Should I apply to tenure-track positions if I'm fairly certain I won't be staying?

Question

I hope to receive my PhD in Mathematics in May of 2015, so I am currently applying for jobs. Due to life circumstances, I'm fairly certain that I will only be staying at my next position for about 2 years. Does this mean I shouldn't even try to apply for tenure-track positions? Will a hiring committee not even consider me for the position if I'm not willing to commit to staying with them for a certain amount of time?

I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college), but as I look for openings, a lot of them are tenure-track assistant professor positions. Should I go through the effort of sending in an application, or will that be a waste of my, and the committee's, time?

Thanks for any advice you have!

Edit (to address Nate's comment):

My wife is currently applying for 2 year graduate degree programs in various cities in the US, so I'm applying for jobs in the same cities. When she finishes her program, we plan to move outside of the US (Africa or Southeast Asia), where I do hope to remain in academia, teaching mathematics to college-aged students.

Answer 1

Apply.

If you accept a position, you are committed for the following year. Leaving after two years will disappoint people, but it happens fairly often, and the potential consequences of you not applying to these jobs are perhaps more serious than the potential consequences to the departments if you leave after two years.

Besides, I don't know what your circumstances are, but you are presumably not completely sure you won't stay.

Answer 2

Faculty come and go all the time at universities. Although we may hope a tenure-track hire will stick around for a decade or more, in practice we know many examples of people who have left voluntarily before getting tenure. So the disappointment that your departure might cause will probably not be very significant. (My personal viewpoint is that it is much better to hire the "best" candidate who applies, even if she only may stay for a short time, than it is to hire someone else just because they will stay longer.)

Regardless of how long you plan to stay, when applying for a tenure-track university you are likely to need to write some sort of teaching statement and some sort of research statement. These will be scrutinized by the hiring committee and neither can credibly say "I am leaving in two years". So you need to develop a plan for the possibility that you will stay in the tenure track position indefinitely, and use that plan when applying.

The bigger concern I have is when you write

I would love to get a teaching/lecturing position at any institute of higher education (4-year research university, liberal arts school, community college),

Those three types of schools are very different, and they are looking for very different types of faculty (and there is a fourth type, "non-research-intensive moderately large public university", with its own idiosyncrasies). Very few candidates have a vita that is competitive for hiring at even two different kinds of institutions.

If you have not yet started thinking about which sort of institution you want to specialize in, now is a good time. I am in mathematics myself, and I have seen many candidates try an ineffective "shotgun" approach where they apply to huge numbers of schools for which they are not competitive. Remember that even a non-elite school is likely to receive hundreds of applications for a single tenure-track position in mathematics these days. A generic application is not likely to rise to the top.

Answer 3

First of all, this isn't really answering your question, but you should seriously discuss with your advisor or another trusted senior mathematician about what sort of jobs you should be applying for; even mentioning research universities as a new Ph.D. makes me wonder if you have been told the "facts of life" by someone. It is much more likely that you'll be able to find a short-term position anyways.

That said, I don't think you should worry about the fact that you want to leave in 2 years. I can speak from the experience of having left two TT jobs within 2 years of starting. Of course, it's not something to be proud of, but it does happen pretty often, and I don't think it offends anybody's sensibilities too much. Honestly, I don't think you need to worry about people asking you about your plans (as long as they don't read this question and follow the link back to your webpage); leaving to move to Africa is so far outside what most people will imagine that they won't even be considering it. They assume that if you're applying for the job, you're at least thinking at the moment that you'll be in for the long haul.

I think if you do mention your plan to anyone involved, it will hurt you a lot. No one actually wants to hire someone into a TT position who will leave in 2 years. It's a huge amount of wasted work and money, so I think it's only worthwhile apply to TT jobs if you feel comfortable just not mentioning it.

Answer 4

To expand on @Anonymous answer, even if you are certain now about what you plan to do in two years, you do not really know what life has waiting for your. In two years your certainties may be very different- and you may regret not having applied for those positions.