This page is for applicants to warn others of institutions/departments with less than reputable practices. This way we can all avoid the bad ones!
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- If you wish to post NICE COMMENTS or REBUTTALS, then go on the Universities to love page. This in particular goes for people who delete posts or post insults about other posters. Everyone reading this site knows that the context of many posts are fueled by disgruntled faculty who leave or get let go. That is why we have both a place for good comments (Universities to Love) and bad comments (Universities to Hate). If a place is really good, then they will discredit comments on here during their visits. Deleting comments oinsulting others only reflects poorly on the school in question.
Formatting for the tables (FAQ)[]
How do I add a row to the table? 50
- To add a row, select Edit (the blue button at the top of the page). When the Visual Editor window opens, scroll down to the entry that will go before the one you are adding. Right click on that entry, and in the menu that comes up choose Row>Insert Row After. Add your entry by filling in the cells in the new row that is created, but do not hit Enter or Return to add blank lines within the cells. Finally, select Publish (the button on the far right of toolbar at the top of the Visual Editor) to add your entry to the page. [Instructions rewritten for clarity June 2014.] [Note: These instructions are outdated.]
Is there a way to fix the line wrapping? The text is stretching out to infinity such that I have to scroll sideways several times to read a sentence.
- Fixed, please do not add extra paragraph breaks in the entries, this will mess up the table.
- You can add a paragraph by holding Shift while pressing enter.
When I right click on the entry, I do not get an option that says "Row." Is there a way around this?
- At least on my computer, it is necessary to click the arrow next to the "Edit" button, and then click "Classic Editor" to make the instructions (i.e., right-click, "insert row after") work.
- You can always try editing in "Source" mode. Sometimes it is easier for negotiating the tables. Click Edit. Note 2 tabs at the top of the Edit window ("Visual" and "Source"). Click the tab that says "Source." The page will resolve into html format but will still be legible. Scroll down to the section where you want to add your post. Note how the other entries in the table are formatted (school; department; issue/date) as a guideline. Type your post, click "preview" and then "publish" if everything looks okay.
The table is so complicated, I am afraid, no one is going to post.
- [Admin.] I agree. I think these tables are a headache for people to edit and discourage participation. They were set up a long time ago by the people who first started the wiki (not me!)--maybe they made sense at that time, but the page has outgrown them by now. I would love to reorganize this page (and Universities to love) to keep all the posts but eliminate the tables and make it easier to add new contributions. I cannot take on this work at this time, however; if anyone would like to volunteer to reformat the page, please leave me a message! --Una74 (talk) 23:18, July 23, 2014 (UTC)
Some formatting etiquette. Before you add your entry, please read this:[]
DON'T use hard returns before your entry. This will throw the table formatting off and give everyone a headache.
DO NOT REFER TO ANYONE BY NAME []
Please make sure ALL information is factually correct BEFORE posting.[]
Please DATE your entries! And put them in alphabetical order in the appropriate sections.[]
Please add responses using bullet points.[]
Thank you!
All Entries still present, now divided into Current, Chronic, and Old Tables. I am struck that there are no recent complaints about lack of contact, lack of reimbursement, rudeness, etc. While the market may have gotten worse, there seems to be a rising level of humanity / accountability promoting good behavior.
- I wish it were that. I think it's that candidates are stark raving terrified. Check out the person on the venting page who was offered a job, given 2 days to answer, and then had the offer rescinded. He/she hasn't posted the details here!
- I have now!
- The reason the complaints are dropping is because people don't know about this page, and when they post on the regular one it gets deleted or moved here, doubtless by wiki admins with the best of intentions.
- I'll just echo the "stark raving terrified" thing--I've had several rather bad campus visit experiences this season but am not able to post about several because I'd be clearly identifiable by faculty at those institutions.
- Added May 2019: I am also stark raving terrified - I would love to add the institution from which I was dismissed here with a warning to anyone applying to that department but am afraid I will be recognized.
| Colorado Christian University | This school can't even be bothered to interview prospective faculty via Zoom and instead interviews applicants using an automated program which records your responses on video and which someone presumably watches later. Incredibly awkward process that does not give one a positive impression of the school. Also, their online application system makes it virtually impossible to contact a real person at any point in the process if you have a question or even want to send a follow-up email. | |||
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| University of Iowa | College of Education | EXTREMELY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR FACULTY OF COLOR! Look at the HIGH turnover rates. I f you are a yeoman or token, feel free to apply. If you value your sanity and self-worth, RUN AWAY. Extremely TOXIC environment. Dean, Associate Deans, DEOs ALL contribute to the culture! if you speak up, you WILL BE targeted and retaliated against. Be ready to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING to protect yourself! You will be expected to do illegal and unethical things. Apply and accept a position at your own risk, you have been warned! | Department of History | extremely hostile environment for faculty of non-US citizens without family connection with US citizens. The faculty has been divided between women's studies camp and wisconsin camp for decades. If you have PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison, you are easily hired and promoted for tenure with the minimum publication. If you got PhD from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, you suffered miserably when a Wiscon camp faculty was the chair of the department. You were not welcomed if you got PhD from Princeton, because the one already there won't tolerate you. The faculties focus on politics and publishing, and they care the least about students. Graduate students were used to teach all the courses as cheap disposable labor. If you dared to say no, you'll be retaliated and destroyed by the faculties. One graduate student already committed suicide, and no evidence is found about him being retaliated to death. |
| Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) | Media and Communication |
A revolving door of faculty is always a leading indicator of an institution with poor values and administration. EUR’s media and communication department advertises for 5-6 positions every semester because so many faculty leave its horror show. There is only one interview with the senior administrators, and as long as you have a pulse and the minimum quals then you can get thrown into their serfdom. You will be a nonstop grading machine teaching the entire year across four quarters with no breaks. You will have no time for research, and even if you did then the library resources are pathetic with so few books and many notable journals unavailable. The inter-library loan system does not work either so if you want necessary texts then you will have to pay out of pocket. Faculty are crammed into small ugly offices with 8-9 faculty assigned to an office with only 4 chairs. You will end up sitting in the hallway on the floor. The whole campus is a modernist nightmare of toaster buildings with no charm or community. Department and school administration are utterly authoritarian as you will have no choice of classes or schedules. You just have to shut up and take it as they ram down your throat multiple classes and dozens of thesis supervisions. You are there to be a grade machine and take orders, and nothing more. Don’t you even dare to speak up a little or you will be cut down by the administrators. The administrators have an entirely colonial mentality and refuse to listen to any dissenting cultural opinions of how things are done in other parts of the world even though they ostensibly claim to be an international program. They are international in name only as the administrators and most faculty have absolutely zero international experience. Erasmus University Rotterdam’s media and communication department is an utter sham. The administrators are pig-headed, culturally myopic eurocentrists who believe their racial and cultural norms should be made universal to bring the entire planet to their heel. | ||
| Acadia University | Arts | Faculty of Arts/Classics/Sociology, WHITE, CAUCASIAN, PATRIARCHY, HOMOPHOBIA, LESBIANISM AT THE EXTREME. The equity officer and dean of arts will punish you for bringing forward allegations about harassment and bullying ON MULTIPLE PROTECTED GROUNDS against M.D. (the homophobic and sexist chair from classics in sociology as they could not get a male from sociology to chair the department) by humiliating you to all of your workmates and subjecting you to a malicious work investigation. The dean's way of dealing with bullying is by prohibiting you from communicating with your departmental head and alienating you from your work colleagues. The union will say homophobia is not their problem, but the employers to deal with. Multiple instructors have left this institution traumatized, unable to ever return to work, if they did not take their own life from the overwhelming sense of powerlessness and humiliation. The students are great, but you have to be a male caucasian or heterosexual woman, who is okay with Heinrich Himmler (M.D. looks and talks exactly like that psychopath who orchestrated the murder of over 7 million people) hitting on you. The dean has less power than a departmental chair, just because she is female. Her looks (she wears a white minidress to a departmental meeting in -20c), heterosexuality and submissiveness are the primary reasons she got that position.
Multiple complaints have been filed against Acadia with the Human Rights Commission for discrimination. If Acadia wants to get rid of you, they will "forget" to send you your accessibility students' documentation and then weaponize those students against you when you unknowingly fail to accommodate them. Accessibility students will fail your courses, as they are disposable to Acadia. Record all of your conversations with the union, administration and equity officer and be prepared to file a human rights complaint with the commission against the union (in terms of employment and the provision of a service) and employer (in terms of employment) within 12 months of the date of the last incident of discrimination. The union will only file grievances for male professors, even without PhDs; even a female professor with a PhD will have no assistance from AUFA. The union will claim not to file discrimination grievances, despite that being in the collective agreement and their duty and obligation under the human rights act, if the equity officer infringes your rights, by retaliating against you for bringing forward allegations against the almighty Himmler for harassment (M.D.). The equity officer is homophobic, just like the dean and union officers. They were all fully aware of the harassment based on the protected ground of my sexual orientation by M.D. (AKA Himmler), a homophobic psychopath, chairing the department of sociology from classics, who was determined to make my life miserable upon my divulging my sexual orientation in response to him making me feel uncomfortable and hitting on me. It is a great department, if you are a white male or heterosexual female. The students will impress you, if they want to, but the large majority are inadequately prepared for university. It's the most unethical, unprogressive, and toxic place at which I had been employed. Within three days of divulging my sexual orientation, I was harassed and belittled non-stop, and subjected to adverse treatment and procedures from all the other heterosexual faculty. I was not even entitled to a safe work environment. M.D. (like Himmler) is a psychopath. Don't let him fool you. M.D. will destroy any lesbian who comes to that department, and you will have no union, Dean of Arts, or equity officer to help you. The latter two will be retaliating against you, as they act as if they would be intimately involved with Himmler or head over heals for that disgusting smelly little ignoramus. People without PhDs have more power and protection at Acadia. If you were a bully in secondary school, you will fit right in. If you have good course evaluations, you make the others look bad and Himmler will sabotage you and your courses. The equity officer looks like a porn star. Her arms are covered in ink and she has a tongue ring. She's corrupt and clueless about human rights law. She and the provost will subject you to a malicious investigation and threaten to discipline you in response to your allegations against Himmler rather than allow you to file a formal complaint, which are all violations of the human rights act. The dean and accessibility manager will modify accessibility students' tests to weed them out of Acadia. It's deeply disturbing. I suffered two seizures within one week, I have no history of epilepsy. The only explanation was extreme stress. | ||
| Monash University | Arts | (-2019) This is a high-ranking R1 but it is a bullying/micro-management culture. Management is obsessed with surveillance of faculty and imposes increasing loads of self-reporting tasks. E.g. lose an hour explaining why you submitted your paper to a certain Q1 journal. If the committee disagrees with your logic, the paper doesn't count in metrics. It's been in decline for some time, but has never been worse than under the current Dean of Arts, who openly despises many disciplines in her remit (go figure). In her reign it has become a stridently anti-intellectual environment. Management favors Facebook likes over scholarly achievement. Promotion is a system of vassalage, with failed scholars elevated into positions of power in return for loyalty. Class sizes doubled, in some settings, in my time - FIFTY is considered viable minimum for a seminar class. The institution dreams of replacing all teaching with videos. Students know they are being conned. Faculty operate in a culture of fear. Many had enough in 2018 (if not before) when all electives were cancelled, removing any option from the major. The Dean sent an email to faculty alleging that students benefit from fewer choices. A basket case. I have never seen so many unhappy people. | ||
| Miami University (Oxford, OH) | All |
The reason why this university is still referred to as a "public ivy" is beyond me. Honestly, even the president Greg Crawford's dog, ironically named "ivy", deserves this title a lot more. The place attracts many garbage faculty with degrees from places you never heard of, yet still claims to be offering "first-class liberal-arts education". Your talent never gets valued here, because you are nothing but a teaching machine. The upper admins (particularly the current provost, Jason Osborne) do not care less about the well-being of the university employees, and will take every opportunity to make budgetary cuts while staying on a filthily high salary themselves. Since the ourbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the teaching load of most faculty has increased by 50%, and, guess what, the salary will be cut by 20%. You have got to be kidding me! How can anyone possibly commit to such a place as long as there's any marginally better option? Just look at the many houses for sale right now; the town is getting empty as faculty flee one by one. With the huge budgetary issue aside, the place is overall poorly managed with extremely fucked-up hierarchy: PhD-level visiting faculty get paid like garbage (less than postdocs) and get disposed of like garbage too, no matter how hard you work and how well you perform; as if your life isn't miserable enough yet, you will be bossed around and bullied by colleagues with only a master's degree because he/she is a "permanent faculty". Look elsewhere if you have the option. This place is so overrated.
(2021) Alert to international applicants: Miami has a long history of mistreating foreign faculty. They do not accept STEM OPT and are likely unwilling to sponsor you an H1B visa. You might have to downgrade to a J-1 visiting visa if you want to work here. During 2020 COVID pandemic, a few foreign faculty were ruthlessly fired while on an employer-specific H1B visa and had to leave the country. They could have stayed on their STEM OPT and work elsewhere if it were not for Miami's OPT policy. (21 April) Finally Miami made it to this list. Recent searches in our department have almost all failed. Just google "Miami University AAUP" and you will easily see why... There is no shared governance of any sort. Shame on your so called love and honor. (2023) agree with all of this; like other institutions they also tenure faculty that have had sexual relationships with students and sexually harassed and assaulted students | ||
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Case Western Reserve University |
Department of English: Writing Division |
This department is not a good place to work for non-tenure track faculty; over the years, tenure track faculty in English and History have become increasingly hostile towards non-tenure track faculty, especially towards writing faculty in particular. This culminated last year in tenure track faculty across the university voting to gut the writing program as a means of increasing precarity amongst non-tenure track faculty. The current situation is very bad if you do not have tenure here. In the next 1-2 years, 40% of the current writing faculty who are non-tenure track will be laid off. The department is currently running a search to determine which of the current 35 writing lecturers they want to retain, if any, and that will include outside candidates (i.e. forcing laid-off current faculty to train their replacements next year). When the proposals for a new general education program came out in 2017, they spoke of an "ethical transition" for non-tenure track faculty, by which they meant, laying off 40% of non-tenure laborers many of whom have families and have spent years devoting their time and effort to creating a strong writing program. What is more, tenure track faculty openly disrespect non-tenure track faculty and speak of firing them all at most departmental meetings. The general attitude seems to be that since employing non-tenure track faculty is unethical as such, all current non-tenure track faculty should be fired immediately. There is no solidarity and no advocacy or support. We have been called "casual academics" who have "scholarly hobbies," for instance, just recently. Bullying is rampant. The department has invented rules and by-laws created to keep non-tenure track faculty from being able to advocate for voting rights, contracts that go beyond one year (all contracts are renewed yearly, but they have never offered more than a one year contract), and better pay. At the same time, the university itself has created a "special faculty" handbook that does the same at the university level - you cannot recieve grants, have almost no access to funding support, and will be judged solely on the basis of your student evaluations. The new job (currently posted, fall 2022 on the MLA), furthermore, will only involve first year writing, and has been set up as a means of further reducing the non-tenure track faculty over time. If you come here, you will likely have to reapply for your job at some point within a year or two and will be forced to compete against colleagues and friends. | ||
|
Frostburg State University |
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences |
Invited for an on-campus interview in early 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic began. I took every chance to decrease expenses associated with the interview. Despite having a positive experience interviewing, meeting faculty, and giving the teaching demonstration, the department called all of my references and then emailed me a day later to say that they had canceled the search--due to COVID-19--despite the glowing recommendations. Additionally, it has been hell to receive reimbursement for those pre-approved expenses, and Accounts Payable has used every opportunity to reimburse far less than previously indicated. Why waste my time and my references' time for a position that they weren't sure they would fill anyway, only to avoid reimbursement at all costs at the end of the day? The department was professional and accommodating; on the other hand, HR has been unprofessional and in need of a lesson on collegiality. | ||
| James Madison University (Virginia) | College of Arts and Letters | My significant other was offered a tenure-track job here and we enthusiastically moved. It has been four years and despite there being a "dual-hiring program", I have yet to find a full-time job (and this is not an isolated incident - unfortunately, I have met many trailing spouses who have been here even longer and have yet to find something full-time). Adjuncts in the College of Arts and Letters are paid $3500 for a three-credit course. This is half of what adjuncts at the University of Virginia (one hour away) earn per three-credit course. The students here are great, but this is a very insular, nepotistic, top down organization with little upward mobiliy unless you're a white guy. Even the women in positions of power seem to pretty much bow to the patriarchy. There is very little diversity on-campus and in town. The general mentality towards trailing academic spouses (which is the main reason I post in "Universities to Fear") is to max them out with part-time work and never offer any opportunity for upward mobility. My department has roughly 75 faculty, about 70% of whom are part-time, contingent, or non-tenure track. It's such a mess here. There are people in my department with inadequate credentials teaching all the courses for an entire program (which violates SACS accreditation standards). I had a successful academic career before we moved here. Now I have no idea what will happen, and I definitely do not trust JMU for the long-term (for a variety of reasons I don't want to share publicly). Also, the town is lousy. Don't waste your time, particularly if you're part of an academic couple. | ||
|
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater |
Department of Languages and Literatures |
(2020) Faculty were welcoming and easy going during visit. Before visit campus visit schedule not sent until last minute. Only communication throughout was with staff person, no communication with Search Committee Chair (invite to campus interview sent by staff person). After campus visit, no communication at all (in spite of me sending multiple emails) and no reimbursement either. They may not be aware of the basic etiquette of searches. | ||
| Lingnan University | Faculty of Arts | [2020] The position is an inside hire. The department uses the title "postdoctoral researcher/research assistant professor" to hire its own PhD students. The departmental big guns have not produced anything scholarly in recent years and no surprise that Lingnan ranks the lowest in Hong Kong. | ||
| Bishop's University | Sociology |
The department of three full time faculty members have no respect for their sessional and junior faculty. The one genuinely nice faculty member is currently on a leave. They expect you to just take their abuse and accept that is the way the world works. They put you down to make themselves feel better, particularly one senior faculty member. Since I cannot mention any names, I will call her "fake nails," the fake "nice" personality goes well with the nails. You will be in for a shock, when she reveals her true character. If you have good publications, you will see it sooner rather than later. While publications will get you hired here, they will not get you friends in this department. This was a really nice, supportive place when the faculty needed me to fix their program, but that all changed once I finished writing the course descriptions for their course catologues, course names, and assisted the faculty in updating their degree requirements. Once they think they have their hooks in you, the corrupt institutional behaviour begins. The university and APBU president don't know anything about employment and human rights legislation in Canada. Their overt violations of employment law in Canada is unbelievable. The faculty gossip with students about their colleagues' teaching. If a student is angry with you, they will actually use statements made by other faculty you thought were your friends. Most of the faculty get rewarded for teaching nothing in their courses. It's perfectly acceptable to play videos in your classes all semester. Even after holding two sessional appointments, the faculty never let you into their circle. You always feel like an outsider in this department and unworthy to be there. The faculty hold yearly teaching evaluations with the dean and two students. You know nothing about this until the faculty appoint two students who hate you enough to actually slander you on the committee. When you try to defend yourself and even receive letters of support from students to prove those were slanderous comments, the faculty will treat you even more like an outsider and call you crazy. This is, by far, the most toxic department I have ever been a part of and the administration is utterly useless in helping you. You have to make friends with people in other departments to survive Bishop's. The people in sociology are fake and get off on bullying junior faculty and trying to make them feel horrible about themselves. The only conversations you have with faculty involve them disparaging a previous instructor who taught your courses. None of the faculty have any experience teaching methods, so they base this opinion entirely on what students say, although they take opinions from students with the lowest grade in your course. I feel so bad for the contract instructor who taught my courses. When she applied to teach the aging course in 2018, I was present when "fake nails" ridiculed her application. She made fun of her for talking about taking care of her elderly mother in her cover letter. This poor instructor has no idea how little the faculty of her. They make fun of her every chance they get. She teaches in the psychology and sports studies departments but has no idea that the sociology department will never hire her to teach a course again because of some rumours that probably are not even true. She teaches so many courses, there is no way there is any truth to what the faculty say about her. She's been casted out of the department of sociology clique. Once your casted out, your dead to the faculty. A yearly evaluation can easily turn into a reputation smearing campaign if the two students hate you. The faculty will not tell you which students they select to assess your teaching to the entire department and dean (apparently withholding this information is a requirement) nor ask for your input on which students to appoint. If they are out to smear your reputation, they will appoint the least appropriate students to the committee: two students who were the least prepared for the most difficult course you teach, out of 12 classes, an upper level statistics course. Yes, the university deems it acceptable to appoint students who have only taken one course out of 12 with you, have no actual mentorship experience with you to be able to present in the meeting, were not adequately preparred for your course, and (one student had the lowest course grade). This is considered a fair and just practice at Bishop's University. You have no support. The APBU is useless. If you are a victim of harassment and bullying, you are on your own and have to remain sane somehow. They use you to fix their undergraduate program and are nice to you when they need something from you. After they get what they want from you, they humiliate you and then expect you to be happy because you were selected for the position. You are lucky, lucky, lucky. You are lucky if you can keep your sanity. The faculty also don't care about their good students who are quiet. They focus all of their attention on the loud, outgoing students, so much so those students think they have complete control over you as a junior faculty member. The students and the university are not bad. The sociology faculty are absolutely toxic. If you have more scholarly output than they do, they (particularly one senior faculty member) will use students to make herself feel superior to you, while the other faculty follow. (Hint: Fake nails, fake personality). My entire class told me about how terrified students are of this one particular person. No one speaks in her classes. When one student questioned what she was saying in front of the class, he was never able to return to her class again. The faculty are all two-faced. They will act nice to your face but look for anything to smear your reputation behind your back. The worst part is that you will hear about it from students appealing their final grades in your course. You will be stuck teaching the largest courses (130 students), the required courses students hate. Apparently, none of the full-time faculty are competent in research methods or statistics. Other points: Eighty per cent of students plagiarize and instructors are stuck dealing with it. You can imagine how unmanageable this becomes in a class of 130 students. Their retirement pension plan does not have enough money to support all the faculty currently retired, so you have to pay an additional 9% of your bi-weekly salary into their retirement pension plan (about 18% total). It keeps going up every year. Your salary will look amazing on the surface but expect about $20,000 in deductions for taxes and the retirement pension plan. There is limited parking space. If you teach class after 9am, you will have to park all the way at the Sports Complex or spend 10-minutes waiting for someone to leave. The university does not put any salt on the actual parking spots in their parking lots. Walking to your car in the winter is dangerous, plowed or not, and their winters are cold and long. They get an insane amount of snow. Don't come here if you are single. Sherbrooke is nice on the outside, but the majority of people living here are without a secondary school education, underemployed or on welfare, and many of the town folk don't speak English. Most of the people living in Sherbrooke are poor and in poverty. 4-litres of milk costs over $6.00 in Quebec. It is heart-breaking to see a father with his kids having to remove items from his basket, so he can purchase 1 litre of milk for his two children. I have given children cash at the grocery store, when their parent is not looking, to buy themselves something when I see how little their parent is able to purchase to feed two kids at a cheap store like Super C. The amount they charge for milk in Quebec is criminal. Most of the children here are living in low income homes, so you have to be okay with seeing kids and single parents that look like they would be living in a third world country. | ||
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Furman University |
All |
If you still somehow naively believe that Furman is the right place for you to live your Dead Poets Society dream, my post may likely break your heart. Long story short, Furman is simply a family school intended for a bunch of privileged yet minimally talented white kids. You cannot afford to have standards; you do not need to be accomplished; all you have to do is to be white, have a degree from a random place, make sure all your students are happy, and hold strong beliefs in the eternal glory of the south. Academic integrity is a joke here, and publishing with undergrads is simply a way to rebate students (their paying customers) their crazily expensive tuition with free rides, so these kids can finally have something to show in their otherwise blank resume. The students may not even be aware of the project, but they magically end up in the author list. PhD and postdoc work of any new faculty can also magically appear as Furman's highlight of "publication with undergrads". Of course this makes grant application so much easier, particularly in South Carolina where quality liberal-arts education basically does not exist. And don't even get me started on racism and diversity here. Just check a faculty page of any department. If you can find a black, a latino or an asian, you'd better head out and buy lottery now (foreign language departments might be exceptions since there's honestly not much choice). The limited number of minority faculty often suffer a lot from all the double standards they face on a daily basis. To cover up their pure whiteness, some departments even start putting black janitors on their faculty/staff page. In conclusion, if you are not white, have no ties with the Carolinas, or simply don't want to see a confederate flag every day on your way home, but somehow got a job at Furman, RUN!
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| Holy Family University (PA) | Humanities |
(2019) This university is fundamentally dishonest and possibly unethical in the way they conduct searches. First of all, I was part of a fake search, which I didn't pick up on until afterwards. Happens to the best of us, I guess? But more significantly, they are NOT upfront about the fact that they don't have a tenure system. I discovered this on my own by doing research after I'd already been invited to my (fake search) campus interview. Instead of offering tenure, they give you a series of three-year contracts. At some point you get promoted to "associate professor" or something, but you still have zero job security. Which is probably related to the fact that the university is not on solid ground financially. Campus visit was rather strenuous, considering the fact that it was ceremonial (i.e. fake). Lengthy teaching demonstration was required. Taught someone else's 90-minute class the day before a major semester holiday. Glad to provide that professor with a "bullshit day" right before the break; less thrilled that I gave up a nonrefundable plane ticket for the pleasure of doing so. (The fact that the visit was held right before Major Holiday probably should have clued me into its fakeness, but what can I say, I remained stupidly optimistic throughout the process.) But maybe that's not entirely my fault--the committee did throw me some mixed signals during the visit. I was given a tour of the building and told things like, "This is where your office will be--see, we've set it aside just for you!" And, "This is where we all eat lunch together every day--we have such a strong sense of community. You'll fit right in!" Found out through various contacts later that I was never a serious contender for the position. Even so, it took the department two months to send me a "Dear Applicant" rejection letter in the mail. Was not reimbursed for campus visit. (Would have been nice to get a personal thank-you from the professor whose 90-minute class I taught right before Major Semester Holiday. You're welcome, asshole.) But maybe it was a blessing in disguise--Holy Family U. currently has a C- from Forbes in terms of its financial viability, and I can't imagine things will get better with coronavirus shut-downs. It's a very overpriced private school that looks and feels like a community college or tiny branch campus. Four or five buildings total; library isn't even open on weekends. The nicest building in the vicinity isn't even part of the university--it's a high school run by the same order of nuns. Tl;dr: Holy Family doesn't reimburse for campus visits; doesn't have a tenure system; requires its fake candidates for its fake searches to teach 90-minute classes; and doesn't have the wherewithal or graciousness to keep its fake candidates apprised of fake search updates. I wonder what it's like to adjunct for these people. | ||
|
California State University Northridge (CSUN) |
English |
The CSUN English department does not value quality teaching or active scholarship. New hires are routinely told that their research will be supported. This is a lie. They are given an initially lightened teaching load, then after a year or two pressured into department-level, college-level, and university-level committee work on top of a 4-4 teaching schedule. When the 4-4 becomes too much, some of them are offered program administration positions in return for a reduction in teaching load. New hires rarely manage to maintain a research and publication program, and as a result, either those ambitions are abandoned, or the new hires leave. The last two people this department hired left for more supportive departments after less than two years. This department will be hiring in 2019-2020. Let the candidate beware. The most active and credible scholars and writers in this department carry the heaviest teaching loads, while the lightest teaching loads are given to those who are favored by the administration, those who agree to join the ranks of the program administrators, and those whom the term "deadwood" fits neatly. Faculty meetings were an excruciating exercise in watching the deadwood squelch any and all ideas for change introduced by the more ambitious attendees. Do some digging. Find CVs, where you can. Find teaching evaluations, where you can. Ask, if you interview here, how much of a role your research will have in this department, and how much of a role the research, if any, of the search committee members plays in this department. Also note that this department will have you do a "teaching" demonstration that amounts to little more than trying to run a class discussion with members of the search committee pretending to be students. I found it to be the most impossibly awkward experience, and it bore no resemblance to my eventual teaching conditions with actual students at the university. If you apply here, be forewarned. The bright picture they paint for you does not resemble the grim reality you will find if you take the job.
