The 2007-2008 hiring season

I have previously posted summaries of the 2005 and 2006 hiring seasons. This post summarizes the 2007-2008 season.

The usual disclaimers apply – there may be occasional errors; although I have done my usual double-checking. I do not intend to post the full data; there is little use for that at this time.

General summary

There were about 152 assistant professors hired in 2007-2008 season in PhD-granting political science departments. This figure is well below previous year’s number (183), but still above the number two years ago (138). Of primary fields – about 52 (34%) were in American, 45 (29%) in Comparative, 36 (23%) in IR, 3 in Methods (I probably coded several who were "methods" hires as Americanists, though), and 16 (11%) in Theory. The following chart shows that the numbers don’t vary much (and much of the variation may be due to coding errors):

Field 2007 2006 2005
American 34% 38% 43%
Comparative 29% 25% 24%
IR 23% 21% 24%
Theory 11% 14% 6%

Theory does experience noteworthy changes; 2005 was a particularly bad year, and 2006 seems to be an above average year.

Here is a table of schools whose PhDs have been hired most in the three years of 2005-2007. This includes all hires, including those who were re-hired from some other tenure track job. I think comparisons year-by-year basis are not that useful. However, Duke did seem to have an extraordinarily good year in 2007.

1T. Harvard, UC Berkeley (25)
3. Duke (24)
4. Stanford (excl. GSB) (19)
5T. Michigan, UCLA, Yale (16)
8T Columbia, UC San Diego (15)
10. North Carolina (14)
11. WashU (12)
12T. Chicago, Rochester (11)
14. Princeton (10)
15T. Cornell, Indiana, Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State (9)
20T. Florida State, Texas A&M (8)

Of the 152 new hires, 87 (57%) received their PhDs in 2008 or later. Further 21 received their PhDs in 2007. The year before, only 49% of the hires graduated the same year or later.

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, 45 (68 in 2006 and 53 in 2005) assistant professor hires were made. The rankings of schools who placed most graduates in "Top 30" in 2005 and 2006 combined:

1T. Harvard, Stanford (excl. GSB) (16)
3. UC Berkeley (14)
4. Michigan (12)
5. Rochester (8)
6T. Columbia, Princeton, UCLA (7)
9T. Duke, UC San Diego, WashU, Yale (6)
13T. Chicago, North Carolina (5)

Of the 45 hires, 26 received their PhD in 2008 or later, 7 received their PhDs in 2007.

New PhD hiring

Finally, I took a look at “new PhD” hirings. As mentioned above, there were 87 assistant professors hired who received their PhD in 2008 or later (thus, the following information does not take into account those 2007-2008 hires who received their PhD in 2007 but were never on market before – there are a couple of those).

The departmental “rankings” by "new PhDs" placed in 2005-2007 combined (I used previous year’s numbers and added what I found this year).

1T. Harvard, UC Berkeley (13)
3. UC San Diego (12)
4. Duke (11)
5T. Stanford, WashU, Yale (10)
8. Michigan (9)
9T. Columbia, Cornell, Rochester, UCLA (8)

Gender & hiring

In 2008, about 39% of the persons hired were female (among new hires, the number is 38%, in top 30 departments, 36%). Altogether, of all assistant professors, about 38% are now female. This number seems to slowly creep up.

Assistants “gone”

Finally, a quick look at departures and promotions. There were 127 assistant professors in PhD-granting political science departments in early 2008 who are no longer assistant professors in PhD-granting departments in early 2009. Of those, 75 became associate professors in their own department, 11 in some other department (including few in non-PhD granting departments), about 11 became assistants at non-PhD granting departments, with about 15 taking various visiting, administrative, or non-academic positions (I’m missing information on further ten or so – but they almost certainly did not become associate professors).

Update

I have obviously not updated the site for a while. I have not abandoned the project, and I have continued collecting the data. However, I do not expect to publish anything for a while. Thanks for all the comments; you may still leave them and I appreciate them a lot.

Gender and hiring

Since I just looked at gender distribution in PhD granting departments, here's a quick summary of gender distribution in recent hires.

