News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
I only just learned of Barry’s passing, and I’m enormously saddened at the news. I wrote my PhD on his…
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that
For what it’s worth, I agree. I have, with some trepidation, given it a bunch of my papers and asked…
Looking at some of the AI-amplified cranks on philpeople, it is hard to agree with the assessment of this article.…
Perhaps a useful distinction here is between replacing philosophers and changing the conditions under which philosophical work gets done. LLMs…
Conditional on the hypothesis that journal editors sometimes desk reject high-quality papers written and commended by world experts on a…
Some users seem to have conflicting impressions about the (absolute level of) abilities of current iterations of the LLMs. But…
"Young Philosopher" has compiled a very informative document with the results of the survey; here are Word and RTF versions:
Download APA vs Skype Survey Results
Download APA vs Skype Survey Results
"Young Philosopher" has also been invited by InsideHigherEd to write about these issues, drawing on the survey results. He welcomes feedback on the survey. There's a lot in the survey document, so do print it out and read it carefully before weighing in.
One datum that seems consistent is the general dislike of the timing of the the Eastern. Its usual locations come in for a second level of dislike.
If we wanted to make a truly useful change, across the board, we could (a) just shift the timing of the Eastern, (b) shift the location[s] of the Eastern, (c) shift both the timing and location[s] of the Eastern, or (d)shift the timing and location of the first job-market heavy meetings to another division.
Any of these moves would preserve the common timing that many wish to preserve.
I was surprised by the enthusiasm for abolishing first-round interviews. Here's a very general argument for first-round interviews, from the perspective of a hiring department: more information is better than less to make a rational choice. Preliminary interviews give more information than paper alone. You'd want to date someone a few times first instead of marrying them on the basis of an eHarmony match. [An aside: in-person interviews give more information than phone or Skype, for analogous reasons.] I know that interview data tends to irrationally swamp paper credentials. But addressing that bias by abolishing preliminary interviews seems to me like dealing with the confirmation bias by refusing to look at confirming instances altogether. Is the anti-first-round interviews argument a sort of a Malcolm Gladwell Blink sort of argument? I'm curious here.
Anyway, job candidates should devoutly hope that departments do *not* just fly finalists to campus and conduct no preliminary interviews. Here's why. You job seekers think you're depressed, demoralized, and dejected now? Wait until literally years go by and the only feedback you ever get from departments is a form rejection letter. I was four years on the job market, going to the Eastern APA every year, until I got a tenure-track job. My first year I had no on-campus interviews. My second year I had no on-campus interviews. My third year I had one on-campus interview, and didn't get the job. Suppose there had been no first-round interviews back then. What would I have believed? Three years, and one interview for a job I didn't get. I would have assumed I was a complete loser, destined to wash out of the profession completely, and given up. That's what you'll do too. But I had a handful of APA interviews every year, and kept trying. My fourth year on the market I had two on-campus interviews and got a tenure-track job.
I know you're thinking "I can judge my viability by seeing how my friends from grad school are doing on the market." That will not work. Either your friends aren't getting jobs either, in which case you'll think you went to a loser grad school, your profs secretly hated you, it's all an old boys network, people are prejudiced against you because you're white, black, Christian, a woman, atheist, or don't have a "pedigree." Basically you'll have no clue. Or some of your friends will get jobs, in which case you'll think "yeah, they were the golden children, the profs all loved them, but I'm scum." However, if you get some first-round interviews–APA, Skype, phone, it doesn't matter–you'll reasonably think that you do have a real shot at getting a job, that out of 300 applicants you were in the top 15. That's an empowering and encouraging thought.
The manner in which Young Philosopher posed the question about whether we favor (a) current practice (b) switch to video (c) abandoning first round interviews altogether raises an important question: What is the purported purpose of first round interviews. It seems to me that the primary function is to narrow a list of 10-15 top candidates to a small bunch to bring to campus. I highlight this point for a number of reasons:
1) The relevant question when weighing video versus APA for first round is how much better (if any) APA is than video for THIS PARTICULAR function. I agree, for instance, that person-to-person contact prior to hiring is essential. But this will come during a campus visit. It seems likely to me that video interviews help enough with the "narrowing" function of first-round interviews to justify switching, giving the cost and inconvenience of APA interviews, especially to job seekers.
2) The reason that first round interviews MAY be necessary for the narrowing function include: a) there are no clear "winners" and so additional info is needed to justify fly-back decisions. b) the hiring department, because of its particular character (SLAC, teaching intensive, unusual course structure, whatever), is looking for particular characteristics that are not usually included or well-represented on paper. However, if a particular search committee finds 4 obvious fly-back candidates and they can get a sense of the important aspects of a candidate on paper, then they DON'T NEED the narrowing function, and can go to directly to C.
