I'd like to hear some confirmation from insiders before I even begin to believe this. Cries of looming capacity crises have been heard before in the education sector, and tend to be nonsense. And academic positions in general are wildly, insanely, ridiculously competitive because of overproduction of new PhDs, with hundreds of applicants for every open position.
EDIT: Hmm, my alma mater Waterloo is looking to hire "up to ten tenure-track (assistant professor) or tenured (associate/full professor) faculty positions." That's out of (or in addition to?) 89 current faculty members. A larger number than I would have expected and as such some evidence for the proposition.
As a PhD student in CS who's seen other people go through the academic job market gauntlet in the last couple of years, this is news to me. My understanding from up close (disclaimer: but, still, secondhand) is that competition among faculty candidates is high, and extremely high at top schools.
Even looking through the report linked in this article, I'm confused about where they got this "factor of five" number. I suspect there's something odd going on with the accounting here. Universities tend to advertise faculty openings saying "we want to hire tons of people!" when they really mean "if tons of elite candidates want to come here, we will certainly hire them". However, there are necessarily not many elite candidates.
More broadly, what appears to be going on here is an illustration of the tension between faculty as researchers and the way they're hired, funded, and work. Tenure-track faculty candidates are still evaluated overwhelmingly based on research and funded in the same way (by research grants, many of which come from outside the university). Research funding is tight, so competition for these research grants is fierce. Accordingly, new faculty must be quite competitive as researchers to get hired, get grants, and get tenure. And as a result, there are not that many new faculty each year, though the number is ticking up. This is all pretty orthogonal to the problem of actually having enough people to teach undergrad CS.
It's as if you hired firefighters by requiring that a hired firefighter must be able to bench press 600 lbs and maintain that bench press ability for five years, and then you expressed surprise that you find it hard to hire enough firefighters who are actually good at...firefighting. There are plenty of good firefighters out there, but this quirk in the hiring and performance evaluation process means you're making it harder for yourself to find them.
IMO, we need more reasonably-paid adjuncts. Adjunct pay needs to stop being a place to cut costs to the bone. There are plenty of CS PhDs who are good but not spectacular researchers who would gladly take a pay cut from industry to be full-time lecturers. But you'll probably have to pay well (maybe even high five figures!) to get them.
The key phrase (IMHO being in this market myself) from your comment is "top schools." The market for CS faculty is vastly different at lower ranked schools than it is at higher ranked schools. I'm sure this is true in any field.
I disagree with you when you say we need more "reasonably paid adjuncts." Yes, adjuncts should be paid better, but what we really need is more reasonably paid full-time teaching faculty who do not have research responsibilities. Students appreciate full-time faculty who are fully committed to teaching them, although of course some adjuncts do a fantastic job as well.
You're right, I know much less about competitiveness at lower-ranked schools. I would expect that the funding situation also changes there? The refrain I have heard is that at lesser-known schools base packages may be better but outside funding and good research partners (e.g. colleagues or grad students or undergrads) become harder to find.
I think the wider point about decoupling research and teaching still stands, though. And even elite schools (Berkeley, Cornell, Stanford) have noted recent cases of having too many students even as they maintain extremely tough faculty standards.
I'm finishing my PhD this semester, and looking for a University teaching job (unfortunately, these are not tenure track), and the number of openings is staggering. For that matter, don't confuse a teaching-track job with an adjunct job. They are most definitely different. Also, teaching faculty aren't the 2nd class citizens that they may have been 10 years ago. Most teaching faculty are specialists not just in teaching but also in the most up-to-date info in the field itself.
It is a seller's market where I (the seller) get to be selective and universities (the buyers) are having to offer premiums (including sign-on bonuses... who would that thought that a teaching position could get a 5-figure sign-on bonus?!?) in order to attract top candidates. Many schools that I have interviewed at say that they are looking to hire multiple positions (both the tenured research-track, as well as the non-tenured teaching track).
Also, from personal knowledge, there are not hundreds of applicants for many of these positions. There may be several dozen, but I know of candidates who have applied to 40, 60, and even 100 jobs.
Combine this with the knowledge that many Comp Sci programs have doubled enrollment in the last 5 years, but have not had a corresponding doubling of faculty size, and the article's assertions make even more sense.
While my experience does not consitute a formal study, I can tell you that everwhere that I have interviewed has said the same thing: "This is a very good year to be looking for a CS, university job!"
Meaning that you will be able to apply for 200 open positions that never pan out, instead of just 100?
I tend to measure my ease in finding a new job by the brevity of the timespan between deciding to look and accepting an offer. Around here, that's usually 2-6 weeks. I don't usually apply to university positions, but for those I have attempted, I frequently see a delay of months between the time of application and their first attempt to put together an interview. None have ever been able to establish initial contact in less than 5 business days. Also, the postings frequently have bizarre requirements, such as requiring a masters in CS and 10 years of experience in C and Matlab, in order to write a glorified CRUD app that requires neither.
The teaching positions might be different, but I have personally never found any year to be a good one to be looking for a university job.
