*Concerns of Young Mathematicians* Volume 2 Issue 19 May 18, 1994 An electronically distributed digest for discussions of the issues of concern to mathematicians at the beginning of their careers. PLEASE FORWARD TO ANY POTENTIALLY INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS Please, direct submissions and questions to Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu , editor for the month of October. Next issue: Wednesday, May 25 Editor for May: Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Editor for June: Frank Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu To subscribe: Send mail to Charles Yeomans at cyeomans@s.ms.uky.edu Back issues and other information are available via anonymous FTP to ftp.ms.uky.edu, in pub3/mailing.lists/ymn-list. Table of Contents Item # Title ------ ----- 1 Editor's notes 2 Mark Winstead: Employable Fields 3 Greg Gibson: Comments on the Job Market 4 Frank Arlinghaus: Ethics for Job Candidates 5 Vincent Blondel: Comments on the job search 6 Curtis Bennett: Job Survey 7 Barbara Nostrand: Comments on the Job Search 8 Closing Credits ___________________________________________________________________ Item #1 Editor's notes: With the end of the job search cycle coming around, we seem to be getting some of the submissions that one of my senior colleagues once termed "whiny". Some of these postings ask questions that we would all do well to think about answers to. In particular, as long as the job market stinks, how can we update the process by which both employers and potential employees inform each other of offers accepted. Earlier in the year, one of the editors sent out a request to departments to alert the YMN about where they were in the job search. To my knowledge, the response we received to this was minimal. Perhaps, however, through e-math, the AMS could be a little more successful. In an ideal world, all employers and all job seekers would take the time and energy to alert each other whenever they had offers accepted. Unfortunately, as several of this week's postings will show, this is not the case. I am happy to report that we have at least one additional successful NSF postdoc proposal file in the archive. At least one of our subscribers was successful in his hunt for a postdoc, and he sent in the file. Are there any more of you out there? I am also reposting the survey that I asked last time. So far the response has been pretty good, but in the event that you missed the survey last week, you have another chance. Curtis Bennett Bowling Green State University cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #2 Mark Winstead: Employable Fields Last week I posted some questions about employable fields. I also asked for individuals report cards on their fields, reported by MR classification numbers. Here is a sample of what has been sent to me so far. Summary thus far 05, Adequate. 20 seemingly poor 54 very poor 55 seemingly poor I heard that a student of Igusa that had solved the Igusa conjecture had been one year unemployed. That would mean that algebraic geometry and number theory are also areas not much in demand. You have also the problem of convincing employers that you are going to include students in your research, which is difficult. My area is a. g. and when I was in the market a few years ago, some people told me that my area was too difficult for the students - they were talking about graduate students. Good luck. -Pablo Lejarraga Speaking as a graduate student, and especially someone who happens to be interested in algebraic topology, I think that grad schools should try to keep their students informed about what fields are more "employable", while not totally discouraging them from studying those that are not. Given a clear picture of how things stand would probably do a lot to make a person consider twice about making sure his/her skills are marketable. This applies too to undergraduate students when they are considering whether to go on to grad schools in math at all. Math is a beautiful subject, but we also need to make a living, right? How does one find the balance? This is probably a question to ask the rest of the readers of CoYM. [paragraph deleted] How do grad students (American citizens) who are studying overseas, keep on top of things that are happening in the US? I mean, for example, how can I get to know what research areas are "popular", or "employable" in the US? I even had trouble convincing schools that I am not a foreign student, just an American student who is living overseas. I will apply to finish the Ph. D. in a school in States later this summer. (I am registered as a Masters student here.) But there's all this to sort out before then! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Sincerely, Chia Stockwell Submitted by Mark Winstead. Send me further comments at winstead@math.ucsd.edu _______________________________________________________________ Item #3 Greg Gibson Comments on the Job Market Conversations with former graduates seem to indicate other job markets are also drying up. I know an actuary who says they get many applications for jobs, that they don't have, where he works. Ditto for places like the NSA. Overall the situation seems to be worsening. This year was much worse than last year at North Carolina State Univ. where I am. Last year only 1 graduate took until the end of May to find a job. All ultimately got tenure track positions, mostly at small local colleges. This year out of 5 one has a tenure track, one has a 3yr temp position, and 3 of us are still looking. The same is true for people with master's degrees. We have several graduates who taught here for 1 yr after graduating who are now unemployed. In general, the trend seems to be sharply downward. On another note, I talked to someone I know who's working on a PhD in sociology yesterday at the gym. He's planning on graduating next year. He was told the same thing we were. Many people are retiring, etc, etc, there will be plenty of jobs. Now the professional society is saying that many positions are being closed out when someone dies or retires. Their outlook is as bad as ours. I've found that faculty in my department are not very up to date in giving career advice to graduates. Particularly on job hunting. They may relate something someone did several years ago, but times have changed. It's frustrating to go to people and talk about the job market and whether it was a good idea for me to get a math degree economically(many student loans) and have them pull out the same tired old things. "Well you could always become an actuary or apply to