Career Traps or Pathways?

Morris Grubbs and Austin Trantham explore the conundrum of contingent faculty jobs for academics seeking tenure-track positions.

November 7, 2022
Illustration of a branching road. One branch is blocked by a cone, and the figure in red is running toward the other branch.

(erhui1979/digitalvision vectors/getty images)

While the standard advice for A.B.D.s (all-but-the-dissertation) and new Ph.D.s aspiring to faculty positions is “beware the adjuncting trap,” contingent positions in various guises—adjunct instructor, visiting lecturer, teaching postdoc, visiting assistant professor and so on—are the default forms of academic employment. Those non-tenure-track, or NTT, positions “are the working conditions for the vast majority of U.S. faculty today,” as the American Association of University Professors reminds us in the “Issues” section of its website.

The percentage of instructional faculty in the United States who are NTT has steadily risen for decades. This is not a problem new Ph.D.s can solve, nor is it a problem most would care to feed. But with strategy and patience, NTT positions—even a series of them—can be a pathway to a tenure-track position.

Just ask Austin, a co-author of this article and of “A Limited Time Offer: Exploring Adjunct, Visiting, and Fixed-Term Positions” in Strategies for Navigating Graduate School and Beyond. Eight years ago, as an A.B.D., he accepted a visiting lecturer position, which he held for two years. He subsequently held a second role as a one-year visiting instructor at another institution. Completing his Ph.D. in the interim, Austin served as a visiting assistant professor for one year at a third school before being hired on in a tenure-track line.

Read more here…

By Alissa Clark
Alissa Clark Graduate Student Program Director