we identified 671 awardees and found no statistically significant differences in rates of early departure between highly qualified, racially minoritized scholars and other highly qualified racial groups across three different science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. We also used data from U.S. News and World Report university rankings, and the FY 2007 Survey of Research and Development Expenditures at Universities and Colleges to understand whether early departing faculty members across all racial categories leave for more prestigious institutions, as is assumed. Those results indicate a slight trend of early departing faculty members leaving for more prestigious institutions than their previous one. We situate these findings within the faculty diversity discourse and offer implications for practice and future research.

How do German pharmacologists publish in the non-peer-reviewed science magazine Biospektrum?

Publications in peer-reviewed journals are the most important currency in science. But what about publications in non-peer-reviewed magazines? The objective of this study was to analyze the publications of scientists, with a focus on pharmacologists, in the non-peer-reviewed German science magazine Biospektrum from 1999 to 2021. Biospektrum is edited by five scientific societies in Germany including the Society for Experimental and Clinical Society Pharmacology and Toxicology (DGPT) and provides opportunities to researchers to showcase their research to a broad audience. We analyzed 3197 authors of 1326 articles. Compared to the fields of biochemistry, microbiology, and genetics, pharmacology was largely underrepresented. Just three institutions in Germany contributed most papers to Biospektrum. Researchers with a doctoral degree were the largest author group, followed by researchers with a habilitation degree. Among all major fields, women were underrepresented as authors, particularly as senior authors. The Covid pandemic leads to a drop of publications of female first authors but not last authors. Compared to publications in the peer-reviewed journal Naunyn–Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (Zehetbauer et al., Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol 395:39–50 (2022)), female pharmacologists were underrepresented in the Biospektrum. Thus, German pharmacologists as a group do not value investing in “social impact” gained by publications in Biospektrum, and this attitude is even more prominent among female pharmacologists. Investing less in “social impact” by female pharmacologists may result in reduced visibility on the academic job market and may contribute to reduced opportunities to achieve high academic positions.

Pitching business school researcher profiles

PurposeThe authors passively apply a researcher profile pitch (RPP) template tool in accounting and across a range of Business School disciplines.Design/methodology/approachThe authors document a diversity of worked examples of the RPP. Using an auto-ethnographic research design, each showcased researcher reflects on the exercise, highlighting nuanced perspectives drawn from their experience. Collectively, these examples and associated independent narratives allow the authors to identify common themes that provide informative insights to potential users.FindingsFirst, the RPP tool is helpful for accounting scholars to portray their essential research stream. Moreover, the tool proved universally meaningful and applicable irrespective of research discipline or research experience. Second, it offers a distinct advantage over existing popular research profile platforms, because it demands a focused “less”, that delivers a meaningful “more”. Further, the conciseness of the RPP design makes it readily amenable to iteration and dynamism. Third, the authors have identified specific situations of added value, e.g. initiating research collaborations and academic job market preparation.Practical implicationsThe RPP tool can provide the basis for developing a scalable interactive researcher exchange platform.Originality/valueThe authors argue that the RPP tool potentially adds meaningful incremental value relative to existing popular platforms for gaining researcher visibility. This additional value derives from the systematic RPP format, combined with the benefit of easy familiarity and strong emphasis on succinctness. Additionally, the authors argue that the RPP adds a depth of nuanced novel information often not contained in other platforms, e.g. around the dimensions of “data” and “tools”. Further, the RPP gives the researcher a “personality”, most notably through the dimensions of “contribution” and “other considerations”.

Notes from the Trenches: Reflections from Recent PhD Graduates on Navigating the Academy

PhD planning graduates face an increasingly competitive academic job market. In this commentary, seven recent graduates provide qualitative descriptions of the complicated and ever-changing expectations graduates face. We situate this within a larger reflection on the neoliberal academy that promotes a culture of competitiveness over care and production over purpose. We emphasize how this system is seemingly antithetical to the transformative planning work needed to address the most pressing planning issues of our time and provide suggestions for meeting shifting expectations, evolving training and support needs, and opportunities for a more compassionate tenure-track market. Our commentary has implications for doctoral pedagogy, the tenure-track market, and the academy.

Unsettling academia: Academic career choices and pathways of PhD graduates in the Greater Bay Area in China

AbstractMuch of the scholarship on employment and career pathways of PhD graduates has examined the issues, including pre‐doctoral experiences, quality of doctoral education, networking and career choices across different sectors; however, contextual environmental factors have been generally overlooked. This study aims to explore the academic career choices and pathways of PhD graduates currently employed in universities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) in China. The primary data sources include semi‐structured interviews with a group of 28 PhD graduates from 14 universities in Guangdong province and Hong Kong, government talent policy documents, and university documents regarding recruitment and tenure. The findings of this study revealed five strategic logics that the PhD graduates deployed in the dynamic decision‐making process for academic career choices and pathways in the GBA: (1) logic of academic alignment (matching degrees between academic competitiveness and academic job market, alignment in research/teaching agenda, alignment with future professional aspiration); (2) logic of financial concerns; (3) logic of academic network; (4) logic of risk mitigation; (5) logic of institutional culture. Implications for universities and policymakers on academic career support and talent management in the GBA are also provided.