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| Lycoming College | Modern Language Studies | (Spring 2019 phone interview) -- The search committee was rude and unprofessional. It was obvious that a particular candidate was favored and everyone else were warm bodies for HR. Aside from rushing the interview without having introduced themselves or having asked me about my background, etc., the search chair was rude and dismissive from the very beginning. None of them seemed to know who I was, i.e., name, institution, experience, nor did they seem to care. Moreover, there were equally snippy exchanges between the search committee members; one of the junior professors let it slip that they lied in the original announcement about both the teaching load and the opportunities for teaching upper-division courses. | ||
| Santiago Canyon College | Communication Studies | April 2019--The search committee for the TT assistant professor/forensics position was the most unprofessional group of faculty I have ever encountered. When I accepted the interview invitation, I was told that there "may" be a behavioral component involved in the interview. But when I arrived at the appointed time/place, I was told that I had 30 minutes to prepare an 8-10 minute teaching demonstration on a specific topic AND an 8-10 minute forensics coaching demonstration using nothing but an informative speech manuscript. This "test" was clearly designed to favor candidates who were involved with the school already and wouldn't have been stressed out by the format. It made for an extremely stressful and embarrassing interview for me, and not to mention was a waste of my time. I'm sure they designed the interview to be compliant with legal requirements, but that doesn't make the format they used ethically justifiable. I would strongly urge anyone NOT to waste your time interviewing at this place unless you're adjuncting for them already. | ||
| University of Colorado Boulder | Engineering |
CU Boulder presents an aggressively corporate front in their job searches, which are run by HR “talent acquisition” staff. The job ad asked for a wealth of materials (much more than usual), including additional essays in addition to a teaching philosophy. After putting in more time than I have on any other application, I was selected to do a “digital interview” which was outsourced to a company called HireVue. This company uses AI to rank candidates on such things as word choice, facial expression, and “eye contact.” I can see how this technology can be useful for large corporations who field tens of thousands or millions of applications per year. But this is completely inappropriate for an academic job search. I felt that after putting in so much work on this application, Boulder couldn’t even be bothered to do a real online interview. I was nervous during the “interview” in ways that I absolutely am not during real human interactions. I am not used to making “eye contact” with a camera. I can see how, in large scale, this tech can overcome biases in hiring, but it can also introduce new biases. It was obvious that half of the questions came from the department and the other half were cliched HR BS (along the lines of “your greatest weakness,” “where do you see yourself in five years”), which felt amateurish and misplaced in an academic job search. I was also very disappointed that I never heard from a single person in the department conducting the search. All I ever received were HR form emails. Very disheartening experience. | ||
| Emory & Henry College | All | During the spring of 2018, at least three people were hired to be tenure-track Assistant Professors in departments ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. Four weeks after beginning their positions during the 2018-2019 academic year, these people were laid off effective the 2019-2020 academic year. A tenure-track job at this college is not an actual tenure-track job. | ||
| University of Toronto | Biology | Members of the faculty were hostile and more than condescending during my interview. Asked if I had children. I was told by someone on the committee after the process that the committee used second hand gossip to help make final decision. In this case, it was about me (they heard from someone that I was going to get hired elsewhere - not at all truthful but that isn't the point and I remain without employment). | ||
| University of Manitoba | Biology | Made the shortlist, went for an interview, interviewed for two days, went home, was asked by chair to submit all teaching materials. Never heard from them again. Not even after polite follow ups, including one to the Dean after six months' waiting. Winter 2018.
Arts - The dean's secretary was a mess and didn't send me any itinerary for my campus visit resulting in mega confusion. When I needed reimbursement, no response because she went on holiday. Don't expect anything to be done well the first time around. No idea where they hired this person given the astounding incompetence. | ||
| Indiana State University | History |
They don't sponsor visas for foreigners. Meaning, the job is de facto closed to anyone but Americans. While I think this is discriminatory, this is not really the problem. The problem is, this was not stated in the job posting, and, worse, they only informed me I'm not eligable to apply after I submitted my application. Worse still, they condescendingly suggested I "continue applying for openings on our website, jobs.indstate.edu, as there are positions in which we do provide visa sponsorship" as though I was applying to a specialized faculty position just for the chance to move to Terre Haute, Indiana. Huge waste of time for me and reference letter writers. | ||
|
University of Chicago |
English |
(2019) I had a really enjoyable MLA interview in Chicago with 8-10 faculty members from the Department. Unfortunately, the search chair never contacted me again to provide details on the progress of the search. I never heard about campus visits, whether a candidate had been chosen, or anything else. I wrote a message in follow-up with email tracking; the chair never responded, but they did open my message five times in one day. I learned many months later from a departmental alum that this was a fake search and that the Department had hired the spouse of a faculty member they wanted to retain. It's disappointing to see a fake search happening at the University of Chicago, which has a reputation for being one of the top two schools in the country for my field. A few suggestions for universities doing this kind of hiring practice: 1) If it's a fake search (or even if it's a real search!), hold the interviews by videoconferencing. It's not reasonable or ethical to expect candidates to pay to attend an interview that has little/no possibility of resulting in their hire. 2) Any candidate who makes it to the interview stage (and ideally all candidates for the position) should be kept abreast of updates in the search. It was disorienting to be dropped completely by the search committee after the interview. The fact that the chair opened my message so many times suggests that they didn't know what to say. A simple 'We have moved on to other candidates, but it was a pleasure to speak with you and thank you for your time' would have sufficed. | ||
| Kean University (?) | All (?) | Administration attacks faculty and very adversarial; President caught plagiarizing most off his CV; Majority of tenure applicants rejected. Etc etc. Google "Kean university contraversies " for more. | ||
| SUNY Geneseo | Spanish, Geography | They hire people who have been there as VAPs but who have objectively worse CVs than the other external search candidates.
Geneseo advertises itself as the "honors college of the SUNY system" to prospective hires and talks up its "liberal arts" culture. Beware of these claims. Class sizes are large for a liberal arts college, especially because there are no TAs. Quality of student is also falling, but student support services are severely lacking. As a result, morale is quite low among the faculty, and the lackluster and even disliked new president doesn't make things any better.... | ||
| Hong Kong Baptist University | College of International Education | The hiring committee did a bait-and-switch with the job ad: they advertised for a Senior Lecturer. I applied for same, but just before the Skype interview (which was the only interview), they switched it to a Lecturer job, which pays a lot less. When I emailed to ask what happened to the Senior Lecturer job, their HR person replied with a vague "that position is no longer available." They also offered the job very late in summer which caused a LOT of problems with my previous job. Working there entails teaching a six-course load, yes, that's right, a six course load.
Also, the director of the college was demoted to Lecturer after faculty complained that he was blackmailing the more outspoken faculty. He threatened them (in writing!) with low teaching evaluation scores if they did not resign. This was in the Hong Kong newspapers in the Spring of 2017. | ||
| Hong Kong University of Science and Technology | Biology | [Autum 2017 and earlier] Beware of research proposal fishing. Many openings for RA, post-doc and higher often require you to submit a research proposal. However, you would not hear them back. Instead, a week or so later, you would find a new postgrad opening with a theme VERY similar to what you've submitted. | ||
| University of Wisconsin Platteville | Criminal Justice | There have been many problems with UW Platteville lately. Some of the problems are shown on http://UniversityCorruption.org/. This website contains an amazing story of corruption, cover-ups and retaliation. It all began with a sexual harassment complaint that the administration decided was too embarrassing to address properly. They instead decided to retaliate against a faculty member whose only sin was helping a female student properly report an incident of sexual harassment. Students are not safe and neither are faculty members who come to their aid. | ||
| California State University San Bernardino | English | Position beginning Fall 2016 in English (Creative Writing) department. As per the 2016 Creative Writing Wiki: multiple complaints by multiple candidates of poor treatment during initial interviews and campus visits. First round interviews required the submission of course curricula for specific CSUSB courses without a clear statement for how intellectual property would be treated or preserved. The candidate who accepted the position was disparaged online by a member of the CSUSB system (including a statement *incorrectly* pointing out the candidate's ethnicity) as documented by IP address. | ||
| Indiana Wesleyan University | Music | Spring 2016. Piano position.
The search committee was made up of four men and only one woman, a pianist. On the first day of the interview, at breakfast, it was only the candidate and the woman SC member. WIthin five minutes, the SC member asked the candidate if she had children. When the candidate replied that she did, the SC memebr went on to say that she could not conceive. Later that day, the candidate was asked again by a male SC member if she "had family here." When the candidate replied that she was indeed married and had two kids, the committee member asked how old the kids were. The candidate was told many times how well she did, how her application "rose to the top," etc.. Being that this was supposedly a "Christian university," the candidate even turned down another job when she was offered that job two months before Indiana Wesleyan could finalize their search. The committee also knew that she turned down another job out of being "ethical." The SC chair promised the candidate that he would let her know the result either way. Fast forward a few weeks later, the candidate saw that the job posting had been taken down from their website, so she emailed the chair to find out what was going on. The chair then informed her that "after very careful consideration, the search committee decided not to consider (her) candidacy." Then, the candidate found out that they had hired a young man with MUCH LESS experience and achievements. Looking at the music department faculty list, it became clear that this department preferred hiring men over women. This was clearly a case of employment discrimination where the woman candidate with young children was not hired because of her gender and the fact that she had kids. The fact that the other pianist on the faculty couldn't conceive herself might just make her more hesitant to work with this candidate as well. But guess what?! You CANNOT sue this school because they had been sued before and they used that "ministerial exception" to argue that since they were a religious institution, their decisions were autonomous and candidates or employees were not protected under federal law! Basically, all in all, I would say that Indiana Wesleyan University is a hypocritical institution that uses their "Christian identity" to cover up whatever illegal decisions they may want to make in hiring and employment. RUN as fast as you can away from this school! | ||
| Adrian College | All | Since 2005.
The Administration does not care about the faculty or the students. The President gets paid more than most Research 1 Presidents and never publishes (his "book" was ghost-written). Issues have included members of administration in black face for halloween, an official policy of "no fat people" on the website, faculty members having their book orders cancelled, a lowering of academic standards to allow more athletes into the College, and the President vetoing faculty votes on a whim. If your face does not fit you will not get tenure, all the LGBT faculty have to remain in the closet for fear of being fired, senior administration shout and bully junior faculty. There is no library budget, conference funding has been cut, and the roofs of the buildings are collapsing. The College is in debt and will likely be bankrupt within ten years. Run, run, run! |
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| Rollins College | Biology | Position was to begin Fall 2016. Applied and was contacted for a phone interview. Cell phone crashed when search committee called, and I immediately emailed to let them know what was going on. Asked to reschedule later in the day. Got the phone working again later that day. Sent another email to follow up, and they wrote back that they had moved on because they were on a tight schedule. Would have been nice to have been given a fair shot, considering the phone malfunction was not my fault. | ||
| Alamo Colleges: St. Philip's College | Respiratory Care Technology Program | [Fall 2015] The school posted the position in December of 2014, and I applied. I was first contacted in the spring of 2015 to arrange the first round of interviewing, a conference call with the respiratory therapy program director and a few other managers of other departments. After the call, I was told if I advance to the second round, I would be contacted within a few weeks. Nearly two months later in June I get a random, urgent email from the program director stating I did not send official transcripts and that I needed to get them sent ASAP. No one ever requested official transcripts during the initial application process, only an unofficial copy. According to the instructions the school posted, once an offer was given and accepted, then the candidate would need to submit official transcripts.
So, I’m assuming I made it to the second round, and spent $65 overnighting the transcripts to the school. A few weeks later I get another email from the assistant to the campus president stating that I was to appear in person in less than a week for the second interview with the president and the rest of the committee. At the time, I was living in Los Angeles and could not drop everything and spend a small fortune on a round-trip ticket to Texas and other expenses on such short notice. The response I got was that the president agreed to conduct the interview over Skype. It’s now the middle of July and after a few initial technical problems on their end were resolved, we got through the Skype session.
I found it odd and frustrating that the President harped on the fact that I received an A- in a previous doctoral course, a course that was part of my original major of higher education administration. I explained multiple times that after taking the course, I realized I no longer wanted to pursue that major, and changed to information systems. After what seemed to be the fifth time of her asking “…but why did you get an A- in that course?”, I could see the other committee members silently laughing behind her. Nonetheless, I finished the session and when she asked if I had any questions, I asked her how soon would it be before I hear about a decision, mainly because there was practically no time left to apply for a state medical practitioner license, one of the major requirements for the position. I could have opted to spend the $200 - $300 processing fee for the license well in advance, but did not want to gamble losing that much money in the event I did not get a job offer for that state. She stated she understood my concern, and would be in contact soon. By the beginning of August, no one had contacted me, despite the emails I sent. Two days before the job was to start, I finally got an email stating they chose a better qualified candidate. I have undergraduate degrees in biology, respiratory therapy, and computer science. I have a master’s degree in education, and am A.B.D. in information systems. I have worked over a decade as a clinician in multiple acute health care facilities, a few years as a software engineer, and eight years teaching in an advanced respiratory therapy program, but somehow I guess I was not qualified enough to teach in their respiratory therapy program… The entire experience interviewing with this school felt very haphazard and the president and her staff came across as unprofessional. I could never recommend anyone apply for any position at this school if these are the types of shenanigans and culture they have cultivated there. | ||
| Mass Bay Community College | Engineering | [Spring 2015] I responded to an add for a teaching position in EE at Mass Bay Community, around june 2015 i recieved a phone call from the departemnt chair asking me to schedual a skipe interview with the committee, i agreed. The interview took place for around one hour, they mentioned that the HR will let me know about their decsion withinn a week. Three weeks later I recieved a call from the college HR, but could not take the call, to my surpriese they did not leave a massage. I emailed the chair, she send me back an email saying this is to schedule another interview with the dean, please call HR to do that, I called HR, and scheduled a skype interview with dean.
At the time of the interview I waited, after 15 minutes the dean call from her skype account, we have about 15 minuets talk, she then said,we have other candidates, and HR will call you for a decsion within a week, this is two weeks from the starting of the fall semester. November 2015, they readvertise the position again. My cerdintials exceeds what they are asking for, including degrees from top 10 engineering school in the country, 9 years academic experience and 7 years industrail experience in the best conpanies in America. Now it is Decmeber 2015 and I am still waiting for the call, to say some thing about regarding candidates and professionalism at this college, plus other issues. | ||
| Bowling Green State University | Engineering Technology | [Spring 2015] I responeded to an add for a tenure track assistant professor in engineering technology. Recieved an email from the chair of the search committee, to schedual a phone interview, but the position now is a temp position for 9 months without the possibility of renew. I know there is some kind of a game, but I agreed to schedule a time for phone interview, the chair confirmed the date in an email. The time of interview came and I was waiting for some one to call but no call was made, I waited for more than an hour, but no call, no eamil nothing.
This type of schools have no regrad for people. | ||
| Bradley University | World Languages & Cultures | After a warm, welcoming, and positive experience at an on-campus interview, I did not hear anything from the department with which I interviewed for 2.5 months. Not a word. I found out that that they had hired someone for the position after going to their faculty page. I emailed them just to get some closure, and I recieved a response that said the position had been filled and that I would receive a letter from some adminstrator soon. I'm just so disappointed that after spending so much money out of my own pocket (it took them about 1.5 months to reimburse me, but I suppose it's a good thing that they did finally reimburse me) to go there, so much energy put into preparation, and so much hope after what I thought was a great interview, I did not hear anything until I finally confirmed for myself that the position had been filled by googling around a bit. | ||
| California State University, Stanislaus | Biology | [Fall 2014] FIrst off, this is a commuter campus and is a major safety school in California. It is probably the least prestigioius of the Cal State system. That being said, it was a job interview and, like most of us, I was desperate for anything. The phone interview was fine but the on-campus interview shed light on a very disjointed department. There seemed to be a lot of infighting and general animosity. The search commitee was great, however. There was little to no research space but it was abundantly clear that research was a priority though there was almost zero funding for support and no startup. They also expect a 4x3 teaching load and labs count for 2/3 of a lecture. So, you're looking at 6 hours of lecture and nine hours of lab in a semester.
When I finally heard back from the search committee, they said they voted to give me the position but the department voted no because the original job announcement wasn't worded exactly as they had hoped. The revised version was even more closely aligned with my background. The search committee all resigned in protest. Now they are re-running the search. I'm definitely not reapplying. The department was in shambles and they expect too much of their professors for pretty terrible pay. | ||
| Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College | All | [December 2013] Run--do not walk--run screaming from any job offered at this institution. The president is a dictator and micro-manager. Deans and chairs kowtow to his every whim. He recently appointed two uncredentialled deans to ABAC's "Stafford School of Business," a fancy name that means nothing more than a fancy building on campus. SACs will surely have something to say about this soon. Administration regularly bullies faculty, who all teach a heavy duty 5/5 course load and are required to publish, too. The Dean of my school lied to me about the kinds of course I'd be teaching when he/she hired me. Then, when I complained, basically told me, "Too bad. Suck it up." For what it's worth, the faculty senate is useless.
ABAC has a "Rural Studies" degree that's really nothing more than an umbrella for several degrees, including a Writing BA and a Business BS. Do not be fooled by any advertisements. Students are nice but they're mostly hayseeds. Little opportunity for advancement at this school unless you're a local yokel who's in on the prevalent "Good Old Boys" network. Tifton's a nice enough town, but there's nothing to do. It's mainly an interestate stop-over of chain restaurants and convenience stores. ABAC is where PhDs go to become irrelevant. Do not apply for a job here. Run away as fast as you can.
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| Arkansas Technical University | English | [Spring 2015 Interview]
First night, the professor picked to have dinner with me spent the meal telling me that the Department Chair was a misogynist. I was shocked at her candidness, but it was a good warning about the lack of profesionalism and hostility in the Department. The next day, during an interview, the Chair asked me a (young, visibly queer woman) whether or not I could live in the South. I replied yes, I'd been living in the South for a while. He asked again "No, I mean it. Can you live in the South?" and then proceeded to tell me that his son sat in the same chair I was in ten years ago and told him that he never wanted to be in Arkansas again before moving to California. Nothing blatantly illegal, but definitely illegal implications. This atmosphere on top of a 4/4 load (with classes around 25-30 studies), colleagues that were visibly overworked, and no hope at all for a raise even after tenure (Chair said as much). Was grateful not to get an offer, but was surprised that I was sent a form rejection letter informing me I was not selected. Though should I have been? It required the least amount of effort. | ||
| Arizona State University | Any non-white individuals / Any non-disabled individuals | English faculty member confronted by campus police officer who demanded to see her papers, then threw her into his car. She's being charged with assault, even though the video shows the officer was the instigator of the assault. The university says they see "no evidence of inappropriate actions" by the officer. If they do this to high-visibility targets like a faculty member, one can only wonder at the level police brutality non-white students and staff are exposed to. [posted June 2014]
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| Ashford University | All | First of all, anyone who is considering a job with this company should realize that it is not a real school--it is a business. The faculty are treated no huneter than other employees and are "at will" employees which means that they can be fired at any time for any reason at all (or none at all). The "school" is owned by Bridgepoint Education which is only in this business of for-profit higher education for the money. This is demonstrated by the fact that Ashford has been replacing textbooks used in its "classes" with in-house texts produced by Bridgepoint. The full-time faculty are also forced to work long hours, teach online classes with large numbers of students who can barely write, attend numerous meetings to plan for other meetings, and serve on various useless "committees" that focus on making cosmetic changes in an attempt to gain accreditation from WASC (Ashford was denied accreditation last year) and keep accreditation from HLC in the meantime. Ashford is also obsessed with student retention because a lost student means a loss of profits. They all but encourage the faculty to "kiss up" to students and give out good grades simply so that they will receive good evaluation and be able to keep their jobs. There is no emphasis on research and faculty are kept so busy with administrative work and meetings that they don't have time to do any research. The only faculty who receive support for research are those in business and those who decide to break down and study online education. There is no support for research in other fields. In addition, the place is so disorganized that they ask faculty for their CVs every month. If you are a new graduate, then I suggest that you avoid this place if you are looking for something that is more long-term than an "at-will" job that has about as much stability as a greeter job at Walmart. If you are working at a real university or have tenure, you would have to be legally insane to leave a job like that to accept a job with this place. The degrees being handed out to students who have done little work while attending this school are basically devaluing higher education across the country.
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| Chowan University | All | Only consider this university if you want to teach really bad students! Chowan University's mission is to accept the worse-than-average students who probably don't get into 99% of the other colleges they have applied to, and to "give them a chance to succeed." However, most of the students don't want to do anything, and the Provost has his own pet-students that he would call into his office for "friendly talks" from time to time, so that he can get information to be used against faculty that he wants to fire. So if a student doesn't like you because he/she thinks your class is difficult, you can get into trouble just like that.
The Provost also tells some of the department chairs to "get information about thei faculty members in case he needs to fire them." He has fired people before where the termination date is "this afternoon," without the person doing anything obviously wrong! He won't tell the person why he's letting him/her go; he just tells them that "we don't have to give you a reason." Also, this year they had a search where the Provost already chose the person he wanted to hire, before the search committee even met for the first time to look over all the applications. Basically, in all accounts, Chowan University is a joke! Not to mention that it is in the middle of nowhere - and they want you to live right there! There are faculty members who live further away in order to be closer to civilization, but generally the administration frowns upon that. They tell some new faculty that "there is no place to rent in this town, so you should buy a house here," just so that they would have more liability and less mobility once they move here. Of course it doesn't mean that they will necessarily keep you. Some people have fallen into those lies before and bought a house right in town, only to find five other houses on sale in the same neighborhood that can't get sold for over a year! Buyer beware! | ||
| Auburn University | any Humanities | This is where Humanities (any discipline) faculty go to wither on the vine and die. This College of Liberal Arts is tiny, and way behind the times, even when compared to other Us in the region. If you're in the Sciences, Engineering or Business fields then this would be a great place. If you're in Humanities though, just move on. Little opportunity, little culture, and geographically isolated. Unless you're a rock star who spends all of your free time travelling to do research/presentations/exhibitions (which will be next to impossible given the work load), don't ever plan on escaping. [posted May 2014] | ||
| Baylor University | Art & Art History | I applied for a job at Baylor in the Department of Art in fall 2014. I was granted a phone interview and asked to prep for it by reading the university's mission statement. The first question I was asked in the phone interview was whether or not I was affiliated with any religion. When I told them I was not religious, they said that religious faith was a requirement of the interview and terminated the interview. Do not bother to apply to this school unless you subscribe to their very narrow worldview. I am sorry I wasted my time on prepping the application and interview.
-This department is toxic and dysfunctional to the nth degree. I used to work here and observed one bully of a colleague make an number of discriminatory statements about applicants' accents, race, perceived race, and assumptions about applican'ts sexuality. Even though the university and its administration pays lip service to equity and diversity, they only penalize whistleblowers and empower the aggressor. Steer clear. | ||
| Baylor University | Sociology | If you get an interview, be sure to ask them why they lost 5 people from the department in as many years. If the words "health" or "choice" come out of their mouths, they're lying to you. This place is a great place to go if you can tow the party line and are a white male, but you can forget it if you're a minority or a woman, and especially if you have any viewpoint beyond the very narrow ones of the crusty old white administration. The department itself has some nice people in it, but the administration is a nightmare and isn't going anywhere. It's a shame because the students have a lot of potential. (2015) | ||
| Bethune-Cookman University English | I should say, first of all, that the English faculty seemed very nice, professional, and put together. We had a great conversation over skype. But the administration should give one great pause. After skyping in December, I was emailed that the Dean would call me "sometime the week of January 6." I actually did not get a phone call until the first week of February and this was the search chair setting up an appointment for a phone interview with the dean. I was then called a day earlier, because she mixed up the dates. Clearly, disorganized, which probably is not all that uncommon.
When the appointed time arrived, I interviewed with the associate dean, because the "dean was in another meeting." The associate dean spent the entire time trying to draw out a confession of faith. Now I am a Christian, but not the denomination associated with this school. Upon reading the mission statement on their website, my understanding was that Bethune-Cookman is a Historically Black University that happens to be loosely faith-based. This appears not to be the case. I applied to other similar instutions and did not get the same response. Unless you are United Methodist, and prepared to make a confession of faith during the interview process, reconsider applying here. [Posted 03/05/2014] This institution is corrupt to the core. They are censured by AAUP and have one of the lowest graduation rates in the country. There are always constant investigations and scandals. Moreover, the pay is extremely low and the administration constantly uses fear tactics to keep the faculty docile. You really notice it once you leave this place. As a result of extremely low morale, most of the faculty do not care about their jobs(they are coasting) leading to chaos in the classrooms. Attendance is not expected in the classroom. Thus, while a great teacher may try to require it, the culture created means those instructors will not succeed in getting students into the classroom. I never had a problem with this before teaching here or after teaching here. There are some great and humble students. These are the ones to cherish and provide any help as they will be really thankful. Nonetheless, this institution will probably collapse unless the government takes it over. Avoid at all costs. Only those with connections and who side with the top tier get any respect. 9/2015 | |||
| Belmont University | Theatre | [March 2013] Several issues mostly concerning Department/Search Committee Head's unprofessional behavior toward me (possibly sexist, but certainly personal), but issues also relate to the School of Performing Arts Dean and the university in general (since they allow the department head to behave so unethically). Generally speaking, I know this school would not have been a good fit for me because their Christian mission was not in line with my personal and professional temperament. However, their actions suggest deeper problems that would impact a new hire no matter what their personal affiliations may be.
