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So how might the APA better meet the needs of the profession?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY TO ENCOURAGE MORE CONTRIBUTIONS to what has been a robust and informative comment thread.

===================================

The results of last week's poll were pretty negative; here are the results as of late yesterday:

How would you rate the APA\'s performance in meeting the needs of the profession?
Excellent   1% (12)
very good   6% (49)
good   15% (127)
Fair   36% (308)
poor   42% (354)
 
 
 

Even allowing for the fact that the aggrieved are more motivated to vote in a poll like this, the results are still pretty stunningly lopsided.   So, in a more constructive vein, I'd like to invite readers to comment substantively on what the APA is doing right and what things the APA ought to be doing to better meet the needs of the profession.  Signed comments will be preferred, though current job seekers may post without putting their name in the signature line.

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50 responses to “So how might the APA better meet the needs of the profession?”

  1. Bitter Jaded Anon. Job Seeker

    0. GET A WEBSITE DESIGNED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS BY SOMEONE WHO KNOWS HOW TO DESIGN A WEBSITE!

    1. Start publishing the JFP online *only* and update it year round.

    2. Start actually sending the JFP update emails. I've been signed up for over a year. I've received exactly two emails.

    3. Start holding the Eastern APA at a less expensive, warm-weather city, (Tampa, Charlotte, Charleston, Richmond, etc.) preferably the week after New Years instead of the week between Christmas and New Years.

    4. See #0.

    Reply
  2. Patricia Marino

    Areas in which the APA needs improvement:

    1) Website should be better designed and should function better.

    2) Job listings should be added to site whenever they become available rather than being gathered in volumes and released only at certain times.

    Things the APA is doing well:

    1) The program chairs and organizers have been great to work with in my experience.

    2) Overall I like the way our conferences have the big smoker events rather than the smaller, invite-only parties that other societies sometimes have. It's more open and less clique-ish.

    Reply
  3. John M. Collins

    Another complaint about the website: it is often difficult to figure out how to volunteer to be a commentator (some divisions are better at this than others). Sometimes the current meeting's program coordinator isn't even listed on the division's site.

    I second moving the Eastern APA to right after New Years, but I don't second making it just southern locations.

    Reply
  4. Carla F.

    Some things to help the APA better meet the needs of the profession:

    1) The dates of the Eastern APA meeting need to change. It is particularly difficult for people with children and for those who have partners who work outside the home and are not academics. The meeting time as it stands is family unfriendly and may be a roadblock to the full participation of women in the profession.

    2) Does the APA provide childcare at meetings? If not, it should. And if it does, it should advertise it more effectively.

    3) I would like to see data printed at the beginning of every conference program on the proportion of women relative to men on the invited and reviewed parts of the meeting programs, on the program committees and in leadership positions within the organization. If we are doing well here, we should celebrate and advertise that fact because it might help with recruitment and retention rates of women students and women faculty members. If we are not doing so well, the data can help us remedy the situation.

    Reply
  5. Kevin Klement

    Here are a few off the top of my head. I'm sure I could think of more with a bit more thought.

    1) I don't care what climate it is in, but host meetings at cheaper locations. They don't need to be downtown at only the most expensive cities in the country. Even with the large discounts, the prices are obscene, and as near as I can tell, completely unnecessary.

    2) Get involved in creating a centralized disciplinary letter of reference clearinghouse, especially for those on the job market: one which interfaces with the job listings, reminds (annoys) letter writers who are late, and which ends once and for all expensive dossier mailings, and separate electronic submission using a different system for each candidate.

    3) Get involved in the struggle for open access journals, and open access publishing generally. Stand up to the ridiculous system which is currently costing our libraries way too much money every year.

    Reply
  6. Job-seeker

    Graduate students make, on average, somewhere between 14,000-20,000 dollars per year. Going on the market can cost as much as 1000 dollars just with respect to sending out applications. To have the APA Eastern – a conference far more important for job seekers than for anyone else – at the most expensive location in the US (the northeast), making graduate students who are job-seekers shell out another 1000 dollars between airfare and cost of lodging, is just unconscionable in my opinion.

    Reply
  7. Christopher Hitchcock

    1. Improve services for job seekers. There have been times when the line has been one hour long to find out what room an interview is in.

