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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2026-27)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2026-27)

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How can we help you? (September 2026)

Now that it’s September, it’s time for a new “how can we help you?” thread.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query. 

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon’s mission) that you could use help with. Ask away – we’re here to help! 

Finally, a quick reminder of the following RULE: Please do not submit replies to other comments in this thread. It makes these threads unwieldy and difficult for me to keep track of. If you’d like to respond to a comment in this thread, please wait until I dedicate a new post to the person’s query myself and comment in that thread instead! I have not been enforcing this rule consistently recently, but need to recommit to it as it has been hard to manage these threads. Thanks!

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27 responses to “How can we help you? (September 2026)”

  1. Anon

    What are some must knows regarding applying for a tenure-track job when one is already in a tenure-track position?
    For example, what should one do about letter writers? Should one minimize talk about their dissertation?

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    Question about publishing:

    I have been having difficulty getting my work published. I spent a long time writing large, grand papers that tried to do two or three systematically related things. I got one such paper published but otherwise just spun my wheels and got everything rejected. Often, these papers would seem appealing to editors but would then be rejected by referees for not having enough detail in the argumentation. This is a natural consequence of trying to do too much in one paper.

    So, now I am taking a new approach: breaking these ideas down into smaller, bite-sized papers that can each include more argumentative detail.

    The problem? Now these papers are getting desk-rejected because the editors think they are uninteresting or unambitious. In one case, I had a large 15k word paper which I submitted to Phil Review a few years ago; after an R&R, it was rejected but there was one portion of it which both referees agreed was ‘genius’ (a direct quotation from one of the reports). So, I took that part out and built a shorter paper around it, offering it up as a solution to an objection that has been raised in the literature… this paper just got desk rejected from a far less prestigious journal because it ‘does not break new ground in the way we want at this journal’ (I’m paraphrasing, not quoting directly).

    I think maybe my problem is that I have gone from overpromising and underdelivering to underpromising and overdelivering. Anyone have tips on how to how to strike the right balance here? Any heuristic or strategies that help you determine the right scope for a paper? Also, any strategies for helping to advertise the most important contributions of a paper most effectively in the introduction? Is publishing really as much of a lottery as it feels like? Any advice is appreciated.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    This might seem a bit broad and/or pessimistic (I promise I am not a Debbie Downer!), but I would like to continue to discuss (perhaps in a regular series?) the major disruptions to the academic philosophy job market that are on the horizon, and what PhD programs/schools/at-risk-of-being-laid-off-faculty are doing about them (or should be doing about them).

    At my regional state school, our CLAS has effectively been told that budget problems are bad and will only get worse, recruitment isn’t a viable option, and that each college will have to make “major structural changes” to adapt to the new normal.

    What makes this extra grim is that roughly 80-90% of our college’s allocated budget is faculty salaries — not the university’s budget, the college’s, since most of the discretionary stuff got cut years ago. So “major structural changes” at the college level can only mean some combination of:

    (i) pay cuts (ii) layoffs (iii) upping teaching loads (iv) shifting faculty to from upper-division courses to high-enrolling gen-ed intro courses (v) merging departments / eliminating chairs (vi) not replacing TT faculty who retire or move (vii) and converting vacated TT lines into NTT lines/adjunct positions

    I actually do not think our university is in particularly bad shape relative to many other smaller schools or schools in more rural areas – I think our problems are (or soon will be) the new norm. Many states are projected to lose 20–30% of their high school graduates over the next 20 years.

    Over that time, then, I think there is a very good possibility that full-time academic philosophy positions will go down by at least 20-25% and tenure-track lines down closer to 30-40% from where we are now. Among the remaining TT lines, I think teaching loads will go up at state schools, so that a 2-2 line is no longer the norm unless you are at the fanciest of the fancy.

    I would genuinely love to be wrong about this, and if you have better numbers please share them. But my worry is that PhD programs/departments are not changing course at the pace needed to address the issue – if there will be a 30% decrease in new TT lines over the next 15 years, and the market is already bad, I think we as a discipline must aim to either (i) produce 30-40% fewer PhDs and/or (ii) emphasize alt-ac placement just as hard as academic placement, which would likely involve radically reimagining programs.

    What are people doing to prepare for this disruption? Are TT faculty at at-risk schools (trying) to flee? Are R1s seeing far more applications from TT faculty trying to flee? Are grad programs planning on further reducing cohorts? Are very low-ranking PhD programs going to close their programs (or would doing so simply lead to more layoffs of their faculty)? Are smaller departments planning on shrinking their size?