Skype interview: during ths the Dean was visably yawning while listening to my answers about my scholarship and teaching. The only time she perked up was to ask me to respond to the university's mission, which in addition to the standard stuff -- student centered, excellence in teaching -- included "Christian". Attempting to avoid a discussion of my beliefs, I responded to the first two adjectives and ignored religion. The Dean then perked up and interrogated me on how my beliefs impacted my teaching. I tried to stay true to my own basic beliefs -- that diversity is a good thing for the classroom -- and assumed that I would not be getting a call for a campus visit b/c I wasn't "Christian" enough. Invitation to campus: in inviting me to campus, the Department/Search Committee Head'asked me first to respond via email to the university's mission statement and reminded me of the importance of the school's Christian identity. I complied, but again, was clearly not a Bible-banger, so I thought the plans for a campus visit could be squashed. They were not. I debated going and decided it would be good experience and I should not judge the school before visiting. Planning campus visit: When the invitation to a campus interview was confirmed I was explicitly told that I would be making 2 presentations: a job talk and a teaching demo, but not given any detail of the length, content, or audience for these presentations. With a month to go before the interview, I waited for these details (which I asked for upon accepting the invitation for the interview) to be confirmed. When they confirmed my flight plans three weeks before the interview I mentioned that I was waiting on details of my presentations and they assured me that they would be in touch asap. Two weeks before the interview I politely requested to know what class I would be teaching, what parameters I should know about for my job talk, and the length of each presentation. A week before the interview I asked again. Both emails received no answer. I emailed again five days before the interview and got a response immediately asking me to wait just a bit longer. The details came 72 hours before my flight and they changed my iterinary from two presentations to one 30-minute teaching demo. So the work I had done on the job talk was a waste and I had less than 72 hours to prep for the class. Pissed, but I handled it. Another snafu in the planning stage: during the phone call to confirm travel plans they informed me that instead of having a day and a half with the search committee (including dinner the night before my presentations, etc) I would only have half a day on campus. This was ostensibly an unavoidable issue having to do with flight schedules, but it was clearly implied that my interview would be half the time they alloted for the other candidates. Also at this point much of my communication started to be with a woman whose position in the department was unclear. Some of this communication was via email from the Department/Search Committee Head' email account, but signed by this woman. I later found out that this person was not in fact a member of the department or even employed by the university but was the Department/Search Committee Head' "girlfriend" and "just helping out". Not to put too fine a point on it, but she apparently was given the authority to cut my interview time in half! Interview Part I: First meeting with search committee and Dean was breakfast and the Department/Search Committee Head is late. The rest of us begin a messy and disorganized interview and the Department/Search Committee Head' stumbles in, interrupting me, and begins talking with the other faculty members about some personal business -- as if we are not in the middle of an interview. I stand to try and introduce myself, since its my interview and everything, and he barely shakes my hand before continuing his private conversation at the other end of the table. That goes on for about fifteen minutes, all the while I am trying to figure out a way to politely enter a conversation I am clearly not welcome to, until he stands up to leave saying "I forgot. I have a class to teach right now". He goes without saying another word to me. I spend the next hour having a tour of campus with another member of the search committee. Interview Part II: The next time I see the Department/Search Committee Head' he takes me on a tour of the Theatre Bldg, which basically consist of him telling me what he has done during his tenure. He does not ask me one question about myself, my work, or my goals. He never refers to what I would be doing if I accepted a position in the department. At the end of the tour he takes me to a meeting with students, which goes very well, but does not include any members of the search committee. In fact the only non-student besides the Department/Search Committee Head' is the "girlfriend" who helped with my travel plans who is "just curious to meet me" so she sits in. Akwardness: At the end of this, Department/Search Committee Head and Girlfriend take me to the Dept office, ostensibly on route to my teaching demo, which is schedule to take place in less than 30 minutes and I am assured I will have "plenty of time to set up and relax before my presentation". But while we are in the office, Department/Search Committee Head gets caught up with some personal or department business (I am not informed about what he is doing when he turns his back to me to work on his computer). This goes on as if I was not even there with occassional interuptions from students, to whom he does not introduce me. Generally I feel as if I am in the one in the way as he takes his sweet time on his computer, chatting with students, and discussing personal issues with his Girlfiend all while I wait to be taken to a classroom to set up for my teaching demo. Finally, he realizes that we are late for my teaching demo! Interview Part III: We rush to my teaching demo, he fiddles with the computer, there's a lot of confusion, and worry about if my materials will work on their OS -- things that could have been resolved if I had been brought to the classroom five minutes before the students arrived so I could set up in peace. But, I do my thing as well as possible -- I do have a fair amount of experience and confidence in this arena and had already done two interviews before this one, so things could have gone worse. At the end of the teaching demo students and other faculty who sat in give me positive feedback, but Department/Search Committee Head' says nothing about my presentation. He tells me we are late for lunch and we start rushing across campus. Here's Where it Gets Really Crazy: on our walk across campus we are joined by -- you guessed it -- the Girlfiend. And by now I am used to them talking to each other as if I am not there, so they do and I walk a bit behind them. At this point I know I'm not taking this job anyway. Girlfriend excuses herself from lunch since encroaching on that would be unprofessional (?) and I endure another uncomfortable half-hour where I learn that Department/Search Committee Head has basically built the department without any supervision, that he has always been the Department Head and that he has personally recruited all of his current faculty. Hmmmm. Final meeting with Dean: meeting with the Dean I am again grilled about my religion, couched in concern for whether or not I will be a good fit at a school that is "so student-centered, devoted to teaching excellence, and oh-by-the-way Christian." Search committee member interupts my meeting with the Dean to inform us that I am late to get to the airport. So my opportunity to talk about myself and my work is cut short. Aftermath: three months after my interview Belmont has not informed me about whether or not they would like to hire me; meanwhile I have accepted a position at another university. I have been in touch with the department about a hotel charge that appeared on my credit card, which to their credit they handled quickly. However, despite instructing me to send receipts for my incidental travel expenses (airport parking, etc), they have not reimbursed me for these petty expenses. I have emailed them three times and have been assured each time that they are being processed. I next will be contacting the Dean. I don't expect to get any money from them. RESPONSE: I need to respond to this to echo the original poster's experience. In fact, reading this I was absolutely flabbergasted because I could have written this about my own experience with this dept. I believe I may have been the only other outside interviewee for this job and we had the EXACT same experience. Dean actually looked to be asleep in my Skype interview. The Dept head was wholly unprofessional throughout my time on campus. Did not pay attention to my job talk. At lunch with other faculty members after my job talk he had personal conversations about issues I knew nothing about and al but turned his back on me to do so. It was so incredibly rude. And I should add everyone at the table but me was male. The dept head's girlfriend was present at almost all other times, which I found very disconserting, but at least she he some social graces. I considered writing the Dean to report what I felt was unconscionably poor treatment, but decided it would only make me look bad. Now that I read this I wish I had contacted them so they could know what an unprofessional dept they have. Thanks for offering this post. | ||
| Blackburn College | English | (Spring 2019) The department itself seems lovely, though small -- you'd expect this of a tiny college. Negotiations, though, were a nightmare: upon the initial offer, I was told that there's zero room to move on salary and then was given four days (over a holiday weekend) to think about it, leaving no time for my partner and I to make travel plans for her to see the place. Two days after the offer, I emailed to ask for a) the MLA's two-week window of time; b) an insurance plan that would cover my fiancee until our wedding [two months after the semester begins]; and c) a phone call to discuss what options might exist for my eventual spouse to find a staff position at the college. A) was sort of met -- the window was extended from four days to eight; b) was outright denied; and c), instead of a phone call, it was suggested that she make an hour-long commute to the nearest city as they couldn't make up a position for her. We did some research into open positions, she applied to one, and then I pointed this out in an email seven days post-initial offer, saying that while I didn't expect them to create a position, one existed that's perfect for her and that finding her a job in this tiny town was my priority. The reply came that evening that a guarantee could not be made and that applications would not be reviewed for another three weeks; five hours later (at 11pm), the offer was rescinded. I had not replied in the interim.
I can't say I'm surprised that they're having trouble filling this position. (Spring 2019) I was ghosted after the campus interview, still haven't been reimbursed for travel expenses. There was a strong indication that the college is in serious financial trouble. Whoever takes this job will be responsible for installing the fourth First Year Experience program in four years. From the above candidate's experience, I would imagine they're looking for someone desperate to railroad into a very bad position. | ||
| Boise State University | Social Science departments (in the College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs--SSPA) | (Fall 2014) The College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs (SSPA) is being eliminated at the end of the 2014-15 academic year. It has been in operation for 29 years. The eight departments in the college will go to health sciences (socialwork), a new college of social policy (public policy, poli sci, crim justice) and the rest will go to Arts & Sciences (history, anthro, communication, sociology).
While this change in itself is not so bad, the stress and politics accompanying this change--coming from the top, President Kustra and Provost Schimpf's offices--diminish the contributions of individual faculty. We don't recommend applying for or getting a new job in social sciences in the near future. It is a disaster during this transition. Replacements of good faculty leaving or contemplating leaving may not occur. The communication department in particular is having substantial curriculum and pedagogical problems that are more than personality differences, but which are substantive differences over quality and the curricular routes to it. One contingent has for years resisted a robust MA program while growing the undergrad programs. The media production faculty and the comm arts faculty are at odds over definitions of scholarship, now a decade+ rift encouraged by bad management and poor leadership, which produced a smorgasboard curriculum fragmenting the department and its students. That failure to provide a common curricular experience for all students has confused students as faculty splintered over such issues. This led to the administration placing the department into a receivership with a dean-appointed interim head for two years, to end with a new chair from a national search. Meanwhile, the department is developing new plans to keep the department whole in spite of efforts to split the department. Over time, the department must make itself into better interconnections internally and with the new home for the department in the College of Arts and Sciences. In transition with histories to learn from and put to bed, I wouldn't recommend Boise State at this point in time to anyone in terms of long-term employment until the department knows what it is. In the social sciences in particular, this is a university to fear. | ||
| Boise State University | College of Engineering |
[Fall 2017] Boise State College of Engineering has a history of toxic work culture with a clique at its center. This clique has been culvitated with a former Dean couple at its heart, which engages in malicious treatment of competent faculty who are not aligned with their petty interests. There is a pattern of workplace discrimination against faculty of international origin and their exploitation through various mechanisms. These faculty are expected to carry the 'priviledged ones' on their back, allow them to steal in broad daylight, include them in their grants and papers, while the admins selectively highlight the achievements of these moochers. The administrators are groomed and promoted from the absolute worst performers without any consideration for their academic record or integrity, mostly from the above mentioned clique. The heirarchy is largely based on race and not performance. There are informers in the departments who have been systematically cultivated to ensure that anyone speaking out against mismanagement and ineptitude in a democratic manner is targeted and their interests are hurt. Several departments have turned toxic due to these policies and have seen a high turnover of faculty and staff. Interviews and hiring decision have been based upon the clique's interests and several times these are fixed to hire from their own kind. Tenure, promotion and merit raise decisions have not been transparent and do not reflect academic reputation and productivity. Unless you have other options, it may be a decent place to start a career but further career progression is not dependent on academic/professional performance but on your racial profile and obsequiousness. | ||
| Borough of Manhattan CC (CUNY) | English | [Spring 2014]
Took over 7 weeks after my 2nd interview to get any information. If you feel it might be a long process, or if the process is taking a long time, please let candidates know. Please respond to their emails - a candidate sending an email 6 weeks after the 2nd interview is justified. A response is deserved. There might come a time when a candidate's employment is ending in a month or two, prompting the need for information and a new job search. Poor experience | ||
| Borough of Manhattan CC (CUNY) Bowie State U | Humanities Division | First interview on Skype went pretty well and the faculty seemed kind and professional. I received an e-amail informing me the committee had reached a decission and that now it would be a provost decission. So I was offered a campus interview with her but no teaching demo or meeting with the committee was even mentioned. At the bottom of the email a note said "the college would not be responsible for travel expenses but I was confirmed by the secretary that they would.
I was not picked up or even taken to lunch. The Provost was outright rude and no meeting with the committee was scheduled. I met one of the professors in another department and had lunch together in the cafeteria (yes, the faculty are nice people). He told me his salary did not reach the 45K's (teaching 4 clases) which for Manhattan is really bellow poverty. Thankfully I was not offered the job and my travel expenses were partially reimbursed after an exchange of messages with the administration (they said the school would recognize only a $500 [a hotel in Manhattan can easilly cost that much]). Talking to a friend later on, he told me he had the same eexperience with them but he declined an invitation to interview there because the department who invited him would not pay the expenses and did not offer to pick him up (they should show a little decency; it's New York, not Nowhereville). Stay away from this school | ||
| Bristol University (UK) | English | Not sure about other departments, but don't bother applying for a job in the Dept. of English unless you have some very firm connection to Oxford or Cambridge, since they only hire people who have done degrees or postdocs at Oxbridge. I went for a campus visit and they made it fairly clear during the process and abundantly clear afterwards that the decision was a foregone conclusion. Needless to say, it is frustrating to waste your time travelling, delivering a job talk, and preparing for an interview only to realize you never had a chance. (December 2015) | ||
| Broward College | Social Science | I made it to the phone interview stage. I fielded the call right before lunch, and it seemed that the entire committee was out to lunch during the call. They raced through the questions, showing no care or evidence of active listening during the call. Talking to dead air the entire time was awkward to say the least. When it came to ‘my turn’ to ask questions, I said I had two. I got one out before they tried hanging up on me. If a search committee is going to take the time to call a candidate, they should at least take the time to listen to that candidate. [posted May 2014] | ||
| Cal State Bakersfield | Education | I had a very bizarre experience with Cal State, Bakersfield, First, one of the professors lied about knowing my mentor. Why? I don't know. It made no sense why someone would lie about something that could be verified easily. The chair said that the professor in question had "exaggerated" about knowing her. Second, two of the professors argued about who would taking me to lunch within the first five minutes of the interview. Third, the search chair was extremely rude to me. He implied I was ignorant because I had never heard an obscure Cuban song he was singing. Instead of taking me to dinner, he had me eat at his house, where we had beef tacos. I don't eat red meat ( he made a comment about my not eating red meat during lunch). He then had me sit in his living room for two hours while he ignored me. Third, they asked people at my university about me after I explicitly told them not to. Finally, they told me that they were interested in me, but I would have to sign an affidavit declaring that I would not cause trouble for their university. it was a bizarre experience, to say the least. Avoid this place at all costs! [posted Feb. 2013] | ||
| Chinese University of Hong Kong | Faculty of Arts | I was invited for a campus visit in 2018, but it was a fake search. Other than a job talk and meeting with a brief meeting with the search committe, I had no interaction with the faculty and the students there. I ate all my meals by myself at the school cafeteria and had to pay for them myself, so was the expenses for local transportation--I was not even reimbursed for the taxi fare from the airport to the hotel. After my visit, they never contacted me, even though the department head told me that I would hear from them within 6 weeks. I invested so much time and efforts into the preparation, but in retrospect I know that I never had a chance in the first place. It was such a waste of my time, and yet they didn't even have the basic courtesy to contact me again. It leaves me with such a bad impression of this university.
I (a different person) had virtually the same experience. I'm not sure it was a fake search. I think it's possible that they just aren't interested in doing job searches the way many Western universities do. It was very strange, and annoying that they never bothered to tell me I didn't get the job, but at least I didn't have to spend two whole days in interviews.
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| Christopher Newport University | Communication | Time to make a note about this department/university in this wiki. For more information about the issues related to this department and the university in general, see the notes in Academic Job Wiki Communication and Media Studies 2012-2013 | ||
| Clemson University | Education | I was thankful to have been invited for an on-campus interview. The reputation of Clemson preceeded me and I felt that I was going to be treated to a top flight experience. OH MY! The first red flag came rather quickly. I had an appointment with the department chair. I figured this person would discuss courses to teach, reserch and service expectations. Alas, I walked in his office and he flatly said, "Look out my window. You can see the Blue Ridge Mountains from here." OK. And? That was literally it. We looked blankly at each other in silence for a few minutes. After 15 minutes, not a SINGLE question about the position. Right then I had the sneaky feeling that I was the obligatory "other candidate we have to bring on campus." And this hunch was confirmed as, while I was waiting to go to another department chair for an interview, I overheard members of the committee talking about how the "other" (i.e. real) candidate has just arrived on campus. Double-booked they were. So, at dinner the two committee members did not ask me a single question about myself, my aspirations, my experience. Nothing. Actually, they sat talking to themselves as if I wasn't there. If the chocolate cake wasn't so good, I would have excused myself right then and there. I called home that night and told my spouse that there was no way in hades we were coming to Clemson. It was a complete joke. I get that I was clearly the "second choice" but, darn, to treat any potential colleague with such complete disregard showed that, in this instance, they were about as unprofessional and sophomoric as they come. | ||
| Clemson University | Overall administration | This isn't so much a recruitment issue as I have been at the university for a while, but it is something you should be aware of if you are negotiating for a job here. This year I was offered two job offers at other universities. I brought these offers to my department chair. Neither was for more money, but both were at better schools in a better geographical location. My department chair spoke with the dean and was greenlighted to give me a raise if I turned the other offers down. This information was provided via e-mail so there is no possibility I was confused on this. For the last 4 months I have been jumping through hoops trying to find out when my raise would begin. I was finally told that even though I followed through on my end and turned the other jobs down, HR deemed them not competitve job offers so I would not actually be getting the raise after all. They recognize that there are factors other than salary, but that is all they will take into account. That decision seems reasonable to me if one is informed of it before the other offers have been turned down, but to wait until the other offers have been turned down and then yank the raise is underhanded. I likely would have taken one of the other offers had I known this. I would strongly caution anyone from taking a job at Clemson as this type of underhanded dealings from the administration is common. I will certainly be on the job market again next year! [posted June 2015]
I had a campus visit here. It was one of the worst vists I think a person could experience. RUN AWAY! The first professor I met for lunch asked me if the woman near us had a wedding ring so he could ask her out. The committee asked me so many inappropriate questions--my religion, what kind of political activities I would be involved in, whether I had kids and what race I was (one professor said I had "a hispanic face" and a "Native American nose"). Race is a huge issue here, and I felt like they were constantly testing me about it in a very hostile manner. Because the state has a negative reputation, they were trying to be hyper PC, but it came off as being aggressive and accusatory. Honestly, I don't know what exactly they were looking for, but I'm glad I wasn't it! I know this post is under administration and the faculty members were the main issue, but what kind of administration would tolerate this kind of behavior? [posted June 2015] | ||
| Cleveland Institute of Art | Tried to negotiate terms of the offer and they rescinded without any discussion. Also, there were a few of unprofessional moments throughout the interview (in one case, a sexist email to an admin assistant was accidentally sent to me). I checked with others in the field, and they are notorious for poor pay. [posted May 2016] | |||
| College of Idaho | These comments are in reference to a campus visit for a position to begin fall 2017. I have two main comments:
1. I felt that the members of the search committee, the other faculty and the students were very nice and welcoming. I had an overall positive impression of the campus and of the people. However, my first complaint is about the scheduling of the campus visit. The schedule was too tight. I had no breaks; there wasn't even time for me to go to the restroom! The schedule didn't take into account the time it takes to walk from Building A to Building B. I got off schedule pretty early on and couldn't get back on track. I had lunch with students and didn't even have the time to go to the resroom first; fortunately, I carry hand sanitzer with me. I noticed that they had a failed search for 2015-2016; I hope that this was not due to the difficult campus visit schedule. I had a campus visit at a different institution a few weeks later that was completely different. At this other place, the person who did the scheduling included several breaks throughout the day and plenty of time to walk from one building to the next. I was also able to go to the restroom at the other place. So my suggestion to the College of Idaho, and for others, is to make a schedule that enables the candidate to take a much needed break, even if it is just for ten minutes. Having a campus visit is incredibly stressful and the schedule should take this into consideration. 2. My second comment is about my meeting with the president. I was late to this meeting (see comment 1 above) but I tried to put my best foot forward. The first question the president asked me was where I am from, which is illegal to ask. I have a non-English last name and a lot of people inquire about my origins. I'm especially sensitive to this question because I'm an ethnic minority. So I replied with something like "I get asked this question a lot" and then changed topics. I didn't even answer that question. I noticed in the "Dear Search Committee" section that a lot of candidates get asked questions that are illegal, such as questions about their origins or if they are married or have children. I didn't get asked this, but the question about my origins did turn me off. Other than these two issues, the College of Idaho is great and it would be a wonderful place to work. | |||
| Dalton State College | All Departments | Dalton State looks like a desirable 4 year college from outside of the institution but it is still run like a 2 year college which it was for a long time. In fact managers (can't call them administrators) take their cues from the way workers are treated at nearby carpet mills. A former VP once stated that professors think they are going to sit in their office and read a book between classes. However, the college has other plans for those faculty---overload classes of a 6/6 load with 2 courses in summer as well. Science faculty--this includes you as well with those labs. Faculty who insist on teaching a 4/4 load will be told they need to "show more enthusiasm" which is the school's way of saying overloads which is the price you pay to get tenure. Most chairs and deans were unable to ever publish and take out their frustration on faculty who do. A few female chairs and deans truly hate males and get their revenge. When the lower level administrators turn on you, don't expect any help from other upper level administrators. These folks all work in tandem to make the school a place where faculty are always a little fearful of their job. The college is famous for hiring people ABD and giving them a 5 year contract cutting them loose if they don't finish the degree in 5 years----guess how many finish with a 6/6 load. See description of ABAC for a similarly run place. This place has their own teaching conference because their people don't get accepted at real conferences.
Avoid this place like the plague. | ||
| Drew University | History | A friend went through the whole job search process for a TT position, was actually told he got the job, told them he'd accepted it... but before the paperwork was finalized (but not before he was told he could announce that he'd start working there in the fall, in public, at conferences, etc.) the administration came in and killed the job. Completely insane, sadistic, the WORST kind of academic job market horror story. Boycott this place. Save your time for schools that respect it, for departments that have their shit at least slightly together. The department deserves to suffer, if only so that their administration can see that axing jobs after they've been offered and accepted will have long-term consequences for the future. As far as I am concerned their name is mud. They are dirt. Anyone who works there should feel ashamed that this was allowed to happen. [posted April 2014] | ||
| East Carolina University | Criminal Justice | This department is a disaster. It is the perfect example of the worst possible environment to work in It has it all: 1) crappy pay (with no hope of improvement in the foreseeable future. I was told I would be "fotunate" to get a P&T raise in the time I was there); 2) terrible administration (the deam of the college and the chair of the department are the worst! If you are not a heterosexual white male, be prepared to do more work that colleagues who are white males. I understand that the dean situation has improved since they sacked the lady who was the dean before who used to tell use young female assistants that we were dressed inappropriately to go into the classroom when we were in slacks and a blouse! Additionally, be prepared to work in a micromangagerial environment with someone who will remain the chair for the forseeable future and has ZERO ability to lead or strategically plan. Further, the current chair likes to pretend that he is a researcher yet he has not written anything since prior to coming to ECU in 2009 and in his CV counts encyclopedia articles as peer reviewed articles); 3) faculty drama (the department is in an ever lasting state of civil war because there are 4 people in the department who went to graduate school together (incidentially they might as well call ECU Sam Houston East, and most of the folks there are not the productive SHSU scholars--with the exception of one) and they all seem to be working stuff out from graduate school. While I could tell you a lot, the summary statement is tthis: the former chair of the department was ousted in a coups before I arrived and he remained on the faculty and the scar tissue from the battle years remains and the wounds consistently reopened. One of my friends who went there after me reported that some of the new hires are real "snakes in the grass" and those folks who are decent and productive are either looking to leave or have left. They have lost almost 10 assistants in the past 5 years alone and almost 2 dozen in the past 10 years).
I could go on and on, but suffice it to say this place should be avoided at all costs. If you are not one of the chairs favorites you will end up doing a lot of service work, and will intentionally have your career sabotaged if you are productive. While these are the words of a person who managed to escape that hell hole, after reading the sever year review that was conducted last year I know I made the right decision to leave. If you get an interview there, you should request a copy of this report and the unit's response to it. If I could figure out how to load it up here, I would. A very prominent criminologist (I do not believe I can name names) said of his assessment of the unit was that the place was in desperate need of leadership and the current working conditions were "deeply troubling." There are some decent people that remain at the university, although they have just lost another good one, but they are few and far between and who knows how you will find them as they are trying to keep their career above water at this point. If I had a student who was considering an offer there, I would tell them to consider brewing coffee for a year while strengthening their CV. Rumor has it last year the chair was secretly negotiating with his preferred candidate against the recommendation of the search committee and the faculty as a whole. What a situation to walk into. | ||
| Eastern Florida State College | All Departments | August, 2018.
Stay away from this college. Most of the newer employees are either sons, daughters, son and/or daughter in law of current college provosts, assistant provost and/or VP's of any department. Needless to say, Nepotism at that college is alive and well. The HR department is the worst department in the world. Charged an employee for dependant life insurance and then denied a claim when the dependant died refunding the premium to the employee, claiming the policy was not valid because the dependant did not provide a physical exam before applying. In reality, none was required for employees who chose that option on the first day of employement. Service award ceremonies are horrible, the HR department has someone create a video of the employees without acknowleging doctor titles for any of the faculty. They offer employees getting awards an opportunity to take a picture for the event with the college protographer. However, if they fail to show up, the HR office uses the very first picture that the employee took for their badge when they first started (even if it is 25 years old), regardless of whether there was a recent badge picture on the college's employee database. The award ceremony brocheres also fail to acknowledge faculty doctor titles. Most faculty member throw the brocheres away. Morevoer, the head of HR only has an AA degree and really needs to step up her game especially now that the college where she works offers students a chance to earn a BAS degree in Human Resources. Everytime there is a faculty or administrative opening, applicants fly in to interview but it is a total waste of money and time for them. They usually select someone's friends or relative for the position. Most who are less qualified than many other applicants that interviewed and/or not qualified at all. Additionally when people are offered a full-time positions, they are invited to the HR office for processing, but are not told that they will be there approximately 6 hours listening to endless PowerPoint presentations about employee benefits without compensation of any kind. If someone complains, HR immeadiately contacts their hiring committee or the new boss that they will report to let them know. Finally the HR department recinded tuition reimbursement benefits for faculty that had been negogiated buy our faculty union over the summer without consulting anyone. Did I already mention that the HR department of this college is the worst in the world? | ||
| Eastern Michigan University | College of Education and Administration | The Dean asked me after my interview with the faculty how soon I would move to Ypsilanti ( I lived less than an hour away). He told me that a 45-minute commute was out of the question. I was under the impression that I would be getting a job offer soon. I waited five weeks, and the only reason I heard anything even then was that I called them. The search chair just told me that they wouldn't be hiring me, with no reason. After I hung up I called back and asked why. I was told that I had "a bad attitude toward students." I had just received a teaching award that same year. I wasn't sure how they could infer that I had a bad attitude toward students. I told her that what the Dean said. She told me he shouldn't have said that. I then informed her that it was unprofessional to make me wait five weeks for a response and I had to call them. I thought they were very unprofessional, which is ironic because they were implying that I was the unprofessional one. [posted Feb. 2013]
2017. The Eastern Michigan University administration prides itself on exercising its prerogative to dismiss employees "at will" with no explanation even in the case of very productive individuals. Raises are sparse for non-faculty. There is a rampant cronyism. Find out who is married to whom. Beware. If you are thinking of relocating to EMU ask about the high turnover rate in the administration in general. Find out why the job you are applying for is suddenly available and what happened to the person who formerly held the postion. There most likely will not be any relocation expense support. Forget about a hire for your spouse since you aren't from here. Get everything in writing in your letter of hire. EVERYTHING. If you are eligible, you MUST negotiate your right to return to faculty, because you will be needing it. Read the AAUP contract and negotiate the right to assume those pay raises when they demote you. Better yet, stay far away. | ||
| Eastern Illinois University | All |
Below comment refers to 2016 Illinios budget stalemate during which EIU laid off faculty and staff. The stalemate is over and stable state funding has been re-established. Current Governor has even pledged to increase state funding. The below described situation was a one-time occurence during a severe crisis imposed on the university by the State's former Governor. Stay away for the near future. University is in a deep budget crisis and the administration has rescinded 26 faculty offers of employment after having issued them 6 weeks earlier. People turned down other offers and now scramble to find anything for Fall (contracts were rescinded 5 weeks before the fall semester). Administration only excludes tenured faculty from further layoffs, does not have a strategy, and is not honoring its commitments. Great place in general, but currently and under this administration, I would not recommend this as a place for anyone wanting to build a career. | ||
| Northern Illinois University | All | Things are not nearly as bad here as Eastern Illinois University, but NIU has extremely high turnover, and for very valid reasons. NIU prefers to hire mediocre people with family in the area that won't want to or be able to get other jobs elsewhere once they discover the degree of incompetence lurking below what is a nice university on the surface. They also lose a lot of good young people because they are absolute shit at spousal hires (they don't even try, because they think DeKalb is in Chicago.) The good thing is that this turnover means they are always hiring!! P.S. I respectfully disagree with the below poster (a friend) about grant support. I got great grant support. And there are some departments, like Psychology, that genuinely have their shit together and have real grad students. But many departments... are not and don't.