A little more women got hired in 2006 than what is usual. Of the 183 hires in 2006-2007, 72 (39%) were female. Of total assistant professors, 37% are now women (297/802). In 2005, the percentage was about 36 (and this was about the percentage of women in assistant professorships then). When looking at 2006-2007 hires where the person did not have a tenure track job, 45% were female (60/132). Maybe men are more aggressive in going on market once they have a tenure track job (one data point is clearly not sufficient to draw any conclusions like that)?

The 2006-2007 hiring season

I posted a summary on the 2005 hiring season in October 2006. This post summarizes the 2006-2007 season.

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 December (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," the political theory newsletter, wiki, blogs, PS: Political Science & Politics). I am not sure when I will get around to posting full data (I think I will do a "usual" update in the winter). In any case, the exact numbers may not be fully accurate, and should be taken as an approximation only.

General summary

There were about 183 assistant professors hired in 2006-2007 season in PhD-granting political science departments; this seems to be quite a significant increase from the year before (I got 138 then). Of primary fields – about 70 (38%) were in American, 46 (25%) in Comparative, 38 (21%) in IR, 4 in Methods (I probably coded several who were "methods" hires as Americanists, though), and 25 (14%) in Theory. There was a significant increase in theory hires compared to 2005 (when less than ten theorists were hired in total). About twenty of the 2006 hires will officially start in 2008.

Here is a table of schools whose PhDs have been hired most in 2005 and 2006 together. This includes all hires, including those who were re-hired from some other tenure track job. I think comparisons year-by-year basis are not that useful; and my 2005 numbers turned out to be a little inaccurate anyway.

1. UC Berkeley (20)
2. Harvard (17)
3. Stanford (15)
4. UCLA (13)
5T. Duke, UC San Diego (12)
7. Michigan (11)
8T. Columbia, Yale (10)
10. Chicago (9)
11T. Indiana, North Carolina, WashU (8)
14T. Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio State, Princeton, Texas A&M (7)
19. Rochester (6)
20T. Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Minnesota, Wisconsin (5).

Of the 183 new hires, 89 received their PhDs in 2007 or are still ABDs as of late 2007. Further 26 received their PhDs in 2006. About 50 had a tenure-track job before.

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, 68 (53 in 2005) assistant professor hires were made. Of those, 23 were in American, 22 in Comparative, 11 in IR, 2 in Methods, 10 in Theory. The rankings of schools who placed most graduates in "Top 30" in 2005 and 2006 combined:

1. UC Berkeley (13)
2. Stanford (12)
3. Harvard (10)
4. Michigan (8)
5. UCLA (7)
6. Rochester (6)
7T. Chicago, Princeton, UC San Diego (5)
10T. North Carolina, WashU, Yale (4)
13T. CalTech, Columbia, Duke, Oxford (3)
17T. Johns Hopkins, NYU, Stanford GSB (2)

One each: Arizona, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago (Psychology), Emory, Indiana, Maryland, MIT, MIT (Economics), Northwestern, Ohio State, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Rice, Texas A&M, UC Berkeley (Economics), UC Berkeley (History), UC Davis, Vanderbilt, Washington, Wisconsin

Of the 68 hires, 37 received their PhD in 2007 or are still ABDs, 10 received their PhDs in 2006. About 19 had tenure-track jobs before.

New PhD hiring

Finally, I took a look at “new PhD” hirings. As mentioned above, there were 89assistant professors hired who received their PhD in 2007 or are still ABDs (thus, the following information does not take into account those 2006-2007 hires who received their PhD in 2006 but were never on market before – there are a couple of those).

The departmental “rankings” by "new PhDs" placed in 2005 and 2006 combined (for 2005 hires, I simply used PhDs obtained in 2006 or later).

1T. Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego (10)
4. Harvard (8)
5T. UCLA, WashU, Yale (7)
8. Michigan (6)
9T. Columbia, Cornell, Duke (5)

Assistants “gone”

Finally, a quick look at departures and promotions. There were 96 assistant professors in PhD-granting political science departments in early 2007 who are no longer assistant professors in PhD-granting departments in late 2007. Of those, 58 became associate professors in their own department, 8 in some other department (including few in non-PhD granting departments), about 15 became assistants at non-PhD granting departments, with about 5 taking various visiting, administrative, or non-academic positions (I’m missing information on further five – but they almost certainly did not become associate professors).

Women in political science

Update: My coding was often based on names. Even though I took extra care when there was any doubt, I have still made at least one mistake. I have moved Alabama up the rankings (instead of 2/15, the number should be 3/15).

