Abstract
Various studies acknowledge the uncertainty many doctoral graduates face when beginning their search for full-time employment within the academic sector. Recent graduates face a job market where the likelihood of obtaining full-time permanent positions in academia is perceived to be declining, and the mobility of graduates within the sector is unclear. Drawing on Statistics Canada’s 2013 National Graduates Survey, this paper assesses whether graduates who pursued a doctoral degree to become a full-time professor achieved their goal within three years of graduation. The results suggest that although a large portion of doctoral graduates pursued their degrees to become full-time professors, relatively few reported obtaining such positions within three years of graduation, regardless of field of study.
Résumé
Plusieurs études attestent de l’incertitude que doivent affronter les titulaires d’un doctorat quand ils entament leurs recherches pour un poste à temps plein dans le secteur universitaire. En effet, les récents diplômés font face à un marché de l’emploi où on plein dans le secteur académique s’amenuisent, et où la mobilité professionnelle des titulaires d’un doctorat de ce secteur demeure floue. À partir des données de l’Enquête nationale auprès des diplômés 2013 de Statistique Canada, cet article examine la propension des titulaires d’un doctorat souhaitant devenir professeurs à temps plein à réaliser leur objectif sur une période de trois ans après leur collation des grades. Indépendamment du domaine d’étude, les résultats démontrent que, bien qu’une grande proportion de titulaires d’un doctorat aspire à devenir professeurs à temps plein, peu d’entre eux rapportent avoir obtenu de tels postes trois ans après leur remise de diplôme. perçoit que les chances d’obtenir un poste permanent à temps
In the national conversation about career opportunities for Ph.D. candidates, we hear a lot of dialogue about faculty
resistance and solutions for how faculty members can become more supportive of students considering wider career options. What we don’t hear as much about is student resistance to career exploration. I recently met with a student who told me he had no intention of considering anything but faculty jobs. He told me it was a waste of his time to take on any work during his program that was not teaching or research, since he was going to be a professor.
I have a PhD in the Humanities and I'm employed.
Gainfully employed, in fact - in every sense of the word, for myself, my employer, my communitym and those I work on behalf of. And I' no employed as a professor, thought I confess that's what I wanted todo when I started my graduate work, and I;ve swum in academic waters since earning my doctorate.
Over the past twenty years the recruitment of international students has become a key priority for many Canadian PSE institutions. Major schools have produced multi-year plans to help make themselves more international, and these plans often give priority to increasing the proportion of international students studying on their campuses. Major figures in higher ed have also warned that the recruitment of international students and the charging of higher tuition fees to this cohort can result in ethical concerns, and have called for enhanced federal guidelines to govern the enrolment of non-Canadian students in Canadian institutions.
Professional capital has a fundamental con-nection to transforming teaching every day, and we’ve seen many examples of this at work in schools and school systems around the world. Here, we explore the powerful idea of capital and articulate its importance for professional work, professional capacity, and professional effectiveness. Systems that invest in professional capital recognize that education spending is an investment in developing human capital from early childhood to adulthood, leading to rewards of economic productivity and social cohesion in the next gen-eration (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).
Professional capital requires attention not only to po-litical and societal investments in education but also to leadership actions and educator needs, contributions, and career stages.
Gender disparities appear to be decreasing in academia according to a number of metrics, such as grant funding, hiring,
acceptance at scholarly journals, and productivity, and it might be tempting to think that gender inequity will soon be a problem of the past. However, a large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities reveals a number of understated and persistent ways in which gender inequities remain. For instance, even where raw publication counts seem to be equal between genders, close inspection reveals that, in certain fields, men predominate in the prestigious first and last author positions. Moreover, women are significantly underrepresented as authors of single-authored papers. Academics should be aware of the subtle ways that gender disparities can occur in scholarly authorship.
The decade since 2004 has brought profound reexamination of the role and results of developmental programs in community and technical colleges around the country. Pushed by the emerging student success and completion agenda, colleges have dealt with intense scrutiny and a demand for the redesign of these programs.
Trust Matters: Distinction and Diversity in Undergraduate Science Education
At times, it can seem as if the march of technology in higher education is unstoppable. But using a laptop in class can significantly damage students’ academic performance, a study warns.
The paper, based on an analysis of the grades of about 5,600 students at a private US liberal arts college, found that using a laptop appeared to harm the grades of male and low-performing students most significantly.
The two US academics who conducted the research found that students who used laptops, typically in “laptop required” or “laptop optional” classes, scored between 0.27 and 0.38-grade points lower on a four-point grade point average scale than those who took notes using pen and paper.
