Arduous trek to a teaching job in the US

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday and the end of the fall semester in the US, it is also a time of anxiety for Ph.D. students on the academic job market. Many more people with Ph.Ds aspire to be professors than there are positions.

- GRACE KAO

The road to becoming a professor is arduous, even for students at Ivy League institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, where I taught for 20 years, and at Yale University, where I have taught for eight years. All of us with tenure-track or tenured positions in fields like sociology have gone through what I am about to describe. It is remarkably similar across multiple disciplines at research-intensive universities.

This career path is not for the faint of heart. The job market cycle spans an entire year. Keep in mind that students near completion in a highly-ranked Ph.D. programme have already been through a rigorous selection program.

In our department, most Ph.D. candidates will enter the job market in the sixth year of their graduate studies. By this point, they have completed their coursework and field exams as well as written and defended a dissertation proposal. They have likely written much of their dissertation, which is an original body of research in the form of a book. They have attended weekly workshops and learned to critically assess research during their graduate training. They will have served as teaching fellows, helping professors with their classes.