I only applied to 9 universities, all R1. After the rounds of interviews, I have received 3 offers so far, and am still waiting to hear back from the majority of the others. Each of the schools is hiring multiple positions, and I can only take one of the positions.
The timeframe is longer, of course, but I am beginning to look for those jobs while finishing my PhD (e.g., still employed at my previous job as a grad student). It's no secret that schools generally hire within the timeframe of the academic year. It's different from industry, though, because schools must hire early enough so that they can schedule classes and plan teaching loads, and that means that it must be early enough for students to be able to register at the end of the previous (spring) semester, but the job itself doesn't begin until the fall. That's the nature of the academic calendar.
As for speed of response, it has generally been quite quick, which is amazing given the committees that everything must go through. I have not had any experiences with bizarre requirements.
They are very very very different. You have the normal "applications close on / for full consideration submit materials before [month] [day]" thing. But if you submit your application on that day (or anyways, pretend you did) then the typical schedule was something like:
* phone interview the next week
* onsite between one week and one month from phone interview
* offer within a few days/weeks of onsite.
Actually, my teaching job process moved much faster than my industry job process.
Maybe at least in CS we need to move to a "rolling basis" style.
Are you coming from a top school? You're applying to R1 schools so I'm wondering if your anecdote, as an ideal candidate, falls outside the "normal" range of actual job search difficulty.
Well, that's why anecdotal evidence is not research. ;)
You are absolutely correct, though: I'm a strong candidate. But when I said that I knew people who were applying to 40, 60, and even 100 positions, those, too, are from top schools.
When I say that schools are only receiving dozens of applications (50-70), those are also top schools.
What I didn't say was that, due to my personal network, I also know of dozens of smaller schools (who aren't advertizing on the CRA job board, for example) who are desperate to find good applicants. I have been contacted by them, as have some of my collegues.
I also happen to know that many of the applicants are international, who are (presumably) looking for a ticket to the US, because they don't have any relevant experience. (Obviously, there are many good international applicants, too!)
My personal experience is that this is a good year to be looking for an academic job. The link just confirmed my personal experience.
While it's certainly not common, there are some school that offer tenure track positions for lectures. The University of Toronto is the only one that immediately comes to mind, but I know there are others.
I've been involved in hiring at a highly ranked small liberal arts college. We are hiring and are desperate for applicants. Every "peer" college we know is hiring, many with multiple open positions. Most of the data (e.g. [1], [2], [3]) we are looking at agrees with the article.
Just as a direct anecdotal comparison, in very recent years our school tried to hire in both math and CS. For math, there were nearly 200 applicants, most of which which were at least superficially qualified, and 30-40 of which were deemed "top contenders". These candidates were from top universities, with stellar track records, multiple awards, a few years of postdocs at great schools, multiple papers in top journals, and recommendations saying things like "best postdoc I have seen in 30 years". We are a good, well-known school, but this was still surprising to me. It certainly appears there are plenty of very strong math candidates and few math positions available.
For the CS position, there were fewer than 25 applicants total in the pool. Two thirds were effectively spam (e.g. foreign applicants only minimal English language skills, applicants who think we are a company or an R1 university with grad students). Half the remainder were people with degrees only tangentially related to CS and/or no formal training in CS, but who apparently can't get teaching jobs in their field. Of the four or so candidates left, most had multiple tenure-track offers on the table before we even had a chance to talk with them on the phone. Others dropped out before we could schedule an on-campus interview.
All our peer colleges are telling us they are seeing the same things.
So yes, I would completely buy the premise of the article.
CS, and engineering in general, have much better job prospects than other fields. As a result, fewer PhDs are fighting to get open academic positions.
Furthermore, I know many people in CS and engineering who have left a tenured professorship for a job in industry. That is exceedingly rare in many other academic fields, such as classics or literature.
So it is possible that there are more openings in certain fields than others. I'm inclined to agree with you that most fields are absurdly competitive and professorships are very difficult to come by.
I'm a phd student currently on the job market for more teaching-oriented (but sometimes still tenure-track) positions.
Outside of R1, the article actually understates the shortage. It's definitely a seller's market, and many of the buyers are viscerally panicked about failed searches.
Look at CS enrollments over time. This is a unique point in history. The phds graduating now went through undergrad at a historic lowpoint in enrollment (the 200x post-dotcom-all-the-jobs-are-going-to-India era) and are graduating into the single largest upswing in undergraduate enrollment in the history of the field.
How's the market look for MS holders with experience in industry? I've always had the yen to teach (enjoyed it in graduate school!), but the pay tends to be 1/2 what I make in industry, with similar benefits.
> How's the market look for MS holders with experience in industry?
If you like teaching and can deal with the cut in pay, you should seriously consider applying to lower-ranked colleges/universities that have teaching positions. You will get an offer, and you will make those places so happy!
> but the pay tends to be 1/2 what I make in industry, with similar benefits.
It's both far worse than that and far better than that, depending on the place.
