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Does Having Publications Hurt a Candidate for Jobs at Schools Whose Primary Mission is Teaching?

Brian Leiter

Reader Matt Barker writes:

John Basl has an interesting post on his Normal Science blog about whether publications do or should count against those applying to teaching-focused jobs. It would be nice to have this noted on the Leiter blog, and to ask faculty in teaching-focused departments whether they (even sometimes) count publications against a job applicant, and why they do so if they do. John, in his post, and I and others, in comments below the post, raise worries about counting publications against those applying to teaching-focused jobs.

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13 responses to “Does Having Publications Hurt a Candidate for Jobs at Schools Whose Primary Mission is Teaching?”

  1. Doug Portmore

    I spent five years as a tenure-track assistant professor at California State University, Northridge. Cal State Northridge is primarily a teaching institution, where the standard teaching load is 4/4. During my time at Cal State Northridge, I participated in three searches. Having publications in good journals was a huge plus for any job applicant. Indeed, I believe that our job ads specified that publications were highly desirable. I also know that my having good publications was crucial to my getting the job there. Of course, if there wasn't good evidence that a job applicant was passionate about and good at teaching, then he or she wouldn't get the job at Cal State Northridge no matter how many publications he or she had. But having good publications was a big plus.

    I also spent two years as a visiting assistance professor at the College of Charleston. There too having publications seemed to be a big plus — although I can't say this definitively as I was not a member of the search committee. I'm speaking only as a close observer.

    The only place that I think that having a good publication record doesn't seem to help much (and maybe it each counts against you) is in applying for community college jobs. I came out of grad school with two publications (one in Ratio and another in Phil Studies) and I couldn't get so much as an interview when I applied to well over fifteen community college positions across the country.

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  2. john doris

    As I recall, there's been some related discussion here, particularly with reference to seeking employment in liberal arts colleges. There are those who suspect — myself included — that evidence of an aggressive research agenda can hurt candidates at places with a strong emphasis on teaching. However, this suggestion has been (heatedly) denied by people working at such institutions, who have drawn attention to the impressive pedigree of many folks working in these contexts. I'm not entirely persuaded by the denials, but I think it's something of a moot point, since I believe it there is relatively little one can do, except for amassing evidence of teaching excellence, to "tailor" oneself for a teaching job. Since it is difficult to predict where one will attract interest on the market, and many, many philosophy departments currently like to see publications, the best advice is to work towards publications (the above debate notwithstanding). I would personally caution against publishing prematurely, however, since mediocre publications in mediocre venues can hurt you. Better to have stronger research that is not yet out; most hiring departments will not be unduly concerned by lack of publications, if there's a sufficient quantity of polished "publishable" material.

    —Doris

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  3. pbb

    Like Doug, I too am at a teaching institution: 4/4 is a standard teaching load and with respect to tenure and promotion, teaching evaluation counts twice as much as scholarship. In our most recent search, publications helped and the sense that someone lacked a research agenda hurt. Younger faculty in particular were interested in colleagues who were publishing and aiming to publish in established journals. However, while members of the philosophy department did not count a publishing record against any job candidates, I did get the sense that some administrators did. There was at least some reluctance on the part of our dean and perhaps others to bring our desired job candidates who had strong publication records to campus for visits because it seemed so obvious to administrators that these people were headed for research institutions.

    To be clear, we were allowed to bring all of our desired candidates to campus for interviews, and make job offers as we saw fit. And I have no reason to believe that this is a general problem. But it did happen.

    (I'm up for tenure this year and in the interest of not alienating my dean or others with a say, I'd prefer to not to leave my name or reveal my institution).

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  4. Michael Cholbi

    I'm at a Cal State campus, with a 3/3/3 teaching load, where teaching is the primary factor in tenure and promotion. And I've never heard anyone say anything against candidates who have publications. In fact, in recent searches, nearly all the candidates we took seriously had publications, and among those that did not, they had clear research agendas from which one could anticipate publications in the next year or two. I suppose there might be an absolute upper limit to this; we might wonder whether an ABD with 5+ articles in prestigious journals is someone with the energy or interest to teach effectively at our institution. In other words, the potential worry is not "too many publications" but "not enough focus on teaching to succeed here." Such a candidate just might not be happy with our teaching load either. But, to return to another topic discussed here recently, I imagine that a person's ability and willingness to teach that much is something that you'd use an interview to ferret out.

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  5. Patty Steck

    I'm at a community college with a 5/5 load. I've also served on two search committees in the past 5 years.

    When I'm reading a CV, the most important information is about teaching experience. I want to see any student-contact and I'm especially looking for experience teaching populations like our own. Having publications doesn't exactly hurt, but it doesn't help a lot unless those publications are related to teaching philosophy.

    I will say that when I came across a CV that was structured to appeal to a research institution, I read the cover letter and other materials very carefully. My concern is similar to the concern expressed by Michael Cholbi above — a person with a CV that focuses on research may not be happy with our high teaching load.

    In terms of Community College application packages — I'd say that putting a few of the most interesting publications and conferences on the CV isn't a bad idea. It gives the committee a feel for you as a scholar while not seeming as if all you'll want to do is use our position as a fall-back until you can get a better job with a lower teaching load.

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  6. Shane J. Ralston

    I have a 3/3 load at a small satellite campus of Penn State University. Most of my publications are not in highly ranked journals. Many are in online journals. More are in lowly ranked non-philosophical journals. A few are in edited collections with little or no connection to the discipline of Philosophy. Members of my hiring committee said that they decided to hire me because I was not a narrowly focused researcher. So, if it was a contest based on the quality of publications (or quality judged by the ranking of the journal the publications appeared in) then I would surely have lost out to another candidate. But it was not. Instead, the committee was concerned with the inter-disciplinary reach of the candidate's scholarship. In other words, they were looking for a different kind of scholar than would be hired by a flagship university.

