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How accurate are department placement pages?

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT AGAIN (ORIGINALLY POSTED MARCH 11):  Discussion continues in the comments

Not quite twenty years ago, I began pressing philosophy departments to provide comprehensive placement information on their homepages.  That effort was largely successful, and the average philosophy PhD program typically makes available better placement information than the average PhD program in other fields.  But periodically the issue arises about how accurate or complete this information is.  For example, a Wisconsin graduate (who is employed) wrote the other day as follows:

I wanted to make a follow up comment to your latest post about academic placement. I often wonder how accurate departmental descriptions of placement history are. For instance, I graduated from UW–Madison. On the Department's placement history, there are a number of people listed as "Did Not Seek Academic Employment" who in fact did seek such employment. They simply didn't get academic employment, and eventually gave up. "Does Not Seek Academic Employment" is a more accurate descriptor. (I'm not one of these people, just to be clear.)

I wonder how common this practice is.

I'm opening comments for other examples:  please include links.  And representatives of any of the departments named are free to post explanations or corrections as well. 

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23 responses to “How accurate are department placement pages?”

  1. anon alum

    https://www.queensu.ca/philosophy/graduate/prospective-students/placement-record-recent-phds

    The data looks good until you read that from 2004-2014 only 22 students graduated. Considering the incoming PhD class could be as high as 10-12 in some years, that looks really grim (and it is in that department). I’m not surprised that those who graduate do well, but to suggest that "a total of 79% (15/19) [are] in academic positions” is likely to deceive a potential graduate student and I would guess that it is phrased as such with an intent to deceive.

    I suppose I am getting at the fact that completion data is important as well. This is largely because the faculty driving the ship in that department have remarkably outdated concepts of what is necessary to land a job and few of their students end up getting one (or even finishing once they realize how bad their prospects are given their lack of accomplishments). It is only the students that work with “lesser” known faculty that end up being successful.

    BL COMMENT: Prof.Bakhurst from Queen's disputes these claims in comment #19 below: https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2019/03/how-accurate-are-department-placement-pages.html#comment-6a00d8341c2e6353ef0240a4943e9d200b

    Reply
  2. Brian Leiter

    A reader points out that Harvard Philosophy's new homepage has a blank placement page: https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/graduate-placement I don't know how recent the revisions are to the homepage, so it could be that the placement information is still migrating to the new page.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    The UT Austin page is still one of the sparsest and least informative: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/philosophy/graduate/placement2/byyear.php

    Reply
  4. Russ Shafer-Landau

    I have (apart from a two-year hiatus) been Placement Director at UW-Madison since 2002, and saw the recent post about our placement record. I've just reviewed the entries of all 94 PhDs who've graduated from our program since 2002 and did, unfortunately, find one case in which we had erroneously identified someone who did try to find a job in philosophy as not having sought academic employment. To my knowledge that is the only error contained in our placement page. We will update the page within the next day. If any of our graduates believes there are other errors contained in our record, I encourage them to be in touch with me directly.

    Reply
  5. Victoria

    I think the poster is referring to the fact that many people do seek academic employment, do not get jobs, then seek non academic employment, so it's a bit misleading to say "did not seek academic employment". An alternative would be to say "non-academic employment" and leave off the "seek" and just reflect their placement outside academia

    Reply
  6. Mike Titelbaum

    As a reply to Victoria, and speaking just for UW-Madison’s placement page, we distinguish between students who did not seek academic employment in philosophy and those who did not obtain such employment. More generally, we try to be as transparent as we can in the information we provide so prospective students can make informed decisions.

    Reply
  7. another anon grad

    I like Pitt's "snapshot" of placement 2013-18:
    https://www.philosophy.pitt.edu/graduate/placement

    Don't know if it's accurate, but assuming it is, it gives you a realistic and sobering sense of how they've been doing.