1. Half is pretty good for lower-tier places. My prototypical offer was around 29% of my best industry offer in terms of raw amounts. Maybe close to half after counting up benefits and doing the CoL adjustment?
2. My best academic offer was about 50% of my best industry offer in terms of what typically goes into comp calculations in industry (salary/stock). But after cost of living adjustment and counting the value of the tuition (divided over a 30 year career and multiplied by the number of children I'd like), the academic position was within 20%. Which is pretty good. So make sure you're counting everything (including tuition remission) and accounting for cost of living (college towns are often dirt cheap compared to hub cities).
3. Oh, and make sure you know what "9 month salary" means. At some places you really can disappear all summer. At other places you need to work all summer even if not teaching; the salary is only nominally for 9 months.
My university's CS department resorted to having adjunct faculty or part time lecturers come in, and this was after dealing with not having enough of them with time to teach more than one or two section of a course. It was so incredibly bad with a lack of instructors and/or time they could spend on multiple sections that there would be waitlists for students to get into courses at least two times as full as the section allowed. This wasn't just a matter of elective type courses being incredibly popular, but quite literally even regular core requirements simply not having enough lecturers/professors.
does the huge number of phd increases show a symptom of the bar being too low to receive a phd, or the number of qualified candidates actually receiving the phd? Same question for the compsci degree.
I know a ton of people who have comp sci degrees, but, cant write my mysql query or write a block of code, or solve some rudimentary problems, or talk through problem solving questions like rational human beings.
Same goes for other faculties. Hell, I once hired a finance major with a business degree who couldn't handle doing the books for our startup.
Just because they are graduates, it doesn't make them candidates
Are you talking about CS undergrad degree holders or CS PhDs?
Some CS undergrads might have chosen CS without commensurating aptitudes and interest, and graduated without much skills. Same goes for other majors at the undergrad level. They are a mixed bag with great and inadequate graduates receiving the same degree.
Also, did you look at their undergrad performance (GPA, research papers, senior project)? They can be more indicative than the degree itself.
PhDs are a whole different ball game. At least they are usually good at problem solving. They might not know SQL off-hand (since they never needed to learn it) but give them a day or a couple of hours to learn, they should be able the master the basics pretty well.
The usual view of academics is that the Ph.D. is a research degree. One of the requirements is the ability to hold chalk and write on a blackboard. The other three qualifications are research, research, and research, especially as in getting a research grant from the NSF, etc. to pay the bills.
For doing research, skills writing MySQL queries, using MathLab, writing JavaScript with AJAX, etc. are rarely important. Uh, can't publish a paper in a peer-reviewed journal or get a research grant based on writing MySQL queries, even clever MySQL queries. Relational database WAS important as research for, say, E. Wong or E. Codd 30+ years ago.
Researchers quickly learn that they can't carry the library around between their ears. In particular, a Ph.D. holder in computer science, mathematics, physics, biology doesn't know everything in computer science, ....
Instead, the requirement for a Ph.D. is roughly (A) pass the qualifying exams and (B) show that can do some research. For (A), that might still be testing over quite a lot of material that was taught to undergraduate majors. For (B), a common requirement is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" where the usual requirements for publication are "new, correct, and significant".
Now a major theme in research in computer science is to build on, or even borrow and extend, sometimes even to apply, applied math that goes back nearly 70 years. So, as is common in a lot of research, the main tools and abilities are in applied math and, then, as has been said for theoretical physics, can do the physics (computer science) in the footnotes.
Net, it stands to be the case that some of the best researchers in computer science will be from pure/applied math and may never have written a SQL query or, for that matter, never taken a course in computer science.
How can this be the case? Did I mention that the main goals are research, research, and research? The high end universities are fairly solidly stuck on these three goals.
So, why should such researchers be teaching courses to undergraduates? Well, maybe they would be teaching some course "Applied Math for Computer Science 101" with some set theory, abstract algebra, deterministic optimization, probability theory, stochastic processes, and statistics.
More generally, the attitude is that a good researcher has done some impressive things, and, thus, the quality of the course content should be better than from "teaching faculty". In fact, commonly that is the case.
Or, the emphasis is not on tutorials on material 30+ years old, e.g., relational database, but on what is new, in theory and/or applications. And, computer science also wants to find what is fundamental in the field -- a darned ill defined goal super tough to reach. Well, the question of P versus NP looks "fundamental" so, whatever connection it has with practice so far, it has been heavily pursued, and a good solution is a Holy Grail problem for the field.
The belief is strong, although maybe rarely made clear in ugrad courses, that it is in the best interest of the grant funders, universities, professors, students, job seekers, computer applications, the computer industry, US standard of living, and civilization to concentrate on what is NEW, powerful, and valuable.
An example of this view is from a statement, at one time at the Web site of the Princeton math department: IIRC, "Students are expected to prepare for the qualifying exams on their own. No courses are given for preparation for the exams. Graduate courses are introductions to research given by experts in their fields." -- IIRC, from memory. Well, bluntly, as a special case, essentially everything a student might want to learn for an ordinary job NOW the graduate program is not interested in teaching!!!