I agree with the post above. A lot of faculty are interested in leaving, and many of the new hires leave after a few years (which applies to me as I'm on my way out). The university is really not a national or 'R2' as it looks like. It's now in the unranked category for national universities in US News. Support for research is mostly limited to sending the files for you: don't expect any help in identifying funding opportunities (you're on your own or you have to set up your own alerts), or in writing a grant. You'll commonly find yourself doing everything, including the budget. The research office is short-staffed, and the university's constant fall in enrollment over the years as well as poor finances (some university bonds are ranked as junk bonds) won't lead to a better support anytime soon. Even if you were to get a grant, its administration is a nightmare and the university can't be trusted (e.g., they 'lose' grant funds for months, they send wrong cheques by orders of magnitude and don't detect it, etc). The quality of the students goes from low to average for the most part. There is a broader distribution for undergraduate students, who attend essentially because they live in the Northern Illinois region. Depending on the department, graduate students can be really mediore, and your best best to do any kind of research is to identify the best 1 or 2 undergrads in a class. Some think of NIU as being "in the Chicagoland" even though there is not even a train to get to Chicago, and many students/faculty never go there. There are little prospects for improvements in this university and it should be avoided. [2018] Agree with all of the above. Financial management is not this university's strong suit. I organized a summer program for which student tuition dollars and a course fee were collected - that money went straight into some pot of money that I never saw, and I was only partially reimbursed for the expense of the program, and extra funds that should have covered my time on the project were never reimbursed. The quality of students is generally the lowest I have encountered in many years of adjuncting. I also had the pleasure of working with a department chair with the bad habit of offering courses for me to teach the following semester, then rescinding the offer a day or two later. If you are a visiting assistant professor, then you should know that the faculty are actively unionized against VAPs to prevent them from having more than a 1 year contact. Run, don't walk. And finally, NIU is not in Chicagoland, it is in the middle of a monoculture wasteland. | ||
| Eastern Oregon University | Admin | This university is the weakest in a now-defunct Oregon University System, which was disbanded a couple years ago. It has its own board and a President/CEO who came into the position from the local wood products plant (Boise Cascade). The business model is in full force there. As someone who applied for an administrative position, I studied the school online as much as possible. I also understand the more general shift in public higher ed toward a business culture. Nothing could prepare me for this though. The search viewed administrators as "enrollment managers" first and foremost. This from a university that has not even hired a professional in that capacity (Enrollment Management). They seem to think it is more efficient to slide that work to the Deans' offices. The conversation around academic programming was consistently framed in terms of utility and jobs. Liberal Arts are dying there and won't be revived, as they are not seen to build skill sets required by the regional job needs. I was ready to move into this kind of position and accepting of the fiscal realities that hamstring small public schools like this, but nobody at that university (save for faculty, who seem beleaguered by the many cuts and "efficiences") indicated that they aspired to be more than a degree mill and a certficiate granting institution. If you value higher education, liberal arts, or your sanity, you should look elsewhere.
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| Eckerd College | GENERAL (not departmental specific). However some information pertains to Religious Studies, Environmental Studies, Spanish, Anthropology, Management, and Economics | The climate of bullying junior faculty and misleading job candidates is well known. Senior faculty, many of whom have done little or no scholarship for years, demand that junior faculty commit unreasonable amounts of time to petty administrative matters. Classes are dumbed down to achieve "retention" based on the institution's theory that their students will not stay unless they get an easy pass and faculty members who question or challenge these assumptions are punished. Their tenure process is utterly without merit, denying tenure to candidates who have stellar records and who have met all of the academic and professional standards, but who do not respond to bullying and granting tenure to faculty members who are not good teachers, produce little or no scholarship, but respond well to bullying. This school will eat your career, tax your time, underpay you and leave you miserable. I've watched it happen here for years and have suffered the professional and emotional consequences. Do not bother. [posted Nov. 2012]
[May 30, 2017] Those who wish to assist in holding the EC Admin accountable can email admin@savingeckerdpel.com' . Please see below links for information on current efforts to hold this administration accountable for. We have retained counsel that will speak to anyone wishing to remain anonymous. https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-reverse-closure-of-eckerd-college-s-program-for-experienced-learners?recruiter=701760008&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition https://www.savingeckerdpel.com https://www.facebook.com/SavingEckerdPEL/ | ||
| Emory University/ Oxford College | Classics | Applied Spring 2014, never heard back. Contacted multiple people there multiple times by phone and email, never heard a word from the Department. | ||
| Fairleigh Dickinson University | English | I was shortlisted for a position that was to begin fall 2015. I received a voicemail asking me if I would come for a campus visit. I couldn't reach the department secretary (who had left the message), so after several tries I left a voicemail saying yes, absolutely. More phone tag later, the secretary left a message suggesting some dates. I needed to figure out what date would be best and, of course, could not get through and ended up leaving a message confirming one of the suggested dates two days later. The next day I received another voicemail telling me that the department had changed its mind and was rescinding its offer of a campus visit. | ||
| Fayetteville Technical Community College
(Fayetteville, NC) |
All | First, let me mention that some of the problems at FTCC are systemic--the NC Community College System has no tenure. Everyone works on a 1 year contract. That means that one need not be fired to be fired--the contract is simply not renewed. And, since contracts are rarely available before Thanksgiving, it also means that the job you think you have can be changed midstream. For example, halfway through Fall 2015 the administration eliminated the Chair position for English, demoting the chair to a regular faculty member and decreasing her pay accordingly. No contract entering the year meant she had no recourse.
Aside from the above, FTCC (in violation of SACS) has no true faculty council or senate. All decisions are made by the president and AVP and then passed down with no faculty input. This applies to everything from how the Blackboard template will be arranged to class size to faculty time spent on campus. Almost none of the administrators have any academic experience--several come straight from the military, some have MBAs, some taught briefly as adjuncts before moving into administration. There is therefore little regard for the needs of faculty. An example of this--FTCC has no final exam week. The last week of school is a regular teaching week. Grades are due by noon the day following the last class period. Instructors carry a 6 class per semester load with each class containing about 35 students. If an instructor has 6 full semester classes, he/she must either give the final exam early or try to grade a phenomenal amount of exams in an 18 hour period. Likewise, many faculty are put in offices that are shared between 2-3 people or in cubicles. None of this is conducive to working--the preparation of class materials or grading--and yet the expectation is that you will spend a great deal of time in these crowded spaces. On 11/24, the Dean of Arts and Humanities emailed faculty the following: "Some things are best left alone. There are times when the benefits of an arrangement outweigh the cost. Notice that there is no such thing as an off campus day. I realize that some faculty are able to schedule classes, office hours, and division hours over four days and benefit from an off campus day. It is my understanding that day is still part of the 40 hour workweek. Please read the quotes from the policy and consider the implications. Faculty Handbook Pg. 43 "The "normal" workweek including instruction, preparation, and administration shall be 40 clock hours per week." "An instructional non-teaching work day is 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m." "A minimum of one hour per day must be scheduled on at least four separate days of the week. Exceptions to this requirement may be approved by the appropriate Dean." "Divisional Hours: In addition to five (5) office hours, full-time faculty is required to complete five (5) divisional hours per week. Divisional hours are to be agreed upon by the appropriate Division Chair/Department Chair/Program Coordinator and forwarded to the appropriate academic dean by the fifth day of each term. These hours should be conducted on campus unless approved otherwise by the appropriate academic dean. Divisional hours can be modified as required and communicated as described above." FTCC is also greatly expanding its "High School Connections" program. FTCC instructors are being sent out to the high schools throughout the entire county to teach dual credit classes. Some of these schools are nearly an hour away from the college, but unless one travels to the college then to the HS then to the college, no compensation for mileage will be given. Additionally, since adjuncts often cannot to go the high schools during the day, adjuncts are given preference for all online classes and classes on campus when full time instructors are farmed out. The high schools, not the college, determine what days and times classes will be held. An average schedule for many instructors Fall 2016 will include 2-3 college classes every morning and 90 minute high school classes every afternoon 4 days a week. The instructors who do best at FTCC are those who give only multiple choice exams and completion grades for all writing assignments and who show videos in class rather than actually teaching. As far as pay, FTCC is competitive, but once you are hired you cannot expect to get much by way of raises. And, you also cannot expect much by way of breaks during the semester. Faculty often are required to hold work days 8-4 when students are off. It leaves little time for getting caught up or for taking care of any personal business. There are some nice things about FTCC--the grounds are lovely and the buildings are clean. But, faculty have no voice--they can't weigh in on strategies to deal with retention issues or even on whether or not high school classes will be increased at the loss of our regular curriculum students. If you work here, you will be nothing more than a wage slave. Your degrees, the professional honors you have achieved, none of these matter. You are a cog in the machine and the view of the upper levels of the administration is that you are easily replacable--because it doesn't matter how shoddy the product we are putting out; it only matters that we increase enrollment and that, having admitted people who have no business being in a college classroom, we retain them at all costs to avoid federal penalties. The leadership of the college is broken but given the circumstances there is no way to fix it. | ||
| Florida Atlantic University | Education | I was shortlisted for a TT job at this university following a phone interview with the entire search committee. I had to travel to the university for the interview/job talk at my own expense. I was not provided air travel, ground transportation, or lodging. Two weeks after the job talk, I was offered the position and given five days to consider it. During that time, I asked if I could summarize my thinking and questions about the offer and send it to the department chair. He had made it clear that he could not respond in writing (no aspect of the job offer was in writing) but he would call me to answer questions after he received my written summary. Upon sending my questions and considerations two days later, about 90 minutes passed when I received an email wishing me well in my further job pursuits. My questions were for clarity, and despite calling and emailing to inquire what happened, the department chair has refused to take my call or acknowledge my email. This is how we are now treating each other within the Academy? Despite the fact that we are supposed to collaborate, research together, build better tomorrows, engage in conversations and interactions, our leadership/senior faculty treats us like this--and we continue to find that acceptable? Apparently, those of us who are fortunate enough to receive an offer need more mentorship on how to negotiate. I wasn't willing to merely accept any condition/offer (probably my "mistake,") but if higher education is about dialogue and inquiry, why are we denied the respect to do this during the negotiating process? It's dangerous to go through the entirety of a job search, interview at one's own expense, be offered a position, and then have it rescinded merely because a question was asked about the offer. It's unethical and unprofessional. If higher education continues down the path this entire page makes clear that it is moving, it will have larger and larger societal implications and not for the better. (February 2014) | ||
| Florida A&M University | Communications | I was shortlisted for a TT job at this school and had arranged to participate in a telephone interview. On the day of the interview, I called the designated number as was requested, but was unable to have the interview "because of emergency staff meetings" or something along those lines that threw off the search committee's schedule. No problem because things happen, right? So we arranged to have the phone interview at a later date. On the day of the rescheduled interview, I called the designated number and the committee member apologized AGAIN and said they couldn't go through with the interview on this day because not all the committee members were on campus. Really? Was this department serious? Anyway, the committee member told me that he'd get back to me later with a rescheduing date. About 15 minutes later, I received a call from the same committee member asking if I could do the interview on the spot. I told him I could since I had already been prepared to do the interview on this date. So we began the conference call. However, I was told that two of the four people who would interview me were NOT even on the search committee! So half of the SC might not have even seen my CV and yet they were interviewing me?! After the interview finished, the primary SC told me that "I'd be hearing from him soon" and that "he was impressed" before hanging up. Well, it's been about five months and I have not heard back from this school since. That's okay because I wouldn't take this job even if offered, but I'm surprised at how disorganized this department was. (Oct 2012) | ||
| Florida Gulf Coast University | History & English | Job candidates who visited campus in January were left completely in the dark until July 2015, and this despite several attempts to contact HR (since the chair of the search committee made it quite clear they did not want to be bothered with interviewees' questions). All in all, an unpleasant experience with an unprofessional search committee. Upon hearing the full story (mostly excluded here), my doctoral advisor (who remains my mentor) was convinced that this dept. was in violation of several AHA hiring policies.
- I visited FGCU in 2017 for a job interview. It was much the same story. I was in touch with them months after the visit to ask what the situation was, only to be curtly told that the search had concluded and someone else had accepted. Guys: an email will do, just make it polite, engaged, and timely. -Just updating to let people know this is still a problem in 2018. Had an on-campus interview & then never heard anything again from the university, and it took six weeks to get a check in the mail to be reimbursed for travel. Their hiring practices are terrible. Professor here from FGCU: These complaints are legit, but the culprit is usually the HR department which controls all phases of the job search. Committee members, including the chair, are instructed NOT to communicate with job candidates. Once the search committee makes its recommendations to the chair, it is disbanded, and the job search is entirely in the hands of the Dean's Office and HR, and the finalists won't hear anything until after the contract has been signed for the new hire--and it'll be a standard, generic email from HR--and yes, it'll be months after the visit. FGCU is a wonderful place to work, but we have some serious issues with our hiring protocol, and we lose good candidates because of it. | ||
| Florida State University | History |
I had a strange interview with this department for a postdoc, which I can only describe as bewildering and hostile. The first odd thing was a cold solicitation. One of the search committee emailed my former advisor and strongly but obliquely asked him to inform "one of his students" (no names used) about the position and encourage them to apply -- in the context, the prof meant me. So I applied and got a Skype interview. Day of the interview, they claimed to have technical problems. They could see me but I couldn't see them; they made no attempt to fix the problem. The chair of the search also had his infant with him during the interview so that our conversation was periodically interrupted. I fielded the usual questions. After answering a question about how I think my research is significant for the field, however, the same prof who had solicited my application started to talk. Actually, he said, what I was doing wasn't particularly novel at all but well developed (which is not true); I had not gone for obviously innovative topics but was instead propping myself up on the research of others. It took a moment to realize that he was undermining and putting me down. The rest of the interview played out and, no surprise, I didn't get a call back. So why would someone solicit an application only to belittle my work? I can only think that 1.) departmental politics were in play and I had strayed into the crossfire; 2.) the search committee had a favorite and wanted reasons to throw out other candidates; or 3.) I somehow inexplicably got on this prof's wrong side. In any case, it was a big waste of my time and still rankles. Reply from the prof described: I'm sorry that what I did made you feel that you'd wasted your time. Perhaps an explanation will help you feel less mystified. 1) As part of our search, I contacted colleagues at other universities who'd recently run searches to ask if they had strong candidates they'd recommend. I was told that your advisor had a strong advisee, so I contacted him/her. I did this in an effort to broaden and strengthen our pool of candidates. 2) Sometimes technical difficulties and family responsibilities make things a bit less smooth than we'd like. We felt it was best to proceed with our interview. We felt that we were able to communicate with you despite the problems. I'm sorry that you experienced this as an impairment. 3) Clearly you were most upset by the tone of my questions about your work. You are right that I probed your novelty claim. I don't think it's fair to describe this as undermining or belittling. I'm not sure what expectation you bring to interviews or what "usual questions" you field, but I'm surprised that you would consider push back about your ideas to be a kind of personal attack. I always ask a sceptical question or two when interviewing candidates; it's important to evaluate how they respond to criticism. None of the three explanations you gave yourself applies. I've been an unsuccessful candidate many times myself, and I am also tempted to impute some personal animus onto committee members. The fact is, though, that in searches with dozens of viable candidates, each candidate gets only a fragment of attention, and certainly not enough to get on anyone's "wrong side." If you're invited to talk to a committee, it means most everyone likes your work already. I was working to engage critically and constructively, as I try to do with everyone whose work I read; I am sorry that I didn't present my interest in a way that lifted you up. [Spring 2020] My interview experience (which, for sake of anonymity, I will not date; it did occur some time in the last 5 years) exhibited enough parallels with the original commenter for me to add something here. I also felt a little bewildered by the changing temperament of some faculty members, who seemed very warm and friendly (and affirming of my work) in one setting and then asking questions in front of a larger group that felt beyond the normal level of challenging questions. In fact, I had been warned beforehand about one member of the faculty in particular who enjoyed this (or at least had a reputation for it). The takeaway for applicants, in my opinion: the department culture seems to value testing you, rather than asking questions out of pure scholarly interest. Be aware of/prepare for this as a potential candidate. | ||
| Georgia Gwinnett College | School of Liberal Arts (and all) | I want to begin by stressing that there are some excellent people at this college, both among the faculty and certain administrators (Dr. Laurel Holland, for example, is a wonderful person). But the system here--which is, unfortunately, the corporate model of higher education towards which the country is moving --is broken. There were five new faculty hired in English last year (for the 2014-2015 year). All five excellent teachers--I have every reason to believe that their teaching evaluations were all consistently strong. Two were dismissed. To clarify, the university does not have a tenure system (and the fast-talking president likes to flout how the faculty voted this non-tenure, rotating contract system into place itself), and the two faculty members who were dismissed simply did not have their contracts renewed. All very legitimate business to the suits who run the place--new faculty receive a lovely letter about two weeks into their year informing them that they are not guaranteed a new contract and are essentially fired at the end of the contract. All admins have CYA'd. But the faculty, even the senior faculty on longer 3 or 5 year rotating contracts, firmly believe their jobs are secure and renewal is almost automatic and try to pass this belief on to the junior faculty. Clearly no one's job is secure here.
Looking in more depth, the two faculty dismissed at the end of the year (they found out at the last minute, though clearly knew their fate was insecure), were not dismissed for lack of performance. In fact, among the five new hires their teaching was just as consistent AND only these two had managed to secure book contracts at major academic publishers, and in a particular subdiscipline in which the faculty had expressed interest. What was their fault? It certainly seems as though this college (and this is not limited to the SLA) rewards faculty who justify their advanced/ing positions by writing and rewriting learning objectives or other administrative trivia but produce little by way of pedagogical or scholarly innovation, and punishes those who try to do more. The feather in the cap of this oblivious, business-minded college is perhaps that faculty whose contracts are not renewed are asked to do their own "off-boarding" paperwork for HR! You can dismiss this as sour grapes, and maybe, just maybe this place sounds like a refuge for you if you want to pretend you have job security and write nothing but learning objectives for the rest of your life...this may be the place for you. If you have other ideas about what scholarship is, perhaps reconsider! | ||
| Georgia Perimeter College | ? | In many ways, this is an excellent academic environment, although there is much variance between campuses. The main thing I wanted to warn possible hires about is that the university is in severe financial trouble including warnings from SACS about their poor financial management. There have been no raises, neither merit nor cost-of-living, not for tenure or promotion, for four years and instead of disdussing this, administration is discussing how to pay less for summer teaching. The cost of required benefits rises every year, so with salary compression I am now making less than when I firsr arrived here. Further acerbating the situation is that even tenured senior faculty members often cannot obtain summer teaching. One campus with 800 students is only teaching six English courses this summer because enrollment is so bad and only a couple of those classes actually filled. 10% of annual salary is given per filled summer class, but a class with less than 18 students only makes part-time salary of $2100, and below that the payment is per student. Since no one is allowed to teach more than one summer class under these conditions, many tenured senior faculty would be taking home less than $1500 total for three months teaching. The assumption is that you will be married and have a two-person income, have family to support you, or be financially well-off. For those who have medical situations, family dependents, or similar situations, it is even worse. The college has set up all its retirement options so that faculty members, even when they have not been given teaching for the summer and face three months with no pay ahead, even with severe emergencies or life-threatening conditions, cannot loan from their retirement funds and cannot access their retirement funds unless they quit their job permanently. I've talked to people at (and worked at) many other institutions where this is not the case; the administrators who set up the retirement options just don't understand that some of us make less than a six-figure salary. If you have a steady income from another source or secure savings and do not normally teach summers or require raises and the salary compression doesn't bother you, this can be a fine place to work, but if this does not apply to you, you can find yourself in a dire situation. | ||
| Georgia State University | Education | This isn't completely about "fear," but it is to inform those who are trying to get a job here what they might be up against. The department I applied for at Georgia State is very, very bottom heavy as most of the tenured faculty have left for much greener pastures. The department that hired me told me that I would have to come in one year as an UNTENURED faculty member subject to review. If I passed review, I would regain my tenure status. This was wholly unacceptable and they didn't tell me this until my on-campus interview that I had to fly in for. After a lot of prodding, they finally admited that they had lost many, many candidates thanks to this policy and were instituting changes and would let me know how those would affect me. Well, the changes? I had to fly back in for a ONE HOUR interview with the Provost. They couldn't even let me phone this one in? On top of everything else, I had to actually accept the job before I could have this interview, meaning that there was a chance I could actually back out if I didn't get my tenure status carried over. What a pain and I suggest anyone with tenure bring this issue up immediately with them during the phone interview process.
Secondly, I simply needed some sort of full-time spousal hire if I was to come. Please don't get me wrong--I understand that no one owes me a spousal hire, but given the large numbers of professional educators who are married, departments should have some sort of proceedure for this. I brought this detail up with the chair who may or may not have shared this with his staff. The faculty member who took me around campus told me that they had actually lost the candidate for this same position from the prevoius year because "he/she wanted us to find his/her spouse a job; can you believe that?" That was good to know. I had hoped they had learned their lesson from their failure the prevoius year. Not the case.. When I told that I would provisionally accepted the job pending employment for my spouse and tneure confirmation, flown back in for my one-hour interview, and tried to press the issue, I was told they were now working on the spousal hire. Several weeks went by as other offers from other schools were coming in (all with confirmed full-time offers for my spouse) and finally GSU's department chair sent a simple e-mail forward from the department my spouse would have taught in. In that e-mail was the chain between the chairs that went like this (paraphrased, but not by much): Chair of edu: "I need a spousal, can you accomodate?" Chair of spouse's department: "Not now, but I might have some adjuct positions come open." Chair of edu to me: "Here's what I got back. Will this work?" After I explained that it didn't (duh!), the chair indicated that he couldn't do any more. Pathetic. I retracted my acceptance, which was accepted without any type of resistance at all. Other department chairs went out of their way to find opportunities and funding and ALL (save GSU's) found something. They certainly worked harder than a two-sentence email. Overall, just a complete waste of time from a university that's trying to make itself relevant. Good luck with that until you at least get to mid-20th century standard of operation... | ||
| Hope College | Communication | Half of the Communication department (including two tenured, several tenure-track, and a much-loved full-time adjunct) have left in the past few years. They can't hang on to most of their quality hires, which is a red flag. About the only ones left are either close to retirement or can't go anywhere else. The problem is the combination of administration (a bully provost, as one factor), a very conservative institution and city, and the department culture has shifted downward in recent years. Contact former faculty who've been able to get out before taking a job here to get the real picture.
It's very hard to break into local social circles if you aren't religious, white, and Dutch. Your colleagues will keep track where you go to church. Don't be duped by the niceness and fancy buildings. Hope and Holland have a very ugly undercurrent that is nasty against anyone who goes ahead the status quo. Teach more diverse students at a community college (and for better pay) in a real city. Avoid this place and keep moving on. GLBTQ candidates: run like heck away from this place. Do your research online about Hope and gay issues, and you'll see that the school has a long recent history of homophobic incidents. | ||
| Hong Kong University (HKU) | Political Science | [2012-2013] I have always wanted to share this experience and save others from something similar. HKU (also called the University of Hong Kong) recruits both faculty and students from overseas as the medium of instruction is English, and they pay/fund rather well. So be warned--the university administration is the WORST. I have never encountered such gross incompetence. Be prepared for blank looks and "I don't know"s in response to basic questions. I ended up pursuing a formal complaint which culminated in a conversation with the dean/vice dean of the university. The dean was apologetic but left shortly, and the vice dean was atrocious. Clearly hadn't read the text of my complaint closely as s/he had the facts all wrong, but came prepared to argue at every turn. Nearly killed her/himself laughing at a mistake I'd made on some paperwork that was written in poorly-worded English--a mistake that had caused me great hardship. Followed up with comments like, "You're an adult, you should take responsibility for your own behavior." Thus the reason for atrocious admin was made eminently clear and that incident stands out as the most juvenile, condescending and insulting interaction I've ever had in academia.
The department was much more pleasant but all-in-all, the place is run like a small school in a small town. They have increasingly faced pressure to self-censor from Beijing and as a result, only obedient faculty are rewarded with tenure. They appear to be refashioning themselves as a (much less political) Public Admin department only. | ||
| Howard University | Biology | [2018] This is supposed to be one of the premier HBCUs but it is really an awful place. This was by far the most disorganized, unprofessional interview that I have ever experienced. The search chair constantly changed the date of the on-campus interview. When we finally agreed on a date, I heard nothing back from them until about two days before the scheduled interview saying that they needed to reschedule. Then they assigned me an interview date only a few days ahead of time without even asking me, and knowing very well that I teach, so I had to cancel my class. At this point, I should have just told them no out of self-respect, but I went ahead. They asked me to prepare a 30 minute research talk and 30 minute teaching example. The teaching example was not related to the job description and I quickly learned that is because this department knows nothing about biology -- they couldn't even bother to pick up a textbook. Finally when it came time to give my talk, they told me I had only 50 minutes for both parts including questions (not an hour as in my itinerary), but then they didn't have a computer set up at the start time, so I lost another 15 minutes while they scambled to get a computer. Instead of apologizing, they were upset with me because I did not bring a computer and have it neatly set up for their audience ahead of time. Then they told me we actually had to be out of the room early. So I had about 35 minutes for an hour talk. Only three of the department faculty showed up -- with almost no engagement. But by far the worst, most demeaning part of the interview was that the African-American faculty barely spoke to me. As a non-African-American, this made me very uncomfortable and was humiliating because I came all the way there and spent weeks preparing an engaging talk and lecture only to be treated very poorly. When the interview was over, no one asked me how I was getting back to my hotel. They just showed me the door. The only highlight of the interview was the students. Many of them were incredibly bright and funny and they told me they really enjoyed by talk; frankly, these students are getting ripped off by their terrible faculty. I can't help but feel that this was all a set-up. I can't prove that there was bias against me, but at best I will say this department is incompetent, but possible there could be soething much more sinister going on here. Oh, and they did not even bother to respond to my post-interview email. The chair, who was not part of the search process, sent me a form letter about having too many applicants -- not even a thanks for spending 2 days of my life there. It's clearly not my abilities because I have landed two tenure-track positions. Avoid this place. | ||
| Hunter College | Film and Media, History | One student explained to me that the department had lost a lot of majors because the teachers in the media department are the worst at the school. I met the members of the search committee, and they look tired, bedraggled and unhappy. They couldn't even feign being content at their jobs. All evidence of a demoralizing work environment. I wouldn't risk going there.