    Reply
  8. anon alum 2000s

    I am a graduate of the PhD program at The Catholic University of America, a non-Leiter ranked philosophy program. Link for the placement page here:

    http://philosophy.cua.edu/jobplacement.cfm

    While I can testify from anecdotal knowledge that the program's placement is not bad, the wording of their testimonial appears deliberately vague: "Since 2000, 67% of our Ph.D. graduates obtained full-time appointments in academia upon completing their degrees. The rest pursued other options; of those, two thirds did so by choice, i.e., they did not seek a full-time academic position in the first place."

    The 67% number appears to include many graduates who went into visiting positions and were not able to secure tenure-track. Likewise, I don't know how one accurately measures that two-thirds of those who pursued other options "did so by choice". Maybe they simply didn't bother given the state of the job market.

    As others have pointed out, an equally pervasive issue seems to be that of programs not publishing their retention and graduation rates. They really should. Nearly all universities in the U.S. are already required to report this data to the federal government every year at an institutional level. My entering class at CUA (in the early 2000's) was around 10 to 12 and I believe only 3 of us finished. Other classes before me were about the same. I would guess this occurs in other departments as well.

    Reply
  9. Jeffrey McDonough

    I just wanted to confirm that the Harvard Philosophy Department’s website is in the middle of a substantial renovation. Predictably, we’ve run into various delays but our placement data should be back up within the next couple of days at the most.

    Reply
  10. Victoria

    Mike Titelbaum – good to know!

    Reply
  11. Former philosophy student

    It's true that placement pages with sparser information aren't as helpful to prospective students, but they do have the advantage of being sensitive to privacy considerations. I think that more comprehensive pages could be providing too much information in some cases.

    I'm sure there are individuals, for instance, who wouldn't want the fact that they left academia because they didn't obtain a job to be included on a public placement page. I checked the placement pages of a number of ranked departments and, so far as I can tell, none of them employ the seeking/obtaining distinction — I suspect for good reason.

    I totally sympathize with the motive of providing accurate information to prospective students, but there can be good reasons for providing less information.

    Reply
  12. David Bourget

    The PhilJobs Appointments service provides a summary of graduation statistics on its data feed page:

    https://philjobs.org/appointments/dataFeed

    This is the information one needs (along with number of placed PhD) to calculate a placement rate.

    We encourage and nudge departments to supply graduation statistics at the same time that they enter placement data, but these stats are not complete.

    Reply
  13. former_grad_student

    I completely agree. If I didn't get an academic job, I wouldn't want that fact to pop up when people (like prospective employers) search for me on Google. Why not just post grads' current and previous positions? I think prospective grad students will get a sense of a department's placement success from that data. And in general, I don't think it would be too difficult to formulate a field-wide "best practices" for reporting departmental placement. A relevant data point here would be how many people leave the (PhD) program without a PhD. From what I can tell, that's not too often listed on departmental webpages.

    Reply
  14. Former philosophy student

    That's exactly right. The point about prospective employers really needs to be emphasized.

    One of the big problems is that non-academic employers often have little to no understanding of how the academic job market works. As a consequence, they can draw unduly negative inferences about candidates based on their academic record. For instance, if an employer sees that a student spent a number of years studying philosophy, but didn't obtain an academic job, they are likely to view that as a major red flag (i.e., they'll take it as a sign that the person is in some way incompetent). Non-academic employers often don't understand that the academic job market is extremely competitive and that even competent people fail to get jobs. That fact is a major reason why career counselors will tell former academics seeking non-academic jobs to never mention the fact that they left academia because they couldn't secure a position.

    I understand the desire for transparency, but I think mentioning that candidates didn't obtain jobs is doing them a real disservice. Just listing current and previous positions is a much better idea.

    Reply
  15. Casey Hart

    I am one of the former grad students who was misrepresented on UW Madison's page as having not sought academic employment. I did in fact spend one year on the market, and when I got a good non-academic job, I decided it wasn't worth revisiting the depressingly bad academic landscape (at least, not yet). A few thoughts based on reading this post and other comments:

    1. Russ was quick to contact me, as I'm sure he was to contact all of the "did not seek…"s on the website, and he made the correction within hours of the original post on this blog. It was clearly an honest mistake; no deception was involved.