Doctoral pathways to imagined futures in higher education: two Hong Kong cases

ABSTRACT Drawing upon the mutually constitutive notions of possible selves and agency, this study illuminates how maintaining a future orientation in doctoral education acts to supply candidates with a pivotal sense of direction and drive their experimentation with disparate pathways to realise their academic career aspirations. In-depth analysis of two longitudinal cases reveals that participants’ trajectorial differences were closely linked to their exercise of agency towards different ends and to different extents under the biographical, institutional, local/national, and global conditions and contingencies they engaged with. However, neither was immune to the risk of suffering an unpredictable employment outcome following candidature. While this plight has much to do with the fierce competition inherent to the neoliberal academic job market, findings also underlined its association with the prominent absence of supervisory and programme support along their doctorate. The study concludes with proffering practical implications beneficial to nurturing and supporting candidates’ (diverse) career-possible selves.

The State of Black Sociology: A Critical Reflection of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology

On the fiftieth anniversary of Joyce Ladner’s The Death of white Sociology, we write this critical reflection to explore the discipline’s historical, often explicit oversight and investment in Whiteness. The historical roots of “mainstream”, white sociology are inundated with pathologization, dehumanization, and exclusion of Black people, the Black community, and Black scholarship. From graduate program training and conferencing to peer-review processes and the academic job market, Black sociologists are expected to center white hegemonic ideals of professionalism and academic rigor. We write this critical reflection exploring the edited volume’s implications for discussing anti-Blackness as well as the methodological and theoretical significance of Black sociology past and present. As Black sociologists and doctoral scholars, this reflection serves as a call to the discipline to grapple with texts such as The Death of white Sociology, the discomfort it may cause, and how the exclusion of such work directly harms the training and careers of Black graduate students.

Signaling in the Academic Job Market – The Case of Open Access Publishing Agreements

Signaling in the Academic Job Market – The Case of Open Access Publishing Agreements

Decolonizing Displacement Research: Betweener Autoethnography as a Method of Resistance

Over the past decade, there have been increasing numbers of displaced scholars from the Middle East and Africa who have come under sustained pressures and threats from their governments; only a few of them have been able to relocate to European and North American academia through scholarships and grants.1 Even these temporary solutions for displaced scholars rarely result in sustainable institutional solidarity in the form of permanent teaching or professorial positions. The lack of institutional support, coupled with discriminatory and racialized immigration policies, pushes these few fortunate scholars to either accept exploitative conditions perpetuated by the neoliberal economy or leave academia altogether to support their families. These challenges, along with draconian economic sanctions and restrictions imposed by the US Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on citizens of countries such as Syria, Sudan, Iran, and Cuba are only a snapshot of what displaced scholars endure on a daily basis while trying to do research, care for their families, and compete with scholars with privileged citizenship status for shrinking opportunities in the academic job market.

Entrepreneurship Education in Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Contexts in Brazil

This article discusses the impact of entrepreneurship education in socioeconomically disadvantaged contexts, emphasizing its perceived dynamic nature in reflecting personal values, social changes, and cultural differences (Lackéus, 2015; Loi et al., 2022; Berglund et al., 2020; Berglund & Johansson, 2007). The focus is on the implementation of the Empreende Jovem Fluminense (EJF) Program for high school students in poor communities in Rio de Janeiro. The EJF had the support of school directors, the State Department of Education, and a non-governmental organization serving children and adolescents at risk. A case study using content analysis was conducted to analyze speeches from school principals, coordinators, students, teachers, parents/guardians, and NGO representatives. The study found that the main contribution of education for entrepreneurship in disadvantaged contexts was the development of non-cognitive skills that can impact academic performance and job market outcomes. The program’s location on university premises also broadened the educational perspectives of the participants. Overall, the EJF is believed to be highly beneficial for the professional development of its participants.

Adviser connectedness and placement outcomes in the economics job market

We study the role of social networks in the academic job market for graduate students of Economics. We find that the connectedness of a student’s advisor in the coauthor network significantly improves her job market outcome. We use two identification strategies and find that a) higher Eigenvector centrality of an adviser leads to her student getting placed at a better ranked institution, and b) larger distance between an adviser and an institution decreases the probability that her students are placed there. Our study sheds light on the importance of social connections in a labour market where information frictions regarding job openings are virtually absent.

Australian Political Science in the 1960s: Establishing the Discipline of Politics at Flinders University

The appointment of foundation professors and establishing Departments/Disciplines in the new Australian universities of the 1960s could be fraught, as the example of Political Theory and Institutions at Flinders University demonstrates. It is worth examining the dynamics of this particular case study because it throws light on the state of Political Science Australia‐wide and the nature of the academic job market at the time, as well as revealing the gap between aspiration and outcome in the new Australian universities of the 1960s. The Flinders experience speaks to wider patterns.