I wanted to add my own story from a search by the History department recently. The formal parts of the campus trip were fine. But it all fell apart during the dinner. I was told to meet the committee at 5:30, having walked 45 minutes to get there (given the lack of accommodation options in NYC that were affordable under the College's guidelines). Nobody was there. I had to wait in the lobby for 45 minutes until the chair of the committee came downstairs and seemed a touch surprised to see me. We then went to dinner, at which I was asked precisely zero questions about my teaching or research. Instead, another attendee had just received a grant, and wanted to drink up. The other three people at dinner were drunk within the hour, and I felt like I was imposing on their time. | ||
| Illinois State University | Languages, Literatures, and Cultures | 1. Committee member in skype interview kept gesturing "hurry it up" even though they asked four two or three questions that could not be neatly answered in two minutes. (Interview was only scheduled to be 20 minutes long.)2. When invited for campus interview, they did not want to pay for international flight, so asked if they could hop on to any travel plans I might already have (to save them money).3. After asking me to drive to Normal after an international flight arriving at 11.30p, finally agreed to house me in Chicago overnight and then have me rent a car in the morning to drive down, only to change their mind and and renege offer to stay in Chicago.4. Had this portion go back and forth multiple times between admin and chair (changed no less than 6 times). Only 10 days out (despite invitation to campus being 1.5 months before) finally learned how long I'd be on campus. Travel and hotel provided 6 days out, with no schedule or information on teaching demo. Schedule draft only arrived 3 days before visit.4.Eventually, was flown internationally, had to rent a car to drive from chicago, arrived at hotel at 2.30a, and had to be at school to begin interview at 8a. (so, no regard for 30 hours of travel, jetlag, exhaustion, or the value of a full night's sleep. 5. No breakfast at hotel on 2nd day of interview.6. They wouldn't cover tolls ($7.20), car insurance for rental ($18), gas ($19), food at airport $13.5, and they wouldn't pay to get me back to my home city -- only to the city that I originally scheduled my ticket to fly home and that they piggy-backed on in order to save the cost of an international ticket, even though I drastically changed my schedule to accommodate them.(2019) | ||
| Indiana State University | Communication | Members of other departments call it "the viper pit." Some senior faculty members have developed a campus-wide reputation for forcing department chairs out of office. Faculty interactions are marked by distrust, anger, and pettiness. Faculty disagreements have led to countless complaints to the administration and to threats of lawsuits against each other and the administration. Junior faculty members are caught in the crossfire between the chair and opposing senior faculty members. Two junior faculty members have left in the past year, as well as 3 full-time instructors. The university administration resorted to bringing an outside consultant a yar ago address the department's problems, but little has changed. The department's reputation as a whole across campus is abysmal. (2015) | ||
| Indiana University - Purdue University, Fort Wayne (IPFW) | Physics | (Fall 2017) If possible, run! Run with a bag-pack full of energy drinks and never stop till you are so far away, you can't think of IPFW! Yup! A lot of politics is going on in the department - they brag about how the geology department was completely useless and they shut it down. During the interview, the chair and other faculty members (except one, whom I mention later) were conversing with me with their eyes on their cellphones. The department-chair asked me questions without even looking at me - constantly fidgeting with his cellphone and replying to emails. The search-chair on the other hand was comparetively nicer to me, and hospitable. Over all, they are very unprofessional, and said a lot of "evil" things behind each other's back! An example is, "ABC is late -- aah, he must be handling his children. He has another one on his way in spite of being unable to handle all the previous ones!" or "XYZ is not coming today. He is not feeling well. Isn't it strange how he falls ill just after the finals? I wonder if he is really ill?" During the mock-lecture, I was interrupted so many times by faculty members, I couldn't get past 25% of the lecture. And the questions (they were acting as students) they asked were incredibly stupid - no college student (or even an elementary school student) in their right mind would ask such questions. When a folly in one of their questions was pointed out, instead of admitting it, the faculty member said something nonsensical. During both the lectures (research and physics), one of the students had a cooing baby in the lecture hall who had to be constantly consoled, and (during the research talk) another faculty member had his leg on the desk with shoe pointing directly at me. A lot of bragging is going on - they were very arrogant, and no one is ever on time (except the search-chair). It was a very unpleasant experience over all. It felt as if I was invited to be insulted and looked-down upon. If possible, avoid it at all cost. And if that was not enough, this university is going through a political crisis - its splitting up into two different universities - Indiana University FW and Purdue University FW (with physics dept going to Purdue). I must point out that their newest/youngest faculty member was professional and very pleasant to converse with, I had a great time interacting with him. | ||
| Kansas Wesleyan University | Admin/all hirings | (May/June 2013) Had a very pleasant phone and campus interview and was offered the job (instructor, non-TT) the day after I returned home. I asked for the details of the offer in writing and requested one week to consider the offer. The written offer never came and when I inquired about it almost a week later, I was told they were waiting for my verbal acceptance. However, my questions were answered in a phone call. I asked for an additional two days to consider while I made one more campus visit (already scheduled). After deciding that I could not wait for the other school to decide, I contacted KWU to inform them I would be mocing forward with their offer and inquired about the possibility of a salary increase. One day later, I was informed that they had offered the position to the other candidate, and when I asked, I was told that they had interpreted my salary request as an ultimatum. However I was never given a chance to "take it or leave it" on their initial offer.
I have no complaints about the faculty I met while there, but beware the provost. If you get an offer, expect to be pressured into a decision quickly and don't count on being able to negotiate. | ||
| Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany | Natural Sciences and Engineering | In 2006, KIT won the Excellence initiative on the on the idea of a merger between the southern (University) campus and the Northern (research center) campus. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Universities_Excellence_Initiative . In 2012, KIT no longer appears as one of the 11 “excellent” universities. Now think how common households manage their income in anticipation of a juicy bonus, and do the math.
Their approach to negotiation (startup funding etc.): everything that’s in writing is negotiable, everything that’s not in writing, does not exist. On numerous occasions, a relatively senior member of the scientific administration commented on my “nationality”. (Actually it wasn’t my nationality the person was concerned with, but the country where I was born; not related to nationality, and only partially to ethnicity). Apparently, it was a “nationality” that did not fit in into the Western values. Given that I observed numerous instances of problems faced by the international, including European, students, I wonder what was meant by “Western values”. There is a very rigid, hierarchical, army-like power structure. Any initiative taken outside of this hierarchy is severely punished, at every level, except if you are a professor there. Then you can do whatever you want and your actions are not accountable to anyone. My advice: run as fast and as far as you can. (Note: KIT is organized in institutes; theoretically, it is possible that the problems were related to the few instutites I had been dealing with) | ||
| Kutztown University (Pennsylvania) | Communication | I did a campus interview there in the Spring of 2013. The town is extremely rural and has absolutely nothing going for it. It was described as "quaint," "charming," and "old-fashioned." In reality, the town was depressed, lugubrious, and morose and that is putting it nicely. It is literally in the middle of nowhere. The town itself reflects both the university and its low quality faculty. From the moment I got there, the faculty bad mouthed the town, the students, and even other faculty behind their back. Nobody and I mean nobody wants to live in Kutztown. The faculty themselves live far from the university, some commuting from as far as Philadelphia and NYC. The Comm building was run down and faculty were placed in closet like offices. I was told on several occasions that the students "lack critical thinking skills" and have "writing skills at a junior high level." Although the faculty said they were "concerned," I was told it was not their problem and that they "just play the hand they are dealt." In meeting with the faculty, I was anything but impressed. Faculty had their phds from universities that some might consider to be degree mills. During my research presentation, one of the male faculty members was a total dick to the other members of the committee by always publicly disagreeing with them on very petty issues. Some of the faculty were tenure track not because they earned the position, but from what I was told that if you served 4 years as an adjunct teaching 4 courses per semester, it automatically converts into a TT position. There were quite a number of faculty who fell into that situation. The search committee chair was a step above trailer trash and had 0% social skills. S/he was laconic the entire time and barely opened her/his mouth other than to ask scripted questions that were required to ask. To top it off, in my rejection letter, I was addressed as "Mr." which shows tremendous disrespect to the candidate while the search committee chair had no problem signing her/his name with the title "Dr." In addition, in meeting with the Dean of the College I found that he had the personality of a can of paint. If this is the only job you get it take it and get back on the job market. Bad living area, bad faculty, bad students, bad vibe all around. There is a reason that faculty get hired and leave this place all the time. | ||
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Lake Erie College |
General: this school has no departments and only one faculty member per subject (e.g., "history," not "American history" or "European history") | (Summer 2013) If you value academic integrity and freedom, this is not the college for you. Increasing enrollments is a huge push here, and over 60% of the enrollment at this school comes from athletes, even though the size of the school prohibits any serious athletics standing. The faculty and admin have struck a "deal" with the athletics departments to maintain college enrollments: athletes can't fail courses. Instead, no matter their performance or attendance, they are given grades of "C-." This "deal," I was told, is an effort to stop the flow of always-successful grade challenges that result from the loss of athletics eligibility and GPA requirements. The school has absolutely no online platforms (Blackboard, ANGEL, etc), has antiquated on-campus electronics, does not participate in the OhioLINK library system (one of only two colleges in the state that doesn't), and provides no teaching support (no sabbaticals or course releases, plus expected course overloads each semester). Not only is the faculty pay among the lowest in the state (average of $39k), the school provides no research support in time off or in funding, though for tenure one is required to publish a rather amorphous "something." Tenure is based mostly on teaching evaluations; however, these are completed online, and most of the students do not complete them unless they do not like the course and want to complain (or so I was informed).
In terms of the on-campus interview, it was run very poorly and seemed designed to make a candidate as uncomfortable as possible. In the space of a few days prior to the interview, I was first told to prepare a teaching presentation to present to a group of faculty and staff who could pretend to be students, or maybe not, or whatever, it doesn't matter; then that was changed to a research talk about "anything"; then that was changed to whatever I wanted it to be, maybe a combination research and teaching talk, maybe to students or to faculty, or both, but whatever is fine, it doesn't matter. (It probably goes without saying that for three solid days I had to change and practice different presentations because of these last-minute contradictions.) Once on campus, I was left waiting in many hallways, outside of many locked doors, and at one point had to knock loudly three times over a few minutes before being let into a room where the search committee was waiting for me midday. Most of the search committee was "out of town or otherwise unavailable" during my visit, and those who were available had nothing but terrible things to say about the students overall (the bitterness was pervasive). One SC member was openly and aggressively hostile both to me directly and about the students, for whom s/he seemed to have nothing but contempt. LEC is, apparently, the college a student attends when community college seems too low-brow but no place else will take the kid (it's a pay and play establishment). The visit was brief, but included three meals, two with only an hour between them. The meals were well attended (unlike everything else), but the conversation was clique-ish and exclusionary with no questions directed to me, suggesting that the committee was merely using the opportunity to grab free nosh. The college-related questions I asked during the meals were ever-so-briefly answered but largely ignored. Regarding location, the campus is small and, for what it is, beautiful, but it's in the middle of uneducated redneck country, and that shows in the school's interactions with the neighborhood. None of the faculty and staff I spoke to lives anywhere near the college, and most expressed significant distaste for the area. The faculty are all older (a wrung-out 40 being the youngest, with most faculty in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s); if you are a dynamic and/or young(er) PhD, there is nothing here for you. On the plus side, there is one truly sharp female dean with what sound like great plans for the college; however, she spent significant time telling me that her plans will not be realized because of the tremendous faculty resistance and the absolute lack of funds to be spent on anything but athletics. Perhaps her frustration represents a reason for the recent exodus of faculty to admin positions at brighter and better schools. Using this one as a springboard to another job might be tough, especially if you want to move up in a faculty position. Both the lack of research support and the overload teaching will inhibit one's ability to gain employment at a better school with stricter publication expectations. In all, I am appalled by the truly terrible hiring processes exhibited here, and I am embarrassed for the search committee. If you interviewed here and didn't get the position, consider it a bullet dodged!
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Liberty University |
Many Departments | Be very careful before considering this university, especially women. Along with some of what you might expect from a university founded by a very conservative religious church, the place has issues with admitted students, grade inflation pressure, administrative interference with student grades, and discrimination against women and minorities. 1.) Religious pressure to believe as Jerry Falwell believed, and many departments (especially religious studies and the seminary) are notorious for only promoting faculty who attend Thomas Road Baptist Church (Falwell's congregation, now run by his son). 2.) In trying to grow (now the 4th largest university in the world through online programs), the university admits students with any highschool GPA over 0.9. AKA, students who fail highschool are regularly admitted without additional testing or placement. 3.) Faculty are regularly pressured to pass students, pressures include: a.) direct e-mail from the university president who communicates with individual students through facebook, b.) at-will employment with "up to" 50% of decision based on student evaluations c.) threat of being "included" in the online teacher pool, this can mean having to agree to teach a 4-4 on campus load, and a 2-2-2-2 load online [the online school and the residential program do not consider each other in course load assignments] - failure to agree results in termination of contract at the end of the semester. 4.) At least 4 professors in the department of communication have been directly contacted by the university president (also one of Falwell's sons) and told that a specific student "will pass" their class.
Finally, and perhaps the best reason to avoid this place - discrimination. (Fall 2012) Women represent the chairs/deans of only 3 departments. There are only 2 women on the board of directors (30 people) and both are wives (Of the seminary and university presidents respectively). As of this writing there are no minorities (male or female) in dean/chair positions. VA is a "right to work" state, therefore HR makes it a practice to let go anyone who files a discrimination complaint. There is no student or faculty representation or organization allowed to deal with discrimination complaints, there is not stated policy in the faculty or student handbooks. Discrimination. Bullying. Ridiculous course loads. No research. Sexism. Avoid this place at all costs. | ||
| Louisiana State University | Humanities | Ineptitude on every level. I was a finalist for a tenure-track assistant professor position. The search chair sent countless identical emails requesting an interview but never responded to my replies. Worried that I'd miss my opportunity, I called the department's admin who intervened for me. After some phone calls, she determined that search chair was not proficient with the computer and was directing multiple candidate responses to a junk folder. Finally an interview was arranged. After a long and friendly interview, search chair explicitly told me the job was mine if I wanted it and promised an update within two weeks. Months passed. I inquired about the status of the interview and was assured that the search was just on hold while the department wrapped up an other search. That next day, I learned via a social networking web site that an acquaintance had been hired into the position to which I'd applied. To this date, I have received not a single word from LSU. I'm left to imagine that the SC is either a liar or inept. Either way, what a total waste of time and energy. | ||
| Louisiana Tech University | Counseling / Liberal Arts / Social Sciences | I worked there for six years. No one receives pay increases, no one receives support from administration. You're expected to "do more with less" which really means do more work with less money. They pay a below bottom 10% wage for the work that you do. I didn't want to leave but I had to do something to support my family. They indoctrinate you with talk of the "Tech Family" but the minute you express that you're exploring work elsewhere then you're dead to them. They try to explain the "low cost of living" in Ruston but it's really not that low. Property is high, the cost of health insurance through the state is high, I do not recommend it. There are better places to work and certainly places that are less expensive to live in. I'm much happier where I'm at now.
Unprofessional colleagues. Nepotism throughout the place. President and administration are inept. Saving face with evangelical anti-vaxxers throughout the pandemic. Athletic Director preaches about jesus in the middle of campus. Students think this is high school 2.0. Never imagined it possible for parents to be so involved in university children's day-to-day. During your interviews, you are told not to post on twitter. As if they know things are terrible and they need to control damage. No departmental meetings, no mentorship, no support for research. Those with tenure don't care. Stay far away from here. Low pay, no leadership, backward administration, and football football football. Most emails are about the tech farm beef and pork sales. Extra courses pushed on faculty. High teaching load and mandatory enforced office hours. Classrooms are very dated with poor furniture. This school is stuck in the past. Continued instances of racism, prejudice, discrimination and more. Highly regarded women have been denied tenure without cause. Most young faculty leave after one year. The student press was shut down after inquiring about the lack of accountability for on-campus sexual assaults. Admin actively rallies against any vocal, outspoken or otherwise Democrat-leaning professors. See recent articles about two history professors and their experience. The highlight of this campus for students is the Chick-fil-A which is widely known to be controversial business anyway. If you are a women, single, or a minority of any type you will struggle to belong here. It is worth commuting from Shreveport like I did just to have access to basic necessities and to feel like you are leaving this place every day. Avoid at all costs. | ||
| MacEwan University | English | Be warned, this department treats job candidates terribly. They think of the interview and the job talk as an opportunity to attack the candidate and his/her research. The department is plagued by academic bullying. [posted Nov. 2014]
2016: The interview process was terrible. Many of the Department members I met made jokes about their students (faculty complained about the 3/3 teaching load and clearly despised their students). Two of the participating faculty were rude and hostile during the interview, but nobody on the 6-person committee thought to stamp out the agression. There was some kind of weird gendered division during the lunch. All in all, I left with the impression that this is indeed an awful place to work. | ||
| Mars Hill University | Spanish | The people were very nice to me, but it wasn't enough to convince me that working here was worth it, literally. Between the fact that the in-person interview was disorganized and, more importantly, that I was asked to accept a salary that I earned 20 years ago as a new educator, I strongly warn you to think twice before coming here. [April 2015] | ||
| Mercer University | Education | This is an extremely disfunctional department. It has about ten faculty on the Macon campus, three of whom are leaving the school this year and two others who are looking for new jobs. There are 5 faculty who are retirement age and need to retire. If you are looking to work here, be warned that this place is toxic. You will be asked to do more work than humanly possible and be asked to bend ethical rules and lower standards. The new doctoral program is seen as a cash cow and be warned if you are a student looking to come here for this program. If you are interviewing, ask why the turnover is so high. As for the undergraduate program - it is quite good, but the students make it this way, not the faculty or administrators. [April 2013]
Also - if you are moving to Macon, GA from someplace outside of the area - it is an extremely difficult transition. If you are not from the "south" don't even think of it. [May 2013] |
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| Mercer University | Education | March, 2016: First, the search committee scheduled my flight leaving at 5:30 am to arrive in Atlanta at 10 am and then I was to interview with the Atlanta Mercer campus at 5 pm. So I had 7 hours of down time in Atlanta. However, due to issues out of my control, I was booted off my flight and did not arrive in Atlanta in time to make that interview. When I called my contacts at the Atlanta campus to tell them what happened I was asked what time I got to the airport that morning. (I got there two hourse before the flight was due to leave.) As if I just blew off the departure time. The position, by the way, was advertised as being on the Macon campus and was never indicated as having anything to do with the Atlanta campus until I got my interview schedule, so that was a big surprise to me! Apparantly they were hiring for two positions, one at each campus, and were killing two birds with one stone. Next on the schdedule was dinner in Macon at 7pm, which I barely made, and would not have made if I had gotten to the 5 pm Atlanta interview. Traffic between Atlanta and Macon was terrible. I was picked up the next morning at 7am for breakfast and the long day of interviews. I gave a teaching demonstration and a research presentation. My teaching demonstration was to a class completely outside my teaching subject area, which was very awkward. My research presenation was attended by only two search committee members, the same two I spent the evening dinner with, who were also the same two (and only two) who attended the final meeting. The entire day I was given numerous hints that I was THE one who was going to be offered the position, was shown "your new office", etc. Upon return home, I never heard from the committee again. I was charged the bill for my car rental, which was significant, and I submitted it to Mercer and asked for confirmation of receipt. No answer. Asked a second time. No answer. I don't mind the incidentals, such as meals and so on, but the car? Really? Don't waste your time with Mercer. Completely unprofessional from beginning to end. | ||
| Menlo College | English | Invited me for a campus visit after the initial Skype interview. Wanted me to prepare a teaching demo and another talk on how I teach and how my research intersects with my teaching. Halfway through the day, one of the search committee members told me there was an internal candidate for the position and that they were only running the search "as a formality" to impress the president with the caliber of candidates they could bring to campus. (In fact, when they later called to reject me, the [actually very kind] search chair confirmed that "the president was extremely impressed with the quality of all the candidates.") After informing me of this internal candidate, the faculty member then escorted me to the threshold of said internal candidate's office and said, "here's his office. Do you want to meet him? He's really great and did his PhD at [Ivy League]." Then, after what was a long and unnecessary day for everyone, they decided to skip dinner, so I was on my own.
They also have no tenure system. | ||
| Molloy College | Humanities | Fall 2018: The college has decided to move to a school based system and move away from divisions (smart) but as a result, the transition progress and institutional changes have become fully opaque. The president oversees all curricular shifts and controls the communication of all vice presidents. The president would rather be provost than president. The humanities in particular are mobilized as resources for the college. Any new faculty hired into Humanities since 2015 have been used and exploited for new ideas with little to no instituational support by the administration. The upper administration completely disregards the scholarship of all Humanities faculty. (Scholarship is not required for tenure and promotion.) Lastly, despite record enrollment increases, faculty's cost of living raises are being withheld indefinitely as the president keeps the money in holding to increase the endowment. | ||
| Montana State University- Billings | Psychology | April, 2014: The search committee chair was incredibly friendly and sweet, and it seems like a very low-drama department. However, I wish I had taken a more active role in helping to plan the interview day. I wound up using two vacation days, on the recommendation of the SCC, to come to campus for two days. However, all that was scheduled for the second day was a campus tour (which I actually accomplished the first day) and a one-hour meeting with the grad students, which could easily have been fit into Day 1. Also, I prepared a job talk/teaching talk for a Master's level audience, then found out at the last minute that I was to present to a group of undergraduates (who mostly just sat there giving me the stinkeye for suddenly taking over their class, with little advance warning or context provided by their professor). So I'd recommend asking a lot of questions to make sure the plan for the interview is clear. | ||
| Montclair State University | Psychology |
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Nevada State College |
Humanities | Strange, surreal campus visit that seemed entirely structured around ascertaining my marital and family status. I am almost certain they Googled me extensively online prior to the visit, and desperately wanted me to give up this information so that they didn't "have" to ask illegal questions. Anyway, here we go. The whole thing started off weird. For starters, they put me up in an awful, loud, smoky casino in a smoking room (ugh). The place got really rowdy at night, and I resorted to banging on the wall at 3am the night before my interview in a (failed) attempt to silence the loud sex transpiring next door. In the morning, the SC member was 15 minutes late to pick me up for my interview (no breakfast-we went right to the SC roundtable interrogation. Luckily the casino had Starbucks.), leaving me standing outside the casino in the 100 degree Nevada heat. The car was cramped and covered in dog hair, and the AC was broken, leading both the car and him/her to reek of BO. This was bad enough, but the discomfort was compounded by the inappropriate, weirdly quasi-sexual questions that s/he asked me while speeding to the college in attempt to ensure that I was not excessively late for my interview (the person also drove recklessly to get there on time, swearing at other cars on the Interstate, which was both awkward and nerve wracking). S/he made remarks about my physical appearance, asked if I had any tattoos or piercings (WTF), how often I worked out, and asked if I had any "special friends"(???) whom I would be "sad" to leave behind if I moved. This person repeatedly attempted to lead me into disclosing my relationship status by talking nonstop about the singles scene in Las Vegas (including mention of how easy it is to "get laid around here"), then proceeding to watch my face for a reaction (which also led to some harrowing moments on the Interstate). We arrive at the college, which is off of the Interstate in a desolate location with nothing in the vicinity. At the interview, everyone seemed pissed that I was late, which somehow was my fault. SC was very rude and unpleasant the whole time (arms crossed defensively, no smiling, one person audibly snickered and huffed during my answers to my interview questions). Maybe I smelled objectionable at this point from the gross car and casino, IDK. I learned, at that point, that the research presentation that I was told to prepare would instead be a teaching demo, but since I wasn't able to meet any students for whatever reason (something about them being "too busy" even though this was AFTER finals was over and commuting from off campus, whatever.)I was to design my presentation as a teaching demo, and administrators and faculty present would "pretend" to be students. This led to a very confusing situation, as I really had no idea how to approach my audience. The only question came from an admin, who grilled me about my tastes in popular culture and then proceeded to criticize them. OK. After that, another SC member drove me around town, also trying to figure out my family status. S/he drove me by several schools, asking me "if I cared about school districts" and "wanted to check out the local playgrounds." Um, ye..-maybe? No? Blerg. At lunch that afternoon, I endured more tedious, indirect attempts to figure out my family status, including a SC member telling me that someone else at the school dressed his/her pets up as children, ha ha, childless people do odd things, *wink wink* amirite? Sigh. Eventually, during this meeting, I was asked point blank if I had children. I looked the person in the eye, saying nothing, and they awkwardly held my gaze. I declined to answer, and the person simply walked away flummoxed (who knows where s/he went? Awkward.). The remaining SC member was even ruder after this episode, and cut short our tour of the area. S/he then dropped me off, alone, outside of a random administration building where someone was supposed to pick me up. S/he simply turned and left, neglecting to even say goodbye. Dinner that night at the casino with deans and administrators consisted of them bragging about their salaries and toasting each other with martinis while boasting that NSC is a great place to be an administrator. Both me and other faculty in my field were undermined for not having strong ties to industry. At this point I knew I would not take the job if it was offered, which of course it wasn't. In sum, ugly campus and area, weird and unpleasant faculty, administration openly loves the corporatization of the university, inappropriate obsession with candidates' family status. To their credit, they were very efficient and timely about reimbursing my travel expenses. If they had stuck me with the bill for that awful casino stay, I would have really been irritated! | ||
| Nevada State College | All Departments | College will not sponsor work visas for faculty. Many departments seem to be unaware of this and will ask candidates for on campus interviews that will be incapable of receiving a work visa from them. I personally know of several candidates that were final round choices that were removed at a very late stage from the applicant pool (i.e. right before flying out) because the department was told months after the search started that they can't budge on the visa issue. Disgusting.
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| Norfolk State University | All Departments | This uiversity has some pretty serious issues, as a quick Google search will reveal--accreditation warning; a new interim president; low graduation rates, etc.
