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Comment by adminprof | Hacker News Reader

The misinformation about adjuncts is pretty widespread. Adjuncts have indeed been hired way more at teaching colleges and for-profit colleges. But research universities haven't really changed their hiring tendencies much, if at all. It's just that there are a lot more non-R1 universities now that statistically, a higher % of new instructors are adjuncts.

Nearly everyone I know that graduated with a PhD from an R1 universities, and was what I considered reasonably good (they were not complete goof-offs and were serious about their work) got good tenure-track positions 0-2 years after graduating.

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Nearly everyone I know that graduated with a PhD from an R1 universities

Would these people perhaps be clustered in a particular field? I'd guess that things are very different depending on the percentage of PhD's in a field who go into academia versus industry. For example, the academic job market for Astronomy is very different than CS, because there are many more non-academic options for CS graduates.

I think even an outstanding Astronomy PhD from a top tier university may find it difficult to get a tenure track position in their field. The same would probably be true for CS if all the graduates were to pursue academic positions, but since many go into industry, there is less competition for tenure track positions among those who want to teach.

Not necessarily a good example. Astronomy has that weird, assassination-based promotion system.

Nice Tycho Brahe reference.

In astronomy I've always heard the rule of 10s.

10% of astronomers get the PhD, 10% of the PhDs get post docs, 10% of post docs get tenure.

And tenure in 0-2 years? That's impossible outside of China or India or the Soviet bloc. I think the average amount of time an Astronomer spends in post-docs is 9-12 years.

AFAIK, tenure in 0-2 years is difficult even in India.

For years fulltime profs number < 25%. This article (with refs) shows that essentially all tenture-track professors are over 60: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...

That Wikipedia page is the most hilarious wtf I have ever seen. I did not see this "< 25%" number you mention, but I read that "In 2011, a survey conducted by TIAA-CREF Institute senior researcher Paul J. Yakoboski estimated that 73% of professors with senior tenure ranged between the ages of 60 and 66 and that the remaining 27% were above the age of 66."

Then I read the reference and it said "To this end, the TIAA-CREF Institute surveyed full-time college and university faculty age 60 and older regarding issues related to whether and when to retire." The survey is about seniors (in terms of age) because TIAA-CREF is a retirement account company, not "senior tenure" whatever that means. I'm actually more surprised that the number of professors over 60 is not 100% since that's the only population surveyed.

The rest of the Wikipedia page is similarly biased, "Today (2015), adjunct professors, hired for their low cost only, rather than expertise, make up more than half the teaching faculty at United States universities." I can't tell if the Wikipedia article is intentionally ridiculous or if it's some parody article.

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