So it could be up to the departments, after they have reviewed dossiers whether they want more info or not, and they can schedule video interviews accordingly. (Unlike with APA, there is no need to make the decision of first-round versus straight-to-campus in early October.)
One other point: Why can't the Eastern APA be in the middle of Fall semester? Wouldn't a more even spacing of Eastern-Central-Western conferences make more sense? It seems to be no big catastrophe that the other two fall during times that are more or less convenient depending on your department's schedule. One big advantage of decoupling the Eastern from hiring is that it could be held in the fall, when travel to cities like Boston, Philly, NY, etc. would be less problematic, weather-wise, and soon-to-be candidates could still use the conference as great practice/networking prior to descending into job-market craziness.
(Unless Prof. Hales is referring to comments in the survey, he must be talking about the previous discussion thread here, as there are no questions in the survey that ask about getting rid of first round interviews.)
The most important question of the survey is the one that asks: "If there was a movement to decouple the Eastern APA conference and the job market by adopting video-interviewing for the first round interviews, which of the following best describes your position?"
Of the 231 job candidates who responded to the survey, 75% favor transitioning to video-interviewing, while only 14% prefer the current system (and 11% are neutral). Of the 66 search committee members who responded, 68% favor transitioning to video-conferencing, while only 18% prefer the status quo (and 15% are neutral).
These are pretty telling numbers (much higher in favor of changing the system than I would have predicted, and with a pretty large sample size). I think something will have to change. I hope Brian will open a thread soon to get suggestions on how exactly people think the changes should be implemented, since it will be key to coordinate them as best as possible, and the APA still seems like it needs to take charge of the situation. If most departments start using video-conferencing over the next few years, it seems to me it would be better to stop supporting on-site interviews at APA meetings and find ways to make sure people are doing the interviews in the best way possible and timing them and offers as well as possible. And as I suggested in last thread, we could make the actual APA conference a *conference* where people on the market are given lots of slots to present their work and people can still talk in person, network, and engage in philosophy.
Meanwhile, the really telling numbers in the survey are the most depressing. Almost a quarter of the job candidate respondents had no interviews, while half had only 1 or 2, and only 6% had 6 or more. That is a lot lot worse than it used to be, isn't it?
@Eddy Nahmias: Questions 13, 26, and 39 of the survey directly ask about getting rid of first-round interviews:
What are your general thoughts and concerns when it comes to the on-going debate about whether the discipline of philosophy should (a) stick with the current practice of conducting first round interviews at the Eastern APA, (b) decouple the Eastern APA from the job market by using video-conferencing technology for first round interviews, or (c) dispense with first round interview altogether and skip right to bringing a limited number of candidates to campus.
What will be interesting here are the stats on the fly-outs. If proportionally more people are getting fly-outs from Skype interviews than face-to-face interviews, or more from face-to-face interviews than from Skype interviews, then it would seem that those with an interest in getting fly-outs should opt for the format that best serves their interest. Could also be a wash, of course, but if there's a difference, it'd be interesting to examine the source of the difference. My suspicion is that face-to-face interviews do give candidates an advantage over Skype interviews, for reasons that I think many of us find obvious.
Data on this question will be particularly rich this year since many interviewing committees were a mixed bag. They interviewed some candidates at the APA and also conducted Skype interviews for those who couldn't make it. In future years, one would assume that if a department is giving Skype or APA interviews, they'd pick one or the other format to keep everything fair.
At the same time, for prisoner's dilemma reasons, if Skype is not unilaterally adopted as the format for all first-round interviews, then job candidates will have as their dominant strategy attendance at the APA. There's always the possibility that a non-Skype interview committee will insist upon a candidate's attendance at the APA job market. Candidates will go. No money will be saved. So these money-saving arguments are, to my mind, unpersuasive. Pressure here will be particularly strong if the data suggests that candidates have an advantage with face-to-face interviews, whatever the source of that advantage.
Just a minor note to say that question 13 asks for general thoughts on dispensing with first round interviews altogether: "What are your general thoughts and concerns when it comes to the on-going debate about whether the discipline of philosophy should (a) stick with the current practice of conducting first round interviews at the Eastern APA, (b) decouple the Eastern APA from the job market by using video-conferencing technology for first round interviews, or (c) dispense with first round interview altogether and skip right to bringing a limited number of candidates to campus."
I believe Prof. Hales is right to highlight a strong trend in these (and other) comments for eliminating first round interviews and to offer some perspective in favor of keeping them in some sort of format.