    2. The contributed papers sessions seemed designed to minimize the amount of philosophical content you can fit in one hour. The standard is 25 minutes for the speaker, 15 for the commentator, 5 minute reply. Ditch the the commentators. Also, length restrictions on papers (3,000 words for most contributed papers) are based on the assumption that speakers will just read their paper. This is a practice that should be discouraged in any event. I can't remember the last time I had anything interesting to say in 3,000 words. It leads to papers like 'A Mistake in Step Seven of Hitchcock's Argument on page 143…' that will only be of interest to hyper-specialists. Let people submit longer papers and then figure out how to present the essence of the material in a given time. E.g. the Philosophy of Science Association allows submissions of up to 5,000 words, with 30 minutes for paper plus discussion. You get just as many people on the program, and a lot more content.

    3. Improve quality control on the program.

    4. My own pet idea: A new type of session, called 'What's new in…?" Have a panel of (say) 4 younger scholars, who have recently completed dissertations on some topic. (E.g. Hume, Utilitarianism, History of Analytic Philosophy, Mental Content, Philosophy of Biology…). Give them each 10 minutes or so to talk about what they think are the exciting new directions in the area, the important new problems, etc. Then allow plenty of time for discussion. Basically, have a session designed for people that don't work in that area to get a taste of what's going on now. It would be more informative for the philosophical community than the current sessions, and it would give younger scholars a good opportunity to get on the program.

    Reply
  8. Michael Weisberg

    I would like to see the APA:

    a. Develop a proper jobs database like the American Psychological Association's PsychCareers (http://www.apa.org/careers/psyccareers/). The printed JFP is a relic … charge the posting departments a reasonable fee and also seek other organizations who might like to hire philosophy PhDs and have them pay too. And make the database freely accesible.

    b. Collect more systematic data about the profession. There are a number of groups (e.g. SPP's diversity committee) that would be happy to help.

    c. Create a real database for job candidates including storing confidential letters. This could potentially make the application process more paperless and less expensive for all parties.

    d. Stop publishing paper documents like "Proceedings and Addresses." There is no reason that this cannot become an electronic only document.

    e. Create a new top-rank general journal (like phil imprint) that is open access and owned by the apa.

    g. Actively promote philosophy and philosophical research to the public and press, along the lines of how university press offices promote their faculty's research (releases, lists of experts, etc).

    Reply
  9. Becko Copenhaver

    It might be useful to make a distinction between the APA national office and the three separate APA divisions (separate both from one another and from the national office). The issues concerning the website, for example, would be addressed by the APA, while the issues about divisional conference times and locations could only be addressed by a particular APA division.

    I'm not asking for a do-over, but if you wanted to do one, it might be interesting to see whether the overall dissatisfaction concerns the national office or the divisions, and if it concerns the divisions, whether it concerns all three divisions equally or a particular division. One upside to the divisional structure is that concerns that have to do with a particular division can be addressed without having to involve all of us or the national office.

    Reply
  10. Anon

    The dates for the Eastern APA should be moved until after New Year's. It's unconscionable that the APA forces many to choose between family and the profession.

    Reply
  11. L.A. Paul

    Change the date of the Eastern APA.

    Reply
  12. anon

    It's not fair that the major job market conference is always on the east coast. This means anyone who lives out west will always have to pay considerably more just to get a job interview than anyone out east.

    I also have to say much of my dissatisfaction has to do with the timing. This year, I do not get to be with my family for Christmas because I just wouldn't have time to travel to California to be with them and then turn right back around and get to Boston in time for the APA. I'm going to be sad and alone for Christmas this year, thanks to the APA's timing, just as I probably will be for all future years until I get a permanent job.

    I went to my first smoker last year, and I found the event nearly unbearable. I'm a woman, and never before had I experienced anything that felt so much like a Good Ol' Boys Club. There are countless unwritten rules about what job seekers are supposed to do at the smoker, and almost all of those rules conflict with one another. Are there any written rules about what job seekers are supposed to do at the smoker? If there are, I sure never learned about them. If there aren't, there should be. The way the smoker currently functions as part of the job market is completely inappropriate and made me feel horrible.

    The APA is the major way that we, as philosophers, represent ourselves. So why isn't there any sort of outreach program between the APA and other fields? We philosophers are struggling these days to get other fields to understand us and care about what we do. Why isn't the APA, as an organization, working to change this? Unless we're just going to throw up our hands and accept that philosophy is a relic of bygone times, shouldn't our major professional association be working on, for lack of better words, our profession's PR?

