On the Market: Surviving the Academic Job Hunt [Paperback]

Christina Boufis (Author), Victoria C. Olsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

A collection of essays by new Ph.D.s explores the problems in the academic job market from a wide variety of viewpoints, offering strategies for getting recommendations and performing well at interviews, as well as discussions of the personal difficulties involved. Original."

Product Details

• Paperback: 381 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; 1st Riverhead ed edition (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573226262
• ISBN-13: 978-1573226264
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,552,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Victoria Olsen teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, where she works with first-year filmmakers, actors, dramatists, dancers, and photographers on understanding art in words. She is the author of a biography of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (2003), two young-adult biographies, a historical novel about a Victorian girl with dyslexia, and articles on art for various national publications like Smithsonian Magazine. She keeps a blog of close readings of photographs and films at www.victoriaolsen.com. Born and raised in New York City, she left to earn a Ph.D. in English at Stanford University, but she has since returned to Brooklyn.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important, excellent, terrifying, December 16, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: On the Market: Surviving the Academic Job Hunt (Paperback)

This book about recent PhDs' experiences on the job market calls attention to a tremendous problem: over-production of PhDs and universities' increasing use (some would say exploitation) of adjuct faculty. Excellent as the book is, I am not sure that I would recommend it to someone about to begin a job search, because it is so terrifying and potentially demoralizing. I would recommend it to anyone in any other stage of academic life, including professors, administrators, students considering getting a PhD, and especially to someone who has already been demoralized about the market and needs to know that (s)he isn't alone.

The authors constitute a diverse group, with different writing styles and opinions. One particularly interesting difference was authors' conflicting claims to being members of groups discriminated against in the job search process. For example, one author lamented his position as a straight white (American) male, while other authors wrote about difficulties they faced for being queer, foreign, or female.

There were some limits to the authors' diversity. Specifically, there was little racial diversity among the authors, and there was no information about engineering, not even an acknowledgment that the engineering market is better than those described in the book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading, June 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: On the Market: Surviving the Academic Job Hunt (Paperback)

For those who are weary and sick at heart over the long, impoverishing, and brutal academic job hunt--for friends and family who are having a hard time understanding just what you are going through--for tenured faculty who need to know what is happening within their profession--this book is an important find. It reminds the frustrated academic job seeker that he or she is not alone, not a loser, and not doomed to failure. It also conveys a real sense of what the academic job search means on a personal, professional and political level; thus, even if you are not searching for a job as a professor, if you care about someone who is,or if you are already a professor who cares about what your students are experiencing on the market, you may want to read this book in order to better understand what they are going through. Oh yes, and it does INDEED contain hopeful, reflective and intelligent essays on job opportunities outside of academia.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend this book, January 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: On the Market: Surviving the Academic Job Hunt (Paperback)

A very well-edited collection of essays from various people in academia--those lucky enough to have full-time positions (yes, you learn just how lucky they are after reading this book), those part-timing, those still looking, and those who've given up. An enlightening, frightening, and at times comforting look at what lies in store for those of us "on the market."