{"id":591,"date":"2009-03-09T07:22:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T13:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=591"},"modified":"2009-03-08T11:12:23","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T17:12:23","slug":"in-the-phd-job-market-abyss-sociologists-fret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/03\/09\/in-the-phd-job-market-abyss-sociologists-fret\/","title":{"rendered":"in the PhD job market abyss, sociologists fret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by Sighthound on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/57293962@N00\/3329232605\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3630\/3329232605_fa07a06234_t.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>This past weekend, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/07\/arts\/07grad.html\">New York Times<\/a> ran a story about how humanities and social science PhD students are experiencing high levels of anxiety in the midst of a shrinking academic job market and grim prospects for the future.<\/p>\n<p>The article opened with the story of Chris Pieper.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Chris Pieper began looking for an academic job in sociology about six months ago, sending off about two dozen application packets. The results so far? Two telephone interviews, and no employment offers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout half of all the rejection letters I\u2019ve received mentioned the poor economy as contributing to their decision,\u201d said Mr. Pieper, 34, who is getting his doctorate from the\u00a0University of Texas, Austin. \u201cSome simply canceled the search because they found the funding for the position didn\u2019t come through. Others changed their tenure-track jobs to adjunct or instructor positions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany of the universities I applied to received more than 300 applications,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Pieper is not alone. Fulltime faculty jobs have not been easy to come by in recent decades, but this year the new crop of Ph.D. candidates is finding the prospects worse than ever. Public universities are bracing for severe cuts as state legislatures grapple with yawning deficits. At the same time, even the wealthiest private colleges have seen their endowments sink and donations slacken since the financial crisis. So a chill has set in at many higher education institutions, where partial or full-fledge hiring freezes have been imposed.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/07\/arts\/07grad.html\">Read more about Pieper and other struggling PhDs&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Share your own stories of the difficult academic job market, comment below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend, the New York Times ran a story about how humanities and social science PhD students are experiencing high levels of anxiety in the midst of a shrinking academic job market and grim prospects for the future. The article opened with the story of Chris Pieper. Chris Pieper began looking for an academic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[143,175,76],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-labor","tag-sociology","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":594,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}