    Reply
  13. HIlary Kornblith

    More than one person has suggested that the APA should get rid of the printed version of JFP. While I agree that having a print version of JFP is, in some respects, an idea whose time has come and gone, it would, in spite of that, be a terrible mistake to get rid of the printed version. Many university affirmative action offices require that job advertisements appear in some printed venue. This may even be required by federal law. (If it isn't explicitly required, it is the way in which many aa offices interpret that law, and advertising departments have no choice but to follow the interpretation of their local aa office.) If the JFP were to appear on-line only, then these departments would be required to advertise somewhere else, in addition to their JFP advertisement, where the printed advertisement satisfied the aa office, though it served no other purpose, while the JFP advertisement made the availability of the job publicly known, but failed to satisfy the aa office. Better to have the ad which really does make the job publicly known appear in a manner which will satisfy the concerns of aa offices. It would be better still if either the law were changed, or the interpretation widely made of it were different. But this is something over which the APA has no control.

    Reply
  14. SCM

    "Start publishing the JFP online *only* and update it year round."

    "Develop a proper jobs database … The printed JFP is a relic …"

    Can we please stop with this nonsense? The United States government *requires* that jobs be advertised *in print* before it will grant foreign academics the visas they need to actually take up those jobs. An arcane requirement, perhaps, but it has sod all to do with the APA.

    BL COMMENT: Just to be clear, I'm not sure what the law requires. It may be that it suffices for positions to be advertised on the university's web site to meet the legal requirements. I will inquire with some colleagues, but if someone else has information on this, please post.

    Reply
  15. Margaret Atherton

    I want to second Becko's suggestion. Almost all of the posts here are complaints about the meetings, which are the responsibility of the divisions not the national office, although the national office is expected to provide a good deal of support to the divisions for the three annual meetings. But as Michael Weisberg's post shows, there are a lot of things that we might expect a professional organization to do which the APA as presently constituted does not seem able to do.

    Reply
  16. Job Seeker

    In order of priority:

    (1) Discourage interviewing at the Eastern altogether, and encourage other less expensive ways Universities might do initial interviews. We have had phones for quite some time now, skype is virtually free, and most new laptops come with a built-in cam that is pretty much fool-proof. I do think it is unfair to saddle grad students and the untenured with the cost of attending the APA. It is going to cost me upwards of $1500 to attend the conference, if I am "lucky" enough to get an interview. However, if you must, do try to find another convenient time to have it.
    (2) On the it's all too damned expensive note: having an online standardized employer-employee database where job-seekers could just upload their dossiers once and for all would be a god-send. It has cost me $300 for copying and about $300 in postage to send out applications this year.
    (3) As everyone says: reorganize the website. Though, given that the people using it are pretty smart and resourceful, I wouldn't put that much time into it. It's not that bad, except for the fact that the online version of the JFP no longer gets a date update, and jobs are repeated in different places.
    (4) Add a membership payment category for the untenured. Even if some VAPs make the same as some tenure-track profs, we have to save more since we don't know where the hell we'll be for the next coming year. Not to mention the fact that VAPs often don't come with a moving expenses budget.
    (5) I realize job seekers are not the only members of the APA, but we are in the pretty dire need these days. Nevertheless, after (1)-(4), I think we should do everything Michael Weisberg suggests.

    Your Typical Egomaniac-with-an-Inferiority-Complex Job-seeker

    Reply
  17. Georgia Wanrke

    I would like to second those comments that point to the APA's total failure to advocate for the expertise of philosophers with regard to social, political and moral issues. National ethics panels often include a religious person but rarely a philosopher; philosophers rarely appear in in public edia with questions about assumptions behind foreign or domestic policy. At a time when the humanities in general are under attack, our professional association seems to be nothing to help.

    Reply
  18. Anon

    Does anyone know whether other disciplines' professional organizations have already made the transition to on-line only listings/posting for jobs (which, in principle, could accurately be called "print on demand")? If so, and assuming the departments of these disciplines are able to both advertise on-line and hire without running afoul of the purported requirements mentioned by SCM, then I see no reason why the APA shouldn't follow suit. On an unrelated note, I, too, have always found it bizarre that our main meeting, which job candidates must attend if they hope to find gainful employment, forces already stressed out and cash strapped grad students and junior philosophers to forgo spending the holidays with their families and spend large sums of money not only to send their dossiers but to attend meetings in some of the country's most expensive cities. Here again, given that other disciplines have come up with more sane and humane ways of organizing the job market, I have never understood why the current arrangement persists despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of job candidates complain about it year in, year out. Indeed, it is a theme that has come up multiple times in this forum and others and yet here we find ourselves once more wondering why the discipline of philosophy, of all disciplines, can't seem to forge a more rational path. It's as if the haves are insensitive to the plight of the have nots. Go figure…