I figured I'd do a ranking on PhD granting political science departments based on the share of women among faculty. I calculated the data from departmental websites, including full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty (excluding visiting professors, adjuncts, emeriti, associated faculty and lecturers/instructors). The total # of political scientists I came up with is 3037, of those 795 women (26%). Top 20 departments based on U.S. News have 24% of women (191/793). My assistant professor database shows about 35% (263/742) of women among assistant professors, thus faring slightly better.

Here are the results, grouped by percentage of women in department (with the number of women/total faculty size in parentheses). There are 115 departments. I've marked in bold the top 20 departments based on U.S. News.

40% or above (the top 9)

New School for Social Research (5/9), American University (11/21), Massachusetts (11/23), UC Santa Barbara (9/21), Claremont Graduate University (3/7), Arizona (8/19), Western Michigan (7/17), Boston University (9/22), Kansas (10/25)

35%-40% (places 10-20)

Connecticut (11/28), Northern Arizona (7/18), Minnesota (14/38), Hawaii (8/22), Arizona State (10/28), New Mexico (5/14), Southern California (5/14), UC Santa Cruz (5/14), UC Irvine (11/31), Colorado State (6/17), Oregon (6/17)

30-35% (places 21-38)

Penn State (9/26), Idaho (3/9), Delaware (8/24), Georgia State (8/24), Cornell (10/30), Colorado (9/27), Vanderbilt (8/24), Michigan (15/46), Rutgers (13/40), Penn (11/34), Purdue (8/25), Johns Hopkins (6/19), Michigan State (10/32), SUNY Albany (8/26), Brown (7/23), Missouri-St. Louis (6/20), Kent State (9/30), Case Western (3/10)

25-30% (places 39-68)

Notre Dame (13/44), Texas-Dallas (5/17), Illinois-Chicago (5/17), UC Riverside (4/14), South Carolina (10/35), Northwestern (8/28), MIT (6/21), Wayne State (7/25), Northern Illinois (7/25), Wisconsin-Milwaukee (5/18), Miami(Ohio) (8/29), Indiana (14/51), Temple (6/22), Oklahoma (9/33), Wisconsin (10/37), Florida (10/37), Princeton (14/52), Yale (14/52), UC Davis (7/26), Illinois (11/41), Texas A&M (11/41), Harvard (13/49), George Washington (11/42), Columbia (14/54), Iowa (7/27), Utah (8/31), SUNY Buffalo (4/16), Howard (5/20), North Carolina (10/40), Rice (5/20)

20-25% (places 69-90)

UC San Diego (10/41), Syracuse (7/29), UCLA (12/50), Texas Tech (5/21), Ohio State (9/38), Brandeis (4/17), Florida International (4/17), U. of Washington (8/34), Cincinnati (3/13), Maryland (9/39), Florida State (6/27), Boston College (5/23), Georgia (5/23), Pittsburgh (5/23), Washington State (3/14), SUNY Binghamton (4/19), Houston (5/24), North Texas (5/25), Alabama (3/15), Nevada-Reno (3/15), Louisiana State (5/25), Chicago (6/30)

15-20% (places 91-107)

Stanford (7/36), Emory (6/31), Nebraska (3/16), West Virginia (3/16), Tulane (2/11), Fordham (3/17), Missouri (3/18), Rochester (4/25), Virginia (6/38), Catholic (2/13), Mississippi (2/13), New Mexico (2/13), North Carolina State (2/13), UC Berkeley (8/52), Washington U. (4/26), Duke (5/33), SUNY Stony Brook (3/20)

Below 15% (the bottom 8, places 108-115)

Kentucky (3/21), NYU (6/43), Texas (8/59), Georgetown (7/56), CalTech (1/8) [I only counted political science faculty], Loyola-Chicago (2/19), Southern Illinois (2/19), Tennessee (2/21)

New host for data

Politicaldata.org has graciously agreed to host the spreadsheet on their very informative and useful website. The February 2007 update of assistant professors data is here.

Most cited work

Here's the list for 20 most-cited publications. The name of the assistant professor is in bold; the last number in parentheses is the citation count. One caveat - for articles, I took into account only the number of cites as reported by ISI Web of Science when looking at the article page ("times cited" field). Most of the papers actually have a few extra cites in the database, but WoS has not recorded them in the right format.