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  7. Bryan

    I'm a master's student in philosophy of religion so I have my eye on the religious studies world as well as the philosophy world. I was not so long ago speaking with an Ivy assistant professor in RS who also holds an Ivy PhD. When on the job market, this AP had a publication or two in respectable RS journals. He was in the final rounds for one position in particular at a small liberal arts venue. Interviewers at this college informed him that, based on the Ivy-ness of his PhD and on his publications, they assumed he intended to leave them after a couple years (despite what he might tell them) and that they therefore felt very uneasy about him as a candidate, however excited they were about him on other fronts. It was his opinion that they would surely have hired him if he had had less pedigree, fewer publications, or both. Of course, in the end, he got an Ivy job so maybe all's well that ends well, but I think it took a little while for him to get said Ivy job and we're all trying to avoid the infamous empty window between PhD and job, right?

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  8. Andrew

    This is pure conjecture but meshes nicely with the other posts. I would think the relevant variable is not the publishing record itself.

    Instead, the function is whether the publishing record/general feel gives the impression that the potential hire is using the teaching institution as a ladder rather than a long term appointment. An extremely strong and quick publishing record would definitely give that vibe.

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  9. Manyul Im

    Seriously? Every teaching-oriented institution cares about, or should care about, quality of publications these days. Philosophy departments in those institutions need to make credible cases for tenure to the university-wide tenure committees. That will mean showing the committees that the candidate for tenure is actively engaged in the field. So, "having publications," especially good ones, certainly does not hurt job candidates for positions at such institutions — if the philosophy departments at those places have any sense at all.

    I could imagine candidates that seem like they're destined for super-stardom based on their publications and hence giving pause to a search committee seeking someone that it thinks will remain at the institution for a while. But that's the rare exception, particularly in the sort of market where there are many more job-seekers available than jobs.

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  10. Brian Laetz

    Manyul raises a fair point. Even at "teaching" schools, research potential probably matters to some extent, in virtue of university-wide tenure committees. However, I'm somewhat skeptical that "quality of publications" really matters here, for it seems staggeringly unlikely that the members of other departments serving on such committees will know journal peer-rankings among philosophers. In the same way, we are unlikely to know such rankings for other disciplines, and I doubt many philosophers serving on such committees bother to find out (but, if they tried, I would caution being very confident, since it is rather difficult to glean such things from "the outside"). So, correct me if I'm wrong, but my guess is that, insofar as publications matter to university-wide committees, quantity probably dramatically outweighs estimations of quality, if, indeed, the latter frequently matters to members of other departments at all.

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  11. Aaron Garrett

    I think Bryan is onto the central issue. Some committees are loath to hire someone who they think will be unhappy and leave quickly. I've seen this happen.

    This is not irrational on the committee's part. If the newly hired faculty member publishes their way into a more desirable job, the already time-strapped members of the department will have to run another search, and furthermore it is often not clear that a department will even get a position again from a financially-strained administration. In other words, if they hire someone who is unhappy and leaves quickly, its more work for them to run another search and potentially a lot more work if they are down a faculty member with no clear sense of when they will be able to hire again.

    There is also a fear that if a junior faculty member raises the publication standards, members of the department who rarely publish will be viewed by the administration as less valuable. I've seen this happen as well.

    I'm not saying this is right, just rational.

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  12. Manyul Im

    Pace Aaron, I don't think it is rational, in most departments that emphasize teaching, for senior members to fear their devaluation in the eyes of administrators. In most such institutions, the senior people are up to their necks in service and their administrators know that they bear the larger share of valuable committee work. Not to mention that in a lot of places the discrepancy between senior faculty salaries and junior ones is substantial, especially if you figure in the economic advantages of not having to move into a new area, buy a house, etc. Further, even if someone senior is "dead wood" it's not like their already acquired job security is going to be pulled out from under them.

    On the other hand, junior faculty are likely to be dropped–i.e. denied tenure–for not publishing. If that happens, then the unhappy time-strapped department will have to put their efforts into running another search. I shouldn't have to repeat this, but the number of job candidates who are likely to go supernova, or even just nova, and rise to the ranks of Better Job Departers constitutes a small percentage of job applicants overall. Better to hire someone with good philosophical skills and decent potential to publish than worry about the ticking supernovas.

    It also *should* go without saying, though I feel like it bears saying on this comment thread, that all potential job-seekers should spend some time thinking about strategies for publishing their better quality work. I know getting the dissertation done and forming a good working relationship with your advisors is important, but some time should be spent on trying to get a decent publication out. Believe me, assuming you're not a ticking supernova, if you have no publications and are up against someone with one publication, in the cutting room of job applications, yours is likely to look worse than that other candidate's, whether it is a teaching or research oriented job in question. Stellar teaching evaluations only help, but the same is true of a publication or two.

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  13. Jeff H

    This thread came up in a workshop on publishing at my school on Monday. The opinion of the faculty members present seemed to be that
    1) Jobs where publishing will hurt you are (if they exist, which at least one was sceptical of) clearly in the minority; publishing will help at a lot more places than it will hurt, and
    2) Even if 1 were false, it doesn't seem very rational to hold back because (relatively) *bad* jobs might be less available to you.

    (You need not equate good jobs with jobs at top research institutions to believe 2; the view seemed to be that teaching-oriented places that were more desirable to be at in the first place would also tend to value publications.)

    Reply

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