@Eddy Nahmias: I'd caution against drawing too many statistical inferences here. Pure sample size isn't that relevant unless (a) the sample is selected somewhat-randomly, or (b) all or most of the population is sampled. (a) clearly isn't the case here, and (b) probably isn't. (Not that YP has ever suggested otherwise).
This isn't to say I disagree with your conclusions (never having applied for a US job, never having been on a US search committee, and never having been to the APA, I'm woefully uninformed to form an opinion either way).
I found question 33 (estimate of overall expense for departments conducting APA interviews) interesting. The n was small (6) and ranged quite a bit, but those departments reported spending $4000 (give or take $2000).
That's a fair chunk of change. For $4000, a department could easily bring an extra person in for an on-campus interview, and still have money left over for lots of toner, copier paper, and some new computers for visiting instructors, the grad student computer lab and/or regular faculty. It's hard for me to believe that sending an interviewing committee to the Eastern APA (as opposed to using Skype) is the best use of $2000-$6000 for most departments.
Oh, an addendum to my previous comment. I was assuming that money was fungible within the department: that savings on the overall job search could be shifted over to supplies. That would be true at some places but not others, depending on budgeting procedures and how searches are funded. But I think that the overall point still stands, even in cases e.g., where searches are directly funded by the Dean of your college. In that case, if a department spends $4000 on Eastern APA interviews, then it seems to me that most departments would be better off asking the Dean to allow an extra on-campus interview in exchange for foregoing the expense of the APA. And if the total cost of that on-campus interview is, say, $1500, then the College of Arts and Sciences could probably find some better use for the $2500 difference–assuming that the Dean would allocate the saved money for some worthy purpose like extra money to all departments for supplies, rather than "Assessment Rules!" mugs and other assessment-related tchotchkes.
@Steven Hales (and Anon): Sorry, you're right, I'd skipped that question because I wasn't looking at the ones with open-ended answers yet (so many words!). For what it's worth, as I said in the previous thread, I think there are often candidate pools for which some sort of interviews will be helpful to narrow from 10-15 to 3-4. I think departments should be flexible about whether they do first-round interviews, depending on the candidate pool that year and other issues. That reasoning may suggest that departments should also have flexibility about whether to do in-person or video interviews. True enough, but I think the problems with having some depts interview at the APA while most do not outweigh the benefits of such flexibility. Again, it would be useful to have proposals for moving forward in a consistent way and discussion (and perhaps more quantitative data) about those proposals.
@David Wallace: I don't think I was drawing too many statistical inferences, just highlighting what I thought were the most interesting quantitative results in the survey. I wonder how many people are on the job market–i.e., what proportion of that population is the 231 who answered the survey? I would be a bit surprised if there were significant differences between the survey sample and the overall population, especially regarding the depressing numbers of interviews people are getting.
Every school is different, but our search costs for t-t positions are paid directly by the provost, and do not come out of our department's general budget. So financial arguments (like Tim O'Keefe's) are irrelevant to my department. We will never have "leftover" money from a search to spend on other things.
Interesting results. One observation about question 3. The answer 'no interviews' corresponded to #11 on the survey, and was calculated in the statistics as 11, rather than 0. Thus the 'mean value' of 4.52 was not really the mean value of number of interviews. A quick calculation gave me an average of 2.08 interviews per candidate (including the 50 respondents who had none).
@B. Hale: I don't think it is too difficult to imagine a situation where if the vast majority of universities conducted first-round interviews over Skype, many candidates simply would not apply to the few schools holding interviews at the APA. The survey results show just how great of a financial burden attending this meeting is on job-seekers (~$1200 or thereabouts when everything is included). Right now, a job-seeker has almost no choice: either plan to attend the APA meeting or face a crippling handicap in her job search. Even planning to attend the APA is expensive: a candidate must purchase plane tickets and register (or pay 50% more at the gate) long before she finds out whether or not she'll have any interviews. It wouldn't take much to eliminate the dilemma you describe once enough schools moved in this direction.
I think one primary goal should be to reduce the financial burden on those in our profession who can least afford to shoulder it. One relevant question that the survey did not ask was how much time and money candidates spend putting together and submitting their applications. There is no reason why this process couldn't be streamlined and centralized. Perhaps the APA could utilize its JobSeeker Database (still under construction) in this regard. Search committees could search by AOS/AOC and access electronic files (CV, writing sample, letters, etc.) of candidates that fit the job description. Letter writers could upload their letters directly to the APA website, and candidates could block access by particular schools or only allow access by certain schools. It'd probably be pretty easy for the APA to turn a profit off of a service like this as well (while, at the same time, saving everyone time and money).
There is an extensive literature re interviewing and hiring processes and techniques. Perhaps that should be considered.
Leave a Reply