Comments on Drop in Sociology Jobs

• Adjunct position Up?
• Posted by Liam , Sociology at The College of NJ on April 27, 2009 at 10:00am EDT

• Given this date, it would be interesting to see if the adjunct rate was up. Is this a general decline in Sociology positions or is it a shift from full time to part-time positions?

• Headline scarier than the facts
• Posted by Roberta Spalter-Roth , Director, Research and Develdopment Department at American Sociological Association on April 27, 2009 at 10:30am EDT

• The headline is scarier than the facts cited in the article. While job advertisements for new assistant professors are donw from 2006, the largest decline occured from 2006-2007. We think that fewer jobs are coming into the job bank, because more are going out on list serves. Open rank jobs have increased. And sociology is not alone in suffering losses. All of these facts were mentioned in the article. The ASA will be conducting a survey to find out what percentage of advertised jobs were filled and what percentage were cancelled.

• Downsizing Ph.D. Programs
• Posted by Claus Mueller , Professor at Hunter College / CUNY on April 27, 2009 at 11:00am EDT

• An obvious response would be to downsize sociology PhD programs which train students for
  positions which do not exist. But as in other academic areas such market oriented approach is
  anathema to most PhD program managers / directors.

• Downsizing would be "Suicide"!
• Posted by Durkheim on April 27, 2009 at 11:45am EDT

• The overproduction of sociology doctorates is nothing new. There have been many more new PhDs, plus recycled older PhDs, on the market every year than there are job openings. The surplus is in fact one reason why so many adjuncts are hired: an applicant pool that is fairly qualified and is eager to take any position at all. It would be unrealistic though to expect doctoral programs to adjust to the reality of employment openings for their graduates. 

  Faculty like having doctoral students. The more you have, the more that you can teach graduate seminars instead of facing the undergraduate throngs. And when you must face the throngs, earnest graduate students are available to be your teaching assistants. Grad students also can run your data, compose your Powerpoint, interview your survey subjects, and be useful all around. Suddenly need an instructor? A grad student can take over the class for that senior colleague who just abandoned the teaching assignment on sabbatical or on grant money.  Your program gains prestige from giving the doctorate. And if writing letters to place your students doesn't exactly work out for them, at least it keeps you in touch with your network of peers at hiring institutions. 

  The same reality -- doctoral production outpacing demand -- has applied even longer in other disciplines, especially in the humanities. In sociology, the difference in recent years is that whereas new doctorates were formerly underemployed (e.g. as adjuncts or community college teachers), now there's simple unemployment when even those residual opportunities have vanished.

• Plus,
• Posted by DFS on April 29, 2009 at 6:30pm EDT

• We are all bored with the shrillness from the Association of America, for example.
  In fact, the very word "anthropological" is another oxymorom, inadvertently merging "anthropology" with that implied quirk, "logical."
  Way too much thought was been wasted over trying to reconcile these misconjoined concepts.
  Actual people have obviously had enough.