Hot answers tagged job
36
Your writing certainly does not betray a "lack of eloquence"; in fact, it's probably better than most of the computer scientists I know!
That said, as JeffE has indicated, you are being mishandled by your employers, and I would strongly encourage you to find a new position as soon as possible. However, it is important to point out that your situation is not ...
31
It's common in computer science for a university to have few if any of its own graduates as faculty, and should not be taken as a bad sign by itself. This low representation is for two main reasons:
The best five or ten universities in the United States produce a disproportionately large number of strong academic candidates. In practice universities that ...
23
There are many formal roles that generally fall under the category of "post-doc":
The simplest is as a post-Ph.D researcher working with a faculty mentor and doing their own research
Some postdocs have a role as "lab manager": they help with advising students.
In addition, if given an appropriate title, a postdoc (as "visiting/research faculty") can write ...
21
Two obvious answers are:
Marking. Ask your supervisor if they have coursework that needs to be marked (for a price).
Tutoring. Put a note up in your departmental office offering to tutor undergraduates. If you're doing a more mathematical degree, you could tutor undergraduates from other disciplines. For example, helping out with some statistics ...
21
The answers so far have many good points: you are being abused, you have been misled, you would do well to seek employment elsewhere, perhaps you were not assertive enough, and so on. But I believe none of that matters much compared to your decisions from this point on. You sound like a person who prefers to think ahead and plan important decisions rather ...
20
I don't have anything essentially divergent to say from the other answers, but since you inquired about mathematics specifically and I am a mathematician who has been (and currently am) involved in postdoctoral and tenure track hiring, I thought it might be useful for me to weigh in as well. Lacking true inspiration, let me just comment on your criteria.
...
19
I am a professor at a top 20 school in mathematics and I have been on our department's hiring committee for the past several years. I can assure you that we take absolutely no notice of the contents of that particular website when making decisions. We consider ourselves competent enough to form our own judgements on any particular candidate. In the past, we ...
19
Virtually Impossible.
Doing a PhD is a full-time job that requires vast amounts of commitment in terms of mental effort and time. If the PhD research comes in number two position, then the results will never be very good. Also, not being available in the department to interact with your colleagues and supervisor will severely reduce the benefits you gain ...
18
I know of a few graduate students who successfully made money doing consulting in their line of work. Most of these were engineering students, where the knowledge gained during graduate school is easily transferable, but I've seen others as well.
If you're interested in this, talk to as many people as you can and network, network, network. It can be a fun ...
18
I haven't seen any statistics on how many tenure professors have been fired, but most articles on the topic treat tenure as though it's a lifetime position (e.g., this Science article, "Tenure and the Future of the University"). Anecdotally, you will likely never meet someone who knows someone else who was fired from a tenure position; it simply doesn't ...
18
In addition to Suresh's answer, I'd say that a postdoc is no longer a student. A PhD student is expected to demonstrate that she can do research, and this is sanctioned by the PhD degree. A postdoc is rather expected to demonstrate that she can be trusted with a permanent academic position.
In my field, postdoc positions usually denote fixed-term positions ...
18
I have never heard of any weight given to contributing to Wikipedia for any aspects of academic evaluation. I personally wouldn't attach any weight to it either, especially given that many articles have a long history of edits and figuring out exactly who contributed what can be difficult.
If you want to include this on your CV or similar, I would mention ...
18
Each situation is different, and it might be hard to generalise, but roughly speaking, you can see a PhD thesis as requiring about 3-4 years working full time. For some people it might be a bit less, for others a bit more, but that's a good average. In addition, a PhD includes of course "technical" work, but also "academic training", such as learning how to ...
17
This is a very good point. There are certain questions I'd like to ask, but cannot because I'm not at all anonymous for the reasons you allude to or because current students might read those answers. That said, I chose not to be anonymous and I have adjusted my behaviour accordingly. Maybe my students like the idea that I can answer their questions on such a ...
16
(Since I've only been faculty in one department, my answer involves a bit of extrapolation...)
Quality of students — It is much easier for top departments to attract the strongest students to their PhD programs, so the average quality of students tends to be higher. Faculty at top schools can spend less time bringing their PhD students up to speed and ...