So, really, if want to hire a Ph.D., then should not use as criteria what ugrad or self-taught computer programmers have learned and use, e.g., HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C++, Matlab, R, etc. And don't look at courses, credits, or grades. Grades? Commonly grades in graduate courses, those introductions to research, don't mean much. Indeed, at some Ph.D. programs, there is no coursework requirement. In such a course, a student is looking for a research direction. So, maybe in the course they see a research direction they like and maybe, likely, not. So be it.
So, instead, to evaluate a Ph.D. look at their research.
And why hire a Ph.D.? Because you want work that is NEW, as in so far no one has done it, and hopefully powerful and valuable for some goal the company has.
And why a Ph.D. for work that is new? Well, doing research is commonly just darned challenging, and essentially the only education for that is the Ph.D. degree. And, to be more clear, such research likely doesn't have much to do with lots of facility in writing SQL queries or teaching or even just making an A in an ugrad course in database.
To be more clear, it is assumed that if some good research has been done and is well written about on the shelves of the research libraries, then anyone at all good at research will be able, routinely, to teach themselves the material so quickly it never was clear they didn't know it. Indeed, in research, commonly it is necessary to review, and learn well enough, quite a lot of old material. So, bluntly, the learning of what is well presented on the shelves of the libraries is considered routine, not worth academic tenure or even a title of professor.
So, e.g., for MySQL and relational database, that subject has been written about voluminously at essentially every possible level from a secretary just starting with a computer using Microsoft's Access to generate a mailing list to the normal forms, locking and transactional ingtegrity, foreign keys, clustered keys, connection pools, backup of a live database, distributed database, and much more. No tenure or professor honors for knowing that stuff.
Precisely. The PhDs direct the research. They solve the (previously) unsolvable. If you want a deployable version of their research, you want a software developer, possibly specializing in research. If you want some python written, hire a regular software developer. A PhD is an entirely separate career path from a regular software developer.
1. The preference (note: not requirement) is quite explicit.
2. No one in CS (literally, even the upper echelon) has the applicant pool that provides them with the luxury of prioritizing on the basis of diversity.
"most computer science students transition directly from graduate school to an industry job, as opposed to a teaching position, because of the stark contrast in employment incentives and opportunities."
Or they leave for an industry job before grad school, because a Ph.D is not a money-making proposition compared with three to five years of experience while making a salary.
But the biggest problem is this: academics are afraid of anyone who hasn't demonstrated commitment to their system by earning a Ph.D, writing a thesis, and accepting terrible wages and living conditions for a number of years as junior or adjunct faculty. So the number of 50 year old software engineers who decide to semi-retire and take up an academic position is effectively zero.
> But the biggest problem is this: academics are afraid of anyone who hasn't demonstrated commitment to their system by earning a Ph.D, writing a thesis, and accepting terrible wages and living conditions for a number of years as junior or adjunct faculty. So the number of 50 year old software engineers who decide to semi-retire and take up an academic position is effectively zero.
A few thoughts:
1. Many schools who are willing to give up on the "traditional" job candidate profile are still have a very hard time hiring. I know this from many, many conversations with department and search committee chairs and lower-ranked places.
2. Hiring non-phds isn't always an option for higher-ranked (and especially mid-ranked) institutions. It'd be great if Google only used the data they collect in ways that enhance their users' experience. But it's unreasonable to expect an ad company to not use their data assets to sell ads. There's something analogous going on with hiring non-phd faculty to teach -- institutions involved in a rankings war should only care about maximizing educational outcomes, but we live in the real world and metrics do matter.
3. Most importantly, maybe these places are right to be skeptical! Engineering isn't teaching, and many of those who can do, cannot teach. I've seen a lot of situations where semi-retired industry folks don't take teaching seriously. The permeated anecdotes from industry are valuable, but not valuable enough to compensate for poorly structured courses or failing to explain tree rotations in an intelligible way. It doesn't help that teaching loads demand a 40 hour week, but teaching salaries only pay for 15-20 hours of even semi-retired engineering time.
I think "terrible" is overstated with respect to wages and living conditions in most cases. Yes, you can generally make a salary several times larger working outside of academia. However, faculty positions still generally pay reasonably well, especially when compared to those living in conditions of poverty.
I actually agree with parent's point here, but for a different reason.
Many of these teaching positions are in the range where you will be dependent on social security / medicare in order to retire. I consider that dependence effectively poverty in this country. Demographics, budget, and political climate all suggest to me that these two safety nets won't be available in 30 years.
When you're working from 18 or 21 onwards and saving, mid 5 figures over your whole life translates into a survivable retirement.
However, if you don't start saving for retirement until after graduate school (late 20s) and at that point start off at mid 5 figures with terrible benefits, little upward pressure on your salary, and lots of student loans, you're basically dependent upon the government for any retirement. Especially if you care to reproduce.
So, some of these teaching jobs really are poverty wages, given the opportunity cost of graduate school. The poverty comes at 65, but it does come.
