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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

No May JFP This Year!

Brian Leiter

Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State) writes:

Saw the following at http://www.apaonline.org/ :

"The National Office has not received a sufficient number of employment ads to warrant publishing a May 2009 issue of Jobs for Philosophers, No. 182. Therefore, there will not be a JFP print issue published in May. Web only ads (if any) will continue to be published on-line from May through the summer months."

Thought it might be worth noting on your blog, as it does reflect the overall terrible job market–I must say I'm rather surprised that the May JFP would be particularly sparse, since I thought a lot of places not filling TT slots because of the economy would still be in the market for cheaper adjuncts and the like to teach their classes, and the May JFP often has ads for those sorts of positions.

Also, I'm surprised that the APA would make this decision. Even if the number of ads is low, how much would it cost the APA to send out a 4-page-long total JFP, one newsprint sheet folded in half?  They seem to have the money to send out chunky bound copies of Proceedings and Addresses several times a year to all members.

What do readers make of this?  Departments that were unable to hire tenure-track faculty this year, how are you meeting your teaching needs?  Have departments also been denied temporary and adjunct positions?  Signed comments please.

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8 responses to “No May JFP This Year!”

  1. Christopher Morris

    As I don't know the significance to be attributed to this decision, it's hard to comment. However, I should like to take the occassion to urge the APA to discontinue the quaint print version of JFP and to move to a www-based system like that of the Am Poli Sci Association (updated every month, sortable by area of specialization, geography, rank, etc.).

    Given how absurd dues have become, I don't think it a bad idea to save money on mailings. But there are more efficient ways of advertising jobs.

    Reply
  2. Thornton Lockwood

    I believe this question has been raised previously, but what exactly is the rational for publishing and mailing out a paper copy of the JFP regardless of the number of advertisements? Placing the document on-line–as HTML or a PDF, which job applicants can print out or search on-line–seems quite sufficient and of course has economic and environmental upsides. Perhaps this May's non-publication event can serve as a precedent for placing the JFP solely on-line in the future. At the least it could serve as an opportunity to canvas current JFP subscribers to see if there is any significant demand for a paper publication.

    Reply
  3. Fritz Allhoff

    Btw, this gives rise to a much more general question about the APA, which is how we actually talk to them/it. The group's been getting a pretty hard time from various corners, perhaps especially from the Philadelphia conference, organization of JFPs, etc. This recent petition business seems to have only gotten a response from a single division, though maybe this is because Eastern and Central haven't met since it. But even the petitions, the overly formalistic letters in response, etc. isn't what I'm talking about. Rather, how do we say "here are five questions, what are the answers?" and get some sort of public discussion from them? Do we just email the executive director? Maybe we could collectively coordinate the list of questions that would be on the list and offer Brian's blog–should he be willing–to post the replies. Just seems like we spend a lot of time talking to each other about issues that we might want to put forward and get a reply from the organization itself.

    Reply
  4. Neil Sinhababu

    I really don't understand why they keep spending money on printing and mailing chunky bound proceedings and addresses. Making large quantities of information broadly available is a job for the internet.

    Reply
  5. Tim O'Keefe

    I agree with Neil that the proceedings and addresses are a more obvious waste of money. Regarding the hard-copy JFP, as long as it's sent to members only on an 'opt-in' basis, having it as an option seems to me to be a reasonable courtesy for those people who prefer reading newsprint to computer screens. But if the cost is high, or very few people opt in, it wouldn't be a big deal to discontinue it.

    Reply
  6. Minh Nguyen

    I'd like to receive hard copies of JFP and proceedings and addresses. Having a 4-4 teaching load plus occasionally doing overloads, I don't have time to read these at work (and print out the relevant parts) and I don't have access to the Internet at home. If I am not mistaken, for those who don't want to receive hard copies of the above publications, all you have to do is tell the APA and they will take care of it.

    Reply
  7. incoming grad student

    Regarding the necessity of JFP print ads, the last comment on a post at Philosophers Anonymous is illuminating (click my name to get there)-

    729 writes:
    "Okay, so here's something I've only recently learned regarding why, despite all the great reasons *not* to continue them, hard copy printed job ads are still needed. Some institutions, like my own, are required to have physical hard copies of job ads. This requirement from human resources has to do with two things: 1) an antiquated rule that really ought to be changed and 2) the US Department of Immigration and Naturalization, which also seems to need an overhaul regarding this.

    This situation only became salient to me when an unlucky department at my institution made an international hire. Their professional association recently moved to 100% online job ad services. Our HR, which placed the ad on the department's behalf, was unaware that the ad was only going to be online. Things proceeded as normal, the department made a hire, and the highly qualified applicant they hired was from another country. Little did the department realize that once the new hire began dealing with US immigration, a *hard copy* of the job ad was absolutely necessary for the application materials. The online ad was not acceptable. No amount of rational negotiation could change this–and as a consequence another job search had to be conducted. The department had to use not only the professional association job postings, but also a printed edition elsewhere.

    Until I witnessed this happen, I had no idea about these requirements and how they work. If the APA did move to only online job ads, I strongly recommend that every hiring committee fully investigate their institutional HR rules and be very aware that International hiring is complicated by the lack of hard copies of job ads. I am in no way defending the hard copy requirements, but only passing along some information about how printed job ads are still *assumed* to be the norm in hires, and that a change in APA production of print ads can potentially complicate hires."

    Reply
  8. Eric Silverman

    I was just looking at this year's tenure track hiring blog comments/postings and noticed that we have 124 posts this year vs 110 posts last year. The simplest explanation for this would be that there were more hires this year. But, this can't be right! Is it just that more people decided to post here this year over last year? Are this year's postings disproportionately for post-docs? Or are there about the same number of TT hires this year as last year, but the VAP and adjunct market have completely collapsed? Any other theories?

    Reply

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