In response to our latest, "How can we help you?" post, an anonymous reader writes in:
I am currently on the job market and would love advice on how to signal in my applications that I will certainly be done in time to start a position in the summer or fall. I have heard conflicting advice on this: defend as early as possible, have the PhD in hand, etc. I am in a situation where I could defend as early as March (and my whole committee has met and agreed that I am ready), but as soon as I defend, my funding gets cut off. So I would like to hold off on the defence so that I can continue to receive funding and not go into debt (!!) If I say in my cover letter that I will be defending in June, is that a red flag or is it early enough for search committees to take my application seriously?
This is an excellent question, as in my experience many (most?) grad students face this quandary. On the one hand, if they defend their dissertation before going on the job-market, they cannot continue to get grad school funding (which, obviously, can be a big problem if they don't get a job). On the other hand, if they don't defend before going on the market, that might undermine their job-market competitiveness, as search committees want to be sure a candidate will have their PhD. What should grad students in this position do?
Unfortunately, it is not at all clear. In response to the above query, another commenter, "Jaded", wrote in:
A search committee has no reason to believe an applicant that s/he will be done her/his dissertation when s/he says s/he will be done in an application letter. We have all been lied to far too many times. And the applicant is not always in the best position to say this with any authority. Indeed, most of us do not even trust thesis supervisors on this issue. I know this is not what you want to hear but that is how it looks from the other side of the table. I would always pick an applicant who has their degree in hand.
In my experience, Jaded has good reason to be jaded. I've heard of more than a few cases of candidates (and their letter-writers) saying the candidate would defend before getting hired, only for the candidate to not defend before being hired. In these cases, the candidates (who, I expect, thought they were acting in good faith) put the school they were hired by in a bad situation. The candidates could not only not be hired into the job they applied for (instead of being hired as Assistant Professors, they had to be hired as Lecturers or Instructors); they also had to continue working on their dissertation while on the job–something which, in many different ways, is a very bad way to start things off (it not only puts the hiring institution in a bad spot; it puts the person hired in a terrible spot, as it may not only frustrate their new colleagues also but prevent them from effectively transitioning into their new job-responsibilities, i.e. teaching and publishing for tenure).
Unfortunately, although Jaded's remarks are apt–and job-candidates should be aware that search committees may be likely to think just as Jaded does–the question still remains: what should candidates do? I wonder what the community thinks. For my part, I have two ideas.
First, I wonder whether there might be creative ways that candidates might demonstrate to committees that they will indeed defend before being hired. While I know some candidates go on the market with only a few chapters of their dissertation finished (and these, presumably, are the potentially overly-optimistic folks that search-committee members like Jaded worry about), I've known other candidates to go on the market with most of their dissertation already drafted. Here's one creative possibility for the latter candidates. What if they posted a dissertation table of contents and drafts of their completed chapters to a private webpage, noting in their letter that their dissertation is mostly drafted and linking to the private webpage in their letter or CV? I'm not sure if that would entirely assuage search-committee members' concerns–but I imagine it might comfort them a whole lot more than simply the candidate or their letter-writers merely saying they will be finished!
Second, I cannot help but wonder whether grad programs need to better address this entire situation. In recent years, I have heard of some grad programs more or less assuring their new PhDs of temporary employment at their home department for at least one year after receiving their degree. This seems to me a kind and responsible thing to do in today's brutal academic market. Given that grad students spend anywhere from 5-10 years in their grad program, setting aside temporary Instructor positions for newly minted PhDs seems to me far preferable to just cutting students loose onto the market without further funding.
Anyway, what do you all think? Do you have any suggestions or better solutions?
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