16
In addition to the individual benefits they offer (subscriptions, electronic journal access, discounts, the possibility of distinguished or honorary grades of membership, etc.), professional organizations also contribute to the research community more broadly:
They organize conferences, publish journals, and support other activities, for example in ...
15
I'm most familiar with the NSF mathematical sciences research postdoctoral fellowship, which I was lucky enough to get 15 years ago. The application process is described in detail in NSF's formal solicitation, but here's an executive summary:
Unlike most other NSF funding, this program is limited to US citizens and permanent residents. (NSF's regular ...
15
In general, «Universitetslektor» is the closest the Swedish system has to an «associate professor» in the US system, and is close to a «lecturer» in the British system. The more junior rank would be «Biträdande lektor», and the more senior «Professor».
There are some subtleties in play here though; most importantly for the linked position is the phrase ...
14
Well, clearly, it depends on many factors (my answer is probably strongly influenced by the Computer Science field).
If you want to apply for a non-research industry position, then clearly, the postdoc might not appear as a strong point, unless you can travel, attend conferences, manage a budget, develop an application/software/experiment, apply for ...
14
It does happen occasionally that entire departments are shut down. An example I remember being in the news a lot was several language departments at SUNY Albany. But it's an extreme measure and even with the current severe economic situation it did not happen very often.
14
To quote (jokingly) a rather blunt friend of mine, a post-doctoral fellow is "someone who has a Ph.D. but is still nobody." I don't quite subscribe to so dismal a view, but it usually means someone who hasn't achieved full independence yet (inasmuch as they still have at least a nominal advisor).
I expect a postdoctoral fellow in my group to be a competent ...
14
TL; DR; 51 hours a week with 12 vacation days a year
It is very difficult to asses how hard someone works. It is relatively easy to quantify the input (number of hours work and the number of vacation days taken) and the output (papers and grants). In 2003 the Sigma Xi post doc society in the US began collecting data from 7600 post docs across 46 ...
13
This answer is a bit different from the others. The other questions deal with what a postdoc is. My answer the difference between what grad students and postdocs are in two ways.
The first distinction is this: A graduate student is an apprentice, while a postdoc is a journeyman.
The academic system in which a student earns a doctorate and eventually ...
13
As an addendum to Lars's answer above, academics place a high value on peer-reviewed literature and professional activities (book chapters, conference proceedings, invited talks, professional workshops you've taught). Non-professional activities, such as being cited in the popular press and appearances on TV and radio shows are nice, but usually aren't big ...
13
What are common steps required to become an adjunct faculty?
Ask your department chair.
Where can I find additional information (e.g. would a university-wide policy be given at the university website?)
Ask your department chair.
Assuming I speak with the department chair, what should I say?
"I'm interested in becoming adjunct faculty. What's the ...
13
The big question here is what you mean by "completing a PhD". At one extreme, there's completing a minimal PhD: choosing the least demanding school that offers a PhD in your field, finding a flexible advisor, and doing only what is absolutely required to get the degree. This could be worth doing in certain circumstances: to develop greater expertise in a ...
12
In practice, a tenured appointment is one of the safest job positions out there. Essentially, the number of things which can get a tenured professor "sacked" are exceedingly small, and most of these involve criminal actions. (Even in such cases, the university tends to pressure resignations rather than try to fire them, as has happened, for instance, in ...
12
One of the strange effects of faculty hiring (and graduate admissions) is that offers do not necessarily go to the strongest candidates. Departments have limited resources to interview, recruit, and hire faculty. Interviews are expensive; startup packages are really expensive; faculty job offers burn political capital even when they aren't accepted.
So ...
12
In short, tenure means that you cannot be fired (you have a very permanent position). For more details, look at this question:
In practice, how secure is a tenured position in the US? In particular, look at the first link in the first answer to that question, which is an article in Science that talks about the role of tenure.
12
That's a good question. I don't have a permanent position yet, and I'm aware that anything I post here can potentially be read by future recruiting committee, so I'm also careful of the way I can ask questions or post answers. I don't think it's a problem to show that you might lack some knowledge, considering that you're also showing you're aware of it and ...
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