What these places need to do is pay well and reduce course loads. But many of them cannot afford to do either.
(Oh BTW google's shooting you emails every week or two.)
> However, faculty positions still generally pay reasonably well, especially when compared to those living in conditions of poverty.
Not compared to the income one can make by ditching Academia and entering the workforce. The pay is terrible, full stop. Comparing it to poverty is a pretty bad idea as well.
Clearly academia doesn't want to pay for the talent, so they shouldn't be shocked when they can't get talent.
I'm not sure I understand why you're treating academia as separate from "the workforce."
> Comparing it to poverty is a pretty bad idea as well.
You're right, but I think there's a valuable point of comparison between poverty and jobs outside of academia. And while this is not true in all cases, I think it's fair to say that many academic jobs in CS can provide a comfortable living wage for a small family.
> Clearly academia doesn't want to pay for the talent
In many cases, they can't pay for the talent. At least not to what some companies are prepared to pay for the same people.
Having been in both, the conditions of academic jobs are so different than private sector that you really should consider it a different employment pool. "Workforce" is probably the wrong word. I generally break things down into public sector, academics, and private sector.
I'm not suggesting that be the baseline. But I think it's important to put things in perspective. I am pulling these numbers out of thin air, but suppose you're making $100K/yr as a faculty member vs $300K/yr in in industry. Although I made those numbers up, I don't think they're unreasonable. And yes, you generally take a huge potential pay cut to be an academic, but CS faculty are also generally paid good living wages.
As faculty you can still consult. Since you are faculty companies like you especially at a prestigious school. Professors make very good money if they play their cards right.
$100K would be a fully tenured professor at a good school, and some time under their belt. Even then, $100K is on the high end of the scale. There are exceptions that go significantly higher even without tenure, but the average with tenure is closer to $80K.
Assistant CS Professors are typically making $100k+ at good public schools. Plug "Assistant Professor Computer Science Austin" into a search engine for public employee salaries [1]. 110K seems to be the minimum for a non-tenured CS professor.
Here's some reference data. At U of Michigan, these professorial wages are typical in CS (and are publicly listed):
lecturer: $80K
assistant: $110K
associate: $110-130K
full: $150-190K
BTW, I see that the UofM CS dept. employs a lot more (3X?) lecturers in CS now than they did 15 years ago -- another sign of high demand/low supply for PhDs in academe.
Universities need to start incentivizing lower down the chain to pump up their graduate level programs.
The common understanding is that grad school is hell and this is quite systemic in that the environment pretty much becomes a form of hazing. This toxic "survivor" mentality persists and is further enforced and romanticized which each generation of graduates.
If you're the masochistic type you might as well hop into the startup game where the upside in financial / social / and prestige capital is much higher. Going to grad school and not surviving is a greater stain on your record than founding a company and failing.
If you're looking for something low risk and stable then grabbing an entry level engineer position wherever is a much more pleasant step and there are legitimate pathways to equally respectable positions, even in research, without going through the academic gauntlet.
Unfortunately, that mentality extends much farther than higher education.
Phrases like, "I had to go college juggling two shitty jobs, and I made it through. There is nothing keeping you from doing the same.", etc. are all-too-common in our culture.
How is that lifestyle ideal in any way? What personal benefit exists apart from bragging rights at the end?
How about, rather than passing on this masochistic life-path as status quo, we actually take some effort to make our society better?
"even in research"? I agree with everything but this last point. Research is almost exclusively dominated by doctoral graduates - it wouldn't be reasonable to expect to land in a research position without a graduate degree.
I don't believe it's that absolute. Senior enough engineers do have opportunities to transfer themselves onto research teams particularly if there's an intent of it being applied and there are papers and patents coming from the less research-dedicated side of things.
I do agree that the first name is almost always a PhD but that's also more of a systemic prejudice against those without the diploma than an actual indication of capability or dedication.
In an important sense, getting a Ph.D. is fast and easy. Basically there are just two steps: (1) Take and pass the qualifying exams. (2) Submit some research that is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and where the criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant".
For nearly everyone who enters a STEM field graduate program, both (A) and (B) are challenging.
A Ph.D. is a research degree. Usually the research part is the most difficult part. Research is difficult enough with good help at a good graduate program that is trying to teach, say, via research level courses, seminars, examples, advice, how to do research. Trying to be good at research without that help is still more difficult.
In D. Knuth's The TeXBook on his mathematical typesetting system TeX is
"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught examsmanship, then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's told to do something original."
So, right, this little statement is dripping with emotional tension of the poor student having long, say, from kindergarten, done really well, say, straight As, at what their parents, teachers, and fellow students highly respected and, then, suddenly being asked, under high threat of failure, the first in their academic life, possibly an emotionally catastrophic failure, to do something that is to them, and most people, quite different from anything they or their parents, teachers, or fellow students did, saw, or understood since kindergarten.