    Reply
  19. Roberta Millstein

    There are lots of good suggestions here, and I want to think about whether I have more to add, but in the meantime I want to point out that moving the APA Eastern after Jan. 1 would disadvantage those who are on the quarter system, which generally starts up right after the new year (making it hard for TAs and those with teaching positions but who are underemployed). I agree, though, that between Christmas and New Years is not a good time. Maybe more of us should do these interviews via Skype and leave the APA Eastern meeting to be just a conference.

    Reply
  20. Ben Laurence

    I've been to the Eastern APA several times now. Every time I've gone the line to check into the conference has been obscenely long, and the information given to job seekers about locations of their interviews has been abysmal. Make sure that the hotel provides multiple employees to check people in at the start of the conference. Run a more competent job seeker info room.

    At one APA I actually missed my first interview because they didn't have the room listed the night before, and then the morning of the interview, after racing to get the info right when the room opened, and then literally running to get to the room number they gave me, I learned that they had made a mistake. I'm sure that I could have taken precautions to prevent this problem, but that's not really the point.

    Reply
  21. Jamie Dreier

    I think it's my appointed role to note in these comments threads that although a large majority is in favor of changing the dates, there is no date such that a plurality favors changing the Easterns to that date. (That is, the current timing wins head-to-head.) Or at least this was true when the Eastern Division took a poll some time ago.

    For example, changing to early January would be great for me, but it would be really bad for members whose terms start in early January.

    As "Job Seeker" notes, we should not have APA interviews at all. That way nobody would be required to go (among myriad other advantages).

    Reply
  22. Anne Jacobson

    There have been great comments on this topic, and to some extent I'm repeating some of the good ideas.

    The Chronicle of Higher Ed has just published a list of the best 32 higher ed institutions for junior faculty. Some proportion of the standards apparently concern "life-work" issues. With such issues of obvious importance in academia, the APA could certainly reconsider some of its practices, including the date of the Eastern Div meeting, lack of child care for meetings, and the undue effort and expense involved in looking for jobs for the untenured.

    I recently saw a breakdown of gender representation at its conferences from a leading mathematics association. In effect, they conformed to Carla F's recommendation. The APA could also do that, with the results posted to the hopefully improved APA web site.

    With attacks on the humanities and well disseminated views on the supposed lack of value underworked professors provide, we need much more advocacy. The APA could become a more powerful voice on behalf of the profession.

    In addition, I'd recommend the APA review the practices of some comparable professional organizations and some larger and better funded ones. There are likely to be some valuable ideas that are new to us.

    Reply
  23. Another Anon Job Seeker

    Having spent a lot of time with the JFP this year, I can come up with a host of complaints about it and suggestions for improving it.

    (1) Each posting should have a unique id that it carries through the multiple editions. Right now it is sometimes noted when postings are in multiple editions, but that information is sometimes wrong and generally not as useful. This would also make it feasible to answer questions like, "How many jobs are there in total?"

    (2) Rather than spreading the postings out in multiple editions with random duplications, there should be a web version that simply has one posting for each available job. Right now it's a frustrating and mind-numbing task to collect the postings from multiple editions making sure not to miss any and eliminating duplicates.

    (3) AOS/AOC information should be prominently displayed in each posting (preferably at the beginning or end). I'm sure I speak for many job seekers when I say I don't enjoy carefully reading through page long postings to find out 2/3 through that I'm not qualified to apply for a job. Ideally, the web version might even let you search or filter by AOS/AOC, but a very minor change could save frustrating hours of reading job posts.

    Ultimately, I'd be in favor of a more drastic overhaul of the system, but those three changes seem simple enough and I estimate that they would have saved me personally something like an entire day's worth of work time.

    Reply
  24. Anne Jacobson

    Also: The blog on what it is like to be a woman in philosophy** is revealing a host of behaviors that are highly unprofessional and too often at least apparently illegal. They range from the very rude behavior that leaves one with the sense that one is invisible to the marked lack of justice in assessments of merit, and then onto harassment and possibly assault.

