Apr 19, 2007

Academic Careers Wiki

by Cliopatria

Hello world, long time no see. I'm in the thick of grading, and so I've been studiously ignoring Ralph's pleas to post to this"group blog," of which I am ostensibly a" contributor." Even more studiously than usual, I mean.

But this just came across the transom, and it seems like the sort of thing that everybody is about to know about very soon. Or maybe those of you on the job market know about it already, but it was news to me: the Academic Careers Wiki. Who is interviewing, who is hiring, who has sent out rejection letters, who got rejected by their candidates, and who got the job you didn't get. This is not H-Net. This is not where you go to find out what jobs you ought to apply for. It is where you go after you've applied, in order to vent, fret, dig up dirt, preen, spill beans, share gossip, and find out why oh why they didn't choose you.

This strikes me as possibly frightening to some and addictive to others. You might have to dig around the wiki a bit to get a feel for why. Here's the list of current U.S. History searches. Scroll down to the University of Chicago's 20th Century [edit: not 19th - thanks, Ralph] search to see how much detail some of these entries go into. Here's a page linking to all the current History searches. All in the fluid, caveat lector,"nobody's in charge here" state that is essential to the Wiki format.

What happens when you harness the collective gossip power / angst / desperation of thousands of job-hungry PhDs? When you take the kind of post-rejection Kremlinology and sour grapes that we all engage(d) in during our job hunts and wiki-fy it? It is, potentially, a lot more powerful than wistful First Person columns in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. There's room for all sorts of hurt feelings here, not to mention breaches of confidentiality and professional conduct. But there's also potential to shine some badly-needed light on a process often conducted in conditions of extreme ignorance and fear."Sunlight is the best disinfectant," said Louis Brandeis. Let the sun shine in.

(X-posted at Old is the New New.)

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More Comments:

Brett Holman - 4/19/2007

Astrophysicists have had an "Astrophysics Jobs Rumor Mill" since at least 1999:

http://www.hp-h.com/b/astromill/

In fact, it even has competition, eg:

http://cdm.berkeley.edu/doku.php?id=astrophysicsjobs

So they've obviously found it useful. Some discussion of the pros and cons can be found at

http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/07/17/rumor-has-it/
http://catdynamics.blogspot.com/2005/04/job-rumours.html

Jason T Kuznicki - 4/19/2007

I have to wonder what exactly you'll actually get out of this process. I'm sure it will feel great to the people who get to "preen," but then, the preening was a part what I never really liked about the academy in the first place.

Come to think of it, the venting was another part I never really liked.

Really, what good is this going to do anyone, except to bruise a few egos a bit harder and build up the pedestals of the lucky few -- as if they need it?

Every job search is unique, and nearly all of them are arbitrary enough that gathering anecdotal evidence isn't going to anything to add to the mountains of advice we all got on preparing a CV, a job talk, an interview, and so forth.

Ed Schmitt - 4/19/2007

This is a fascinating development, but I wonder how much real light and understanding it will generate aside from folks perhaps finding out who got jobs sooner than via the conventional grapevine or departmental website updates. Perhaps it might serve as a watchdog for search committees and create peer pressure for greater transparency, but sometimes I don't know if transparency is the most professional attribute. Certainly gossip is not. All of this seems to presuppose chicanery rather than good intentions on the part of search committees. Another matter to consider - once you get a job, do you want to know if you're the second or third choice? Maybe a dumb question, but this does, as Rob suggests, raise all sorts of issues. Wow.

Jonathan Dresner - 4/19/2007

Talk about how our edits were edited by someone else, I suppose.

The Asia section is pretty bare bones, I notice. And either I'm missing something, or there's nobody using the discussion channels.

There's a huge ethical dilemma here waiting to happen: if search committees (I've been on a few, and I'm on a few now!) start monitoring the discussions, or involving themselves?

Ralph E. Luker - 4/19/2007

Rob, That's a 20th -- not 19th -- century U.S. search.

Manan Ahmed - 4/19/2007

What are we supposed to do over beers now?