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TT community college job or VAP at 4-year institution?

In our newest “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

Let’s say one has two job offers, one a tenure-track job offer at a community college, and the other a VAP at a good-enough but not particularly well-known 4 year institution. Do Cocooners think that one would be more competitive on the job market in future cycles, looking for tenure-track jobs at 4 year institutions, coming from the VAP at the 4 year or the community college? To me, the community college seems like a better deal: the pay is better, there’s more of a safety net in case the job market continues to be dire, and the location is better, to boot. But I’m unsure whether or not the community college experience is something that meaningfully drags you down in searches held at 4 years, especially institutions like R2s.

Not sure, but in this market environment I think I’d take the tenure-track CC job for all the reasons the OP mentions. I personally know people who have reported loving their CC jobs, more so than jobs at 4-year institutions they’ve had. Could taking a CC job make it more difficult to obtain a TT job at a 4-year institution? Maybe. But then again, so could a VAP at a not-particularly-well-known institution.

What do readers think?

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8 responses to “TT community college job or VAP at 4-year institution?”

  1. Anonymous

    I’d take the CC job. For what it’s worth, at my 4-yr public college (think: 3/3 teaching with course reductions for assistant profs; striving-for-but-lacking-R2-status), we would not immediately discount job candidates for a TT position simply because they come from a CC. Part of the reason for this might be because are part of a large college system which includes a mixture of 4-yr schools and community colleges, so we’re accustomed to faculty trying to leap from the latter to the former. That said, we would still pay close attention to publications, especially recent publications and evidence of ongoing research (papers in the pipeline, etc.).

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Like others so far, I would recommend taking the CC job. Permanency is valuable–even just avoiding having to move every couple of years is a big deal, never mind the uncertainty, pay, benefits, inability to find a community, etc. Delaying contributing to a retirement fund is a big problem, too, one that we don’t talk enough about in the context of the adjunct treadmill. Applying from a position of safety (like the CC job) always puts you in a better position. And I do think the job market is going to continue to be tight for a long while. I don’t think most universities (regional publics and other teaching focused institutions) would bat an eye at CC experience, provided you can keep up a reasonable rate of producing research.

    The more I learn about CCs, the more I love them. OP might find themselves very happy in that role and not want to apply out after all.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I would be cautious about taking a CC job unless you’re confident you would enjoy that work permanently. If what you want is to teach college students philosophy, you will find little of that at a CC. The work is closer to social work than college teaching. Rewarding for some, but not for all.

    It’s a high-stakes decision, because CCs are risky as traps:
    – The teaching loads are huge and students have so many terrible life circumstances that non-psychopath teachers will find themselves constantly exhausted. That makes it difficult to maintain the level of philosophical productivity that will allow for applications to 4-years.
    – Related: burnout at CCs is so common it’s the default position. It is unlikely that you will find any scholarly or intellectual community among faculty. Any non-teaching reading and writing you are able to do will probably be done in isolation.
    – Teaching at CCs is unfairly stigmatized. Unless you’re a wizard at social networking, you will get no invitations to present your work, participate in workshops or reading groups, or other life of the mind stuff you’re accustomed to from graduate school.
    – Related: many people at 4-year schools will assume that your teaching experience at an open-access CC is not relevant to teaching their students. That is false–if you make ANY progress learning to teach well at a CC, it will be by developing teaching fundamentals that are transferable anywhere. But very few people recognize that a short tour of duty at a CC improves teaching skills, and in fact they often assume the opposite.
    – Perhaps unique to the CC system I teach in, but I doubt it: student evaluations of teaching are done via electronic surveys that are nearly indistinguishable from “rate your experience with this app” surveys that students are constantly bombarded with. And evaluations stay open for students until after grades are filed. The result is that the percentage of students who rate my teaching is about 5% of those enrolled, heavily tilted toward those outraged that they got a D or F. The result is that after one year of teaching here, I no longer had the specific kind of “evidence of teaching effectiveness” that job applications require.

    You’ll meet lots of students who are lovely people with life stories that will drop your jaw. You’ll get more control over where you live. You will have no school-imposed pressures to produce research or secure grants. That’s all good. But the cost is that you’ll spend more time sitting with students while they cry and showing them how to access food banks than you will spend teaching college-level philosophical content or skills.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I’m going to push back on some of these points.

