How frequently do pre-tenured assistant professors switch institutions?

Question

It's interview season. I've noticed that many of the applicants in this round are already assistant professors at other institutions.

Is there any known number or record on how frequently (let's say, across North America) assistant professors who don't have tenure yet switch institutions?

The market is already incredibly competitive. The academic institution has spent thousands of dollars on hiring a candidate and wants to retain them. If an assistant professor goes to another school and gets hired, then what you might end up with is this cycle of highly-ranking candidates swirling around and leaving empty positions in their wake. Alternatively, one might presume that the hiring system must be inefficient if, in a competitive environment, a university is unable to retain its hires.

This article (and associated comments) for example, illustrates how many faculty have changed institutions for various reasons; I also know personally at least two assistant professors who left their original institution to move to a new one within the first few years of them being hired.

Depending on the answer to this question, I would have a number of follow-ups (Do schools hate it if you apply elsewhere, and would they fire you? How does a department react when a recent hire leaves? Why do people switch? Are applicants often successful? Do people switch more than once?) but I'll start with this first.

Answer 1

It does happen. But it's not that common. I've been on faculty search committees for a number of years now, and out of the hundreds of applications I've seen, it's very rare to see pre-tenure faculty from other institutions apply. If and when they do, it's because

• they're worried about their tenure case
• there's a two-body problem (this is in fact the most "reasonable" reason to move)
• they have other reasons for wanting to move (location, opportunity)

But it's not a frequent thing. Because it's hard to do: clocks have to be negotiated, research programs have to be uprooted, students have to be moved (and let me not even start on the logistics of moving a family that might just be getting settled in the first place)

Answer 2

Well, first of all, I'm living proof that it does happen (twice!) from time to time. My sense (which is purely personal, and thus can only speak to the situation in mathematics) is that applying for other jobs before tenure is very common, and even people who aren't especially serious about moving will do it "just to test the waters" or "because it's the thing to do" especially right as they are coming up to tenure. Having been in a position to read files for job searches over the past couple of years, a lot come from people who already have tenure track positions. It's considerably less common for offers to actually get made (in part because of a vague sense that people may not be especially serious about moving or that they may just want it as a bargaining chip), and less common still for people to move, though I'm far from the last person I know who's done so, and I know of several other instances of people having outside job offers that they ended up turning down.

I think Suresh has the reasons down; for me, the issue has been the two-body problem. I think generally people are quite understanding about the issue, and I haven't (directly at least) encountered hostility from my former colleagues about moving (and indeed I've cowritten papers with 3 people at institutions I've left since leaving), though I have gotten occasional jokes.

My experience is that the general reaction of schools is to negotiate to convince you to stay (or come back after you've left); I've never heard of anyone being fired because of applications elsewhere.

Answer 3

My several-decades' observation suggests that this does not happen often at all, in all sorts of economic climates. Only the rare person whose work is both "hot" and who wants to play job-change games will do this.

Yes, applying for other jobs does tend to alienate many (not all) faculty at one's current institution. But if one can "get away with it", then it may be profitable, even while people resent it.

I have been acquainted with situation in which there was anticipated to be some prejudicial nonsense at the tenure-decision time, so that people took a year's leave and found other (potentially permanent, but supposedly temporary) jobs as back-up. This is only sensible. Yes, people at the "home" institution used this as leverage to disparage the candidate... but one imagines that these people were wanting to disparage the candidate anyway, so the fact that a person acted reasonably and in self-defense was irrelevant.

Indeed, I think the most common, and most sensible, case of such job applications is exactly when there's some anticipation that the tenure case will not go well. In some very rare cases a person has out-of-the-blue done something surprisingly good, and can launch themselves into a higher stratum of academe. :)

In most cases, such job apps would be a pointlessly antagonistic thing to do...

Answer 4

At the R1 where I got my social science PhD, I'd estimate that 75% of senior faculty in my department switched jobs at least once before gaining tenure. Usually these moves were from one R1 to another, although usually from institutions considered less prestigious than this one. A few moved from R2/R3 or SLACs to this R1. That being said, maybe my field and department are different from the norm:

1. This field has a "pretty good" job market; there are more new jobs than PhDs each year (caveat: we do hire from outside the field and some professional practitioners). Still, a healthy job market probably facilitates mobility.
2. My department is by some metrics the most research productive in the field, so the dynamics that lead one to land there may be exceptional.

Also, my field does not generally do post-docs so a large proportion of those who get a T-T position had a T-T position of some sort as their first job post-PhD. Maybe fields with an expectation of post-doctoral work have more efficient markets that place you into a better fit once you go on the T-T market. We also aren't really a lab-based field so there are fewer "anchors" so to speak that would hold us in one place since we don't have big infrastructure needs.

The advice I received before going on the job market was that your first T-T position was unlikely to be your last. Again, this coming from people whose experience was advising graduates of this department and institution. The logic is that it's not that likely that the market the year you were on the market had the right spot for you and even if it did, you needed some good fortune to be the one chosen.

This answer is of course referring to the pre-pandemic world.

Answer 5

This is becoming more common. Younger workers are savvy about good opportunities and moving is not that big a deal to us. I think the baby boomers look at relocating as a far more disruptive thing than we do. I changed jobs and moved this last year and it was no big deal. I'm single and don't own a home so I can take advantage of good opportunities. Plus, if you want an actual pay increase, you have to move. That's the reality of it.

Answer 6

As a social science PhD I was on the tenure track 4 times. I moved from a community college in the northeast to a comprehensive school in the south to one R1 in the west and then to a private liberal arts college which paid more in the northeast again, but this was just before the meltdown of 2008/2009 and I don’t think I’d be able to pull it off again in today’s job market which has gotten way more competitive. Having served on search committees now for about a decade after getting tenure, we do get some tenured folks who apply but they rarely are interviewed. TT applications are more common and they often get shortlisted as are post docs and ABDs but the former have to come up with a pretty good reason and explanation about why they want to move where they are and why they want to join our institution. The onus is on them to prove there are as much pull as push factors…