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I have a question about the etiquette of funding disclosure and acknowledgments in publications. My current position is funded by a grant. When I publish work arising from that project, I declare the funding in the relevant field of the journal’s submission system and include a sentence in the acknowledgments. But what about papers from earlier, thematically unrelated research that are now being accepted? While holding my current position, I might have (a) shepherded a paper through an R&R, (b) made minor revisions, or (c) done essentially nothing beyond waiting for the reviews to come back. In these cases, is it appropriate to (i) declare and (ii) acknowledge the funding – and if so, in what form?

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    I love doing philosophy and being part of the ongoing conversations in the literature, but I don’t necessarily feel the need to be a university professor. I know there are some independent scholars out there who do good work and are part of what’s going on in philosophy, and I wanted to ask what it’s like.

    Are there independent scholars who can share their experiences, and share if they feel disadvantaged or left out in some way as philosophers because they aren’t affiliated with an institution?

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I am wondering whether publishing in a lower-ranked but still established philosophy journal can actually hurt an early career job candidate. Suppose the journal is roughly in the 20–30 range in one of the journal meta-rankings, and the paper is outside the candidate’s main AOS.

    Obviously, publishing the paper in a more prestigious journal would be better. But could a publication at this level actually count against a candidate, especially for research-oriented jobs? For example, could it negatively affect how search committees perceive the quality of the candidate’s research, or would it generally just count as a modest positive?

    Reply
  7. Anonymous

    How do people afford to take visiting fellowships during sabbaticals?

    My understanding is that even if one’s home university pays 100% of their salary, and even if they’re offered a visiting fellowship that pays a stipend, one’s home university typically won’t allow them to pocket more than 100% of their income. (So, in this case, they’d have to forfeit their additional stipend.)

    How, then, do people afford to relocate and live in the new area? Are visiting fellows expected to somehow continue paying their mortgage *and* rent at the visited university on their regular salary? How – unless they’re particularly wealthy – is this supposed to be viable?

    Reply
  8. Anonymous

    Happily, someone cited my paper. Unhappily, they attributed to me a view which is the diametrical opposite of what I (and a very well-known, major international figure in philosophy of science on whose view I was elaborating) claimed. They made claims in the form of “Contra Scholars X and Y, I argue z.” Nothing in their argument rides on it, but I defended the very kind of framework they were advocating while they positioned themselves as doing the contrary. Their paper is in a top philosophy of science journal. What should I do?

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    The Cocoon may not be the right venue for this query, but I’m looking for some direction when it comes to a literature base. Are there philosophers working in philosophy of AI that issue responses (direct or indirect) to the Dario Amodeis of the world? Amodei’s essays and pieces in the LessWrong part of the web are more complex than op-eds in periodicals, but I haven’t found a satisfying counterweight to these because it seems the actual work in philosophy of AI (viz., published in philosophy journals) is more fine-grained (as I think it ought to be). Thanks in advance for any leads.

    Reply
  10. anon

    I know this is a little open-ended, and is more a confession than a question, but does anyone feel just ‘disconnected’ from the more public-facing sided aspects of the philosophy community? There’s a vibrant philosophical community on social media, a vibrant community of people at conferences. Is it odd to just…not care? I enjoy my colleagues, my friends from grad school, the scholars working on adjacent work to mine, but beyond that, I feel no real pressure to have a ‘presence’ as a philosopher in this social-philosophy-sphere. I enjoy my teaching, I enjoy doing my research, I enjoy chatting about my and others’ work when I’m at conferences, but the ‘being connected’ into ‘what’s going on’ in the discipline I just feel is not for me. I don’t care what people are arguing about, who said what, the newest controversy about rankings or AI or the APA…I just really couldn’t care less. Maybe relevant is that I’ve been tt job-hunting for a few years now, so admittedly perhaps there’s some disillusionment I feel. Idk. I guess I’m just curious about how others feel about this, if anyone commiserates, or if I’m just being a wet blanket.

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    I’m wondering if anyone has experience or advice on applying for jobs as a postdoc without a letter from your current supervisor. Things started out well, but deteriorated after several months for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious to me. Recently my supervisor told me they will not be writing me a letter. I have strong letters from my dissertation advisor and other faculty I worked with during grad school which I can use (they’ve all been updated). But I’m not sure how to navigate not having a letter from my current position (for instance, how to talk about the situation if I’m asked directly about it).

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I’d like to know the extent to which the prestige of one’s PhD-granting institution (or even master’s or undergrad) affects hiring in the very top UK and US universities. I struggle to find examples of people graduating from less prestigious universities getting postdocs or jobs at these more prestigious universities. This is unfortunate in the UK in particular, as even if you get accepted into a more prestigious university, funding is rare and some cannot self-fund. Would people who have sat on hiring committees have any insights or impressions on this matter?

