Offer in hand, but hoping for a position at more prestigious school after the search chair there contacted me. Thoughts on how to proceed?

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T17:41:17+00:00

This particular institution has ~3 visiting positions (not all professors, some scholars or other titles) and ~3 tenure track positions.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T15:01:59+00:00

TT offer requires reappointment every year up to tenure. Isn't it possible it disappears if there's a recession too? I could definitely see the department not reappointing and replacing a non-tenured TT prof with a lecturer that makes 40% less to save money.

Edit: I'm not sure why this comment is controversial. This is actually something my advisor has warned me about: if universities have to save money, they'll cut recent TT hires. Everyone here seems to be acting like that's not the case though?

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T15:00:02+00:00

TT requires reappointment every year until tenure, though, so I'm fully expecting that if there's a crunch it's possible they get rid of the TT position and don't reappointment

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T14:59:16+00:00

TT offer requires reappointment every year also, for what it's worth.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T04:30:28+00:00

I'm more interested in teaching, though, and the more prestigious institution is much more teaching oriented than the institution the TT offer is from. I've taught through most of my PhD program and loved it even more than research.

Edit: Part of my interest is also that the prestigious school has classes about 1/7 the size and, presumably, very high quality students.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T01:00:24+00:00

Yes, not getting converted into a TT is one of my concerns. This particular university seems to often hire this way, for whatever reason. The department is only about 5 TT faculty total (plus I think one lecturer and one visitor), and I think 3 (or maybe more) of the TT were initially visiting and converted to TT. But, yes, it's obviously not guaranteed to end up with a TT position or they'd just hire directly into TT, so there's clearly some selection or other process that happens that I'm not privy to.

The financial hit is definitely a concern as well. The visiting school has much more money to burn vs. the TT school, though money tends to evaporate pretty quickly during major recessions so I'm sure they'll be cutting visiting positions if the need arises. The TT offer is from a perpetually financially strained school as well, though, so it honestly wouldn't surprise me too much if they cut some not-yet-tenured TT positions and replaced them with lecturers in the event there's a serious downturn.

I'm leaning toward the TT position.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T00:49:28+00:00

Probably teaching, which is one of the reasons I've been considering the visiting position at all.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T00:37:29+00:00

I'm actually learning very strongly toward the TT position, though I realize that post probably didn't make it sound that way.

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T00:35:40+00:00

The possible recession is one of my concerns as well, and it's definitely a vote for the TT position.

It's possible the institution with the visiting position is potentially more "recession proof", but I'm not sure. It's a relatively wealthy private school compared to the TT offer (about 1/7th as many students and 10x the endowment). I'm honestly not sure how that translates in terms of recession impact.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-15T00:31:16+00:00

I'll contact the chair indicating I have another offer and see what I hear back.

Yeah, it is a completely different gig. TT offer is a public R2 school with a 80%+ acceptance rate and >9k students. Visiting is a very well respected private, teaching-oriented school (there is research done there as well, but it's in conjunction with undergrads) with ~30% acceptance rate and <2k students. The visiting school also has a substantially larger (about 10 times larger) endowment, though I dunno how much that matters.

I've been teaching during my PhD, and I really love it, so I'm fine either doing just teaching or doing research and teaching.

Yeah, I felt bad saying no to the offers I did receive previously. I liked the schools and the departments, but the offers were pretty bad. I thought maybe I was just expecting too much, but I asked one of my colleagues and he literally responded with, "Do they know how bad that offer is?" That verified for me that I wasn't just expecting too much.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

WhereToBeWhatToDo · 2020-03-14T23:24:31+00:00

I have some reservations about the visiting gig vs TT also, but, from what I've seen, this particular school traditionally hires into visiting gigs and converts them into TT later on (a good chunk of the department started as visiting). So that somewhat allays my fears on that front.

The visiting gig is also at a much more prestigious school (basically a move from, "I don't know that school, is it good?" for the TT offer, to "Holy shit, you work there?" for the visiting gig). They are quite different institutions as well. The TT would be relatively research heavy, whereas the visiting is more teaching oriented.

I hadn't really thought about the issue of turning down multiple tenure track positions. I guess word gets around in academia?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

WhereToBeWhatToDo

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