Prospects in the Academic Labor Market for Economists

[econphilomath]

Stumbled onto this paper. Thought it might be of interest.
Prospects in the Academic Labor Market for Economists
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Spring, 2004), pp. 227-238

Here the link to jstor. I didn't want to get in trouble by attaching it.

Cookie Absent

[thescienceboy]

Interesting article...Quite depressing though (all this stuff about contract faculty). I just didn't get one thing. They say something about shrinking labor market for freshly minted PhDs and fierce competition in the US, and at the same time write about how American colleges HAVE TO attract foreign PhDs to fill in available slots. And it's funny that the authors are really concerned that foreign professionals might "undervalue the role of women" that will affect the quality of education. I'm just wondering if someone saw a foreign PhD who "undervalues the role of women" in the US.lol. If they wanted to advocate protectionism , they should have chosen less crappy reasons.

[econphilomath]

Originally Posted by thescienceboy

Interesting article...Quite depressing though (all this stuff about contract faculty). I just didn't get one thing. They say something about shrinking labor market for freshly minted PhDs and fierce competition in the US, and at the same time write about how American colleges HAVE TO attract foreign PhDs to fill in available slots. And it's funny that the authors are really concerned that foreign professionals might "undervalue the role of women" that will affect the quality of education. I'm just wondering if someone saw a foreign PhD who "undervalues the role of women" in the US.lol. If they wanted to advocate protectionism , they should have chosen less crappy reasons.

LOL Yea that was a weird paragraph. I think what was worrying was the facts on the falling amount of tenured professors. As if it wasn't hard enough !!

However, to get everyones moral back up, a recent ranking of the best careers notes that being a tenured professor was r one of the best jobs in America. See US News Best Careers Ranking.

[asianeconomist]

Originally Posted by econphilomath

being a tenured professor was r one of the best jobs in America. See US News Best Careers Ranking.

Hopefully it remains that way by the time we hit the market.

[YoungEconomist]

Originally Posted by asianeconomist

Hopefully it remains that way by the time we hit the market.

I think it definitely will stay that way.

However, it also seems like it might be getting tougher to get that tenured job. I sure hope the academic job market for economists is not going the way of the academic job market for physicists.

[Oikos-nomos]

I heard, can't recall where tough (maybe in this forum?), that the trend is that unis are diminishing the number of tenured professors, changing tenured positions into adjunt ones. They reason it's because they want more flexibility with faculty. For instance, if they want to fire one professor, they can do it, and consequently increase professors' incentives to slack.
Sounds logical to me.
In addition to that i think that another reason, also a consequence of flexibility to fire professors, is that it also means flexibility to adjust universities' budgets.