In the comments section of my post in this series on originality, Pendaran Roberts wrote:
If you're going to be original, based on my experience, it needs to be within a well-worn and, preferably, popular topic…Anyway, originality is certainly not something to shoot for simpliciter. I think what you want is a 'cool' project, immediately understandable and appealing to non-philosophers, in an acceptable and popular area. I'm not sure 'originality' really captures this idea correctly. I'd use words like 'cool,' 'popular,' 'trendy,' 'consistent with the zeitgeist…'
Pendaran's point here actually gestures toward several different issues that, in my experience, grad programs and their students may not pay enough attention to: the role that one's choices (of AOS, dissertation topic, etc.) can play in one's competitiveness (or lack thereof) on the market.
Although things could of course be changing (I'd be very interested to hear if they are!), my experience has been that grad students often select–and are encouraged to select–their AOS and research/dissertation topics primarily on the basis of their interests. This is entirely understandable. It seems to embody attractive ideals of intellectual honesty, curiosity, and authenticity. As someone who works on issues I'm genuinely interested in, I'll be the first to say how wonderful it is to do so. On a few occasions, I've heard people say they do work they're not genuinely interested in, and do it primarily because they think that's the work they need to do in order to publish, get a job, get tenure, and so on. To be honest, that sounds rather depressing to me.
But here's the thing: like it or not, one's choices–as a graduate student, job-marketeer, etc.–have practical dimensions. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. We live in a nonideal world where some AOS's have far more candidates (and far fewer jobs) than others; a world where universities are more likely to hire in some areas than others; and a world where people on the hiring side of things have views about which problems they find interesting. For better or worse (I'll leave it to everyone to decide for themselves), if you want an academic job, these things can be relevant.
One of the more striking things to me about the philosophical profession is that one sometimes gets the sense that the more abstract an area is (e.g. M&E, logic, meta-ethics, etc.), the more "important" or prestigious that area is considered. Conversely, more applied areas (e.g. applied ethics) may be considered less important or prestigious. My sense, in turn, is that a lot of grad students are steared towards the former, more abstract AOS (both by themeselves and those around them), and away from more applied ones. Indeed, although I was in grad school a while ago now, in my time grad students (at most programs, or so I heard) were routinely and strongly steered away from applied ethics: it was simply looked down upon.
But here's the thing. From a job-market perspective, this seems like a 'trap' in several different ways. First, if most students are steered towards certain AOS's (M&E, Mind, meta-ethics, etc.), then those will be the areas with the most competition. Worse yet, those very areas appear to consistently be areas where there are very few jobs. In contrast, areas that grad students are steered away from (e.g. applied ethics) appear to be where the most jobs are by a significant margin. So, if you choose to work in those areas, it seems like you're not only likely to have less competition, but also more jobs for a smaller candidate pool. And things are even worse than this. Having worked at a teaching institution for several years now (and having applied to and interviewed at many teaching schools previously), my clear sense is that teaching schools appear to be the least likely to have full-time TT jobs available in the most abstract, 'Core' areas. This is for a very simple reason: philosophy departments at teaching institutions are typically small and highly dependent on student enrollment–and, you guessed it, the most likely courses to get enrollment in a general curriculum are not 'core' areas: they are more applied areas. So, it seems, if you are concerned about the job-market, then choice of AOS matters. My experience on several search committees bears this out: some AOS have far more applicants than others: some have hundreds, others far fewer.
It’s not just choice of AOS that can matter: choice of research/dissertation topic can matter too. As Pendaran points out, it seems likely that people whose projects/dissertations are on 'cool' topics are likely to fare better on the market. My sense is that this is probably right, and for several reasons. First, if the people on the hiring side of things are philosophers, they may have views of their own about which projects are "interesting" or "boring." I'll be frank: I've known people who work on problems that, as far as I can tell, only a handful of other people on the planet are interested in. It would not be surprising at all to me if philosophers on the hiring side of things might pass people like this up, simply because they don't find the project particularly interesting. Second–and this is important–at a good number of teaching schools the people interviewing you may not be philosophers: they can be people from other departments (Theology, English, etc.), and so their sense of what is 'cool' and interesting is likely to be far different (and more 'applied') than what philosophers consider cool. Third, whether one works on a 'cool' project or not can also be relevant to student enrollments. At teaching schools, faculty are typically expected to teach lower and upper-division courses based on their research interests. Thus, insofar as philosophy departments at teaching schools can be dependent on student enrollment and major numbers, there can be strategic reasons for the department to prefer candidates who work on topics students are likely to find cool (and which the university can market to parents, donors, etc., as 'cool').
Let me be clear: cothing I've said here should be taken to imply any conclusions about what one should do, all things considered. If you think that deciding upon an AOS or research topic on strategic grounds is distasteful, I might very well agree with you (I couldn't for the life of me stomach to work on things I don't find genuinely interesting!). My point in writing this post is simply to help people become more aware of these issues. My sense is that people's choice of AOS and research topics do indeed make a substantial difference on the job-market–and that these may be things that people may not be fully aware of in making the choices they do.
But these are just my thoughts and experiences. What are yours?
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