This puts an interesting twist on KL’s comment about the relative lack of adventurousness of Canadians, and the fact that “there are many job openings in Asia (particularly in China, Korea and Taiwan).” It seems to me that the notion that PhD’s are in high demand in Canada continues to be prevailing inside and outside of Canada, even though this is no longer the case. Thus, doctorates from around the world converge here, just to find out that the needs of the academic job market in Canada have already been met, thank you, but that no one has yet bothered to take down the sign of “PhD’s wanted — apply within.”

Is the solution for the 4,000 people who get their PhD’s in Canada every year and the other 3,200 doctorates who arrive here from abroad every year simply to start to think of other places in the world they could go instead? That’s an idea. But there is something about the idea of spending spent years of hard work in a country and then finding out that none of the fruits of that hard work can revert back to the country where the hard work was done that I find really sad, be the country Canada, India, China or Brazil.

But it’s not as if I had a prognosis to match this diagnosis: at this point, any diagnosis that explains the painful symptons I see everywhere is already a big help. And here’s why I found Carson’s article so helpful (in the way that getting a second opinion on an unfavourable diagnosis can be called helpful: reassuring, but not exactly good news).

(for another set of reflections on unemployed/unemployable PhD’s, check a post I wrote on my blog last week:
http://estersblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/concentrated-knowledge/)

Here is the link: http://www.macleans.ca/education/postsecondary/article.jsp?content=20071122_140406_7508&page=1

And here is a relevant sample:

“A 2002 report by the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada(AUCC), the universities’ lobby group, estimated that by 2011, as many as 40,000 new faculty will be needed due to growing demand for higher education and the retirement of the baby boomers. If the AUCC is right, then it will be the 1960s all over again: even if every Canadian Ph.D. holder enters academia, Canadian doctoral program graduates will be too few to meet the demand.

Others are skeptical. ‘Ph.D. students have been hearing that the market will open up for well over a decade now,” says Folkerth. And Archer notes that new academics still face fierce competition for jobs. “Because the job market was so tight in the late 1980s to the late 1990s, people really had to have exceptional CVs to get out and be successful, and that in itself led to a pattern where our Ph.D. students were really being pushed to be competitive with the best students globally.’”

The importance of publications and teaching experience really depends on the type of institution you apply to. Some undergrad focused schools are just looking for people who can teach certain classes, but at large research institutions, teaching becomes completely secondary, and the important qualification becomes publications in top tier peer-reviewed journals and the ability to attract research grants.

Also, the competition for academic positions has grown and changed over time. A couple decades ago, universities were more likely to pick teachers. Now, universities pick academics able to publish and compete for grant money.

I don’t know what the specific figures are for each discipline, but as the author says, in everything from physics, engineering, to political science and sociology, and english and philosophy, fewer PhD actually garner tenure-track academic positions. Some PhDs drop out before finishing, due to lack of funding and realization of the futility of getting a tenure track job, and find jobs in industry, research, or government, or go to law, med, or business school.

To answer your first question: Not as many as you think. Indeed a lot of people meet the requirement but have turned down offers due to better career prospects elsewhere. The second question to your answer is an excellent recommendation from people we know. I am sorry in stating this but the truth is referees we know are better than we don’t.

By the way, to the “highly motivated PhD graduates I who are scraping by on stipend jobs, are year-to-year on CLTA, or who are simply unemployed in their fields”, there are many job openings in Asia (particularly in China, Korea and Taiwan) where there is an ever growing demand for postsecondary education in English. I don’t believe it is an INSULTING assessment that our “highly motivated PhD graduates in Canada” are less adventurous than our American and Australian counterparts!

You state: “Objectively, what the academe looks for is someone who holds a PhD who will be able to offer courses the respective departments require.”

My first question: “How many people do you believe (if you’ve ever even counted) apply for each position that meet this minimum qualification?”

My second question: “What factors are used to determine who among these qualified candidates gets hired and who does not?”

I find your perspective, for a retired professor, to be bizarrely simplistic. We live in a competitive world. University level instruction (never mind research) is a highly coveted job. Of course it takes more than a newly minted PhD and a willingness to teach your 101 class to get hired. What it actually takes is being more (over) qualified than every other single person who applies for that same job.

Your suggestion is insulting to the very many highly motivated PhD graduates I know who are scraping by on stipend jobs, are year-to-year on CLTA, or who are simply unemployed in their fields. The situation may not be as dire as Carson suggests, but at least he made some attempt to grapple with its complexity.

1) Where exactly do I make the point you appear to be challenging?

2) you’re absolutely right, recruitment doesn’t just look at numbers of publications, but at a number of factors such as the one you identified. Again, not something I was discussing in this post.

I did make a comment about PhDs becoming stale. But, is it not true that if someone earns a PhD but doesn’t find a tenure track position right within, say, 5 years, that their attractiveness to recruiters fades, even just a bit?

However, the main point I was making was to question the AUCC’s predictions for the numbers of professors retiring. But interestingly, you don’t challenge this point, you’re just lobbing insults.

3) You can suggest I speak to someone who knows the ins and outs, and I can tell you I have interviewed dozens of people over the years on this topic, but I doubt you will believe me. So ad hominen it is!