Motivation
I am a PhD in comparative politics at a top 20 US school. I enjoy research and teaching, and would stay in academia with a good offer. However, my university is in DC so my career-changing options are strong. I don't love research enough to devote 5 years to the PhD then retrain in my early 30's. Roughly, I would prefer changing tracks to becoming a post-doc but not to becoming a non-tenure assistant professor.
Ideally, I want to know in year 3 of 5 if I will succeed on the market. That gives enough time to submit several publications and get feedback.
Some relevant facts
My university is the 25th most prestigious in Political Science, and similar schools place 25% of their students in tenure track positions. For now, 25% seems a reasonable base rate.
My probability also depends on my skill relative to other PhD finishers. Obviously ability is hard to self-assess. Some observables
- I am quicker with statistical concepts than my peers.
- I spend more time reading the research than my peers. I'm generally more independently curiosity-driven and less grades-driven.
- I have one publication out, and am finishing data analysis on 2. Some PhD's finish with 0 publications, so I'm doing well.
But how important are skill signals in the hiring process? Some of my professors believe hiring is highly nepotistic, such that only prestigious universities get placements. The evidence is unclear: the top quintile of schools place at twice the rate of second quintile schools, but the two groups differ in observable ability signals. Without at least a regression on placement via prestige and publications, there's no way to tell.
Any advice on how to arrive at my best probability?
I did quite a bit of research on it after this. It turns out there really isn't good data, the best is from the APSA but is full of holes. I did a tweet thread on it a while back.
I do have more publications than my competitors. Unfortunately, I have been repeatedly told in my program that publications do not matter and only dissertations matter. Kind of sucks, but what can you do. Publishing is definitely a signal of value, so I have the skills to do a good dissertation. It just sucks that what I like doing (papers) isn't rewarded.
The real kicker here is that even if I get the tenure track job, it's just not that great. For tenure track the average pay is 75k (for non-tenure 60k). More importantly, the tenure process is 6-8 years and very stressful. So I would be on the treadmill of competition from 27 (now) to 38. I doubt I want that level of stress for that long.
So probably not my best option but we'll see.