The first “teaching machine” was invented nearly a century ago by Sydney Pressey, a psychologist at Ohio University, out of spare typewriter parts. The device was simple, presenting the user with a multiple-choice question and a set of answers. In “teach mode,” the machine would advance to the next question only once the user chose the correct answer. Pressey declared that his invention marked the beginning of “the industrial revolution in education”—but despite his grand claims, the teaching machine failed to gain much attention, and soon faded into obscurity.
Women are much less likely to be reappointed as faculty deans than men, says a new study of hiring at Canadian
universities.
While recruitment of new deans at Canadian universities largely reflects the overall gender balance of its academic sector, a University of Toronto researcher has found that women were far less likely to be reappointed once their five-year office had concluded.
Analysing almost 300 appointment and reappointment announcements from the Canadian publication University Affairs between 2011 and 2016, Eric Lavigne, a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, found that 58 per cent of appointments for dean positions went to men and 42 per cent were awarded to women.
Five principles of deliberate practice can help teachers consistently improve their teaching.
Ten years ago, I taught a literature unit on the Vietnam era. We read T.C. Boyle’s Drop City and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and I invited my colleague Bob to speak to my class. He brought his guitar and sang a song he’d written about serving in the Army. Then he looked at my students and said, "I’ve been asked to talk about my experiences in Vietnam maybe six times in my life. You’re the seventh." And he held us spellbound for an hour.
It happens nearly every semester: I get a paper so bad I don't know how to grade it. I'm not talking about a late paper, or one that's been plagiarized, or is too short or off topic. No, I’m referring to a species of essay that checks all of the superficial boxes but is so poorly written, so shoddily done, that it seems to demand a special response.
It’s actually hard for students to get a bad grade on a piece of writing in my courses. I do in-class workshops on topic choice, thesis construction, rough drafts, and revision. Students have many opportunities to find out that their essay is on the wrong track, and fix the problem. It’s almost impossible for them to leave the writing to the last minute. But there's always one ...
I have written this Guidebook to assist users interested in creating a campus that will be more global in its mission, programs, and people. My approach is to focus on the views and contributions of the people who are engaged in higher education. Thus it has a “person” emphasis rather than a structural or policy point of view. I do this since I think that the goals, aspirations, and achievements of those working and studying on campus is the critical factor in creating a campus with a global perspective. (Campus is to be broadly defined to include both “in-place” multiple sites and virtual.)
“Stereotype threat” is a well-known social psychological construct in which people live down or up to the expectations others have of them based their gender, race, age, or other such characteristics. As professors we are careful — or we should be — not to translate our personal beliefs about students’ capabilities into our expectations of how they will perform academically, but we rarely think about how students’ expectations of us affect our performance.
In particular, faculty who are women and/or members of racial minority groups run the risk of becoming stereotype threatened: feeling anxiety about whether they will either confirm or disprove students’ stereotypical beliefs.
If you don’t think students — or all people — have ideas about what a professor looks and sounds like, try this exercise: Ask a few people who don’t know you’re an academic to describe the “average” professor. Undoubtedly they will paint a picture of an older white male who may or may not be wearing a tweed jacket.
There has been rapid growth in value-added assessment of teachers to meet the widely supported identifying the most effective and the most ineffective teachers in a school system. The former group is to be r epwoalircdye gdo walh oilfe the lpartotbelre mgrso.u Cph iise tf oa mbeo nhge ltpheedm o ris f tirheed c foomr mthoenilry pfooourn dp ecrlfaosrsm-taon-cclea.s sB uatn,d v yaeluaer--taod-dyeeadr a upnprreolaiachbeilsi ttyo i nte tahceh escr oerveasl uoabttiaoinn ehda.v Tee macahneyr fvraolume -caladsdse tdo s ccloarsess a acpropsesa rt wtoo baed jhaicgehnlty yuenasrtsa.ble across two classes of the same subject that they teach in the same semester, or
Among the many tasks associated with my position as a professor, one is to talk to my students about their future plans. What kind of job would they like to find? What career have they decided to pursue?
Not so long ago, I was heartened by knowing that a few of my students liked the idea of becoming a professor, of doing the same job that I do. Something about their college experience had gotten them hooked on the idea of pursuing a future in the ivory tower. What could be more flattering than students coming to me for advice about how they could do what I do for a living?
We often hear that peer review is an excellent opportunity for reciprocal student learning. In theory, this makes sense. Since an instructor can only dedicate a certain amount of attention to each student, peer review allows students to receive more feedback and engage more frequently in the content they are learning. Research shows this benefits both the students who receive and provide feedback.
Even if the adjunct movement for better working conditions succeeds, most adjuncts will lose. That’s one bold claim
of a recent paper on the costs associated with a number of the movement’s goals, such as better pay and benefits.
While activists and scholars have been quick to criticize what they call the paper’s inherently flawed logic, the
study’s authors say it is a first step in a more critical dialogue on the adjunct “dilemma.”