Sunday, October 29, 2006

The 2005-2006 hiring season

Update (11/03/2006): Nancy Luxon's information taken into account; a couple of minor mistakes

I took a quick look at the 2005-2006 hiring season, with a view of a possible update of my data in 2007. I have put together a very preliminay summary. I can't post the full data at the moment - it's not very clean and might contain inaccuracies. I just wish the departmental websites were updated more often. It is really annoying that you cannot get a list of current faculty from the departmental website as late as late October (yes, this is the case in a few departments). However, I did my best (when I noticed that the website is probably out of date, I checked some other source, e.g. general university directory or a news item on "new faculty"). I also cross-validated from blogs that provided a list of accepted offers from the previous hiring season. I am not sure when I will get around to posting full data; hopefully in a few weeks (but maybe much later). In any case: the exact numbers may not be fully accurate, and should be taken as an approximation only.

General summary

There were about 136 assistant professors hired in 2005-2006 season in PhD-granting political science departments (of primary fields – about 59 in American, 33 in Comparative, 33 in IR, 3 in Methods, and 8 in Theory). Of those, about 9 will officially start in 2007.

Schools whose PhDs were hired most:

1. Stanford (9)
2T. Columbia, Harvard, UC Berkeley (7)
5T. Chicago, Ohio State, Texas A&M, UC San Diego (5)
9. Duke (4)
10T. Indiana, Michigan State, Princeton, Rochester, UCLA, WashU (3)

Of the 136 new hires, 67 received their PhDs in 2006 or are still ABDs as of late 2006 (there are about 12 of those). Further 22 received their PhDs in 2005. About 25 had a tenure-track job at a PhD-granting department.

Top 30 hiring

I also took a quick look at hiring in “top 30” departments (I used the U.S. News and included Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Yale, UC San Diego, Duke, Chicago, Columbia, MIT, UCLA, Ohio State, UNC, Rochester, Wisconsin, WashU, Cornell, NYU, Minnesota, Northwestern, Michigan State, Texas A&M, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Texas-Austin, Washington, Emory, Rice, SUNY Stony Brook, UC Davis, Maryland and Pennsylvania).

In those departments, 48 assistant professor hires were made (17 American, 13 Comparative, 11 IR, 1 Methods, 6 Theory). The rankings of schools who placed most graduates in Top30 don't show much (too few cases), but anyway:

1. Stanford (7)
2T. Harvard, UC Berkeley (6)
4T. Princeton, Rochester, UC San Diego(3)
7T. Chicago, Columbia, NYU, Yale (2).
11T. Carnegie Mellon (economics), Duke, Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, Texas A&M, UC Berekeley (history), Vanderbilt, Washington, WashU, Wisconsin (1).

Of the 48 hires, 27 received their PhD in 2006 or are still ABDs, 7 received their PhDs in 2005. About 13 had tenure-track jobs at PhD-granting departments (and only one in non-PhD granting department; the rest were post-docs).

New PhD hiring

Finally, I took a look at “new PhD” hirings. As mentioned above, there were 68 assistant professors hired who received their PhD in 2006 or are still ABDs (thus, the following information does not take into account those new hires who received their PhD in 2005 but were never on market before – there are a couple of those). The primary fields: American (29), IR (18), Comparative (15), Methods (2), and Theory (3).

The departmental “rankings:”

1. Stanford (5)
2T. Columbia, UC San Diego (4)
4T. Duke, Princeton, Texas A&M, UC Berkeley, WashU (3)
9T. Chicago, Harvard, Ohio State, Penn State, Rice, Washington (2)

Assistants “gone”

Finally, a quick look at departures and promotions. There were 113 assistant professors in PhD-granting political science departments in early 2006 who are no longer assistant professors in PhD-granting departments in late 2006. Of those, 54 became associate professors in their own department, 17 in some other department (including a few in non-PhD granting departments), 9 became assistants at non-PhD granting departments, with others taking various visiting, administrative, or non-academic positions (I’m missing information on further 17 – but they almost certainly did not become associate professors). Not all of the new associates were probably tenured, but this should approximately give an indication of tenure rates and the number of moves between departments right before tenure decision is made.