In that sense, a better student was the one who, say, in plane geometry in high school, loved the material, slept in class, finished the text in the first few weeks of the course, fathomed everything on geometry in the school library before Thanksgiving, thought that the teacher was an idiot or at least largely ignorant of geometry, started on topology, looked at the work of A. Gleason at Harvard, noticed the Hilbert problem Gleason solved, quickly taught himself some group theory to understand what Gleason was saying about symmetry in geometry, saw exterior algebra, and then rushed into calculus to have enough to understand the inverse and implicit function theorems, differential geometry, and the role there of exterior algebra, .... Did I mention, in high school geometry class, he usually had his head down asleep? Actually with a little guidance and encouragement, all that is quite feasible.
Maybe there is no royal road to math. But in a STEM field at a high end university, there is a royal road, at least a red carpet, to a Ph.D.: Do some good RESEARCH. If there is any doubt about the quality, then submit it for publication at a good journal. Do that and usually will get treated with high respect.
For the OP, I can believe that there are five open computer science professor job slots at research universities for each NSF, DARPA, etc. research grant funded by Congress. So, the bottleneck is not really the number of students but the number of research grants. So address all complaints to Congress.
The role of the grants? Bluntly a tenured prof is not an expense to a university but a great customer. The professor gets research grants, and usually ballpark 60% of the grant goes to the university as "overhead" and the rest goes to cover the professor's salary, research equipment, travel expenses, graduate student support, etc. So, really the prof is working for the NSF, not the university.
So, such a prof is something like a free agent in professional sports: E.g., if Lebron joins a team and helps them get an NBA title, then the ticket sales, TV rights, etc. for the team will more than pay for Lebron's salary. Really, then, Lebron is an independent businessman. Similarly for a tenured full professor of research in computer science.
So, if a person in computing is to be an independent businessman, then maybe instead of a professor slot they should do a startup. I came to that conclusion.
It's not a 'crisis.' That's absolutely absurd. Just like there is no 'crisis' for finding good engineers. These are simply made up ideas by industries not willing to pay market rates. Yes, there's a 'crisis' if you're underpaying by a factor of 2-3x. There is no crisis, just a bunch of cheap executives unwilling to pay what it takes for talent, as always.
It _is_ a crisis if there are not enough faculty to handle the number of students. The solutions are simple (admit fewer students or hire more faculty) but not easy (students could go somewhere else so as to be admitted to their preferred major; it might be difficult to hire faculty at current pay rates).
Obviously compensation is an issue but an experienced engineer has a very little incentive to find letters of recommendation, personal statement and wait for really long hiring cycles and horrendous ATS. The position ultimately puts a ceiling in career progression as well because they might not have a Phd and may never be considered qualified for a Managerial Position later on either.
> The position ultimately puts a ceiling in career progression as well because they might not have a Phd
In what way? I've worked in a few industry research labs (Bay Area and elsewhere), and while they are mostly staffed with Computer Science PhDs, there are always some folks without. As long as you can produce most shops don't seem to care about the degree.
If we're talking about university faculty, I would hope that they would all have a PhD! The problem is likely that these are not tenure track positions and that means low pay, low job security, and possibly no ability to direct research and have grad students.
Worse, even if they were tenure positions, the compensation is still out of line with industry. Mind you, there will be a subset of people that will be fine with that as long as they have the ability to do research.
> If we're talking about university faculty, I would hope that they would all have a PhD!
Having a PhD does not make you a good teacher (which is what this capacity problem is about (it's about a lack of teaching capacity for undergraduates)). There are many good adjunct faculty, instructors, and gasp, yes, even assistant professors with just a masters degree teaching undergraduate college level computer science at institutions like community colleges, teaching oriented 4-year colleges, and universities with an open mind. I know because I am one of them and I know several others. It is rather rare, and sure you wouldn't hire us to be research faculty, but excluding people who lack a research credential (PhD), but who have a proven track record of successful teaching (perhaps through starting as an adjunct) from teaching is very ivory tower...
The idea is that you want the people on the leading edge teaching, otherwise you'll end up with the same problem that colleges have where faculty may be good at teaching, but don't update their knowledge and track state of the art.
I'm not at all against colleges and trade schools, they have their place, but I don't agree that we should turn our universities into into them. It's perfectly fine to have a separation. Traditionally colleges and trade schools have been focused on training a workforce, and universities have been places to go to get a broader, but not necessarily trade focused education.
There are many other complaints about university education that essentially boil down to people wishing they were trade schools. E.g. why don't they teach popular industry language X? Why don't they teach unit testing, agile programming, etc?
Without having research faculty doing the teaching, I think you lose what traditionally has been the strength of a university education: teachers with state of the art knowledge teaching people to push the boundaries of how they think.
It’s not an either/or. Great universities can have both teaching focused faculty and research focused faculty. Also the vast majority of undergraduates are taking basic fundamentals courses - not courses that involve “leading edge” research. University or college this thread is about the crunch teaching undergraduates, not research focused grad students.
Also what you will find the is in research focused universities, the "leading edge" researchers you cite teach very few classes. Many of them teach no classes or one or two a year. Hence the problem that this thread began with regarding load. The fact is these classes are being taught by graduate students or adjuncts when the student population would be better served by full time teaching-focused faculty.
