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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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Senior faculty’s assumptions about job candidates?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

One of the more frustrating aspects of academia is how often senior faculty, including those tasked with supporting job candidates, assume that people on the market are young, naive, and not quite fully adult.

Why is this the default assumption?

I'm a 36-year-old married scholar with two young children, and yet I'm frequently treated—especially by North American colleagues—as if I were a grad student in need of unsolicited life advice or professional guidance. The tone often implies that I’m too inexperienced to know my own mind, and seems to show tacit commitment to the assumption that postdocs are somehow too young to know themselves, or something. In my case, I have been offered tenure-track positions, but I have turned them down for very good personal and professional reasons.

Can we stop equating job market status with youth, naivety, or incompleteness? Why is this even an assumption? Can any senior or mid-career scholars weigh in on how they have critically reflected on their treatment of those who are professionally junior, and changed their treatment of those who are professionally junior as a result?

One analogue here, I think, is how I was treated before and after having children. Before children, I was sometimes treated as though there was some sort of incompleteness as an adult stemming from the lack of children, which is rubbish.

I'd be interested to hear from others who’ve experienced this, and from senior or mid-career scholars who have advice on how to speak to junior colleagues without condescension.

Another reader reported similar experiences:

I do not have a solution. I just want to say that my experience is pretty similar: I find the North American attitude towards researchers in precarious jobs very disrespectful. Although I have to say that there are some people who are very supportive and treat me like an intellectual peer (usually those are people with an international profile, though…).

Have other readers had similar experiences? Any concrete suggestions for how senior faculty should do better?

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9 responses to “Senior faculty’s assumptions about job candidates?”

  1. Anonymous

    I just wanted to chime in in solidarity. I am finishing grad school this summer and heading to a competitive VAP position in the fall, at age 39 and with a child. I joined the field late, after beginning a career in an adjacent discipline (which has meant that my work is correspondingly better developed and informed than that of many of my peers). I feel that both professionally and socially I am given inadequate respect. There is an assumption that my work must be somewhat juvenile, or that the conclusions it imples not fully warranted. I’ve been ignored, had my Q&A etiquette unfairly critiqued, etc. It’s a hard bridge to straddle. I’m hoping it may lessen with the PhD behind me and an ‘Assistant Professor’ title.

    Reply
  2. anon R1 fac member

    I think it’s important that we treat all job candidates as adults and as philosophical adults as well… but I also think it’s dangerous to think that age and/or expertise in an adjacent field mean one somehow deserves more respect professionally and socially than other people at the same career stage. I’m not suggesting that Anonymous thinks this. But, I do think it’s important that we not make this a comparative thing where somehow age or different kinds of experience as a job candidate makes people more worthy of respect than their peers (academic peers, i.e. people at the same career stage).
    Just want to clarify that I’m just saying that we should treat all job candidates like competent adults! Not that anyone should be disrespected or treated paternalistically or anything like that.

    Reply
  3. Anon as well

    @anon R1: you are certainly right that all job candidates should be treated like competent adults.
    It would also be silly to deny that there are differences in the life experience and emotional or general maturity of someone, like Anonymous, who has had another career first and come to a PhD later and who is in their late 30s, than a fresh 20-something who is ABD, who has gone straight from a BA to a PhD and been a student their whole life. It is also right that different advice will be required specific to one’s situation.
    I agree that the default assumption should be to assume that all candidates are adults, but what I think the previous commenters are rightly pointing out is that one can sometimes speak to junior colleagues with condescension, even without meaning to, and that it is quite silly to assume that all mentees are at the same life stage. That is a problem.

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  4. Young but not naive

    I wonder how much this depends on the job market structure. In Europe it is very, very common to go through several postdocs and temporary teaching posts before a permanent job. So very many members of the profession, of various ages and levels of experience, are on the job market in the sense of not having a permanent job. I have the feeling that these people are generally not treated as naive or incomplete adults…I might be wrong, but my perception is that once you have your PhD, you’re not a student anymore and that’s the main step.
    What I definitely see is that senior people sometimes (often?) cite one’s being young as a reason not to have a right to complain about the precarious nature of one’s job – you’re still young, it’s normal to not have stable jobs in sight, all will be well etc.

    Reply
  5. Trevor Hedberg

    I think that this experience is becoming less common as knowledge of the increased difficulty of the job market (at least relative to its pre-2008 state) has proliferated. I have, however, had some instances where I have been treated like a 2nd-class philosopher. The most jarring of these was when I was at a meet-and-greet for the philosophy department when starting a new job, and a faculty member blatantly lost interest in talking to me when I mentioned I wasn’t on the tenure-track. As is usually the case with such reactions, it was a senior male philosopher who likely got his job 30+ years ago (he retired the same academic year this exchange occurred) and has little understanding of the current job market. That prejudice — tenure-track vs non-tenure-track — persists in a lot of academia, including philosophy, even as tenure-track jobs become increasingly rarer and non-tenure-track jobs more common.
    But I do think that things have gotten significantly better in this regard during the last decade. Before long, the majority of the profession will be people who got their job after the 2008 financial crisis, and condescending attitudes toward people in non-tenure-track jobs will only serve as an indicator of ignorance.

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  6. Condescension sucks

    Sorry to add to the negativity of the OP, but they should be prepared that they might run into similar condescension at their new job. I started my current faculty position after being in other positions for 13 years. But at the mandatory new-hire orientation, I got lectures about how it was important to manage my time well during finals and other platitudes. The whole thing was disrespectful, as were conversations with colleagues who had more senior titles but published less than me where I got unsolicited advice about how to publish. Some people just see the title.

    Reply
  7. Bumblebees are not my thing

    @Young but not naive and @Trevor Hedberg, I can relate to your experiences. I want to add that, at least for some, being infantilized and treated like a student for years (especially long after receiving their PhD) is exhausting in many ways. So exhausting that one might decide to leave the profession altogether instead of trying to get another (perhaps even excellent) short term-contract.

    Reply
  8. PhilosopHER

    @Trevor Hedberg, I am not so sure that it is becoming less common, or at least, uncommon enough to be counted as uncommon. Anecdotal evidence suggests that it happens quite a bit.
    As someone in a similar position to OP, but without kids, and as a woman (though I am not assuming the gender of OP), I know that condescension of the kind described has happened to me other my other female colleagues and friends very, very often.

    Reply
  9. Hypatia

    As a woman in philosophy I’d like to second @PhilosopHER’s comment that this type of condescension has not stopped even with a TT position.

    Reply

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