1. John Bound, David A. Jaeger and Regina M. Baker. 1995. "On Potential Problems with Instrumental Variables Estimation When the Correlation Between the Instruments and the Endogenous Explanatory Variable is Weak." Journal of the American Statistical Association 90: 443-450 (448).

2. Gary King, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg. 2000. "Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation." American Journal of Political Science 44: 341-355 (160; there are 190 further cites to Clarify software which I won't list separately).

3. Gary King, James Honaker, Anne Joseph and Kenneth Scheve. 2001. "Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation." American Political Science Review 95: 49-69 (144; there are 89 further cites to Amelia software which I won't list separately).

4. Herbert Kitschelt, in collaboration with Anthony J. McGann. 1995. The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (128).

5. Hein Goemans. 2000. War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press (76).

6. Peter C. Ordeshook and Olga Shvetsova. 1994. "Ethnic Heterogeneity, District Magnitude, and the Number of Parties." American Journal of Political Science 38: 100–23 (66).

7. Clark Gibson, Elinor Ostrom, and T.K. Ahn. 2000. "The Concept of Scale and the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change." Ecological Economics 32: 217-239 (62).

8. Jenna Bednar and William N. Eskridge, Jr. 1995. "Steadying the Court's 'Unsteady Path': A Theory of Judicial Enforcement of Federalism." Southern California Law Review 68: 1447-1491 (54).

9. Torben Iversen and Anne Wren. 1998. "Equality, Employment, and Budgetary Restraint: The Trilemma of the Service Economy." World Politics 50: 507-46 (50).

10. Alan I. Abramowitz and Kyle L. Saunders. 1998. "Ideological Realignment in the US Electorate." Journal of Politics 60: 634-652 (48).

11. Steven C. Poe, C. Neal Tate and Linda Camp Keith. 1999. "Repression of the Human Right to Personal Integrity Revisited: A Global Crossnational Study Covering the Years 1976-1993." International Studies Quarterly 43: 291-313 (46).

12. Ian Hurd. 1999. "Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics." International Organization 53: 379-408 (45).

13. Paul G. Lewis. 1996. Shaping Suburbia: How Political Institutions Organize Urban Development. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

14. Mark Hallerberg and Scott Basinger. 1998. "Internationalization and Changes in Tax Policy in OECD Countries. The Importance of Domestic Veto Players." Comparative Political Studies 31: 321-352 (43).

15. Robert C. Lowry, James E. Alt and Karen E. Ferree. 1998. "Fiscal Policy Outcomes and Electoral Accountability in American States." American Political Science Review 92: 759-774 (42).

16. James L. Gibson, Gregory A. Caldeira, and Vanessa Baird. 1998. "On the Legitimacy of National High Courts." American Political Science Review 92: 343-358 (41).

16. Paul K. Huth and Todd Allee. 2003. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (41).

18. Geoffrey Garrett, R. Daniel Keleman, and Heiner Schulz. 1998. "The European Court of Justice, National Governments, and Legal Integration in the European Union." International Organization 52: 149-76 (40).

19. Colin Elman. 1996. "Horses for Courses: Why Not Neo-Realist Theories of Foreign Policy?" Security Studies 6: 7-53 (38).

20. Beth Simmons and Zachary Elkins. 2004. "The Globalization of Liberalization: Policy Diffusion in the International Political Economy." American Political Science Review 98: 171-190 (37).

(Assisting) Political Science 40

I did not collect citations information for the February 2007 update. I just did not have the time. However, I decided to to something close to that - figure out who are the 40 most cited assistant professors of political science (in PhD granting departments, as of February 23, 2007).

Unfortunately, the Web of Science information is sometimes quite inaccurate, so I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the following lists. See January 2007 PS: Political Science & Politics article on PS400 for various problems with coding citations data. A few remarks - every citation counts fully, even if the piece is co-authored (or in one case - "in collaboration with"); in case of co-authored books (and in one case - software), I manually counted cites to the book (software) so that co-authors don't lose out (Web of Science does not list co-authors...).

I collected two pieces of information - first, a ranking by name and then the most cited articles/books/software where a current assistant professor is a (co-)author. The top publication list is in the next post. Please let me know of any problems (you may leave an anonymous comment; I will not publish it if you don't want me to).

