recentgrad Posted March 30, 2020 Share Posted March 30, 2020 Welp... looks like the academic market this coming year may be rough sledding :dejected: Incomplete/Unofficial/ Unconfirmed List of Schools That Have Announced Hiring Freezes or Pauses, Professor Is In - Google Docs Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phd2017 Posted March 30, 2020 Share Posted March 30, 2020 Anyone have any idea if/how this thing is going to effect entering 1st year PhD’s? Should I be prepared for an email revoking or reducing my stipend? Or even expecting postponement of the program? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCB Posted March 31, 2020 Share Posted March 31, 2020 Anyone have any idea if/how this thing is going to effect entering 1st year PhD’s? Should I be prepared for an email revoking or reducing my stipend? Or even expecting postponement of the program? Rescinding admission offers is very rare. At this point, I would say that this is highly unlikely. Not impossible, but I think that things would have to get much worse than they currently are. It is much more likely that schools will choose not to go down their wait lists and leave phd student "lines" unfilled. I think that this year's market is going to be delayed, but hopefully not too badly impacted. I have a lot of friends who are going to be on the market this fall and they are all pretty stressed about this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjb55 Posted April 2, 2020 Share Posted April 2, 2020 How are you all interpreting these hiring freezes as it pertains to downstream job market? I feel that the ripple effects of very few placements of new PhD's this year could have a ripple effect on the market that lasts 4-5 years. Particularly considering that in the last recession, professorial jobs were cut and not replaced (except with adjuncts). I ask as someone entering a PhD cohort this coming fall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recentgrad Posted April 2, 2020 Author Share Posted April 2, 2020 How are you all interpreting these hiring freezes as it pertains to downstream job market? I feel that the ripple effects of very few placements of new PhD's this year could have a ripple effect on the market that lasts 4-5 years. Particularly considering that in the last recession, professorial jobs were cut and not replaced (except with adjuncts). I ask as someone entering a PhD cohort this coming fall. See the job market thread a few threads back for a baseline. I think things likely will get tougher to some (unknowable) degree, at least in STR/OB. In general, the job market process is not at all transparent, so it's tough to provide any sort of prediction interval on how much harder it will be. From my experience, I'd estimate that 1/4 to 1/3 of graduating Management PhD students do not take TT Assistant Prof jobs (out of choice, due to being uncompetitive, or most likely, some combination of the two). This fact isn't publicized by schools for obvious reasons. You should anticipate this being the baseline environment for the foreseeable future. For comparison, it seems like the 2008 recession acted as a "ratchet" in many schools; administrators found "fat" to cut from school budgets and haven't added it back since. I imagine the same thing, on average and probably to a lesser degree, will happen here too. Outside of maintaining a certain percent of scholarly professors for AACSB credentials, there's no hard requirement stopping admins from replacing tenure track researchers with an adjunct who does 3x the teaching work for 1/3 of the price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phd2017 Posted April 3, 2020 Share Posted April 3, 2020 How are you all interpreting these hiring freezes as it pertains to downstream job market? I feel that the ripple effects of very few placements of new PhD's this year could have a ripple effect on the market that lasts 4-5 years. Particularly considering that in the last recession, professorial jobs were cut and not replaced (except with adjuncts). I ask as someone entering a PhD cohort this coming fall. Considering the last recession the market crash happened in late 2008, hiring in the private sector at least didn’t truly pick up until 2012, maybe more like 2013. I am thinking that 2020 is looking to be another 2008 and that by the time 2024-2025 rolls around and we are on the market university budgets will be in better shape than they will be over the next few years, and that there will hopefully be some pent up demand considering a few years of belt tightening of TT hiring. I think it will be a brutal job market over the next few years though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recentgrad Posted April 3, 2020 Author Share Posted April 3, 2020 Considering the last recession the market crash happened in late 2008, hiring in the private sector at least didn’t truly pick up until 2012, maybe more like 2013. I am thinking that 2020 is looking to be another 2008 and that by the time 2024-2025 rolls around and we are on the market university budgets will be in better shape than they will be over the next few years, and that there will hopefully be some pent up demand considering a few years of belt tightening of TT hiring. I think it will be a brutal job market over the next few years though. Good point about the "delay". We definitely saw a delay following 2008, and I think the lag caught many folks off guard. I'm not sure about pent up demand. I think it's much more likely that we'll develop pent up supply (to a lesser degree, like every other field in academia). Academia is particularly good at creating cheap, temporary ways to allow PhDs to continue on their quest for TT jobs. Many (if not most) students in STR/OB are taking a 6th year, often unpaid, which is financially the best way for universities to preserve staff dedicated to maintain research output. Post-docs are a "second best", since you need to pay them a little more than PhDs, yet post-docs are usually about 1/3 the cost of TT profs with about the same research ability. Schools generally are wary of decreasing PhD spots, since it looks like a bad quality signal for the program, so incoming PhD supply will probably stay pretty constant. I wouldn't anticipate a mad rush of people to MBAs, so faculty hiring probably won't be especially robust. The 'Flight To Quality' In The MBA Market. On the bright side, growing interest in specialized programs may increase faculty hiring in certain non-management fields (finance: risk management, operations: data science, etc.). Once economic conditions improve, universities will have little financial incentive to get rid of post-doc positions, the 6th year trend, etc., leading to a larger supply in long-run equilibrium. Yes, some folks will "wise up" and leave for more stable pastures in industry. If other PhD fields are an indication, however, this reality will likely lead to more folks competing for about the same number of TT jobs year over year, leading to a "ratchet effect". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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