    Quite why a professor should think he can with impunity, e.g., ask an undergraduate female to undress for him is a mystery, but the APA should attempt to formlate and effectively disseminate a code of conduct that makes it clear that such actions are, among many other things, damaging the profession by driving away potential members.

    The injustice takes many forms, and some of it may be due to people not appreciating the power of implicit biases we probably all have. However, it seems some philosophers are quite happy to announce that women cannot do philosophy at department meetings in the presence of one or more women. (The blog, feministphilosophers.wordpress.com, is coming a list of resources on the psychology of philosophy; it already has a very good piece on implicit biases and entries on what one can do when colleagues behave badly.)

    Here again by effective disseminating lists of standards the APA can put some pressure on the situation for the good.

    ** http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/

    Reply
  25. grad student

    This is just a small point, but it is rather inconvenient that in order to qualify for the grad student travel stipend of $300, the grad adviser of that student has to mail a physical letter to the APA office confirming this person is a student, and the letter has to arrive there on the day the paper submission is due. Needless to say, me and most of my fellow grad students who haven't submitted APA papers before only realized this right before the submission deadline, when it was already too late. Why can't we just provide the APA with proof that we are students once the papers are accepted, and why can't the grad adviser just send an email???

    Reply
  26. SCM

    Brian, the print requirement is the Department of Labor's present interpretation of the advertisement requirement set out in 20 CFR 656.18(b)(3). It would be wonderful if they allowed an electronic journal, but they do not (unless they have very recently changed this position). No university's international office would be at all amused if the philosophy department wanted to hire a foreign academic with only an electronic advertisement to submit in the labor certification process.

    Reply
  27. Fritz McDonald

    I agree with Carla F. and Michael Weisberg regarding the importance of gathering data about the profession. In addition to their suggestions, I think it would be helpful for the APA to gather information on how many PhDs are earned per year, and how many individuals with philosophy PhDs are working full-time or part-time at colleges/universities, or working at other jobs, or not working at all.

    From what I can see on the website (I may be missing something here?), the APA seems to have stopped gathering any data of this sort within the last few years. The most recent data on degrees awarded is from 1994 and the most recent data on candidates per job is from 2003:

    http://www.apaonline.org/profession/data.aspx

    As an advisor of undergraduate students, it would be really helpful to have this sort of data available when I am discussing the career prospects for philosophy graduate students.

    I agree with those who have suggested that a dossier service would be helpful. The expense of using a dossier service can be significant during a job search.

    Reply
  28. Geoff Pynn

    Nothing new here, but the only thing most of us now rely on the APA's national office for is the JFP, and it is actually quite hilarious how outdated and amateur that service is. I mean, listen to Another Anon (3:49pm) above, hoping beyond hope:

    "Ideally, the web version might even let you search or filter by AOS/AOC."

    O brave new world! But how ever could it be done? What great Secrets must Nature yield before we can harness her Powers to such wondrous ends?

    Reply
  29. David Reidy

    An important mission of a properly constituted and operated APA would be representing the discipline in a serious way not just within the
    ACLS and other NGOs important to academics, but also within Congress and governmental agencies more generally. Moving the APA more solidly in this direction was one of Jerry Schneewind's ambitions. It does not seem that much progress was made, unless along with many others I'm missing a great deal of behind the scenes action.

    Reply
  30. Job Seeker

    Get rid of the current members of the APA Ethics Committee. When I made a formal complaint against an institution I worked for, they told me that breaches of student-professor confidentiality were acceptable so long as the administration is testing out a new policy.

    Reply
  31. Anonymous job seeker

    My suggestion reiterates some of what has already been said, but it offers a few more justifications: First round interviews at the Eastern conference should be abandoned.