    Reply
  13. Grad Anon

    I’m a graduate student whose supervisor recently left the university. I’m done my coursework and working on my dissertation, and due to an okay funding situation for a few more years, am thinking of doing visiting semesters at a few places. Is spending a semester here and there working with people at other institutions, especially more prestigious ones, particularly helpful to have on one’s CV? Do people even care – if you did your PhD in a top 20-30 PGR program, which hiring data seems to suggest might hurt you compared to the top programs, does having these visiting semesters help on the job market?

    Needless to say, I do plan on doing one or two visits to work with some people whose work I find very interesting. I’m just curious about the job market impact/CV.

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    A few months ago a bunch of people wrote about their submissions getting stuck at “successfully submitted” at American Philosophical Quarterly for a long time. Now I have a submission at that stage for a month and I’m considering withdrawing early instead of waiting months and getting into a sunken investment situation.

    Could those who posted a few months ago and maybe others also share what ever happened with their submissions at APQ? Is APQ broken?

    Reply
  15. dazesensationallye39c0dc2cd

    Is it okay to list a publication in a journal without noting that it’s in a special issue or special edition or symposium (but still peer-reviewed)? I realize that doing so is less than fully revealing about the pub, and that in asking the question here I’m calling attention to that fact, perhaps thereby inviting a more disapproving response. But I ask folks to please try to look past that, and just imagine seeing it listed as a publication in that journal (on a CV or website), and then later learning, through some other means, that it was in a special edition. Would you then judge the author as deceptive or shady, even if the piece was fully peer-reviewed and accepted by the journal?

    Reply
  16. Anonymous

    Is there a risk that people on search committees might take applicants’ “next project” ideas, run with them, and try to scoop the topic? I’m curious how specific or general you should be when describing your future research agenda in job applications (research statement), especially in highly competitive, “trendy” fields like the philosophy/ethics of AI.
    Especially if you’re not a grad student but someone in a TT position trying to make a lateral move? I mention this because if you have a grad advisor and faculty and other people who know your current work, they might be able to vouch for you in case someone does try to scoop you, but as a faculty member in not well-known departments and you yourself aren’t well known, it seems like it’ll be nearly impossible to argue. And given the state of our discipline, more senior or mid-career but well-known people seem to get the benefit of the doubt more often than others.

    Reply
  17. Anonymous

    What’s going on at the Australian Journal of Philosophy? They’ve had one of my manuscripts for too many months. When I inquired after four months, I was told that it hadn’t even been assigned to an associate editor–the very first step. Several peers of mine have similar stories. I replied to ask about the median time to first decision, but the question was unsurprisingly ignored.

    Judging by the data from papers recently published there, it seems to take a minimum of a year to get through their review process, and often two. One recently published paper took *three years*.

    This strikes me as completely bonkers. Does anyone have more information about what’s going on at that journal? Do they have any sense of urgency about this, or are they twiddling their tenured thumbs? It’s hard not to think I should withdraw the manuscript if I find out it’s still not with external reviewers. Advice welcome.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Australasian*

      Reply
  18. Anonymous

    I don’t really understand TT positions that have an open AOS/AOC. Why do departments advertise these? And what should the applicant’s strategy be in applying given that they don’t know what the department wants or needs vis-a-vis research/teaching expertise?

    Reply
  19. Anonymous

    I’ve heard a lot of people say that the humanities are becoming more valuable again because of AI – in part because the once “hirable” majors are expected to become less hirable.

    Do people think this could actually lead to an increase in Philosophy majors? I ask because my department will face program review soon and I am curious as to whether we might be justified in making a kind of marketing push to students about Philosophy as a good major in an uncertain world, and whether this would be worth the effort.

    If there is any evidence of this, I would also love to know about it, so that we could potentially present it to admin at some point to hopefully convince them that we could plausibly increase majors over the next five years.

    Reply
  20. Writing Novice

    I am just getting into the business of writing philosophy, and I would be happy to hear others opinion on judging ones own writing.

