Academics Find Lack of Professional Security

With a narrower range of job possibilities throughout the country, graduate and post graduate students are discovering that a Columbia degree or teaching position at the University does not guarantee as much professional security as it once did.

Though some institutions have put hiring freezes into effect, the University is utilizing less extreme money-saving methods for the time being. The Arts and Sciences division, which houses Columbia College, has implemented a hiring review board, and has deferred some faculty searches.

“We’re not feeling it now at Columbia the same way our colleagues [at public universities] are,” Nicole Wallack, acting director of the Undergraduate Writing Program, said.

The UWP still employs only Columbia graduate students to instruct the first-year University Writing course, and instructors are able to use their compensation to pay off their student bills.

A steady salary is not the only reward of holding this position.
“In this current market, to have this as one of things you are able to teach is a plus,” Wallack said. She expressed her belief that having this credential on a resume can boost a graduate student’s desirability as a candidate for a job.

At the same time, the UWP’s policy is not a good representation of the climate of the professional world, even on campus, outside of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Geoffrey MacAdam, a post graduate in the French Department and a Literature Humanities instructor, had to terminate his two-year contract with the Core Curriculum to take a job in financial consulting.

“Occasionally people could hang around for another year, but what was made clear to me was that I couldn’t.” MacAdam said, recalling that there used to be more elasticity in Core instructor’s contracts. MacAdam added that in a different economic situation, he may have been “a little bit more willing to roll with the dice,” but certain safety nets—such as adjunct professorships or teaching assistant positions—are no longer as common.

For graduate students and post graduates going through what are now secure job searches, this tapering scope means that teaching is going to change, postulated MacAdam, adding that, “folks [post graduate teachers] like me probably aren’t going to be around too much.”

“Now, even for Ph.D.’s who are very open to doing something outside the academy, finding a non-academic job is not a given,” Richard Kurz and Jennifer Furlong, director and associate director, respectively, of Graduate Student Career Developmentin Columbia’s Center for Career Education—wrote in an e-mail. “It is hard to say whether the current situations in universities and colleges will make fewer people consider academic careers.”

Kurz and Furlong reiterated, though, that the economic downturn is not likely to radically affect the way in which graduate students and postdoctoral fellows go about looking for tenure-track faculty positions.

As for the future of the UWP’s unique graduate student employment program, the current economic state is no predictor. “We have no idea about what the future of that [graduate student employment] will be,” Wallack said.

And, for post graduates like MacAdam who cannot realize aspirations of continuing their academic careers now, the future is just as vague. Down the line, in a stronger economy, MacAdam admitted he would be open to teaching as an adjunct professor.

“Once you walk out that door, though, it’s hard to come back,” MacAdam said.

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