    Reasons:
    (1) Video conferences can work just as well as in-person interviews, and have already done so for a few enlightened schools who have done first round interviews this way.
    (2) Video conferences have the advantage of saving EVERYBODY (grad students, hiring departments, etc. money)
    (3) Video conferences often permit a greater portion of the hiring department to sit in on first round interviews.
    (4) Video conferences allow for a much more flexible window of scheduling.
    (5) While video conferences might not allow the exact same in-person feel, lack of certain types of in-person information may be an advantage in terms of equality. Many unconscious biases (say, against short, overweight, pregnant, overly sweaty palmed, etc. people) would be minimized. Plus, the in-person feel can be evaluated on the fly back.
    (6) No more debate necessary regarding the need for suites for interviewing.
    (7) It reduces carbon emissions by reducing air travel nobody wants to do anyway. ('Nobody' may be an exaggeration, so let's just say nobody I know)
    (8) As various people have mentioned, this is a much more family-friendly policy. It is especially devastating for a stressed out job-seeker who has just one interview to leave the comfort and support of their family holiday time to travel days for a one-hour interview. It is much more reasonable to ask them to find one hour during the holidays to make themselves available by video for an interview (Kinkos offers a fairly bullet proof video-conference arrangement that allows the interviewer to simply show up at the nearest Kinkos).
    (9) Video conferencing can be sabotaged by technical difficulties, but APA interviews can be sabotaged by airline delays, poorly organized and disseminated info regarding interview location, illness, etc. I hypothesize that the overall level of problems would be decreased or remain level, and when there are problems, they can be rectified less expensively.

    The only downside I see is that participation at the Eastern conference would likely plummet. But is this a downside? If so, why? Shouldn't people attend the Eastern APA because they want to, because it is of such intellectual value, rather than because they have to?

    Reply
  32. Anonymous

    The advantage of having the conference between Christmas and New Years, it seems, is that that is a time when absolutely no one is teaching. It is also a time when hotel conference rates are cheaper (or so I've been told).

    Someone suggested doing away with interviews. I'm sympathetic, but I'd be reluctant to endorse this proposal because letters of recommendation are so overinflated. We could have more Skype interviews, but these can be awkward and, if lots of people did this, conference attendance would plummet.

    That said, I think the APA should streamline the applications process. Jobs should be easily sortable by AOS, teaching load, etc. There should be a central database where you upload your CV, letters, etc., and indicate where you want them sent. This would save job seekers considerable time and money.

    One final note. The APA, I think, should refrain from coming out in favor of various leftist causes, like their statement against the Iraq war. I agree with the politics, but I just don't see what good comes from making such statements. The APA should stick with promoting the profession. I don't know how best to do that, but I'm sure that taking leftist positions ain't it!

    Reply
  33. Mark Couch

    "With attacks on the humanities and well disseminated views on the supposed lack of value underworked professors provide, we need much more advocacy. The APA could become a more powerful voice on behalf of the profession."

    I would like to second, or third, this point, which has been made a few times above. It seems to me that philosophers would benefit from more outreach and visibility on public issues. For example, "The Stone" in the NYTimes is garnering some attention and this could be promoted by the APA more. I also find valuable the various articles on "philosophy in the news." This material exists but could be organized better on the website and made more prominent.

    Reply
  34. john doris

    Jamie wrote:

    "As 'Job Seeker' notes, we should not have APA interviews at all."

    Indeed.

    –Doris

    –Doris

    Reply
  35. Amy Kind

    I will be the Program Chair for the 2012 Pacific Division Meeting (April 4-8 2012 in Seattle). The planning for this meeting will not really begin until late spring 2011, so if anyone has constructive suggestions for creative new session formats (suggestions of the sort that Christopher Hitchcock offers above), please feel free to email me at amy.kind[at]cmc.edu.

    Reply
  36. Steven Hales

    I think Michael Weisberg's suggestions are excellent ones, and merit investigation into whether APA members generally want those changes and whether they are financially feasible to implement. However, indignant calls to abolish a printed JFP, change meeting dates, and the like aren't very helpful. The informed remarks of Hilary Kornblith, SCM, and Jamie Dreier show the limitations of armchair kvetching. A lot of the dissatisfaction seems to be coming from job seekers. Job Seeker 2:20 says "I realize job seekers are not the only members of the APA, but we are in the pretty dire need these days." I hate to break the news, but the job market has wavered between dire and more dire for at least 25 years. That's not exactly the APA's fault. I certainly agree that there are things the APA might do that they are not, but it seems to me that we would do well to focus on general goods that could be realistically achieved.

    Reply
  37. Steve T.

    Note that the Department of Labor does not require all ads to be print ads, just that there be at least one. Our central academic HR office runs one of those "Big University is hiring faculty in the following 20 disciplines:" ads in the Chronicle as early as possible each fall to meet the print requirement, and then the detailed ads are submitted mostly to on-line job posting services in the individual disciplines. Cheaper and faster than running 20 individual print ads.

    Reply
  38. Michael Weisberg

    Thanks to Steve T. for clarification.