    2. Philosophy departments in general do a poor job of preparing students for how bad the market really is. I think that Madison is an exception on that front, and largely due to Russ and Mike. The market was still bad when I got to it, but I was as prepared as I could be.

    3. Until we fix some systemic problems, though, things won't get better overall: grad students are paid too little compared to the relative value of being able to teach scores of undergrads, departments as a result accept far more students than they have a prayer of placing in academic jobs, and job seekers who flood the market are too willing to accept horrible jobs (low pay, short term, impossible teaching loads). All of these factors will then incent departments to mislead incoming students.

    4. Related to (3): I want my name listed on a department page as having not obtained employment. It helps incoming students make a better assessment of their placement odds. Also, I'm not too worried that it will be a personal hit: everyone knows that the market's rough enough that some good folks (like me?) don't get jobs. And even if it does take a philosophy-professional toll, we need more people to be willing to pay it, just we need folks to decline bad academic jobs so that things get better in the long run.

    Reply
  16. Stolen Valor

    My original school is a top 30 school. My advisor died and I left. I earned a PhD elsewhere. My original school still has me as one of their "successes" when in reality I was put on the page early due to getting a tenure-track job. I am now tenured elsewhere. But my success has nothing to do with the former school. I didn't even use former profs. for letters…One other person on their placement page is in a similar position. So, the "numbers" are not always accurate.

    Reply
  17. Tim O'Keefe

    Re: privacy and putting up names on placement pages. Even though some people might not mind, I think that privacy concerns have some weight. A way around them, while still making those pages informative, is to include the dissertation title and/or AOS of the graduate, and perhaps their dissertation director, along with their placement info.

    That will help give prospective students an idea of what sorts of topics/areas people work on, which faculty are advising people, and the placement of people working in those areas–because sometimes schools can do a better placement in some areas than others.

    This does not preserve perfect anonymity, because somebody could go to the list of dissertations that are typically uploaded to the University's library pages somewhere and then match the dissertation title to a name. But I think few people are going to bother doing that, and it least this means that a google search on a person's name (especially if it's an unusual name) won't have their placement information pop up on the first page of results.

    Reply
  18. Former philosophy student

    Casey,

    I applaud you for coming forward like this on a public blog. Let me make a few responses to your points and then I'll let the issue about "not obtaining jobs" drop.

    1. I wasn't sure if your post was a response to mine, but, as I mentioned in my previous post, your claim about everyone knowing the market is bad is demonstrably false when it comes to people outside academia. Many non-academic employers aren't aware of this and will hold unjustified views about former academic candidates because of it. There's a cottage industry in alt-ac career advising set up to deal with this very fact about these employers.

    As for the benefit to prospective students of this info about not obtaining jobs, I don't see there being much benefit there. There are lots of reasons why people don't seek or don't obtain jobs; just knowing that fact about a person doesn't provide much informational benefit to a prospective student. At best the benefit is a small one. Given that posting that fact could have a negative effect on a candidate's employment prospects, and only provides a small benefit to students, that seems like a good reason not to include it.

    2. As for you claim about people needing to "pay the toll" for the profession, I'm even less convinced of that. It seems to me part of the reason philosophy has an overproduction problem is because many prospective students suffer from a type of "above-average driver" thinking: many think they are going to be the ones who beat the odds and get tenure-track jobs, even though we know that can't be true. I'm skeptical that data about candidates who don't obtain jobs is going to dissuade many people about their chances. Moreover, it's not as if the badness of the job market is some new feature of it. If people aren't aware that the odds aren't great by now, I don't think having people "pay the toll" on placement pages is going to do much to change that.

    I think I've gone on long enough, however, so I'll stop posting about this issue.

    I am glad that you got a good non-academic job.

