The Professor Is In

May 1, 2015
Practical advice for job-seeking graduate students. In 2010, after 15 years as a tenured anthropology professor and department head, Kelsky (Women on the Verge: Japanese Women, Western Dreams, 2001) left academia to found The Professor Is In, a counseling service and blog aimed at helping graduate students mount a job search. Aware of the current competitive job market, with colleges and universities increasingly trying to save money by staffing departments with part-time adjuncts, Kelsky offers smart, frank, and often witty advice to lead applicants through the complicated process of securing a tenure-track position. She has no illusions about her readers' ability to do this on their own. Graduate study is infantilizing, she maintains, a process of hazing that leaves students "insecure, defensive, paranoid, beset by feelings of inadequacy, pretentious, self-involved, communicatively challenged, and fixated on minutiae." Advisers range from moderately helpful to neglectful to downright discouraging. They may not have any idea of the realities of the market into which they are sending students, which Kelsky thinks is "terribly, patently unfair, in that several generations of Ph.D.'s are now victims of an exploitative system that trains them for jobs that no longer exist, and denies that fact." The author covers in detail every aspect of the job search: building a strong record through carefully chosen publications (prestigious peer-review journals are the gold standard, and in the humanities and social sciences, a book contract is crucial); going after grants; presenting at national conferences; honing a CV; writing a succinct, sophisticated cover letter and teaching statement; presenting oneself in an interview and during a campus visit; and negotiating an offer. "Grad students," she writes, "remain in an extended juvenile status long after their peers outside of academia have moved on to fully adult lives." For those students-and anyone who cares about them-this cogent, illuminating book will be indispensable.

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June 1, 2015

Kelsky, a former tenured anthropology professor and department head and current principal of the eponymous "The Professor Is In" blog and career guidance service, delivers straightforward advice to those considering or preparing for a tenure-track faculty position in U.S. colleges and universities. The author pulls no punches in her candid and often irreverent description of the arcane tenure track job search process in an environment of rapidly dwindling opportunities owing to academic budget shortfalls and the resultant proliferation of nontenure track faculty, adjunct instructors, and graduate teaching assistants. Likening the process to a political campaign, Kelsky's detailed five-year plan is replete with advice on building a competitive record, both where and where not to publish, from whom to solicit guidance, cultivating references, writing effective application materials, navigating the job market, negotiating offers, and more. VERDICT Primarily directed to PhD candidates and alumni in the humanities and social sciences, the advice illuminated here will benefit all doctoral students and adjuncts contemplating or pursuing a tenure-track career.--Alan Farber, Univ, of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015
Kelsky, entrepreneur, blogger, and former academic, reports that the American academy is in crisis. State funding has declined for public colleges and universities; tuition and student debt have increased; costly administrative hirings (of deans, provosts, etc.) are balanced with numerous budget cuts, including fewer educational programs and faculty positions, eliminated course offerings, and closed campuses. Adjuncts, many with PhDs, are hired as temporary teachers with salaries at a fraction of tenure-track faculty. The author aims to empower current or future PhD job seekers to make informed career choices, indicating they will find almost no university opportunities for permanent and secure tenure-line positions commensurate with their advanced training. This book reveals the unspoken norms and expectations of the job market so that graduate students, PhDs, and adjuncts can weigh the risks and chances of success in a tenure-track job search, or they may seek nonacademic options. Kelsky offers wide-ranging, valuable advice and an important perspective for job seekers choosing either of these two career paths.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)