While it seems that the university leadership is aware of the specific things that need to be done to make improvements, they lack the operational procedures--particularly at the departmental level--to make real changes. As one who has run the gauntlet, I recommend avoiding this place. | ||
| Northeastern Global | Global Studies Program | Amatures. Cold, rude, and evasive throughout the process. Run away unless you like toxic enviornments. | ||
| Northwest Nazarene | Arts/Sciences | Not on a search currently, but it has become apparent that, perhaps due to the school's small size, they have some faculty teaching in additional areas for which they are, at best, dubiously qualified. This might be more an administrative problem than a problem with the faculty members themselves, who are stretched too thin as a result. So this may be something to watch out for if you are involved in a search. No one wants to find out that they are going to have to teach in additional areas they may not be necessarily prepared for. | ||
| Oklahoma Baptist University | English | I interviewed spring 2015 for a job starting in fall 2015. I knew going in it was a Christian school, and had no real problems agreeing with the official statement of faith, though had some worries about the campus culture and academic freedom based on some issues I had read about online. These rumors were largely confirmed during a phone interview; I was accused by a member of the administration who was chairing the search of being a heretic (specifically, believing that salvation comes from works not by faith) for expressing a commitment to social justice based on my faith. Later in the interview, the same person (when I asked what they were hoping the faculty member could contribute to the campus culture and institutional efforts) said he wanted someone who "wouldn't convince students they had to be heretics in order to be good Christians." I was a bit surprised that my professional references received a follow up phone call, but was not at all surprised I didn't get a campus interview after they called the pastor of my church. | ||
| Ottawa University (Kansas) | All/Online | Ongoing, although my experiences were fall 2012/spring 2013.
Although their contract specifically says that paychecks are cut biweekly, payment (if it comes at all) in my experience is remitted randomly. The last course I taught for them, I had to beg to be paid, even though I did them a favor by taking on the class at the last minute. I received part of my check 7 weeks into an 8 week course. I am still owed money, which I probably will never see. Avoid this "university" if you expect to get paid. They are dishonest. I will never teach for them again. Problems at Ottawa go much deeper than that. Faculty is jumping ship. President and upper administration are wholly unqualified to run an academic institution (But they will make sure they get paid twice what the regional norms are for like institutions). Financials do not look good. Firing career staff a year before retirement. Avoid this place at all costs. | ||
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Pacific Lutheran University (Washington) |
All/Social Sciences | This school is exploitative of non-tenure track faculty (usual promises of consideration when tenure-track searches open up, but in reality they are usually passed over, unless you are in a favored department). Very difficult environment for minority faculty. The school is ostensibly seeking to diversify, but is unable/unwilling to understand the correlation between race/gender and student evaluations. 90% student approval expected for first-year faculty (which is very difficult for minority faculty to achieve). For a religious school, it was shocking that they would fire the pastor to save money. High degree of labor instability in certain posts, e.g. area studies, where persons of color have been routinely discriminated. From the grapevine, internal processes at the school are seriously prejudiced, and the learning environment is highly complacent and insular, contrary to the advertising. It is popular regionally among a niche market, i.e. well-off middle-class white parents who want a "safe" space for their students, which does not create a strong intellectual/teaching atmosphere for faculty.
I interviewed with this university, and the first question that the committee asked me was "We are seeking to increase diversity by including more people of color. How would you fit within our mission?" Mind you, I already knew that they had a visiting faculty member from West Africa whose research fit the job description exactly, and I suspected hat this was a fake search. I am part Latina, so obviously the committee could not tell if I fit within their requirement of hiring a "person of color." When I did not state my race and instead focused on my teaching and research creditials, it was quite clear that the interview was over. I received a very specific rejection email from the chair a few days later documenting that they had asked a different first question (which was a lie) and that I did not answer it. She also went on to say that I did not mention anything about collaboration (although they never asked me a quetion about collaboration). It seems that the committee was covering their tracks. Increasing diversity should not involve interrogating someone as to exactly what race he or she is. | ||
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Palm Beach Atlantic University |
Pharmacy | First of all, Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL should be called Liberty University Junior and mysteriously has a deceptive name similar to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. The Pharmacy school was formerly controlled and manipulated by a husband and wife team who subscribed--along with most administrators--to a fundamentalist view of Protestant Christianity and the majority of the "influencers" of the school belong to a mega church called Christ Fellowship. When the Dean stepped down, his position was open and his wife had a faculty meeting where she told the faculty that the Holy Spirit told her to be the Dean. When the majority of the faculty opposed her appointment by the Provost, the Provost met with the faculty ... he stated, "I haven't prepared anything so I am going to just be led by the Spirit. You guys are a mess ...." Here was the breakdown. Provost with an EdD who came from Pat Robertson's school. Faculty= Ph.D.s, M.D.s and PharmDs from across the nation. The faculty was and still are, forced by school policy to integrate faith into their lectures. They are also supposed to be "examples" by the fundies definition of being good. A faculty member who reported an administrator for harassment was suddenly walked off campus one day by security and her office was emptied ... I mean emptied in boxes the very next day!!!! Another professor kept teaching students about human evolution and was moved from a corner executive office to an adjunct office the size of a broom closet. He posted posters of human migration out of Africa along with his publications. His position was "dissolved" by the Provost right after a visit by the financiers of the pharmacy school. If you have a hard time explaining the genetics of a virgin giving birth to a son who has a Y chromosome this isn't your place. If you don't like the administration downloading your facebook photos and snooping on you ... not your place. If you feel it is against the law to single out women who became pregnant out of wedlock ... not your place. And this was reported to the Department of Education due to a pharmacy student who was singled out for "getting pregnant out of wedlock." If you believe in academic freedom ... LOL. If you understand that graduate education is more than board score performance and memorization ... not your place. The rest is history and would make a hilarious book!!! [posted July 2013]
...I second that emotion! Different department but same Provost. My interview with the Provost began with him asking "If it were a crime to be a Christian, what evidence would there be to convict me?" Wow. Silly me, I thought he might want to talk about my research. After I blew that question, he talked about a workshop in faith that he gave to the faculty and thought I could benefit from hearing a bit of it. Then he asked if he could pray over me. You read that right: Pray OVER me, not with me or for me. What's a nice Jewish kid from Philly supposed to do? | ||
| Penn State Behrend | School of Science | Avoid working here if at all possible. It is a small, 4 year public university with a high teaching load (12 contact hours per semester) and very high expectations for tenure. Faculty are required to have excellent student and faculty teaching reviews, 6 publications in 6 years (with students as co-authors) and have a very good university service record. Last winter I submitted my dossier for tenure review and turned it in feeling pretty confident because I had met and exceeded expectations: excellent student and faculty evaluations, 7 pubs in six years and a very good university service record. My dossier was passed on to the School of Science comittee who unanimously recommended tenure (5 / 5), but the School of Science director overturned the committees recommendations and suggested I be denied tenure. To be officially denied however, 2 adminsitrative levels have to recommend denial, and my dossier was sent to the College Comittee. Once there, the College Comittee recommended tenure 6 /3, so the Director went to the Chancellor and convinced him to second the recommendation for denial. In addition to my own experience, aproximately half of the faculty in the School of Science who apply for tenure are denied it. In sum, this school's expectations are too high, and are enforced unfairly. Work somewhere else if you can. | ||
| Pratt Institute | School of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Offer rescinded 24h after it was intiated. I responded to the offer with my requested terms, which included a fairly big ask (including a bump in rank) but only after discussing it with the Dean during my campus visit. The Chair responded to my offer with a terse email saying we were "clearly not on the same page" and therefore "I am hereby rescinding our offer." Chair and Dean then completely shut down communication.
Chairs are all appointed hires at Pratt, which inevitably creates a position of administrator rather than representative of the faculty. In this case, it appears that a brand new chair had complete control over the process on his first hire at the school. This bodes very poorly for overall governance and faculty support. Many Art schools are an administrative mess but this was beyond anything I have seen, and I have worked at several of Pratt's competitors. | ||
| Pusan National University (South Korea) | Department of Global Studies | The department actively seeks to recruit from the US and deserves to be included here. This is an interdisciplinary liberal arts department, with a handful of tenure-track faculty and a larger cluster of adjuncts. Most of the adjuncts teach ESL to the Korean students in the department. If you are hired on a tenure-track contract, an off-campus apartment will be rented for you by the university. Adjuncts will be allocated accommodation of variable quality on campus. Salaries are paid on time and are fairly generous for South Korean standards.Teaching loads are moderate, classes are small, and students are generally very pleasant to work with. Still, there are very serious problems here:
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| Quinnipiac | all | New hires are having offers recinded, newer professors laid off. http://www.nhregister.com/social-affairs/20140509/quinnipiac-university-to-lay-off-15-professors-add-12-new-faculty-members [posted May 2014] | ||
| Rhode Island School of Design | HPSS | [2015] Asked me to cover some of the costs of my travel to campus and file for reimbursement. Then stopped responding to email inquiries about reimbursement (I made 3 different inquiries, ignored by 2-faculty and staff alike). Luckily, my costs were nominal, but buyer beware. This campus appears to expect job candidates to help subsidize their searches. Do not expect them to follow through on reimbursements. --> FOLLOW-UP: After posting here, I did receive reimbursement of these costs (albeit several months post-interview).
2016-17 Similar experience, though with a different department. Five emails over the course of six weeks and even a phone call regarding entirely reasonable reimbursements (did they expect me to sprout wings and fly from the airport to campus?), all disregarded and by faculty and staff both. | ||
| Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) | College of Business and Management, College of Arts and Behavioral Sciences | *2013
[New Post February 2014]. Interviewed at SVSU last year. As previous posters note, there is a strange 'vibe' there. Not a scholarly place. It is like a community college. They list faculty publications online and they average less than one paper per year per faculty. And most of those publications are in journals you have never heard of. There is a certain small town culture -- but not in a good way. I looked back at the faculty roster for the past few years and the turnover was incredible. New faculty do not seem to stay more than 2 or 3 years. That is a bad sign. [New Post March 2014] While a campus visit here sounds unpleasant, there are teaching schools where facuty do 4/4 or 5/5 loads, and perhaps one conference or paper a year. I hope that is not a mark against a university. | ||
| Saint Mary's University of Minnesota | Psychology | Reason for fear: the Dean rescinded a verbal offer after I sent a request for research support to the VPAA. [posted Dec. 2014]
More background: This was for a biological psychology position that emphasizes teaching but was also to include research involving undergraduate students. During the first conversation about the offer Tues., the Dean was caught off guard when I asked about research support, which he thought would be satisfied by an office with a computer. When I explained that I was inquiring about equipment and supplies that would make my research possible, he said he would need to find out and discuss it with others. The next day, I got a brief e-mail from the Dean stating "...regarding your question about research support[:] We do not have a standard research package that we offer and support depends on the research area and funding available. Every new faculty member is issued a computer...[and the travel support is...etc.]" In my next conversation, the Chair seemed to think the Dean as an interim dean may have been unfamiliar with "start-up" vocabulary and budget, apologized for communication problems with the administration (the VPAA had told me all research facilities in a new life science building would be general use with Biology, when in fact the Chair had planned with architects for dedicated spaces like an observation room) and said the research support was negotiable. She told me to send the VPAA an itemized list of my request for research support. She couldn't offer a ballpark figure. She said someone in the administration would go through my list to ensure I was not asking for "the best of the best". The VPAA didn't respond to my phone messages. Thursday afternoon I e-mailed the VPAA a research request list that came to the smallest total I've heard of anyone being offered for this type of position at an SLAC in recent times, and indicated the most essential equipment. I never received a reply or any acknowledgement of the email. On Friday the Dean e-mailed rescinding the verbal offer. He had also accelerated the deadline to Monday based on the "strong applicant pool", even though in our first phone conversation he had agreed to a week for a decision deadline after HR would receive details for a written contract. If you consider a position here, I recommend that you anticipate being rushed and being screened based on your ability to guess an upper limit of research support that even the department and search committee may be unaware of. | ||
| Salem State University | Political Science | Interviewed with them a while ago. The junior faculty seemed nice enough but more concerned with getting a free dinner on the university's dime than actually getting to know their potential future colleague. A few weeks after I interviewed the faculty member being replaced, since he failed to earn tenure, contacted me. He complained that he was harassed by the chair for the six years he was there and eventually denied tenure because they did not like that he is a foreigner with an accent. I did not receive an offer, but decided to forward this information to the new hire, who in turn forwarded it to the department chair (the harasser), who in turn started sending me threatening e-mails saying that he would "destroy" my reputation. He did not accomplish this, but he surely lived up to his own reputation. I had the last laugh, though, as I now have a job and am a name in my field, while he is semi-retired, a no-body in his area of expertise, and "teach[ing] directed studies for the Department" (in other words, being the same deadwood he has been for his entire academic career). | ||
| Sam Houston State University | History | Interviewed with them in 2013. It was black comedy and a lawsuit waiting to happen. During the phone interview they spent 60% of the time making statements instead of having me answer questions. The on-campus was creepy. It is never fun being up against an inside candidate married to a professor in the department (though she did not get the job in the end and neither of them is on the school website anymore), but that's part of interviewing. I am a woman and this is the only department that has ever asked me if I was married and "how many" kids I have. When I was evasive I was asked if I wanted to have kids. (I guess employment laws don't apply at Sam Houston) During my job talk a man I was later told was a dean and history professor stood against the wall in the half-empty classroom glaring at me until he stormed out half way through. In the second job talk one of the professors was reading his mail during my research presentation and another was asleep. Later that day, I overheard two male history professors saying that I was "easy on the eyes" and commenting on my legs while one of them did some wierd impersonation. I would not have worked in that department if my only other option was adjuncting on an oil rig. Thankfully I had other options. No wonder the department's women all looked nervous around their male colleagues! The sad part was that I really liked some of the younger professors, but the established faculty made me want to get out of Texas ASAP.
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| San Jose State University | English | The phone interview was very strange. One interviewer kept asking the same question: "How are you qualified to work with linguistically diverse students?" I found out from a friend who went on to the campus visit stage that the search committee was essentially sabotaging the search process. The English department is mostly comprised of literature professors who do not agree with compostion and rhetoric's approach to writing. One professor even stated that she does not "believe in research" . . . that is any research into writing. It's pretty clear that the administration would like a composition specialist, but the faculty want nothing to do with composition and prefer the grammar drill approach to writing. [posted April 2014] | ||
| School of Advanced Studies (University of Tyumen) | All fields |
One of the prospective faculty members used the n-word, and later made a casual rape analogy/joke. The director responded to this by saying that he did not want the center to be a space for "political correctness," and wouldn't condemn what had happened. (Perhaps related: the search committee was 10 white men.) [posted 2018]
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Sewanee:"University of the South" |
English and other departments |
This post is a warning for persons of color who will have the misfortune of being short-listed for jobs at this department and this college. This college and the department will be a waste of your time. The English department at Sewanee has not hired a person of color for nearly 150 years. Such is the case with the majority of the liberal arts programs. This is a racist department and a racist school. (You might also run in to a few locals working at that Inn and might experience racism from them too. One of the people working at the Inn deliberately gave me wrong information to cause me delay for a meeting.) The only reason you will be short-listed here is so that they can fill the EEOC form. Even if your research and teaching are way superior to the next white guy in line, you will NOT be hired. White privilege here runs deeper than that valley surrounding the school. If you are short-listed here be warned that you will not be hired. Either use the experience to learn how campus visits happen or simply do not bother to apply at all to this school. In either case, run as fast as you can from here. This is not a place where critical thinking happens. [posted June 2015] Sewanee's discourse on diversity is laughable. After speaking with many employees, I realized that there are some isolated efforts led by a few facutly members to improve things for the school. However, the University of the South does NOT have any policies in place (or intention to implement any) to support faculty of color, international, and/or members of the LGBTQI community. I agree with the previous post that white priviledge runs deep here. The institutional racism is evident in the demographics of the school (more than 93% white) and the retention rate of diversity hires. Be aware of this place. [posted June 2018] Faculty morale at an all time low. Tenure process is broken. Junior faculty scrambling to find other positions. [June 2019] Sewanee is no longer a sinking ship. The ship has sunk. Former VC tried to turn the university into the "Aspen of the South", completely gutted morale by increasing admin positions by 25% during the pandemic while suspending retirement contributions for faculty. No one remaining in the upper administration is concerned about the quality of education. Sewanee is still in a hiring freeze from the pandemic. 20% of classes are taught by adjuncts. Faculty can't afford houses in Sewanee and either commute an hour each way or quit. 18 faculty/staff in university-owned houses were told to vacate with 30 days notice, including faculty of color, despite the area outside Sewanee being not welcoming to POC. Students can't get the classes they need to graduate on time. Acting admins wont do anything. Professors getting refused tenure for political reasons. If you have offers anywhere else, take them. From the student newspaper: https://thesewaneepurple.org/2022/04/11/faculty-address-hiring-crisis/ https://thesewaneepurple.org/2022/04/25/hiring-freeze-causes-crisis-in-psychology-department/ https://thesewaneepurple.org/2022/06/04/student-leaders-demand-administration-accommodate-academic-staffing-needs/ | ||
| Southeast Missouri State University | Social science field | Really odd phone interview with this school. The only person on was the department chair, who apparently was the search committee chair as well. I was asked almost nothing about my scholarship (which was an important component of the job as described) and surprisingly little about my teaching, and I was told nothing about the students, the department, or the school until I started asking questions. Instead, the first half of my interview was about "teamwork," starting with "What would the people you work with say about you?" and continuing to several questions about how I would handle conflicts within the department. (Of course, this raised more red flags for me than a Chinese revolutionary opera.) The experience reminded me of interviewing to work as a package handler for UPS a number of years ago; certainly, it reminded me in almost no way of the interviews I've had before or since for academic positions. [posted June 2014]
I had the exact same experience as above- so much so I assume it was the same search. The position ended up going to an inside hire; maybe the chair was just going through the motions.
I had two interviews and during both the phone and on-campus interview there was no interest in asking me anything other than stock questions. I was shocked to be invited to an on-campus interview after the very bland phone interview. During the on-campus interview, my interaction with the other faculty was very limited and during an hour with the department chair she spoke only of her own journey to SEMO and then described the position leaving no time for me to ask questions or to ask me any questions. Very odd. This was also for a lecturer position and they twice asked me about my resaerch plans in the second committee interview (which lasted only 15 minutes), which was made odd by the fact that in the first round interview they made very clear that there would be no focus on my research as this was a teaching only position. When I met with the Dean, he started with, "what questions do you have for me," which I also found extremely off-putting. (2019) | ||
| Southeastern Community College (Iowa) | Social Science | In today’s job market getting a campus is exciting, and unfortunately, all too rare. I was excited to get a campus visit from SCC Iowa (my first campus visit). I was amped. The kicker, they would cover less than 50% of the travel costs. I had to break the bank to make the trip, but I figured I was a finalist with two additional candidates. It was only when I got to campus that I realized the long odds ahead of me. Five total candidates, not three. I really wish they would have had another step in the application process (phone interview, Skype interview, something). I had to spend money I did not have (credit card). Considering the amount of money it costs to visit a campus, SCC Iowa should have really narrowed the search down further. I drove across half the country, dedicating four days of my life for what amounted to an hour-long interview. Did this really have to be accomplished in person? [posted May 2014]
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| Southern New Hampshire University | All/Online and Administration | This school has some serious integrity issues. The (canned) curriculum has become increasingly watered down, using materials that are full of mistakes a decent 8th grade student could probably catch. Typically weekly expectations are about 30 pages of reading and 2-3 discussion posts, which is about 1/5 of the work students might do in a course at another school (including other open-enrollment colleges I'm familiar with). The students still complain that they can't keep up. Faculty are repeatedly told to "be flexibile," so the deadlines on the syllabi are more or less meaningless.
The administration is downright hostile towards faculty, who are routinely ordered not to flunk students who are caught cheating/plagiarizing (we're supposed to give them a chance to redo it). They also do not enforce their own code of conduct...students can and do get away with behaving any way they want towards faculty. The administration does not enforce any sort of academic integrity or conduct expectations. Faculty are also subject to regular harasssment by (typically under/unqualified) staffers who send rude, condescending, and frequently downright libelous emails. Any time a student has a complaint, no matter how dubious, the faculty are instantly accused and their job threatened, even if it would have taken 20 seconds of research on the administrator's part to discredit the claims. (Such as reading the syllabus!) Grades are also a joke. If a student complains, you will receive an email from the administration ordering you to change it, even if you followed their rubrics. They demand that their adjunct faculty participate (unpaid, of course) in endless online workshops designed to reinforce that the students are "customers." Be prepared to spend several hours a month, with little-to-no notice, on these poorly-taught customer service training courses and redundant Blackboard trainings. If you decline to participate, you are deactivated. The administration (most of whom have dubious online terminal master's degrees and no actual scholarly credentials) are rude and unprofessional. I had a dean who demanded to sit in om my class and then spent the entire class loudly texting and playing on Facebook, to the extent she was disrupting not only me, but my students couldn't concentrate. Unsurprisingly, the worst offenders are all SNHU alums. [posted May 2013] (Oct 2015) I agree with the above post. Things have not gotten better: I taught at SNHU for one quarter. That is all it took to convince me that it is a For-Profit hiding behind the 'Not-for-profit' marketing (they are trying to imply that they are not a tuition seeking degree mill). Guys, they are a degree mill and here is why. Professors are hounded weekly via email from the Dean and the Lead to 'forgive late penalties' to 'help student success' (read, make sure they pass the class or you won't get hired for next term),to allow 'resubmissions of crappy work for a higher grade' and if the student fails the class he/she can always submit a grade appeal and get either tuition forgiveness and a chance to redo the class for basically free or a passing grade. If they submit an email to the Dean and complain about a 'mean' professor they'll get the AVIS treatment of 'of course that professor was a meanie for pointing out that you can't write at the 10th grade level, how dare he, here is your money back, so sorry for inconveniencing you with such a curmudgeon'. The professor then gets a full investigation taking up hours of his time and if he is desperate for money he will never ever give a student less than a B- and if he is financially OK he runs away. So the people left teaching for SNHU are financially desperate adjuncts with no other options. Do you really want prof. desperate grading your work? Grade is all they want to do since they get paid 2500 for a 10 week class of 30 students. Do the math - that is 8.30 per student/week. Less than working for McDonalds in most states. Instructors have to send out a weekly email where the profs. are 'reaching out' to students because of their crappy grades and it's not because they care, they are required to write these emails. It is CYA for the school in case the student complains later that 'I didn't know I was failing so give me my money back' as well as an opportunity to offer the student an out of their self-inflicted failure by allowing for submission of work without late penalties. If they pass the class, they'll pay tuition for the next class.. If a certain number of students fail your class even though you are using the ridiculously easy grading rubrics (you literally have to submit nothing for 10 weeks to fail) you get an email and then a phone call from the dean. Who has time to listen to that? So profs. try super hard to not fail anybody - if all are passing – for the prof. that means no weekly outreach emails they have to send, no annoying calls from the micromanaging administration and oh boy, more classes to teach in upcoming quarters. Upcoming attractions - you will be required to reply to all initial discussion board posts starting 2016. If you have 30-33 students you are going to have to come up with 30 replies to insipid posts, grade 33 DB posts and one other assignment (short paper, drafts of the final paper) all for 8 bucks per student per week. RUN AWAY! Also, students feel free to copy/paste most of their papers, SNHU's plagiarism policy is only for the auditors, it does not apply to the students. [Summer 2017] I had a very telling phone interview with SNHU for an administrative position. The Dean spent a majority of the 30 minute call defensively clarifying details that could have been included in the job posting. While there were 9 people on the call, almost no one spoke or could tell me what they liked about working there. They also continually referenced how "different" their school was and how it was nothing like any other school. I wasn't entirely sure what they meant. I can only imagine this might have been their attempt to reference their for-profit school hiding as a not-for-profit model as the previous poster noted. The clencher was when they contacted me afterwards and the Dean misspelled the name of the institution. Avoid at all costs. | ||
| Stanford University | Music | Disturbing allegations of sexual harrassment against a senior faculty member in the music department and an apparent efford by the university to silence his accusor: | ||
| St. Louis College of Pharmacy | History | Fall 2016 - This search was a joke. We were contacted for interviews in December to be held at the AHA in Atlanta this year. At the interview, they explained that the entire search committee wasn't even there! From the seemingly scores of interviews they did at the conference, they were first going to make a short list of 10 for phone interviews and then were inviting finalist to campus. So basically, many of us spent money on plane tickets, hotel room, conference fees etc. for what amounted to an informational session with dumb questions like "its 5:00 and you've been in meetings all day and you just want to go home and you are about to get in your car when you hear a student in the background saying professor smith, professor smith, can i talk to you for a minute?" Do they not realize that many of us applying for these positions are grad students who cannot afford to travel unnecessarily? In this market, conference interviews are hugely exciting and we are willing to spend the money on attending conferences we would not usually attend on the off chance that we may actually beat the odds and get a job. We send out hundred of applications hoping to get that invitation. We assume these committees are credible and have done the work to narrow down their list to semi-finalists--that way the trip is worth everyone's while. This group of misfits seemed to purposefully give off the impression that they were there to have fun, and used the interviews as an excuse for a free trip to the AHA. If you apply for a job at this university in the future---DO NOT waste your money and meet them at a conference-ask them for a phone or skype interview, at least then it will only be a minimal waste of your time. | ||
| SUNY Oneonta | Communication, general | Spring 2017. I was selected as a finalist for one of two open positions. Everyone I met was *very* nice, so this is not a complaint about the department or its faculty. However, their campus interview process was quite an ordeal. I was responsible for booking travel arrangements. At the last minute, I was informed that the department would be housing me in a room on-campus, at which point I cancelled the hotel reservations I had made. A few days later, I received an update that I would now be housed at a local hotel--the same hotel with which I had just cancelled a reservation. But, I digress. The biggest issue here is that the campus is located about an hour outside of Albany and, therefore, an hour away from the closest airport. The department conducted campus visits in February, and as it so happened, I flew in on a particularly snowy day. Rather than arranging for a faculty member to pick candidates up from the airport or working out some sort of transportation to/from the airport/campus, I was told to rent a car. The result of this was me trying to drive quite a distance in the snow in a Toyota Corrolla on very unfamiliar roads--because of the snow, the trip took over 2 hours after what had already been an exhausting day of cross-country travelling. I was fortunate that I did not miss any turns or exits--the highway leading to Oneonta only has exits every 20+ miles after a certain point. When I finally arrived in Oneonta, I had dinner with the search committee chair. The actual on-campus interview was fine. The following morning, I had breakfast with the chair of the department, which made this campus visit a 3-day extravaganza. Travel back to the airport the following day--again in the snow--was another hassle.
