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Should you be willing to move anywhere for a TT job?

Today, as I contemplate 2.5 years not having seen my parents in person, I got thinking about mobility as an essential aspect of the academic job market. We take it for granted that if you want to succeed in academia, you must be willing to move to a wide range of geographical locations, away from people you care about including family and friends. You must be willing to uproot yourself to a location far away from them, and then find that it is hard (or impossible, as often turns out) to make friends. People with the two-body problem likewise face heart-rending choices of either sacrificing one's academic hopes to be able to stay with one's partner, or signing up for an indefinite, difficult long-distance relationship.

All of this was hard before the pandemic, now it's become even harder. With a changing and unpredictable public health situation, travel bans and border closures, academic job market candidates will increasingly ask themselves "Am I willing to put an ocean (or another large geographic distance) between myself and the people I care about?" — My guess is that the answer to this question will be increasingly "No". 

It used to be common wisdom to tell grad students that they should be willing to take a job anywhere, and apply anywhere, even in places that they don't find geographically desirable. Given the state of the job market, it is indeed the case that making any sort of geographic restriction will severely limit your chances of academic employment. For this reason, it is a good idea to be frank with prospective graduate students about the many challenges of the academic job market, including the lack of geographic control. In my experience, talking to many alt-ac philosophy PhDs, geographic control was an important (and sometimes decisive) factor for them to leave academia. 

However, as placement director now more even than before, I do not advise prospective students "Apply (and accept) any TT job anywhere". Rather, I say that it does help to apply widely, and to be open-minded about where you want to live. But I would never recommend to people who definitely, 100% because of family reasons or whatever want to stay in their current city/area to take any TT job anywhere. Rather, if they are not willing to move where the jobs are, they need (early on) to have a good backup alt-ac plan. I've since seen several candidates who got placed in positions in places where they want to live, including one person who was able to find a nice alt-ac job just a few miles from where his parents live. 

So, given the pandemic and given how unexpectedly hard it is to find oneself basically without friends and family nearby, I would recommend that we revisit the recommendation to graduate students they should be willing to live anywhere. Even before the pandemic, I think people underestimate the importance of geographic control in their overall happiness, and our job market plans and advice should reflect that reality. 

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5 responses to “Should you be willing to move anywhere for a TT job?”

  1. Daniel Weltman

    I might just be too blinkered and ignorant about this topic, but for my part I find it hard to make any generalizations about this. Are people going to increasingly be less willing to move to various places in search of jobs, because of the pandemic? Or are they going to be more willing to move to various places, because the market will get even worse and because we’re now all much more comfortable with online meetings and being geographically distant is perhaps not going to rule out staying connected with people? I at least don’t feel at all confident in making any sort of predictions one way or another, but I’m also not a placement director (we don’t even have a grad program) so it’s hard for me to gather any data on this.

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  2. Helen De Cruz

    Daniel: I don’t know it either. It maybe as you say people are more willing to move, or less willing. It could even make no difference.
    But already before the pandemic, I was hesitant to advise “Be willing to move anywhere.”–I received that advice myself from people who basically told me a version of “buyer’s market job candidates can’t be choosers”, and I didn’t think the advice helpful at the time. It’s important to be frank with candidates that if they have geographic constraints, it will diminish their prospects on finding a job, but it’s also important to recognize the importance of geography for happiness and wellbeing, and so now I advise ac job candidates who want to stay local or who want to move to a particular area to invest extra in a good plan-B. For instance, one job candidate recently found a wonderful TT job in a local community college, which probably would not have been an option had they wanted to move anywhere.

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  3. RJM

    Just to add that one reason why you can’t move “just anywhere” is that your medical needs might not be met, or only be met at extortionate cost, in certain countries. I personally couldn’t take a job in the US with a standard salary and health insurance because I would find it too difficult to pay for essential medication.

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  4. Rosa

    I think this is basically right – the advice should always be conditional: if you care only about getting a TT job, you should be willing to move anywhere. If you are not willing to move anywhere, have a strong Plan B. But I also want to reemphasize the point about still applying really broadly – I ended up spending 6 years in a TT job in a place I dreaded living before the fly-out, and ended up being surprisingly happy there.

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  5. best of luck everyone

    I think Covid has motivated people to reassess (at least temporarily) their values–or at least I have been. We should respect people who decide friends and family are more important than career prestige. I think people should investigate local options and, more importantly, I think placement committees should not treat those options as disappointments–candidates should be encouraged to pursue all avenues. That said, I think schools are already screening applicants for willingness to move and be better than miserable about it. I work at a perfectly respectable university in a region of the country that is beautiful but, for sometimes very good reason, unpopular. At a certain point, we can’t help looking at cover letters to determine whether the person would find it a total bummer to move to our region. So in some ways, schools are already trying to screen for ‘perfectly happy to move here and give it a try’ and ‘I can’t wait to get my second job in California.’

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