the NSA." As I've pointed out above both routes now appear to be overflowing with applicants as well. Same for community colleges. These people are out of touch and don't seem to by very motivated to have the department help graduate students. They are definitely sympathetic, but I think that departments and the societies should do more to provide sources of up to date advice for graduates. It would be particularly helpful to know what previous masters and PhD graduates from my school are currently doing. Also how did they do their job searches? What worked and what didn't. What avenues have they explored. I think that each of us ends up reinventing the wheel when we do our job search. The attitude here is one of detached sympathy. Perhaps faculty don't think that there is much that can be done to help. The career planning office here at NCSU has plenty of advice for people going into high school, community college teaching, and business areas as well as engineering. They are completely ignorant of academic search. We are off the map as far as they are concerned, since we often go through different channels. I wish we could develop similar resources for use by people looking for work in academia. I suspect that people in other academic fields face similar challenges, and a similar lack of information. At least this forum has helped fill in some of the gaps. Keep up the good work. As for limiting enrollment in graduate programs. It would be a good idea if department where more honest with incoming grad students, but I suspect that many are not because it conflicts with their own self interest as a department. More students equals more funding. I don't see how they can continue to recruit people with this job market but they do. When asked about the job situation they just say that they hope it'll improve soon or look away from the reality of what's happening out there. Some people are concerned, many still do not want any disruption in their routine way of doing things just because of the market. Greg Gibson PhD 1994 NCSU _______________________________________________________________ Item #4 Frank Arlinghaus Ethics for Job Candidates In February, Curtis Bennett began a discussion on ethical behavior by candidates. I would like to add a real-life application to this discussion. My department began a job search in January, identifying 15 people from applications and interviews at the "meat-market" in Cincinnati. We invited our top candidate in February, offered her the position, and she turned it down. Our next candidate cancelled her interview after accepting a position elsewhere. We interviewed 2 more candidates and, since time was running short, offered the position to the second candidate at the end of his day on campus (March 10). After renegotiating the offer, getting a higher salary and several perks, the candidate accepted the position two weeks later. When a candidate accepts a position, the search halts, the list of candidates is told (as we all know), "Thanks but we have filled the position," and the budget for interviewing is absorbed by the Dean. Suddenly, on May 2 (yes, May 2; yes, he accepted in March), the candidate informed us that the reason he hadn't signed a contract was that he had CHANGED HIS MIND. Now, we had rushed in March because we were interviewing candidates from Texas A&M, Wisconsin, and Cornell; we were turning down people from Michigan, Harvard, and Wisconsin. We saw an opportunity to get a high-quality probabilist before they accepted jobs elsewhere. In May, we were (are) faced with hiring from that same list, without money. Who's left on that list? Some of the people have accepted positions at inferior schools because they felt they had no choice--when May 1 rolls around, we begin to panic. Some were snapped up by better schools. The point is, our list evaporated along with the money. To bring anyone in requires money, which we have to take from our supplies budget or our travel budget or our computer budget (all of which are close to zero with one month left). The person we bring in is unlikely to be of the same caliber as the people available 2 months ago (but might be the same caliber). The candidate we turned down in favor of this one, as well as several others we had on our list have been cheated of an opportunity. In summary, we've lost time, money, and opportunity, while others seeking jobs have also lost opportunity. Note: We might chalk it up to experience, but the offender had just finished a three-year position!!! Frank Arlinghaus _______________________________________________________________ Item #5 Vincent Blondel: Comments on the job search Earlier this year I have applied for an Assistant Professor position in Mathematics in a major state university in the US. The position was advertised in the AMS Employment Information, I know that the department Chair received about 400 applications for the position. My application took me considerable effort; the advertisement asked for three reference letters and the deadline was tight. I had to contact one of my referee by fax and had to trace another referee by email at the university he was visiting at that time. It certainly took me two days full-time to get everything ready. If all the other 399 candidates took the same effort (not counting the time spent by the 1200 referees), that's about 800 days of human work to enter all applications. I did not receive an acknowledgment of my application and I received no news at all until very recently when I happened to visit the department for a totally different reason. I then learned the following: The department received 400 applications and found it too expensive and too time consuming to acknowledge them. So they just didn't; not even by email. In fact, they did not even read the applications because it turned out that the open position did not materialize. Still, if it had, it is not even clear that they would have read the applications because, as I happened to learn, the department had its own candidates that were most likely to obtain the job if it had materialized. The advertisement was more a question of legal obligation of "fair chances to all". What are the protections against such huge waste of time, paper, effort and stress? Vincent Blondel Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm vincent@math.kth.se _______________________________________________________________ Item #6 Curtis Bennett Job Survey This is a second posting of the Job Survey. To those of you who have responded already, thank you. I would like to do a survey on how subscribers to the YMN have done on the job market this year. This may give us an early idea as to how bad the market has been this year, although it will in no way be a scientific survey. If you could send me email answering the following questions, I would appreciate it. I will try and tabulate results as soon as possible, but I don't expect to find the time very soon. Thanks, Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu 1. Did you apply for jobs this year? (If yes, please answer the rest of the questions.) 