I'll also add that this is a small, rural town in upstate New York, which I obviously knew from my pre-application research, but I don't think I was prepared for *how* small or rural. I personally experienced identity-based street harassment while walking "downtown" (one street, three blocks) immediately following my campus interview. Candidates seeking to live in a place where various forms of diversity are affirmed and valued (or even apparently present) should look elsewhere. And I'll say again that everyone I met and interacted with in the department was perfectly nice and pleasant, so at the end of the day, the issues I experienced were really with poor travel coordination and unsuitable location (for me). For a candidate interested in a position at a teaching university in a small, rural environment and who has the benefit of having extra money to spend for up-front travel costs, this could be a fine place to work. I did receive a reimbursement check (about 1.5 months after my campus interview). I did not receive an offer, apparently, as the wiki has been updated to reflect that both positions have been filled. I've had no communication with the search committee chair after my campus visit. | ||
| Taylor University | All |
I think one major fact about this university that you don't realize is an issue coming in, but becomes more of an issue the longer you are there, is that a huge majority of the employees are alumni. It has created an environment where you are not allowed to openly voice concerns or genuinely constructive criticism. There just seems to be an attitude that everything about Taylor is wonderful, and if you might feel differently, then you are not "Taylor Quality", or in other words, you are just not ever going anyplace here. Many people working in offices, as assistants, and in other roles are spouses or children of the current faculty and administration, as well. Nepotism rules. This also happens because there are no opportunities for those folks to work elsewhere. The town is very small, in a very economically depressed region, surrounded by agricultural areas. In addition, the pay rate is very very low, which is why so many faculty wives have jobs. Making it on the salary they offer is a real challenge. The faculty handbook is a joke. They promise regular (and economically necessary) pay increases, but those are dependent on approval from a committee. And they just might not approve them. Which means your pay may start at $40K (I am not joking) and the next year it might be $40,500. Maybe. The folks who live here are generally here because either 1. they weren't able to get a job elsewhere 2. they are alums and there is no other place on earth as perfect and wonderful as Taylor University 3. they bought the idea that living in such a small town is perfect and wonderful and ideal and they wanted that dream - and it is just that - a dream - because the reality is that Upland is like being on an island covered with Taylor University Alums and no way out. In all of this, the university itself has little committment to their people. The University will arbitrarily close departments and leave folks they have brought in with no opportunities for hire (and they don't help them find jobs), nobody to buy their homes (a mistake many people make moving to the area is to purchase a home here - there is no selling of homes), and no hope for the future. The area is littered with people who "used to work at Taylor", until their department was shut down or their position was discontinued. Some folks get lucky and get hired at IWU (a 30 minute drive away) or Ball State, but most end up struggling to make it and end up having to take any job they can(painting houses, waitressing, gas station work, hair cutting, blue collar work, etc) just to keep food on the table. The interpersonal issues here are unbelieveable - never before have I seen such unprofessional behavior between academics. Professors backstab each other, set each other up and then use "gotcha" tactics (especially in front of students), and it seems that a lack of leadership is rampant among the department heads - leaving the strongest or most willful personality to drive and control the group - so passive aggressiveness is a familiar trait among faculty. There is a persona of "good christian behavior" which means everyone will be nice to your face, but will go behind your back to get what they want, even using students as excuses for their bad behaviour. And everything about this university is for the students - all of your time, all of your extra time, weekends, any extra time you have. You are expected to perform backbends in your life for students - giving multiple opportunities for them to hand homework in, extendend deadlines, and pass students who are inadequate performers. I would recommend anybody who considers taking a position here get the contact information for previous professors (who have managed to get out) and ask them clear and specific questions about how the groups really function (or how dysfunctional they are). Ask directly about each person you will be working with, and get a clear picture of those people and how they work. You will be stuck with them while you are working at Taylor, and lucky to get hired anyplace after, if you do manage to get an offer after this. Remember, those people will be your job references. Pay particular attention to groups that have heavy turnover (especially in the sciences & physics/engineering). These departments have had a steady stream of quality hires that they have been unable to hold onto. There is a reason for that. Also - talk to the people in the town about living in Upland. I would recommend stopping at the post office, the bank, and the grocery store. Ask them what they think, honestly, about Taylor and the people there. Don't let the "niceness" of the folks at Taylor dupe you into a position that really is a dead end black hole. Be very wary and be sure this is where you want to stay for a long time, even if you end up not working at Taylor (remember - you are a disposable commodity). And be careful when they tell you to "walk by faith and not by sight" - what they mean by that is keeping your eyes closed about the problems here is the only way you can survive. [posted April 2014]
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| Texas A&M University - College Station | English/College of Liberal Arts | This department has had a lot of trouble retaining junior faculty, in particular faculty of color, and graduate students. Recently, the department staff, faculty, and graduate students completed a survey on the climate for diversity, and the results placed this department in a tie for worst climate in the College of Liberal Arts. Allegations of blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia, as well as multiple abuses of power were brought up, and the department was forced by the dean of the college to create and implement concrete plan to address these issues. Graduate students, junior faculty, and staff seem to bear the brunt of these problems, often because of their position as more vulnerable members of the department. Many graduate students took the lead in bringing these issues to air (because they couldn't be fired, like junior faculty and staff), and the response ranged from disbelief to outright hostility. Texas A&M is a largely conservative school in general, and its institutional history as a military school for white men informs a lot of its present traditions and culture, but the problems within the English department cannot be simply blamed on its association with Texas A&M. [April 2013]
[Updating April 2014]: I am not the same writer as the person(s?) who wrote the previous blurb, but I can confirm the above statements. I can also report that a year later, the departmental climate here remains strained and dysfunctional. It is a challenging place to navigate as a woman, person of color, or vulnerable-status department member (think: junior faculty, staff, graduate students). The department-level Diversity Committee which was formed to address the issues the last poster(s) mentioned? It never meets. (This is not hyperbole. I mean that the committee literally has not been meeting.) Finding people who are willing to serve on it has also been a problem. [Updating April 2019] I am not the same writer as either above post, but can confirm that this is a college-university wide issue. There's been a mass exodus of POC (most visibly Tommy Curry) this year and reports of physical violence and abuse by department heads towards junior faculty and graduate students in at least two separate departments under the current dean. | ||
| Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi | Art | [SUMMER – FALL 2015]
They will woo you with a location on an island, close to the beach, and beautiful scenery and weather, but do not be fooled, Corpus Christi is a small town that does not support the University. The University has seen a major change in leadership over the past six months with a new Provost, Interim CLA Dean, Interim CLA Associate Dean, and within the past year a new Department of Art Chair. Why I suggest to avoid this university and department. The university lacks a since of identity and tradition. It seems to escape the leadership, but the students are well aware of the lack of identity. Turn over of faculty—retirements, resignations, non-renewals—have been staggering in the three years I have spent at this school. My own experience justifies caution in pursuing a position within the Department of Art. As TT faculty I was guided through training and orientation during my first year and half. Completed adequate service and had average reviews from student reviews (note: at no point did I receive a rating of "poor" during my annual review in any of the outlined areas). Promotion and Tenure requirements are a moving target campus wide, however the Art Department has never voted to accept any guidelines for their junior faculty. Furthermore contradiction runs rampant within the department on what can and can not be counted towards your 3/6 reviews. Onto June 2015, received a request to discuss personnel matters with my chair. Was given the "your contract will not be renewed". Mind you at this time I had not received my 3-year review, had not been asked to defend myself against any allegations that led to this decision, and had just received a annual review that listed my progress as "standard". When asked, the department chair refused to expand on the reason of my termination, offered no guidance, and asked to make this situation as easy as possible for them. The entire process was completely unprofessional as I was refused the opportunity to improve. After this meeting I discovered that the chair's treatment of faculty was not reserved to myself that other faculty members had issues with the our new "leader" and their handling of departmental matters. If you thrive in a dictatorial department within an environment that does not accept different opinions and forces the hand of all the professors, then this department is for you. But please air on the side of caution, do your research, understand who you will be working for both within the department and the university as a whole. | ||
| Texas A&M University-Texarkana | All | |||
| Tiffin University | All | Nightmare institution -- a non-profit increasingly being run like a for-profit. In the last three to four searches, Deans were told one salary range which was then dramatically lowered in the middle of the search process. They are doing this to specifically hire certain types of faculty members: those willing to put up with this kind of shit. An investigation by the federal Department of Justice and a short-term re-review by the HLC is now pending for a number of essentially criminal practices. Anyone associated with running the humanities areas at any level are not actually qualified to do so. The current Dean of Arts and Sciences is an unemployed lawyer. A previous Dean was essentially a high school teacher with Master's degrees. This place hates faculty, does not take its educational mission seriously, and should be investigated by the IRS for profit-taking practices. | ||
| University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa | Social Work / Modern Languages | There seem to be many disgruntled faculty and staff here. A LOT of politics and A LOT of people looking for other jobs. Be careful of this place. Ditto modern language dep. Lots of drama, coldness, backstabbing, politics there. | ||
| University of Arkansas at Little Rock | Health, Human Performance, and Sport Management | August 2015 - A late job announcement was posted in July for an August 17 start date. Actually there were three announcements for three different positions in this department all posted at the same time with the same hire date, so I (possibly wrongly) assumed that they were simply given a late approval by higher administration. I applied thinking they may be willing to negotiate a January start date. Phone interview was scheduled for two weeks prior to start date On the phone, the search committee chair was openly hostile and aggressive. He started by telling me to ask my questions first. When I did, he then admonished me for asking a question that he was planning to cover during the phone interview. I asked a second question about the standard teaching load and he told me "That is a question for the department chair, not the search committee." The search committee members then took turns asking the standard HR-approved questions, then asked if I had any other questions. I asked about the fast-approaching start date and the search committee chair cut me off to say, "Yeah, that is the start date. Is that going to be a problem?" I politely said that I just wanted clarification and that I was still interested in the position. He then asked how I would be arriving for the on-campus interview next week, by car or plane? I told him that it would be best to fly since I am quite far away. His exact response, "Okay. Thank you for your time." That was it; he hung up the phone. I had no idea if this was an official invitation for an on-campus interview or not. I was expecting to hear from him or the department's administrative assistant to coordinate travel plans (even though I was going to decline), but heard nothing until the automated HR rejection email arrived on August 17. My only guess is that it was a sham search for an internal hire. The absolutely worst phone interview experience I have ever had. | ||
| University of Connecticut | Digital Media & Design | It's a new department--I interviewed for what will be their first tenure track hire (in interactive design). These folks are expecting faculty to do a unreasonable amount of work. The course load is 3/4 (high for an R1 institute)--but what is more, each 3 credit course actually consists of 6 contact hours because they consist of 3 classroom hours followed by 3 lab hours (which are overseen by the faculty, not grad students or such). So it is essentially a 6/8 load! Additionally, there are very high demands in terms of departmental & college service as well as an expectation that faculty will be on campus 5 days/week (which would be necessary given the high course load). And since it is an R1 institute, there is also a high bar regarding research & creative output. Yikes! Stay away! | ||
| University of Copenhagen | Transnational American Studies | Was a finalist for a visiting position in December 2013--a truly bizarre and horrible experience, if mercifully brief. Fully 8 months after I applied, they gave me one time slot for a 1-hour Skype interview, at 6 AM (which is NOON in Copenhagen, so it's not like they couldn't have scheduled it remotely close to business hours). During the interview, the search chair was extremely aggressive, doubting my obviously uninflated credentials ("how can you call yourself a lecturer when you only teach 2 classes?"); insulting my application materials ("why did you include those publications? Wouldn't others have been better choices? Here you've basically written the same article twice!"); quizzing me about the interests of the other humanities faculty to see how thoroughly I'd memorized the website; and asserting that I'd have no idea how to deal with the delinquent students in the program. The other committee-members were perfectly nice but mostly silent. Because it was so early, it took me a while to realize I was being insulted, but in retrospect I might have asked them why on earth they were interviewing me if they so thoroughly despised my work and doubted my credentials. Not sure if this has something to do with the academic culture there or if it was a pro forma interview because I had the right amount of publications, if apparently identical and subpar ones. To their credit, they rejected me very quickly, though I wouldn't have gone near the job in any case.
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| University of Denver | Languages and Literatures | Steer clear of this deeply dysfunctional and highly toxic department in perpetual state of disarray. It is marked by significant drama and infighting. Personal battles (lawsuits), low morale, low performance, riddled with inefficient processes. More concerned about survival than growth. It is static, much more about protecting the status quo -clinging to their security blanket- rather than progressing forward with innovation implementation.
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| University of Georgia, Tifton | Forestry | I interviewed for a position at a satellite campus. After talking with a few people it became clear that the only reason this job would be in Tifton was because of some senator who footed the money. He demanded that it be in Tifton. Satellite campuses are great and have their place. Except this was clear that there was a chasm between this place and the main campus.
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University of Iowa |
Divisons of World Languages | Proceed with caution if you are up for any of the jobs (gender, Spanish, migration) in this Division at the perpetually-in-crisis University of Iowa. Even in a very tough market, you have the right to know what you're getting into: keep your eyes open, ask the right questions, and do your homework. [posted Jan. 2013]
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| University of Liverpool in China, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) | Language Centre and Several Other Departments | This is a most corrupt and dishonest university. In the current trend as many American universities are positioning campuses overseas, so too are UK institutions following in suit. the problem is that the UK university does not translate in China where students are not properly being trained in English (most of my students cannot follow simple lectures) and the students are actively discouraged from thinking. I have learned that most all of their evaluations are by exams repeating the Chinese system of education whereby the students memorize for exams learning very very little. I have been here several years already and have seen some really good lecturers come in ready to made a change and better the students' learning and they end up being harassed for their efforts. I would add here that harassment is the modus operandi of this university. They are desperate for teaching staff but once over here, you will be shut down quickly if you offer suggestions for improvement, if you teach in any innovative or creative way or if you challenge some of the more spoiled students who usually never attend class, do not understand English and whose parents wield an inordinate degree of power. So before you can even get started on a project which promises student improvements in much needed areas, you are already being threatened with possible job loss. While some of the departments here have excellent leadership, many do not. There is, like back in the UK, a trend of hiring very young and inexperienced managers, or hiring older staff who have only recently gone back to school for a quick PhD and these two groups have zero experience or knowledge about how academia functions. They are given higher salaries to push a managerial agenda and learning is pushed down in the list of priorities. Topping the list are student recruitments, ridiculous exercises which are of a grammar school level made to entice these students, making them feel that they are really doing university level work (when they are not), and a gender tenacity to reproduce a very white, male power dynamic where those instructors with more experience are discredited, abused, and harassed, and where those few white men with new PhDs and zero knowledge of academia are paid to shut people down, impose excessive administrative tasks and generally to be a thorn in everyone's side such that research is impossible (but they do love to talk about research"), where student activities are anything but academic, and where the open and healthy environment of academic debate is non-existent. I have recently heard of a lecturer in another department whose students were abused when they went to the Language Center for writing support, and when this colleague wrote to alert the director of this program as to what was going on, this lecturer and her students were accused of lying, of making up the repeated 25 plus incidents. You can't make this stuff up. If you are a student considering this as an option, don't! Go to NYU in Shanghai--it is a far better program. If you are a lecturer looking into a job here, save yourself the hassle. You would have far more respect at a Community College any day of the week. [posted April 2015] | ||
| University of London, Royal Holloway | History | First off, I want to stress that everyone involved in this search was very welcoming and kind in person. I have no qualms whatsoever with how I was treated during the interview, nor with getting full and speedy reimbusement for travel costs. The committee entirely lacked this touch in the follow-up, though. During the formal sit-down interview, the dean told me to expect to hear back "in one to two days." This is typical of British interviews, where decisions are often made the same day. I then heard nothing the following week and assumed I had not gotten the job. I waited for the rejection from the head of department. None came. After 8 weeks, I emailed the head of department for an update on the search and got no reply. It was only when I emailed HR another week later, who had helped arrange the visit, that I was told the hire had been made and finalized. HR seemed as confused as me that the search committee had not been in touch and was very apologetic. It took another couple of emails and more than a week before HR finally "ran down" the head of department and got them to send an email -- with some breezy explanations for the months of silence and the news that I had been the runner-up. Fancy that. Hate to think how the committee treated the other also-rans. | ||
| University of Maine System | All | In October 2014, University of Southern Maine (USM) adminstrators decided, on the pretext of alleged financial difficulties, to fire 25% of the tenured faculty at the USM, one of the seven campuses in the University of Maine System. AAUP investigated these firings and found:
1. In terminating the appointments of sixty of the 250 full-time faculty members and eliminating, reducing, or consolidating numerous academic programs, allegedly on financial grounds, the administration of the University of Southern Maine acted in flagrant violation of the joint 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and its requirement that when terminations are attributed to financial exigency, that condition must be demonstrably bona fide. 2. The administration’s actions disregarded the major provisions of Regulations 4c (Financial Exigency) and 4d (Discontinuance of Program or Department for Educational Reasons) of the Association’s derivative Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure, with the sole exception of the provision on severance salary, where the collective bargaining agreement required that tenured faculty members notified of retrenchment continue to be paid for a year and a half. 3. The administration also acted in brazen disregard of key provisions of the Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities, despite reference to this fundamental document in the preambles to the governance constitution of USM. Moreover, the bylaws of the senate state that "the administrative officers of the university should consult with the faculty and rely on advice and assistance from the faculty in the performance of their administrative responsibilities, particularly where administrative officers are called upon to make decisions bearing directly on the central academic functions of the faculty." In its pattern of confining its communications with the faculty on programmatic matters to announcement of accomplished fact, the administration has ignored not only AAUP-supported governance standards but also its own published statements. The program closures at USM are not merely matters of bookkeeping; they impinge on matters of curriculum and instruction, for which the faculty should always have primary responsibility. The administration’s ignoring the faculty senate, repeatedly and apparently deliberately, is at odds with generally accepted norms of academic governance in American higher education. These conclusions were followed by a 50-page financial analysis of the University of Maine System, which found that the system is in "robust financial shape" with no need to fire faculty. On the basis of this investigative report and the financial appendix, the AAUP voted to censure the University of Southern Maine. One other tidbit: administrators pushed through a devastating change---emeritus status can now be REVOKED if administrators decide that a faculty member has been critical of the university or adminstrators (and being critical of stupid decisions is what we RELY on emeriti professors to do!). Now the University of Maine campuses, including the flagship in Orono, are having failed searches left and right. Candidates know that the administrators there will ignore tenure and fire faculty who dare to question administrative policies and initiatives. | ||
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University of Maryland Global Campus (formerly University of Maryland University College) |
All Programs, Stateside, Asia, Europe | The problem child of the University of System of Maryland, it is hard to overstate the seriousness of the disarray at UMUC. After the previous president went down in scandal, the post was taken over by a career administrator with a tenuous commitment to academics. Shortly after shedding the “interim” part of “interim president,” he assembled the mind-numbingly named “Ideation Group” consisting not of educators, but of business executives to determine the future of the institution. The Ideation Group was only the beginning of a program of serious self-destruction passed off as “innovation.” Academic standards have been watered down, liberal arts slashed, and academic freedom sharply curtailed. Administrative bloat is everywhere, with edicts coming down from deanlets and an array of “Centers” and “Groups” looking to justify their existence by micromanaging a faculty whom they presume to be generally incompetent. Intolerant of any criticism of his initiatives, the current president surrounds himself with yes-men and sycophants who translate his disastrous ideas into white papers and policy proposals that give the assault on core academic values a veneer of respectability. He abolished the token faculty governance body because he found working with it to be “unproductive,” and replaced it with a neutered board stacked mostly with his supporters. UMUC has even gone so far as to ban books: in lieu of real textbooks, courses use a hodgepodge of stuff from the internet, “resources” that anywhere else would land an undergraduate in trouble if they appeared in a bibliography for freshman comp. The book ban is just one of a series of top-down curricular reforms laughably called the “'Enhanced' 'Learning' Model,” and administration loves to congratulate itself for bringing about such “innovative” “disruptive” changes, even as they pull the rug out from under the feet of students and faculty alike. All control mechanisms have failed; the regents, the Maryland government, and the accreditors have all given UMUC admin a pass, while the trickle of bad press and pressure from the system-wide shared governance body have failed to turn the tide. As a faculty member in the UMUC stateside division you can look forward to being a glorified tutor moving underprepared students through a canned online curriculum. Faculty in the university's European and Asian divisions, storied institutions serving non-traditional students in the US military community, were suddenly dismissed a few years back and replaced with what are essentially scabs, which is why they are constantly hiring. While faculty in Europe and Asia have more autonomy (for now), they get moved about like pieces on a chessboard as schedulers seek to balance the course catalogue on their backs. The traveling model means that they are delivered unto an administration that has shown time and again how little understanding they have of the culture or legal systems of the countries in which they operate. In fairness, middle- and lower level management tends to be more sympathetic, but there are also enough bullies about to make life uncomfortable. More often, lower-level administrators and staff would sooner watch the roof crash down on your head than offer necessary support, sometimes out of fear over their own status, sometimes because inertia serves bureaucratic interests. UMUC is a predatory university stalking for enrollments, students are told all kinds of things, explicitly or implicitly, all for the sake of getting butts in the seats. Wise faculty thus have to spend time disabusing students of misinformation, and they do so as much to cover their own arses as for the benefit of the students. The entire faculty is contingent, a fact the administration loves to remind us of with the occasional threatening e-mail telling us that renewal is not a guarantee and that they reserve the right to radically change our pay and benefits package at contract renewal time (in 2015 overseas faculty barely fended off what would have amounted to a 1/3 pay cut, and that victory may have been temporary). In spite of these problems, the job can be a unique opportunity and lead to some good lines on a C.V., if you do it right, signing on to an institution that so nakedly exploits the overabundance of PhDs entails tremendous risk. (Fall 2016)
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| University of Minnesota, Morris | College of Social Science | Some of the people here were really nice, but I had a feeling I was being read a pre-written "script" that provided me with rehearsed answers to all of my questions. Something odd is going on with the major influx of International students from China (there were faculty grumbles about the fact that most of these students cannot speak or read or write English and this was causing friction across the campus). There is a really strong population of American Indian students and I was impressed by this, but on the other hand it did not sound like there were enough courses or services on campus to help support these students. Everyone kept telling me "we have a lot of Native American students!" but I didn't get the sense that they actually knew why this was important or significant. The town of Morris is in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota (three hours from Minneapolis...closest "city" is St. Cloud 1.5 hours away). I drove down isolated country roads packed with snow in order to get there (What do they do when they need to go to a conference? They drive three hours to the closest airport...). There are two, maybe 3 resturants, and no separationg between faculty and students in the town itself. The students were nice but seemed overly attached to professors (called them their "friends"). A couple of times I was told "and if you have a partner..." or "if you have kids..." of which I have neither. They said that they support research but I kept hearing a LOT about "service, meetings, service, meetings..." (yikes!) There also seemed to be a lot of alumni who worked there, so perhaps some academic in-breeding? This was another strange thing--a large number of their faculty are "Instructors" but they use the title "Assistant Professor" so based on websites, etc., you can't actually tell that most of the classes being taught are by contingent faculty members. No one was horribly rude--just passive-aggressive. My gut reaction suggests that you should avoid this place if you have other options. | ||
|
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
School of Social Work |
Search committee chair repeatedly ignored requests of other faculty to schedule me for an interview. He finally scheduled a screen interview with me to take place at a conference, but never finalized the time or location despite agreeing to follow up with this information. At the conference, repeated attempts from faculty to obtain this information were ignored. Search committee chair eventually claimed that he didn't have my contact information, despite my name, cell number, and email address being included on my cover letter, CV, and other application materials. While other candidates were interviewed the day before by 5+ faculty, my interview took place with just the disinterested search chair and lasted less than 20 minutes. The search chair made a comment about my personality endearing other faculty to me as a candidate, implying that I was charming, but not competent. | ||
| University of Nebraska, Kearney | English | This school offered me a campus visit last Tuesday. The following Friday, one of the members of the search committee e-mailed me and informed me that the offer of a campus visit was withdrawn because they were having difficulty contacting my references. UNK never gave me an opportunity to supply correct contact information or to inform my references that UNK was trying to contact them. Nor did I even get an apology for the withdrawn campus visit. | ||
| University of Nevada, Reno | Psychology |
2015-2016. I completed a phone interview with several search committee members in November. I thought it went well. I received a follow-up email in December, hinting at an in-person interview. The email noted that I was a "strong candidate", asked about my availability to travel in late January, and said they would "continue to be in contact". I replied enthusiastically, noting my travel availability. But they did not continue to be in contact. I heard nothing from them. I did not want to be too pushy, so I waited until early February to send another email. In that email, I noted that I was still interested, but that I would need to know about any interviews ASAP as I needed to decide on other offers. They didn't respond to that email either, and it's now April and they still haven't responded. Even a brief "you're no longer being considered" would have been nice. So perhaps not a department that should be staunchly avoided, but beware of poor communication. May 2019: And once you get in, you discover grade inflation is alive and thriving. I was told by the chair (both in person and in an email) that students view a C as failing and that my class averages needed to be at minimum a B and no less than a B- or the students would complain and file grade appeals which they would lose (because the grading wasn't unfair--just hard) but it's such a hassle so it's just easier to alter the grading scale to give the students what they want, even if they didn't earn it. Entitlement runs rampant among the not-highly-skilled students, and the department seems to bend over backwards to accomodate them. I wish I had known this before I quit my prior job and moved here. | ||
| University of North Carolina, Wilmington | School of Education |
RUN AWAY!! Nightmare and bizarre interview! This, by far, was the most unprofessional interview and I have ever experienced. During the formal interview portion of my campus interview I was asked one single question-ONLY 1 QUESTION-- which of their courses could I teach. The search chair literally pulled out a list and made me indicate course by course which ones I could teach putting my name down next to each one. The search chair was especially difficult while I was making my travel arrangements and displayed downright peculiar behavior during my interview. At one point in the day she (the search chair) informed me "Wilmington is very racist" and suggested I might have trouble adjusting to the racism. And, by noon she disappeared leaving me to fend for myself. I not only ended up walking around trying to find various faculty offices and meeting rooms by myself, but introducing myself as well...Awkward! It became rather obvious to me during the course of the day that I was not really being considered and that they likely had an internal candidate. This was practically confirmed when the Dean (who was actually very nice) said "you should be very proud of having gotten this far in the interview process" not once but TWICE! He also indicated that however much he might disagree with a search committee hiring recommendation he would still follow it. Given I was not really being considered, what I found most upsetting was that I ended up sitting in the airport for hours b/c the chair had insisted that I take a later fli +gt claiming I would never make the earlier one even though the tiny airport was a whopping 15 minutes away. Instead of getting home at nine, I got home midnight and had to pay a fortune in babysitting b/c of the additional hours and time of day. If they had let me go even just 15 minutes earlier I could've easily made the earlier flight (perhaps they could've deleted the 45 minutes I was scheduled to sit in a room by myself so any faculty who couldn't make my talk could meet me...you know exactly how many stopped by). [posted May 2013] | ||
| University of Northern Colorado | English | Seven full-time contingent faculty were fired
in October 2018 without warning, despite consistently positive performance reviews, decades of teaching experience, and many service contributions to the department. The rationale: the department needs to make fyw more “current,” given supposed complaints about inadequate instruction. No evidence was supplied for said inadequacies. No opportunities for improvement were offered (too labor-intensive). Chair and WPA discussed freely with tenured faculty in department for weeks before firing, but refused to tell impacted instructors until replacement plans were in place. Department is advertising for replacements (also contingent) with PhDs in rhet/comp. Applicants for these positions should be aware that department is not dynamic and has a long history of treating contingent faculty badly, that the university is facing a budget crisis, that they will have very few rights, that they could be fired without notice or cause, and salaries are low. | ||
| University of Oregon | English | Couldn't be bothered to send out notices to applicants (this concerns the 2019 Instructor of English search). Got an acknowledgment from the academicjobsonline system, otherwise heard nothing from the Dept. We put a lot of work into these applications. The least Oregon could do is acknowledge our existence! | ||
| University of Oregon | College of Arts and Sciences | Absolute chaos. There are "have" and "have not" departments. If you are applying to a "have" department like Biology or Psychology things may be better but if you are looking elsewhere be careful. Also note that there is a reason that the faculty fought long and hard for a union; the administration there are overpaid and incompetent (as are many of the support service departments on campus). For example, the grants office cannot manage grant paperwork and will blame the faculty for their shortcomings. Similarly, renovations for faculty run over budget and over time. Then when they tell you that your lab is in a space requiring asbestos abatement, you can deduct that from your own money or leave it be.
