In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I'm a grad student (ABD) who recently had my first job interview. I'd be grateful to hear some advice from folks in the profession about whether turning down an offer from this job, assuming I received one, would be too risky. Here's my somewhat complicated situation:
My dissertation is virtually ready to be defended as the time of writing. I can graduate as early as December of this year. The job starts in August (next month). So, if I took it, I would move there ABD and wrap up my PhD in absentia. The job is a temporary non-TT lecturer position that lasts for three years and it pays decently well, especially given the low cost of living in the area. The teaching load is 4/4. There is no philosophy department. It's a small state university. My other option is to remain in my program for one more year (it will be my sixth year if I do). If I stay in, I'll have more time to produce publishable papers over the next year, as I'd only be TAing or teaching one class each semester. I already have one pub in a leiter top-10 (not top-5) generalist journal, another in a well-regarded but not tippy-top specialist journal, and a third in a specialist journal that isn't widely known. If I take the job, obviously I'll have significantly less time to add more good pubs to my CV. On the other hand, I'm from a program that is ranked on the lower end of the leiter scale (it is a top specialist department for my dissertation area, however). So, I'm worried that if I don't take this potentially decent opportunity now (assuming I receive an offer), I might end up with nothing, or with something worse, when it's all said and done. I know that there's a lot of luck involved with this sort of thing.
Basically, I'm weighing immediate job and financial security against the possibility that I can do better if I just keep my head down and write, write, write for the next year. Taking the immediate security could mean that I'm less well-positioned at the end of the three years to move on to bigger and better things. Choosing to turn it down, however, could be seen as a gamble — I'd be turning it down on the assumption that I *will* receive a better offer this upcoming round on the job market.
A few final things that factor into this: my spouse would be able to watch our small children full-time if I took the job. Currently, I spend part of my "working" hours every week contributing to childcare because my spouse has to work a part-time job (my TA stipend alone isn't enough to keep us afloat). If I took the job, I'd get back some of that time (about 8-10 hours per week). Still, a 4/4 will be more significantly more time-consuming than my current workload even after factoring that in. Another thing to mention is that I would have summer and winter breaks off to write if I took the job. I'm also especially worried that this upcoming job cycle will be particularly rough. My ultimate goal is a TT job at an R2 or good SLAC with something like a 3/3 or 3/2.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Another reader submitted the following reply:
It would be unwise to do anything on the assumption that you will do better on the market this coming year. For one thing, this coming year is going to be one of the worst years the job market has ever seen. Secondly, even if it weren’t, the job market is normally too unpredictable to operate on that assumption. From what you say above, it appears you would have a decent shot at landing a TT job in a normal year, but that outcome would be by no means guaranteed and the odds themselves of this happening would be difficult to discern, but I suspect no better than chance. This is not a criticism of you, this is a sober assessment of market conditions. In general, people in grad school are too optimistic about the job market. Perhaps the following will be helpful for comparison. Like you, I went to a Leiter ranked program but not one of the top ones. My program was also very strong in my area. I finished with 8 publications in pretty good journals (e.g.,Synthese, Phil Studies) and one in a top 5. I didn’t get a TT, I got a post-doc. Then I hit the market again with more publications and still didn’t get a TT job (although I got more interviews). Both years were pretty good job market years compared to what lies ahead. If you are going to make any assumption about job market outcomes, assume you will be on the marketfor at least five years and try to limit the number of times you have to immigrate (it’s expensive, confusing, and makes it hard to write). That assumption could prove false, but it is a realistic outcome and you need to be prepared.
I agree with this 100%. If I were in the OP's position, the answer for me would be clear: take the job. Getting any full-time job is a real win in a normal market, and like many I expect the coming year(s) to be the worst job market in a long time. Further, the job the OP describes would give them time: 3 years in a full-time position. And the importance of time like this should not be underestimated. It should not only give them time to publish more; working in a 4/4 job should make them more attractive for jobs at teaching oriented universities (including the kinds of jobs the OP mentions)–and most importantly, it would give the OP at least three more years to obtain a TT job. Conversely, there's a real risk that if the OP stays in grad school another year, they may get nothing. I'm not a betting man, but some bets are unavoidable and to me the one to make here seems pretty clear.
What do readers think?
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