One strong caveat - ranking assistant professors based on the citation information is not a very valid "ranking," unfortunately. Two main reasons: 1. The most cited people have usually stayed on the assistant level for longer than usual (they should actually be compared with people of their "age"); 2. Disregarding co-authorship distorts the results quite strongly (very often, a paper published when the current assistant professor was still in graduate school). Nevertheless, I think more information is always better.

Assisting Professors 40:
(in parentheses, current school is given first, followed by PhD school and graduation year, then followed by the number of cites in the second parenthesis)

1. Regina M. Baker (Oregon, Michigan 2002) (448)
2. Michael Tomz (Stanford, Harvard 2001) (419)
3. Jason Wittenberg (Berkeley, MIT 1999) (334)
4. James Honaker (UCLA, Harvard 2001) (235)
5. Anthony McGann (UC Irvine, Duke 1999) (165)
6. Olga Shvetsova (SUNY Binghamton, CalTech 1995) (156)
7. Jenna Bednar (Michigan, Stanford 1998) (151)
8. Colin Elman (Arizona State, Columbia 1999) (138)
9. Hein Goemans (Rochester, Chicago 1995) (135)
10. Doug Gibler (Alabama, Vanderbilt 1997) (129)
11. Christopher Federico (Minnesota, UCLA Psychology 1001) (119)
12. T.K. Ahn (Florida State, Indiana 2001) (94)
13. Linda Camp Keith (Texas-Dallas, North Texas 1999) (89)
14. Zachary Elkins (Illinois, Berkeley 2002) (88)
15. Joanne Miller (Minnesota, Ohio State psychology 2000) (83)
16. Janelle Wong (USC, Yale 2001) (81)
17. Ian Hurd (Northwestern, Yale 2000) (79)
18. Kevin M. Quinn (Harvard, WashU 1999) (78)
19. Carole J. Wilson (Texas-Dallas, UNC 2001) (77)
20. Michele L. Swers (Georgetown, Harvard 2000) (75)
21. Zoltan L. Hajnal (UCSD, Chicago 1998) (74)
21. Paul Lewis (Arizona State, Princeton 1994) (74)
21. Monika L. McDermott (Connecticut, UCLA 1999) (74)
21. Layna Mosley (UNC, Duke 1999) (74)
25. Michael D. Cobb (North Carolina State, Illinois 2001) (72)
25. John Transue (Duke, Minnesota 2001) (72)
27. David E. Campbell (Notre Dame, Harvard 2002) (69)
27. Henry E. Hale (George Washington, Harvard 1998) (69)
29. Henry Farrell (George Washington, Georgetown 2000) (68)
30. Brian Sala (UC Davis, UCSD 1994) (67)
30. Mark J.C. Crescenzi (UNC, Illinois 2000) (67)
30. Milana A. Vachudova (UNC, Oxford 1997) (67)
33. Jeffery A. Jenkins (Northwestern, Illinois 1999) (66)
34. Gretchen Helmke (Rochester, Chicago 2000) (65)
35. Mala Htun (New School for Social Research, Harvard 2000) (64)
36. Eva Bertram (UC Santa Cruz, Yale 2004) (61)
37. Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton, Oxford 1999) (59)
37. Soo Yeon Kim (Maryland, Yale 1998) (59)
37. Emilie Hafner-Burton (Princeton, Wisconsin 2003) (59)
40. Miki C. Kittilson (Arizona State, UC Irvine 2001) (58)

There are obviously several people right behind the cutoff, so I just mention everyone else as well for whom I counted 50 cites or more (in alphabetical order): Scott Allard, Todd Allee, Scott Basinger, Rachel Cichowski, Scott Desposato, Karen Ferree, Mikhail Filippov, Venelin Ganev, Virginia Hettinger, Joseph Jupille, Andrew G. Long, Brian Moraski, Sebastian Saiegh, Kyle L. Saunders, Heiner Schulz, Pete Wielhouwer, Anne Wren.

Guest blogging at MoneyLaw

Starting this week, I will be guest blogging at the excellent MoneyLaw, a blog devoted to "the art of winning an unfair academic game" (focusing on legal academia). Please drop by.

Canadian departments

I have been asked whether I could include Canadian political science departments. I'm afraid I will not be able to do so, at least at the moment (time is a scarce commodity, after all).