    I have no insiders' knowledge of the relevant labor laws, but my point was simply that many other fields use online, freely accessible databases as their primary sources of job advertisement decimation. I am quite sure that Penn manages to fulfill its legal obligations while letting Psychology (http://www.apa.org/careers/psyccareers/), Chemistry (http://chemistryjobs.acs.org/jobs), Biology (http://www.biologyjobs.com/), etc., do what they have to do. So there is no reason to not make JFP an online, searchable, freely accessible database.

    Reply
  39. anon #n

    If interviewing at the meeting held in the winter is to continue, it would be nice if the APA and its subsidiaries could decouple the regional and the temporal. It is certainly conceivable that one (academic) year the first meeting should be held in the middle of the country, the second on the west coast, and the third on the east.

    (Of course, that would require the collaboration of the national APA and the three regional divisions, and it would result in the eastern division's meeting being of diminished importance a third of the time. However, it seems to me that the fact that there are all these more or less independent organizations running about is itself worthy of comment, if not complaint.)

    "We could have more Skype interviews, but these can be awkward and, if lots of people did this, conference attendance would plummet."

    In-person interviews can be awkward as well, I'm sure, and I'm not sure what the problem with letting conference attendance plummet is, if the eastern APA is currently as well attended as it is primarily because of the confluence of interviewers and interviewees, rather than because philosophers nationwide are drawn to the program.

    "I think it's my appointed role to note in these comments threads that although a large majority is in favor of changing the dates, there is no date such that a plurality favors changing the Easterns to that date. (That is, the current timing wins head-to-head.) Or at least this was true when the Eastern Division took a poll some time ago."

    The MLA managed it—meeting in January for the first time this academic year. Surely philosophers won't let themselves be shown up by such types!

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  40. A graduate student

    "The APA […] should refrain from coming out in favor of various leftist causes, like their statement against the Iraq war. I agree with the politics, but I just don't see what good comes from making such statements."

    Good God. Do many American philosophers really think of Jacques Chirac's position on the Iraq war as leftist, or is this commenter a total (ignorant) outlier?

    As a non-American who will have to join the APA soon (because the US is where the jobs are) I am certainly glad that the APA decided to align itself with the overwhelming majority of humanity on this issue, rather than with parochial prejudices (or take no position at all, which is just as bad). This is an unjust, criminal war of aggression we're talking about, undertaken with the flimsiest of pretexts — every aggressor has some pretext; so what? In the case of such a clear injustice, it is perfectly appropriate for the profession to condemn it.

    Please note that the APA has also taken positions on gender equality that are just as political and just as leftist as opposition to the Iraq war, but no one is complaining about those.

    Anyway, I second, or third or fourth or whatever, the suggestion that we should do away with the conference interviews. Graduate students, most of whom live close to or below poverty line, should not be expected to cross the Atlantic, or the American continent for that matter, just so they can do some interviews that may, if they're lucky, lead to job offers. To the person who said: but that would cause conference attendance to plummet! I say: and that would be a good thing. The less money graduate students are required to spend on transatlantic arline tickets and hotels the better. If the only reason most people are attending your conference is for job interviews that could just as well be done not in person, then maybe your conference isn't all that interesting.

    At least I can take comfort in the fact that I am paying dues to an organization that took the right — almost universally accepted, not "leftist" — position on the Iraq war.

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  41. Jason Brennan

    Since most of the posts have been complaints (rightly so, I think), I'll add a positive comment. I'm pleased that the APA reviews whole papers, rather than just abstracts, when selecting presenters for the division meetings. I have been to a number of political science conferences recently, at which the practice is to review abstracts rather than papers. It's clear than most of the papers at these political science meetings were hastily written right before the various conferences, and the quality tends to be very poor. (Granted, in general, the average political theory paper is not as good as the average political philosophy paper, but this doesn't explain the entire difference in quality between the average theory paper at MPSA and average political philosophy paper at the Central.)

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  42. jonathan weinberg

    Given the concerns recently discussed here
    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/11/how-common-is-it-for-departments-now-to-contact-recommenders-individually-for-letters.html

    I don't see why the APA can't do some serious work to facilitate the construction of a philosophy-specific version of this:
    https://econjobmarket.org/index.php

    You can also add my voice to the modernize-the-JFP, move-the-spatiotemporal-parameters-of-the-big-hiring-conference, and generally-get-rid-of-conference-interviews choruses.