That's not accurate — it varies from institution to institution. Most universities hire both teaching faculty and research faculty. Some universities title the teaching faculty "lecturers" or "instructors" instead of "professors." However sometimes they also receive "professor" titles. Tenure is an antiquated system, and the concern around titles is elitist. However, those are discussions for another time.
ABET - the primary accreditor of engineering and technology programs generally suggests only a Masters level degree as a requirement for teaching Bachelors level students, although they encourage more. They also encourage industry experience.
>The program must demonstrate that the faculty members are of sufficient number and they have the competencies to cover all of the curricular areas of the program. There must be sufficient faculty to accommodate adequate levels of student-faculty interaction, student advising and counseling, university service activities, professional development, and interactions with industrial and professional practitioners, as well as employers of students.
>The program faculty must have appropriate qualifications and must have and demonstrate sufficient authority to ensure the proper guidance of the program and to develop and implement processes for the evaluation, assessment, and continuing improvement of the program. The overall competence of the faculty may be judged by such factors as education, diversity of backgrounds, engineering experience, teaching effectiveness and experience, ability to communicate, enthusiasm for developing more effective programs, level of scholarship, participation in professional societies, and licensure as Professional Engineers.
to the point mentioned somewhere else about outcomes vs. optics: some of the academic beauty pageant rankings beloved of university marketers do include nominal instructor qualifications (faculty status of instructors, fraction of faculty with phds, etc.) as metrics.
As a TA at Stanford currently, I have heard this from numerous professors and can confirm there is a serious lack of candidates. I have sat in on lecturer "auditions" and even the amount of people that come to interview are low, let alone those with the necessary skills. It sounds wild but really is the case that we lack faculty. The number of students far outweighs those with the credentials and ability to teach the material.
Stanford has made $billions from IP developed by students and faculty, such as Google and others that followed, but it is unwilling to spend some of it to pay for faculty to attract the next generation of students. The school is eating its seed corn.
lack of security of employment makes teaching at low pay unattractive compared to industry at high pay. look at this posting [0]. nowhere does it say that this ladder is ever eligible for tenure, unlike (say) berkeley's lecturer SOE position.
"The Department of Computer Science at Stanford University invites applications for an educationally-focused faculty position. The responsibilities of the Assistant Professor of Computer Science Education will include: teaching classes (typically three or four courses, depending on class size, during the three quarters of the regular academic year), working to develop CS undergraduate curriculum, and involvement in the broader CS education community (e.g., research and/or leadership in CS education). The appointment has an initial term of three years with the possibility of reappointment of an additional three years. This position is eligible for promotion into the non-tenure (Teaching) faculty line. After completion of the five-year term as Associate Professor (Teaching), the candidate will be considered for promotion to Professor (Teaching). Experienced candidates with an already established reputation and national visibility in computer science education may apply for a senior appointment (Associate or Full Professor (Teaching)), commensurate with level of experience. Appointments at the level of Associate or Full Professor (Teaching) may be for a continuing term."
Look at the cost of a local home suitable for a family. Let's say it is on 0.3 acre, has 2500 square feet, and has 4 bedrooms. It is within a 20-minute commute. Consider the mortgage payment on a 30-year loan with a down payment of $40,000.
No, you can't assume there is a second income.
After paying taxes and that mortgage payment, what would the person have left? I hope it is something like $80,000 per year. I fear it may be negative. Conventional loans require that the loan payment not exceed 28% of gross income.
Perhaps. I will say a lecturer positions pays well, but not well enough for many. Its a problem in the valley for sure, though I'd argue its not the biggest issue by far. We have a small number of people apply (relative to the number we would want) but quality is still a huge problem despite qualifications.
I acknowledge your experience, but I have to wonder how much of this is caused by setting a very high bar in the preliminary selection stages.
The number of people who can do Stanford-level research in computer science is probably pretty low. But the number of people who could teach first- and second-year computer science courses, even to Stanford standards, could be much higher.
The positions in question were actually lecturer, not professor, positions. We have former TA's currently going through the process right after graduating undergrad even. Even then, with minimal experience "required", its a hard problem.
I'm normally not a fan of adjunct positions, but I wonder if they make sense for certain fields. Some of my best CS courses were taught by adjuncts who were able to relate the subject material to concrete examples.
Not that traditional academia isn't valuable—we still need to provide the right environment to nurture the facets of our industry that don't have an immediate financial connection. But I do think that adjuncts, in the right circumstances, can help to address any shortage, while also improving our field as a whole.
Of course, the danger is that adjunct positions will be seen by leadership as a cost-saving measure only. Screw that.
Hiring more Adjuncts is not the solution. Having good teachers is, though. Sometimes an adjunct is a good teacher, and when a university finds someone willing to be an amazing teacher for such abysmally low wages, then they hire that person.