      First, I think the teaching load is not as bad as it is often made out to be. It can be a lot when you start out, but at most CCs, there are no new preps after the first year or so. It’s just the same few introductory courses again and again. Also, I find that a lot of people who complain about their workload also for some reason insist on assigning way more work than is necessary (like weekly written assignments that get in-depth grading). There are ways to make teaching/grading a lot easier on yourself – and one of those is to not overburden yourself with grading. Finally, CC teaching involves a lot of online teaching which can be a very low time burden for repeat courses.

      Second, I have never at any point in my decade of teaching at a CC felt like a social worker. I am not a psychopath, but I have basically never felt worn down by hearing about my students’ many various life struggles. I give them grace, leniency, and encouragement. I am not sure what more would be expected of me that would lead to being constantly exhausted.

      Third, neither CC that I have taught at, nor any other one in my area, uses evals like you describe. I am guessing that this is not common.

      —-

      A couple other positive notes about CC teaching:

      First, there is great freedom in publishing. You can write about whatever you want basically. And you don’t need to worry about prestige in publishing.

      Second, the pay can be exceptional. Most CCs that I know of start you off hire than even most new TT hires in my area. And then pay bumps can be really significant and locked-in by contract. Full-time CC instructors in my area generally are making 100k+ after a decade or so on the job.

      Reply
  4. recentlytenured

    I think the crux of the longest Anonymous post above – that you should only accept a job offer that entails conditions and ways of life you can live with – is good, and isn’t something that anyone else can really advise you on without knowing more about you and your values. Their experience as they have described it here is valuable. I work at a university rather than a community college, so take my comment with a grain of salt, but: Lots of people here are burned out, albeit in other ways – endless service, students who are overly focused on grades rather than learning, etc. Moreover, personally, some of the best philosophy teachers I’ve ever met came from community colleges. I met them at teaching-focused philosophy events, and read their work in (e.g.) Teaching Philosophy, APA blog, etc. I would invite people to do stuff if I’ve met them, heard of them, etc. and know that they are doing relevant things – not based on where they work. Perhaps the conditions of a CC make those connections harder to foster, but I’m not sure that the conditions of a one-year VAP are any better, really. It is hard to calculate the productivity and quality of life lost to interminable job-market grinding. Whatever choice you make, make sure it is one that you can live with and that you are going into it with an eye to the kinds of efforts you’re going to have to make to change things (should you expect that this is something you might want to do in the future). The more doors you keep open for yourself, the better (imho).

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  5. AnAnon

    I don’t doubt that Anonymous’s comment reflects their own experience teaching at a CC, but mine has been a bit different. It’s certainly true that the teaching load precludes a research program unless you want to do it on your own time (I haven’t) and that you’ll be teaching intro-level classes to a lot of students who are poorly-prepared and have a lot of other demands on their time. (You’ll get some great students too.)

    But I’ve never once felt more like a social worker than a teacher. That maybe because my school focuses on addressing the non-academic needs of students to such an extent that there’s a rather large apparatus for that on campus, leaving me to focus entirely on the academic needs.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I think taking a TT job, no matter the type, is a no-brainer.
    If you can continue to publish, you can still remain competitive.

    The teaching load does not preclude it because as others have indicated, once you’ve prepped a class once, it teaches itself and you’re likely to have multiple sections of either critical thinking, logic, or intro, or ethics.

    One note of caution: there is a lot more *asynch* online teaching at CC colleges because of the demographics that CC’s appeal to.

    This could be a good thing if you want to do research and remain competitive for other jobs in the future, or it could be a bad thing because async courses are basically just uploading content, creating videos no one will watch and lots of grading. In other words, the work is not especially fulfilling.

    Reply
    1. AnAnon

      You’re correct about the repetition of courses drastically cutting down prep time. My saying that the teaching load precluded research unless you want to do it on your own time is partly a function of my having adopted a rather expansive view of what counts as “my own time.”

      (My employer, at least, has an official vision of what my 40 hour work week is supposed to look like that does not include any time allocated to research.)

      Reply

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