2. What is your field? 3. How many schools did you apply to? 4. How many industry/government positions did you apply to? 5. How many on-sight interviews did you have? 6. How many offers did you receive? (if you received no offers, please skip to question 8). 7. If you received an offer, when was it made? 8. What kind of position is it? (grad student, 1-year, 2-year, part-time, tenure track, etc.) 9. What was your position for 1993-1994? (grad student, 1-year, 2-year, etc.) 10. Please include anything else you feel might be interesting. _______________________________________________________________ Item #7 Barbara Nostrand: Comments on the Job Search I posted part of this to the newsgroup alt.flame.professor and was asked to send it to YMN, with some editing. There is much about the mathematics profession that I am not happy about. APPLYING FOR JOBS I have not obtained even a single campus visit from any of my applications to North American colleges and universities. I have applied for both temporary and permanent work at institutions ranging from famous research universities to local extension schools to small liberal arts colleges. It is very likely that I shall be taking a permanent position at a prefectural Japanese university which is aggressively hiring North Americans. The job offer is in electrical engineering. So, if you want to study mathematics or computer science and hear English in the classroom, I suggest studying in Japan. Several years ago I was able to get an interview for a research associate position at a major United States research university. As it happens, my qualifications exactly matched those listed in the job requisition. (At the time, I held a masters, had recent experience in digital signal processing, etc.) During my interview with the principal investigator he explained to me that although I was qualified for the job that the ad was fake and that there was a certain other person whom they were trying to hire. Basically, if you are at a research university or practically any four year institution which is trying to "improve" its reputation or even just its self-image, you as a student and the "education" which is delivered to you do not count for very much. To quote a rejection letter which I received today: "Our Committee has narrowed the list of candidates for our one-year visiting position to a short list of three, and I regret to tell you that you are not among the finalists. The pool of applicants for our position was very strong, and the process of elimination was quite difficult. Among other factors, we put much weight on a candidate's potential for immediate research collaboration with our current faculty." Some schools do care about teaching and require teaching references and a statement of educational "philosophy" from their applicants, but these are in the decided minority. NSF GRANTS Current National Science Foundation regulations mandate that N.S.F. grants only be given to institutions. That is, you may hold a Ph.D. and be a United States citizen, but you are not eligible to receive an N.S.F. grant unless you are employed by a United States college, university or qualified research center. However, U.S. tax law requires you to pay income taxes regardless of where you may live. Thus, as I am currently in Canada, I get to pay taxes both to the United States and Canada, but am ineligible to receive either an N.S.F. grant (U.S.) or an N.S.E.R.C. grant (Canadian). Even if I return to the United State, unless I am employed by a United States university, I can not apply for grant money, but all of us have the privilege of supporting a privileged elite of professors through our tax dollars. (If you are a U.S. citizen living in a foreign country, there are certain tax breaks you receive. PLEASE check with an accountant to find out about these before paying your taxes. -- ed.) NATO RESEARCH CONFERENCES I'm applying for an M.A. program in East Asian Studies this week. I figure that it can not be much more useless than a Ph.D. in mathematics. On the positive side, I get to go to Oberwolfach this month. YAY! (Of course at the NATO conference the senior mathematicians at times seemed to fall into the attitude that neophyte mathematicians should be neither heard nor seen. Basically, the big-wig mathematicians staked out the patio and there was nowhere for the junior mathematicians to hang out. The NSF Summer Geometry Institute was entirely different. However, I've been told that the NATO conference is the norm for these things. Oh an interesting thing about NATO conferences. NATO regulations require that there be participants from certain designated countries. I learned this from my roommate who was from Portugal and was rather annoyed that she had been invited as it turned out that the conference had nothing to do with her own research interests. She left the conference as soon as she could arrange a return flight to Portugal.) MORE AND MORE PH.D'S Despite a long term over-supply of Ph.D.'s, I know of a department of math and stats that is seriously talking about increasing the size of the Ph.D. program. The reason for this is so that junior research faculty will have an opportunity to supervise Ph.D. dissertations! Personally, I think that these needs could be better directed to undergraduate research, undergraduate theses and master's theses. Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D. nostrand@mathstat.york.ca _______________________________________________________________ Item #8 Closing Credits The Young Mathematicians' Network is administered by: Charles Yeomans cyeomans@ms.uky.edu Mark Winstead winstead@euclid.ucsd.edu Vic Perera vperera@silver.ucs.indiana.edu Franklin Mendivil mendivil@math.gatech.edu Stephen Kennedy kennedy@stolaf.edu Neil Calkin calkin@math.gatech.edu Curtis Bennett cbennet@andy.bgsu.edu Jeff Adams adams@bright.uoregon.edu Edward Aboufadel aboufade@scus1.ctstateu.edu Frank Arlinghaus frank@math.ysu.edu Matt Hudelson hudelson@math.washington.edu _______________________________________________________________ End of Journal -- Next week: The Discussion Continues