For perspective: I used to work at Walmart as a cashier and then a Customer Service Manager. 15 years later, I'm finishing my PhD in CS. Let's just say that my mental capacity far exceeded the requirements of the job. Walmart, however, was not willing to pay me more, though, just because I was smart, because there were others that were willing to do the job for that amount of pay.
You are right in that many see adjuncts as a way to save money. The only way to combat that, then, is for no good teachers to take a position as adjunct.
Thankfully, many Universities have recognized this problem with adjuncts (and some are even embarrassed by their part in it), and have begun to move away from the Adjunct model, except in cases of emergency, and even then for only a limited time (e.g., one semester or academic year).
The most important thing for a university (from their perspective) is to have good researchers. The most important thing for students (from their perspective) is to have good teachers. Sometimes these two overlap in a single professor, but often not. Should a teacher be paid less than a researcher? Universities historically have thought so, which is why they have paid teachers so little. I don't know what it will take to change the tide, but I'm really, really positive that the solution is not for more people to become adjuncts.
> I don't know what it will take to change the tide...
If student tuition revenue vastly outweighs research grant funding revenue, then the students as an aggregate have the leverage to demand the change to better teaching outcomes through re-allocation of their high tuition costs to better teaching compensation. As for whether or not students in aggregate can sufficiently organize and pursue such a demand however, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Considering current revenue split [1], I don't see that leverage emerging anytime soon. Furthermore, much of what currently passes for "good teaching" evaluations in the short-term (a few years) gets compressed down to the signaling function yielded by a university diploma, or gamified teaching staff popularity rankings. No real substitute solution than putting in the grind over a long period of time to embed quality into the system through lots of changes small and large, but donors don't like to hear that message.
I think adjuncts only work when there are people that have a well-paying full-time job, but who would also have to teach part-time. Their motivations could include earning a bit of supplemental income, furthering their own skills (teaching is a great way to learn), making connections with students (perhaps their day-job employer allows them to teach in place of some of their normal responsibilities)...
Adjuncts don't work, IMHO, when the faculty is hoping to use the position as their sole source of income.
The only CS professors I had that were worth paying attention to were the middle-aged guys that semi-retired after 20 years in industry. They knew real things, had solved real problems, and had lessons to teach.
The pure CS academic pipeline types were complete space cases. Just out in la la land all the time.
I would love to apply for a CompSci position at a university, but I left college for a high paying engineering role during my freshmen year and the opportunity cost of getting a Ph.D. at this point is very high. I don't think 30 college credits is going to get me very far in academia.
I was relieved to see this line: "He goes on to point out that most computer science students transition directly from graduate school to an industry job, as opposed to a teaching position, because of the stark contrast in employment incentives and opportunities."
Ok, good, we don't have to have the discussion about why it makes no sense to discuss a shortage without discussing pay, career stability, and working conditions.
One possible suggestion - why not start hiring people with academic MS degrees? I know this is an anathema in many academic circles, but I really do think that the PhD + post doc has become "normal" mainly because of a saturated academic job market. Law professors often have 3 year JDs. Are they dumber than PhD professors? There's no reason you can't grow into a research job as you do it. There's no reason you have to be an underpaid postdoc prior to become a paid member of a tenure track series.
Here's an idea - leverage the concept of a librarian series. Librarians are often considered faculty, with a masters degree, who can have primary investigator status under many conditions, tenure, sabbaticals. If the problem is getting enough educators, why not hire the MS in CS or related fields to mainly teach with enough autonomy to engage in research. Keep in mind, we'd still be requiring an academic MS with thesis.
I'm skeptical of this "factor of 5" claim, but if things really are as bad as they seem, then that's good! Maybe we can start requiring the credentials that are actually required, rather than credentials that are part of an arms race in an excessively crowded and saturated field.
That’s like the Cleveland Browns saying “Looking for a quarterback. Must have won 3 Super Bowls and have a career passer rating of at least 85.0. Must be willing to sign for a maximum salary of $10 million per year.” And then complaining that they have no candidates applying.
If we want to increase capacity, the openings have to be for full-time tenure track professors. Else the number is meaningless. Perhaps stop paying the basketball coaches so much.
I'm a PhD student in CS at Caltech. Last year we had 600 applications, interviewed ten candidates, and made exactly one offer. I shared this on Facebook and all my profs started making fun of it.
This is probably only true because companies will hire top faculty in their companies. And the universities can’t compete with real money and stock options .
One problem I have noticed in the field is that many existing professors are operating at a reduced capacity because of the incentives to work in industry (consulting etc) and do startups. Many end-up taking many less phd students than they could otherwise because of this. What the article mentions sounds like a problem that will fix itself.
We just asked you to please comment civilly and substantively, and we ban accounts that won't. Deliberately inflammatory one-liners with no substance (trolling) is not what this site is for.
EDIT: Hmm, my alma mater Waterloo is looking to hire "up to ten tenure-track (assistant professor) or tenured (associate/full professor) faculty positions." That's out of (or in addition to?) 89 current faculty members. A larger number than I would have expected and as such some evidence for the proposition.
https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/about/open-positions/faculty-positio...