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  43. Matt Shockey

    How about we adopt the AP(hilological)A's system for scheduling interviews: instead of having each interviewing school independently set up interviews with each candidate, have requests to interview put into a central system which coordinates everything. Calls still go out to say interviews are desired, but all the scheduling headaches disappear. You just get a list when you show up at the meeting (or maybe in advance). Given how much bigger we are than the other APA, it makes even more sense for us to do this.

    Also, while this discussion is useful, what mechanisms are in place, if any, for actually trying to get proposed changes to occur? I suspect I am not alone in having little idea of how decisions actually get made by the national APA, and what my relation to it, as opposed to my regional division, is.

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  44. Matt Brown

    I second the suggestion that the JFP should be brought into the 21st century as a standardized, searchable, online database. Perhaps even one where you can sign up for updates via RSS or email. The evidence suggests that this is very technologically feasible and would solve headaches on all sides.

    It is also compatible with continuing the print version, and again a standardized format would even make THAT more useful.

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  45. Christian Perring

    The poll asks to rate the APA's performance in meeting the needs of the profession. The job market is part of that, but there's also teaching, promoting philosophy as an option for undergraduate majors, and the tasks of department chairs. There is the Newsletter on Teaching, which is sometimes useful. But the Association could do more in promoting the value of philosophy as a major, especially in a recession. I'd also welcome more APA help on the onerous task of creating outcomes assessment for philosophy courses.

    Philosophers don't have to wait for the APA to do these things, but my impression is that to a large extent each department is reinventing the wheel for itself.

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  46. Daniel Harris

    The prospect of going on the job market in a couple of years would be considerably less depressing if some of these reasonable proposals were enacted.

    Specifically, I'll enthusiastically get on the following bandwagons: (a) a modern APA website and custom-searchable online JFP database, (b) an eastern APA meeting at some time other than the single most inconvenient week of the year, and/or (c) the abolition of present first interviewing practice in favour of something more humane and convenient—most likely involving video conferencing.

    And I'll second Matt Shockey's query: given that a clear (and probably vast) majority of APA members and other interested parties are on board with something like these proposals (which seems likely—perhaps a poll is in order?), what avenues are available for constructive progress toward enacting them?

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  47. law/philosophy student

    I think the way the Association of American Law Schools does its online applications is quiet good. The AALS is generally *not* a model I would recommend for the APA in a lot of ways, but the website is vastly better and filling out one online application to go out to all the schools interviewing is a much saner thing than making grad students send individual copies by mail.

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  48. Tim Schroeder

    I'll join in the call to end the practice of interviewing in person at the Eastern APA (or any division meeting). Conference calls and video-conference calls have 90% of the virtues of hour-long in-person interviews, and many virtues that such interviews lack.

    The APA should announce that this is the last year in which the APA will take any institutional steps to support the presence of a job fair at any divisional meeting. It should put together a best-practices document that encourages departments to run phone- and videophone-interviews in a fairly standardized and sensible way. (E.g., interviews should run between 30 and 90 minutes, should still conform to the timing of the conventional job cycle when possible, interviewers should not take seriously the thought that, on Skype, no one knows if you're wearing pants, etc.) And it should make the online delivery of the JFP a model of rational, clear presentation of information (whatever the fate of the paper edition).

    Other suggestions above seem great too, but fixing the broken Eastern APA and the not-broken-but-not-smooth-running JFP should be the number one priority of the APA. It could be done in a year, and would save us all (especially the poorest and most vulnerable) a lot of money and grief.

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  49. Christopher Gauker

    When it comes to the selection of the all-important program committees, the APA operates like a secret society. I admit I don't really know how the members are selected, but I think it works like this: The incoming president chooses a program chair. The program chair then picks the committee, which in practice means asking around among friends and friends of friends. Is this how every professional society selects its program committees? Isn't there a better way?

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  50. DDennis

    The APA should put a lot of effort into promoting the teaching of philosophy in schools. Ideally every child would be taught philosophy. This would:

    1) Be good for the individuals taught
    2) Be likely to raise the standard of thought and discourse in public life
    3) Provide more philosophy teaching jobs for the many grad students not getting jobs in universities
    4) Be likely to increase the number of individuals studying philosophy in university and further education – which would further increase the number of philosophy teaching jobs available.
    5) Be likely to increase the number of people pursuing careers in philosophy (because more philosophy teaching jobs would be available) which would hopefully increase the amount of good quality research done in philosophy.

    Reply

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