    I have taken forever to writing my thesis and am still not finished (too many different issues to solve) and I am not feeling good about it. Now I have written two papers. One of these papers has gained considerable praise from one reviewer who called it excellent and important, and my supervisor liked it too; it is in R&R. I am not sure, though, if it can make it for the other reviewers had mixed feelings. I have mixed feelings too. While I am standing behind it firmly in one sense, I also see a lots of caveats, and receiving reviewer feedback, I take that very serious, perhaps a little too much. If the reviewer says it is not stable enough, then a part of me believes him, while the other one is meanwhile proving the reviewer false in every point. The feedback did help me to think through aspects I had not thought through before, which also means that I did not have thought the paper enough before. And if it stands on such shaky grounds, maybe, I then think to myself, it should not be published. Or maybe it should, maybe it helps for discussion, if somebody wishes to discuss it. So what are the standards on that. How firm is your trust in your writing, how firm must it be to be valuable?
    The second paper is also out for review. I am even more unsure about that one, but in a different way. I like it, and I think it says something genuinly true and important, but I am not sure, if it is “up to the standards of the discipline” which frighten me sometimes a little. It is very challenging to say something non-trivial, and to say it in a way that is technical enough (but perhaps not too much). I always have a kind of feeling that everything I say is just… made up in some way. Even though I firmly believe it is true (at least most of it, there are parts that may not be truth apt). I guess all that sounds very weird and a little contradictory. So I do not seem to be a very good person to judge my own writing. Or maybe I am and it is just that bad. Or maybe the part of me that is up to truth is right, and maybe it is good or good enough.

    So much to these inner ups and downs. Now my question are (i) are others are also experiencing this weird divided mind, and how handle it (ii) can others estimate a papers sucess from their own feel towards it? Like, if I feel it is trivial, then others feel that too; or if I feel that the method is not fully stabilized, or not standardized, then it will not come through peer review. Can you reliably estimate the chances of a paper before submitting? (iii) Do you feel it is fine if a paper has some unresolved issues, so if you did not think about each eventuallity before? Is it fine to use peer review as a part of that thinking process in that case?

    Reply
  21. Anonymous

    I’ve seen a few cases where students or postdocs were asked to write up their supervisors’ paper ideas and coauthor with them. These include papers on “controversial” topics that, in the worst cases, might affect the student’s reputation in the field and affect their ability to get a job in the future, but it seems to me that they might not feel comfortable saying no.

    So I wonder how search committees look at such cases. Is there a serious chance that such cases could damage early-career philosophers’ reputations? (In that case, as publications and post-docs experience are increasingly expected, it seems we need to have a serious conversation about the ethics of coauthoring.) Or do search committees take any account of these power dynamics when evaluating applicants’ coauthored works? (Coauthored works seem to be heavily discounted in evaluations, anyway, so maybe that mitigates the damage that could be caused…)

    Reply
  22. Anonymous

    It’s not uncommon lately to hear talk about how instructors are designing assignments that get students to engage with AI/”learn responsible” AI-use. I’m curious if anyone teaching on the philosophy of AI is using assignments that involve students using AI of some sort, whether critically, substantively, or ancillarily.

    Reply
  23. Anonymous

    We often talk about delays before acceptance: unresponsive editors, slow reviewers, and papers stuck in limbo. But how much variation is there once a paper is actually accepted?

    A paper of mine was recently accepted by a reputable journal with a major publisher. Peer review took nearly a year, but I’ve now spent almost three months waiting for it to appear online. Proofs were delayed, and despite returning everything and signing the contract straight away, it has gone completely quiet.

    When post-acceptance drags on like this, is the bottleneck typically with the journal’s editorial team or the publisher’s central production department?

    I’d be curious to hear other people’s experiences, and whether there are noticeable differences between publishers and journals.

    Reply
  24. Anonymous

    Kind of a trivial question but in case others have wondered too…I had a paper published a weeks ago (in a well-known mainstream journal), but it isn’t on philpapers. Is this normal? Should I upload it myself, or wait for it to hopefully be pulled automatically from the journal? Any reason to do one or the other? Thank you

    Reply
  25. Anonymous

    Just lamenting that my department has ceased offering logic, not even as an elective. The reason offered by the head of philosophy is that too many students fail the course and thus have the highest failure rate, the outcome is typically a U curve, and that has made the overlords unhappy. This seems to be the wrong kind of reason, even if it makes financial sense: students may move to a different major or even risk dropping out of uni when failing.

    Reply
  26. Anonymous

    Slightly weird question (I think): what if someone is already a TT assistant professor (heavy teaching load) but is considering applying for a postdoc at another university? why..? Well, my spouse is up for a significant promotion at a company in the area where the postdoc is, and I feel it’s a bit unfair to hold back their career because of my “gold-standard TT job.” Also, there are some benefits for me; it would let me focus mostly on research, hopefully so I can apply for a more research-focused position in the future.

    Also, while I’m okay-ish with giving up the TT position for a two-year postdoc, knowing that getting another TT position afterward is unlikely, just wondering if it’s weird to even apply for a postdoc when you’re already TT. Would the selection committee view it negatively? Are there other issues I’m not considering? Any advice would be appreciated.

    I know people have opinions about how silly this is, etc., but I’m mainly trying to get crowd-funded advice about how to navigate this odd/uncomfortable position of forgoing a TT for a temp postdoc.

    Reply

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