Comments on: Postdoc after postdoc after postdoc?

By: Glencora

Glencora — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:53:04 +0000

@Jana: I’m not (yet?) familiar with DARPA grants – I didn’t realize that they would be entirely contract based. I would hope that one could be creative and be able to fund interesting research while on a contract. I’d say more, but I’m ignorant of the issues involved with DARPA projects.

also @Jana: there has been surging frustration in Canada where undergrads have been told for 15 years (my sister’s generation, then mine, and still now) that they should “go to grad school! There will be all these retirements in 6 years! You’ll get the sweetest job as a professor!” Well, those retirements are either not happening or the vacancies left behind are not being filled. I’m not sure what US undergrads are being told upon entering grad school, but I would be hesitant to tell any undergrad, no matter how bright, to put all their eggs in the tenure-track basket.

@Warren: My feeling is 10 is worse than last year. In the end, I applied to 21 jobs – some in Europe, 2 in Canada. I know several of those positions didn’t end up hiring. However, my search was pretty directed. I did not apply to jobs that were in places I didn’t want to live, which at least halved the possibilities for me. To, unfortunately, further hurt the situation, more people last year didn’t get jobs that otherwise would have – I think the number of people looking will be higher this year.

By: Warren

Warren — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:38:35 +0000

It looks like this year’s academic-job market is even worse than last

My job search spreadsheet currently has about 10 top-50 schools that are hiring tenure-track positions possibly compatible with theorists. This includes several positions open to any area of CS whatsoever, some positions with a narrower list of areas that includes theory or algorithms along with several other areas, and a pair of Econ/CS positions. On the downside my contacts indicate that several of the open positions are unlikely to hire in theory this year. Do you know how this compares to previous years?

By: Jana

Jana — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:15:59 +0000

In the machine learning community, I have observed the same kind of behavior since 2005 and I’m afraid it will be worse in the coming years. As a grad student who aspires to become a faculty someday, this worries me a lot.

Until 2005, mostly good people used to get an academic job immediately after their Ph.D. I know a lot of people who are postdocking for few(> 3 yrs) years and are quite frustrated with the current job market. Also, the postdocs supported by DARPA projects do not have much scope to do research(this is true even for grad students and faculty w.r.t DARPA projects, when NSF grants are so competitive). I’m not talking about the CI Fellowship for Post-docs which is highly competitive (60 among all sub-fields of computer science).

I’m sure students will start thinking – Is it really worth ? I’m referring to all the years of grad school, then postdocking and struggle involved in getting tenure.