    Reply
  19. David Bakhurst

    Anon Alum’s post about the Queen’s PhD program is wholly inaccurate. I am presently Graduate Coordinator in the Department. Since 2004, the average number of students admitted to our PhD program per year is 4. Between 1989 and 2004, the average was 2 per year. There has never been a class of “10-12”. Contrary to what is implied in the post, the non-completion rate since 2004 is only 10-12%. Prospective students are always welcome to contact the department for information about our programs.

    Reply
  20. In the fortunate <20% for my cohort

    I have Anon Alum's concerns, even if the particular data about Queen's is up for grabs. On Professor Bakhurst's accounting, averaging 4 students per year over the 10 years from 2004-2014 (not sure if that is 10 or 11 years, so I'll go with the conservative number) is 40 students. According to the Queen's website, 6 of the students who entered between 2004 and 2014 have tenure track jobs. That's a truly woeful 15%, by the program's own numbers! And, of course, I don't have any reason to think that Queen's is distinctive, but rather I have every reason to think that Queen's is sadly typical in this regard.

    By contrast, Georgetown Law, a strong but not top-rated law school, placed nearly 80% of its 2017 graduates in bar-exam-requiring jobs by 2018, i.e., right away, and they placed nearly 96% in some sort of employment right away. I'm sure there are problems in Georgetown's data, gimmicks and the rest, and maybe bar-exam-requiring isn't the same as tenure-track, but 80% is a whole, whole lot higher than 15, and right-away is a whole, whole lot sooner than within 5-15 years.

    Matriculating students should be aware of these numbers (i.e., matriculation to tenure-track hire), because (as noted above), admitted students are inclined to be wildly optimistic about their particular chances, and faculty have unfortunately strongly prudential reasons to refrain from seriously informing admitted students of just how grim things are.

    Reply
  21. Justin Fisher

    I wonder how informative the distinction between sought-academic-jobs-but-failed versus didn't-bother-seeking-academic-jobs really is? Most students begin Philosophy Ph.D. programs with the hope that it will lead to an academic job. Some try and fail to find one. Others see comrades trying and failing to find one and determine that they likely won't be any more successful, so don't even bother to try. Both of these seem equally to be ways that getting a Ph.D. fails to yield the sort of job that most students enter the program seeking.

    It seems like some departments try to tally the didn't-even-try group separately, as though that will reflect better on the department than if those students had tried-but-failed. But should it really reflect well on a department that some of their graduates recognize that their chances are so dismal that it's not even worth trying? (Now, if there were a category for people who *turned*down* good academic jobs to take non-academic jobs, that could be informative, but I doubt it would contain all that many…)

    Reply
  22. former_grad_student

    Agreed. This is why I think it makes more sense to just list what a grad's job is (academic or not), perhaps without including his or her name. In my department, the academic placement director tells some would-be candidates not to bother applying for jobs, because there's very little chance they'd get anything. This might be totally sensible advice to give. But those who follow the advice are then listed as having not sought academic employment on the placement page. This isn't technically false, but it's a bit misleading, and it doesn't help to serve the primary function of listing placement data: to help prospective students get a sense of what their academic prospects are.

    This is why I think there should be some sort of "best practices" framework. Does anyone have a sense of what body would be the appropriate one to develop this within? The APA?

    Reply
  23. Prof at an MA program

    It is also important for MA programs to have complete placement pages. Most of the MA programs listed in the Philosophical Gourmet report seem pretty complete, but two of the top-ranked programs there, Tufts and Brandeis, seem to list only the successful applicants to PhD programs and select other programs (e.g., top law schools). It's unclear how many of their admitted students (a) do not complete the program, (b) do not apply to PhD or other programs (and if so, what they do), and (c) apply but are not admitted. Assuming their classes are roughly 10 students per year, several students each year are unaccounted for. This information is important for prospective students to have.

    https://as.tufts.edu/philosophy/graduate/placement

    https://www.brandeis.edu/philosophy/masters/placement.html

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