Dr. Christopher Tudico, who in the spring received his doctorate in the history of education from the University of Pennsylvania, says he’s realistic about his chances as he launches a search for a tenure-track position.
“I think in all honesty there’s about a 50 percent chance that I get placed because there are so many applicants and not enough positions. It’s impossible for everybody to have a position,” he says. “I think I’m a very strong candidate, but it may not work out.”
It’s a tough time to want to be a professor or try to climb the faculty ranks, particularly for minority faculty, as Tudico, a Mexican-American, and others are finding.
The recession and its go-slow recovery have cut the number of job openings on faculties, as colleges and universities rebalance budgets to cope with cuts in state aid or declines in their investment portfolios. Many senior professors are staying put while they wait for retirement accounts to recover lost value. If they choose to retire, some are not being replaced — or not with another tenured professor.
The humanities and social sciences, where minorities except Asians are clustered, have been struck hardest by the jobs crunch. The latest reports from the national associations of eight academic disciplines show the drop in the numbers of teaching jobs advertised in those fields averages slightly more than 30 percent. The reductions range from 19 percent for economics to 39 percent for foreign languages.
“This is happening at the same time we’re working very hard to diversify the faculty,” says Dr. John Curtis, director of research and public policy for the American Association of University Professors. “It’s a real challenge to diversify the faculty ranks at a time we’re seeing the student body become more diverse. That’s definitely a problem.”
The decline in jobs threatens to reverse the hiring gains of minority faculty, who accounted for 17 percent of faculty positions in 2007, up from 13 percent in 1997, according to the American Council on Education’s 2010 Minorities in Higher Education report. That same study documents a growth in minority student enrollment, with students of color accounting for 30 percent of the student body.