Administrators are not afraid to misrepresent just about anything to your face so make sure everything is in writing and hope that person still has authority when you have problems. The administrative turnover is so great at UO that getting agreements in writing is almost useless since the incoming administrators have no requirement to uphold the deals they inherit. Retention of well funded faculty is often done with a strong armed approach involving threats to keep external grants or just give them back to the funding agency. For more information about how bad this place is please see the following webpage or check local news for the latest rape scandal, etc.: http://www.uomatters.com [posted Nov. 2014] | ||
| University of Pittsburgh | History | The last three female Assistant Professors to go up for tenure in this department have been denied. | ||
| University of Pittsburgh | Computer Science | 50% tenure rate over the past ten years (pool of ten Assistant Professors), all failed cases in the candidates' 6th year, all failures engineered club-style at the departmental-vote level. Dysfunctional relationship with the school administration; chronic issues. Beware. [posted April 2014]
CS and the SCS college: very unprofessional. Retracted offer a few hours after sending the official letter since they did not want to negotiate the terms. Ghosting behavior afterwards. Too many redflags!
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| University of Regina (Canada | Nursing | Unprofessional and disorganized. Had secretary ask "Will you have any more children?" at the end of the interview. [3/2015] | ||
| University of Richmond | English | See chronic issues listed below. | ||
| USC Upstate | Communication | I wouldn't say fear but proceed with caution. My thank you email after the Skype interview was not acknowledged by the SC. I was not invited for a campus interview - no big deal, it happens. No notification that I wasn't invited - just silence. My subsequent email asking for guidance on my performance on the Skype interview was not acknowledged. I just don't think that's the way to treat colleagues. I may not have a TT job but I am a colleague. (2/2015) | ||
| University of Texas Rio Grande Valley | General | Massive incompetence and dysfunction across the board. Get all start-up promises in writing and then be prepared for incredible difficulty spending any of it. Communication among various levels of administration is very poor and the old guard seems to enjoy screwing the new folks that come in with higher research expectations, Compensation is generally poor for incoming new Assistant Professors, teaching loads still too high to meet research expectations and then there is the problem with actually being able to spend your start-up (and get a functional lab space). Everything about this place is difficult. To top things off, the IT and information security office are nazis - faculty have no control over their computers and must have very un-responsive IT department folks load all software and deat with any and all issues. This all occurs in a region that provides a very isolated and low quality of life in general. | ||
| University of Toledo | Psychology (Clinical) | Be wary of intense faculty discord and severely problematic administrative interference in this program. Program and department bylaws are routinely violated by faculty and administration with no consequence. A Chair and DCT have been removed by an active Dean (to the detriment of the program). Student training suffers greatly. A status of probation from the APA seems possible and the administration has threatened to voluntarily withdraw from APA accreditation. Update 2020: I *happened* upon this page and noticed my previous university is on this page. While I am not a graduate student at UT and will not claim to know all of the internal matters, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the psychology department for years. I loved my lab. Please know this information appears almost 10 years old. The department has had a chair and assoc. chair change since then, and apparently numerous faculty changes. They are also no longer on probation, never lost accreditation, and have been accredited since 1979. | ||
| University of Texas at Austin | English | A few problems here: several professors of color have been denied tenure in the past 5-6 years, and at least one left. Department culture is one of distrust and frustration. One professor has been accused of serial sexual harassment, and the Chair seems to be doing her best to make sure he becomes Chair when she finishes. | ||
| University of Utah | Communication | This department is increasingly toxic. Senior faculty members hold junior faculty to monstrously unrealistic research and tenure standards that they themselves could not meet. Students of color and queer students are driven out of the graduate program. Most troublingly, faculty members have abused grad students in a variety of ways, including berating them in meetings and plagiarizing their work. The department is also unable to recruit a chair, so its leadership is weak and unwilling to deal with these problems. 2020. | ||
| University of Utah | Family and consumer studies | (Fall 2021) This was for a job interview. First, no good COVID protocols for in-person interviews. Second, the faculty basically admitted that they take advantage of their doctoral students because they have some student being the Instructor of record on 2 courses per semester for their funding. And when I met with the students many of them were concerned about how much teaching they do because they have no time for doing their research. Also, the students mentioned how they are struggling to find professors willing to advise them or even chair their committees.Third, multiple faculty members talked to me (out of nowhere) about how they like the Mormon church view on "traditional family values." I got into an argument with some of the faculty because they said that they don't have diversity initiatives because they don't have a diversity problem, while in that same meeting a faculty told me that poc have an easier time getting hired and promoted in academia than white women. People told me that they are getting a lot of pushbacks for proposing that 10% of their classes discuss issues related to diverse families. Faculty told me jokingly about how I would have to get used to white men students telling me that they have concealed guns in class, labs and meetings and that there is nothing I can say about it. And when I asked about how the chair will help me protect my time (given work on how faculty of color do more service) she said "it is really important for you to learn how to say no." | ||
| University of Virginia, Charlottesville | Medical Center | Issues with human resources, travel, and reimbursement in Fall 2017. I had to specifically ask for an itinerary. When an itinerary was finally provided, it did not accurately reflect the meeting schedule. Very little consideration for the traveler. Flights were not convenient. They offered a red-eye return flight not getting back until after midnight. HR were supposed to meet me at the hotel but didn't. HR skipped a meeting to discuss employment benefits. Multiple emails and 2 months after interview, still no reply or travel reimbursement. | ||
| University of West Georgia | History | I interviewed here last winter for a Fall 2016 position. I never heard back from them with a decision, despite having a three-day interview with two presentations. Additionally, I was questioned about my nationality and religion by one of the graduate students. I guess the promising lad didn't realize "Are you a Muslim?" is not a legal question. I was also told by the professor whose class I made my teaching presentation that I could provide him with one or two multiple choice questions for his exam "If I would like." I think this smacks of exploitation, but I'll let the reader be the judge. Regarding Carrollton itself, don't let the proximity to a big city fool you. Unless Confederate flags on your neighbor's door make you feel at home, I would be wary about living here. | ||
| University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point | All | November 2018 - This university is in the middle of a tremendous financial crisis (estimations of the deficit have ranged from $4-8 million) created by lack of funding from the state, a six-year tuition freeze, and declining enrollments. The administration's leadership has been incompetent, non-transparent, and often outright hostile to faculty. There is a sense among many that in the coming years, UWSP will be a tech college rather than a four-year comprehensive university--if it still exists.
Last March, administration released a proposal to eliminate thirteen majors, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. The proposal was revised this fall, and now the institution is slated to lose six majors: French, German, History, Geography, Geology, and 2-D and 3-D art. Other majors, such as Art History, are not listed on the new proposal but are also disappearing nevertheless. Administration insists that only the majors are going away, and the disciplines will be absorbed into the general education program. They keep insisting that faculty will stay, even without a department. The provost has suggested, more than once, that any faculty who leave as a result of their department's elimination do not care about teaching and students, only about furthering their own careers. He has made statements to the effect that, if faculty leave, they are easily replaceable with adjunct labor. It's unclear how he expects to draw enough adjuncts to rural Wisconsin to cover the university's general education program. The university is also in the process of raising the full-time teaching load for adjunct faculty to five courses rather than four--which means that it will be difficult for all of those contingent faculty to get benefits than it already is. Once majors are eliminated, UWSP can enact Wisconsin Regents Policy 20-24, which permits the firing of tenured faculty. UWSP will be the first university in the Wisconsin system to go through with that policy. It is the canary in the coal mine. If 20-24 goes through successfully, tenure no longer has meaning and everyone is vulnerable. Junior faculty across the university are at risk of being laid off. Department chairs have been given a dollar amount to cut from their programs, which is then translated into faculty positions. The number of potential layoffs keeps changing. At one point, it was upwards of 70 people. Many assistant professors, particularly those in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, are either on the market or looking at alternative careers. Morale is in the toilet. Over the course of the last eight months, three different committees have been formed in an attempt to advise administration on possible fixes to the budget crisis. Those committees seem to have been nothing more than a charade to give the appearance of faculty and staff buy-in. Both the committee that met over the summer and the committee that met this fall were never given complete financial information or explanations for the proposed cuts. At the final meeting of the fall committee, members asked to see a draft of the administration's proposal, which was slated to be released in the following weeks. That meeting was on a Friday, and members were told no draft existed. Lo and behold, the media had a complete draft on the following Monday morning. Adminstration had outright lied to those committee members. Throughout this process, the provost and chancellor have pushed ahead without listening to faculty who were attempting--in good faith--to help solve the university's problems. In addition to cutting majors, administration has proposed a massive restructuring of the university. The College of Letters and Sciences will cease to exist, and those majors will be scattered throughout the other colleges. Departments will also cease to exist, and the university will be structured around "interdisciplinary professional schools." No one is really sure how this is supposed to work. It certainly won't save the university any money. Simultaneously, UWSP is investing in multiple new, expensive, "career-oriented" degree programs that administration believes will draw more students to campus. They have never produced any market research to show that those majors will actually increase enrollment or solve our budget crisis. This fall, for instance, the university just approved a PhD in Physical Therapy that will cost $1 million, and will take years to become financially solvent. It's unclear how this can be justified. In light of these facts, over 300 faculty, staff, students, and community members signed an open letter to the Wisconsin Board of Regents asking for the chancellor and provost to be fired. Administration has responded primarily by denigrating those who object to the proposal--and in some cases there has been direct retaliation. The provost has also been very good at pitting faculty against each other. The university has been compared to The Hunger Games too many times to count. Everyone is trying to carve out their diminishing piece of the pie. Finally, unless you can get external grant money, there is no funding for research right now. Sabbaticals have been suspended for the foreseeable future. Travel funds have been swept, so you'll be paying for conferences largely out of pocket. For some reason, the university is still hiring new faculty in spite of all this, which is incredibly unethical. If you care about your sanity, stay away from this place. | ||
| University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point | Biology | All of my recommendation letters were mailed to Chair of Dept. way about a month before the app deadline. Received an email a month later from committee chair saying that one of my letters was missing. The letter writer then emailed the rec directly to the committee chair. This was confirmed by the committee chair that she received it. Roughly a few weeks later and I receive another email from the secretary this time that one of my letters was missing and my application would not be considered. Called and talked directly to the secretary and got a lot of attitude. Basically said that she did not care that my rec letter was in the committee chairs email inbox and that my application is not complete unless she has it. It was my problem that the committee chair did not pass it along! Wow, I then had my letter writer email it directly to the secretary. Never got a confirmation even after emailing the secretary again that it was received and have not heard anything since then. What a joke....must be like the circus in this dept. Glad my application was mishandled and I did not get an interview with these bozos since this appears to be more than just an isolated incident. [posted March 2013]
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| University of Wisconsin-Waukesha | Communication Department | I had a campus interview there in the Spring of 2012. The university struck me as very depressing. To begin, the university looked more like a high school than a college. It was very small and just made up of a few buildings. The faculty seemed dispirited and defeated from the moment I got there. I was told repeatedly by one of the search committee members that the salary here blows (not quite in that language, but close enough). I was given the lamest teaching demo topic and rather than address students, I addressed a group of faculty. The faculty in there did not seem to care much. It seemed like they had given up on life. Afterwards, I interviewed in a conference room with no less than 10 or 12 people asking me various idiotic questions that made little sense (e.g. Do you value diversity?). When all was over, I sent a thank you note (by snail mail too). Yet, I never received a response back one way or another about whether the position had been filled. And supposedly this is the "best" of the UW 2-year schools. It is literally in the most conservative part of the state and an ugly campus with very poor salary and a faculty that was indifferent towards everything. Stay away. Only good thing is that Milwaukee is close enough to commute from. Otherwise, not much going on for this school. | ||
| Utah Valley University | English/College Success | Screening interview was pleasant, but was told nothing else about the search. Was offered campus visit some weeks later and accepted. Search committee members frequently not present. Was abandoned for several stretches of time during the process. Accosted by a random faculty member during research talk. Was told multiple times during the interview that the positition was mine, expect an offer soon, etc. Didn't hear back anything for three months. Apparently, several finalists were brought out with mutliweek breaks inbetween each. An extremely misleading interview with many disengaged (or outright rude) faculty showing up to candidate events. [2014-2015]
Phone interview was tense but I got a campus interview. The Search Chair picked me up from Salt Lake City and drove me to hotel near Orem (about an hour south). I was not offered dinner, so I went to the nearby Winco for ingredients and cooked a meal in my kitchenette. Search Chair told me she was Methodist and not allowed to live in Orem County as an unmarried woman who isn't Mormon. In the morning, she seemed disorganized - I met with the department chair whose college-age son was in her office. Our meeting ended very early and the Search Chair was flustered that she needed to occupy my time. She told me to sit in a lobby near couches and maybe faculty would meet me while I waited. One department member came to me and told me he noticed I was not Mormon based on my CV and wanted me to know he was a black sheep because he was gay and could not live in the county around the institution. That was how he introduced himself. I waited around a lot and then had a teaching demo on a challenging topic in the department chair's section of the course. Faculty members sat on the floor between students' desks, and I tried to incorporate them into the activities. I went to lunch with a big group of people to P.F. Chang's and ordered my usual iced tea. Everyone gasped like I was out of my mind when the server informed me that no caffeinated beverages were served at that location (I guess that my daily iced-tea drinking could get me arrested)! I was told that the teaching load is 5-5 and I could get one course release to 5-4 for research. I was under the impression that I would be teaching 10 sections of the SAME CLASS every year, which would be...tough. UVU was a two-year institution initially and most of its students come freshman year and then go on two-year missions before returning so there is a lot of college transition struggle. Another faculty member drove me around Provo since I had never seen that area or BYU's campus. I noticed the single gender apartments and mentioned something about never seeing that before. He was very offended as a BYU grad and made sure I knew he did not approve of my comment. I had an awkward phone call with the department chair a week after my interview and did not get the job. They hired a BYU graduate, which did not surprise me. | ||
| Virginia Military Institute | English/ERH | Dysfunctionally evil. The split in this Department, spun as a "professional disagreement about the direction of the field" between those who favor the "old-fashioned" teaching of literature and those "on the cutting edge" favoring rhetoric is really personality driven. Those in power in the department (which includes an assistant dean and his wife) make life miserable for those who disagree with their views. The personalities got so viscious that several professors, tenured and non-, were driven to seek jobs elsewhere, sue the school, or simply resign in protest. They have since run through a series of multiple-hire years, with as many as 9 new instructors (couldn't find enough people willing to take TT jobs at the abysmal pay in such a dysfunctional department) per year, with few lasting more than a couple of years. The (previous) dean's solution to the dysfunction was to fold English in with Philosophy and for the "English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies" program, which is about as vague and rudderless as it sounds. The school, which is pretty hierarchical to begin with (as one might expect), calls this a solution. The chair, who has been in place for over 20 years, is a willing and malicious tool of the administration, which silences, buys off, or banishes anyone who dares speak up. The branch of the AAUP that once existed here lapsed long ago, as faculty who speak up are shut down and indirectly threatened with the loss of their job. Tenured faculty can hide in their offices, but the tenuring process has become overtly political, and exceptionally unpredictable. Deans over-turn committee decisions arbitrarily, and have established their "right" to have an appointed, semi-permanent representative on the T&P committee, as well as every other committee. (Makes you wonder what the dean does, but ... ). To top it off, pay is horrid (in the bottom 10 percent for the school's self-selected comparisons, as well as for the state) despite claims to be a top-tier LA school. No raises for a decade, and none on the horizon. Simply a horrid environment in which to try to exist, much less thrive. [posted Sept. 2015] | ||
| Virginia Tech | Sociology | A few years ago they merged 5 units all into one Sociology department. The faculty don't like each other and now they fight over resources too. Morale is low. In the past several years, MOST new assistants leave right away. Pay is low and Virginia is not known for raises. The cost of living is high in Blacksburg and many faculty and students consider the atmosphere racially hostile and toxic to women. | ||
| West Texas A&M | English | Never received any form of communication after a campus visit (nothing from the chair, committee member, or HR). [2014-2015] | ||
| San Jose State University | Library |
Campus interview was schedule for a short two days. Flew nearly across the country for a less than 24 hour stay. I arrived (after getting up for an early am flight) in San Jose in the early afternoon (already a full day of travel). My accommodations were on campus in a DORM, which I could not check into until two a hours after my arrival. I was responsible for my own transportation. The Search Committee had set up a tour and dinner that evening. It was quite a LONG day--I was about to fall over from exhaustion. At dinner a recent faculty hire had talked about the hotel he stayed at for his interview not too long ago and asked where I was staying. I experience second-hand embarrassment for the committee itself to reveal that I was staying in a dorm. My interview begin at 7:30--no breakfast and the student store did not open until later. Imagine doing a full day of interviewing with no fuel! The interview with the search committee was odd--they asked the same questions they had asked in my phone interview (red flag #2). Next up--the presentation they had asked me to prepare. What I covered was news to the dean of the library and most of the faculty--huge red flag. They asked me to prepare a presentation and where unaware of their OWN universities protocol. Lunch was covered and people were generally nice. Months went by and I emailed to inquire about the status--an offered had been accepted. They ghosted me without so much as a courtesy email. **I've kept my eye out on who was hired for the position, expecting a seasoned business librarian from Yale (given the role they were seeking to fill) but it appears that they hired a recent library graduate with little to no experience. I do not think they had any intention of hiring me when they brought me to campus. I took the committee's questions, the presentation request, and the role they were hiring for very seriously. I am currently in an academic position, and I took time away from my current post out of an interest in the position and the university. That is probably the biggest insult--the blatant wasting of my time and energy when I have continuous academic and scholarly commitments. |
Recent Issues: Specific Problems with Departments or Searches that Occurred During AY 2010-2011 & 2011-12 Search Cycles []
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School |
Department |
Issue and Date |
|---|---|---|
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Angelo State University |
Communication |
Interviewed there in 2010. Got a really bad vibe from this school, and the Comm dept. in particular. For starters, the entire interview was highly disorganized-first, I sat in a conference room while the SC wandered in and out over the course of an hour, asking me questions. Everyone seemed stressed, bored and annoyed during the interview, and at one point one SC member was loudly texting in the conference room while another was interviewing me. SC committee chair seemed irritated that I was not familiar with ASU's point-based tenure system, even though this information was nowhere to be found on the website, and I was not aware that I was expected to know it prior to the interview. Then, I was informed that my teaching presentation would actually be 15 minutes shorter that I was originally told to plan for, and I was given less than 5 minutes to set up. To make matters worse, I had to deliver the presentation in the middle of a class, and rush through it so that the instructor (who sat in the audiene fidgeting and looking impatient the entire time) could resume her lesson. At the dinner, this same SC member rudely took jabs at me for being from the midwest, and kept trying to get me to admit that I thought San Angelo was a boring and undesirable place to be, which was awkward. Later that night, I had plans to meet a friend for drinks, and SC chair invited himself along, and proceeded to ask me inappropriate, probing questions about my marital status. This guy, duing the course of the interview, constantly made self-depricating remarks about the school and department, implying that no one at NCA respected them, etc. He also made disparaging comments about the outgoing faculty member to me, which was extremely uncomfortable. This sense of self-loathing and animosity seemed to be echoed by everyone in this department, who at different times complained about the workload, admin, how busy they all were, unsupportive colleagues, etc. Took me awhile to detox from this one! |
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Ashland University |
Arts & Sciences |
Strange place, located in the middle of nowhere in Ohio in a town with nothing in it but a Walmart. Dept. chair didn't respond to email and phone messages before the visit so I never had any idea where or when to meet at the start of the day; he later claimed he was too busy but it was obvious he was unorganized and lacked leadership. Of five search committee members only three were present during my visit (one was out of town, one showed up for 20 minutes and left the meeting early never to be seen again). I was asked weird questions that had nothing to do with my field and was told that my field wasn't considered very academic! At one point was asked what year I graduated high school--age discrimination??? The HR person asked a lot of personal questions and wondered why I'd want to move there. I was never taken on a campus tour and only shown a few rooms in the building the department is housed in. And I never met a student in my field--they had me talk to a class that had four students in it, none of whom were majors. It seemed very in-bred with a number of alumni working there, which is never a good sign. I was told I'd hear back within a week either way and of course never heard anything. Strange place that I'd recommend people avoid. [posted March 2012] |
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Asian University for Women |
All |
I taught there during 2009-2010 academic year with a great team of administrators and faculty and wonderful students. The academic leadership completely turned over while I was there. The new provost, who was fired from her previous job, laid off a number of the original faculty and instructional staff, mostly while they were on vacation abroad. Several of them had to go through rounds of communication with the board that oversees the AUW Support Foundation in order to get their belongings returned to them, and not all of them were returned. The provost and founder/Acting VC declared there would be no Academic Senate. The students live in crowded conditions with no mental health professionals, despite the fact that many of them come from conflict zones and one of the programs their publicity materials boast of - a conflict resolution program between SInhalese and Tamil students from Sri Lanka - was carried out by the counselor they have since let go. The campus has suffered from two outbreaks of dengue fever. The closest quality medical care is at an American hospital several hours from the city, and that facility has limited resources for handling emergencies. The location in Chittagong is difficult to get to and requires adding an extra day coming and going for international travel. If you are considering working here, be sure to search blogs and Facebook for more information, and ask about the retirement plan.
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Austin Peay State University |
All |
School pays much less than comparable positions elsewhere. Teaching loads are extraordinarily high (15+ contact hours per term) and the expectation for research keeps growing, with no relief from the teaching loads. Used to be a liberal arts curriculum but is now getting more technical. The quality is really going downhill. Changed tenure criteria in my 4th year to be more rigourous without having the infrastructure to support the research that would lead to passing the new tenure review. Heard similar issues in humanities, sciences, etc... [Posted Mar 2012]
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Baker U |
Humanities |
Committee chair committed to pay to bring me in for an interview and two nights in hotel, asked me to prepare a talk. Over Christmas I spent hours working on the talk, then four days before the interview got frantic call from department chair claiming I couldn't come since the dean wouldn't be in town. She said the interview process was being "suspended" but when I questioned her she said the other interviews had been conducted and mine was the only one being suspended. A couple weeks later someone in the department emailed the truth--they liked one of the other candidates they had already interviewed so much that they decided to hire him and reneg on commitment to bring me to campus. Tacky, classless and even dishonest. This school claims to be all about teaching "integrity" yet they failed--how could anyone who applies at this school trust them? [posted Jan. 2012] |
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Barry University |
Social Work |
June 2011. I was offered a phone interview for a full time faculty position that doubled as the program director at one of their off-campus locations. The person calling me offered me a date and time for an interview. I accepted the interview, but let her know that I would be out of the country and asked if it would be any trouble for them to conduct the interview via an international call, and that I could provide the exact number where I could be reached in the U.K. The person fumbled and stammered on the phone and said, "Well, I don't think we can do that." I then asked if I could try interviewing from the U.S on a different day. The person said, "I don't know. The Dean wants this done on that day." I offered to initiate the international call on the original date and time that was suggested, to alleviate any stress or problems on their behalf. The person setting the appointment seemed upset that I was trying to find alternative solutions, but scheduled the date and time of the interview anyway, and asked me to call her 48 hours before the interview just to make sure that it would be all right to conduct this interview over an international call. Mind you, this is all over a PHONE interview, not a face-to-face meeting. Well, I did as she asked. I called her two days before the interview and I was sent to her voice mail. I called her again the next day. I emailed her, and then I finally called from the U.K. on the exact day and time that I was scheduled to interview. Each time I called, I went straight to voice mail and none of my calls were ever returned. My email never received a response, either. About a month later, the position was re-posted. A year later, I met a colleague who used to adjunct in that same department and she failed a student for plagiarism. The student complained to the Dean and the Dean changed the student's grade. My colleague promptly quit and now is an adjunct somewhere else. Although her story is unrelated to mine, I felt her experience only verified the unprofessionalism I experienced with the phone interview, and pretty much told me all I needed to know regarding what would have happened if I had been hired. |
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Berea College |
A Search in Division IV |
Unclear search criteria! I was never really sure what they were looking for. Completely, tragically disorganized. Routinely did not respond to emails or phone calls after they had previously contacted me for more information. Wasted an enormous amount of candidate time with requests for writing samples based on the college's "committments." Openly hostile Dean of the Faculty during the campus interview. Ignored repeated requests to provide a complete campus visit itinerary while I was visiting the campus. Committee chair forgetting conversations (or possibly forgetting who I was and why I was there). Poor scheduling by both the Dean's office and the department. No establishment of a timeline while faculty admitted that the search was not a priority. Last-minute scheduling on their part necessitated extremely expensive airline tickets. Over a month past the interview and reimbursement has not been processed. Pithy rejection notice from departmental secretary after over a month of complete silence. They hide behind "busyness," but in reality there was a serious lack of professional respect and courtesy here. [posted May 2012] |
| Cal State U, Northridge | English |
This department does not value quality teaching or active scholarship. New hires are routinely told that their research will be supported. This is a lie. They are given an initially lightened teaching load, then after a year or two pressured into department-level, college-level, and university-level committee work on top of a 4-4 teaching schedule. When the 4-4 becomes too much, some of them are offered program administration positions in return for a reduction in teaching load. New hires rarely manage to maintain a research and publication program, and as a result, either those ambitions are abandoned, or the new hires leave. The last two people this department hired left for more supportive departments after less than two years. This department will be hiring in 2019-2020. Let the candidate beware. The most active and credible scholars and writers in this department carry the heaviest teaching loads, while the lightest teaching loads are given to those who are favored by the administration, those who agree to join the ranks of the program administrators, and those whom the term "deadwood" fits neatly. Faculty meetings were an excruciating exercise in watching the deadwood squelch any and all ideas for change introduced by the more ambitious attendees. Do some digging. Find CVs, where you can. Find teaching evaluations, where you can. Ask, if you interview here, how much of a role your research will have in this department, and how much of a role the research, if any, of the search committee members plays in this department. Also note that this department will have you do a "teaching" demonstration that amounts to little more than trying to run a class discussion with members of the search committee pretending to be students. It was the most impossibly awkward experience, and bore no resemblance to actual teaching conditions with actual students at the university. If you apply here, be forewarned. The bright picture they paint for you does not resemble the grim reality you will find if you take the job. |
| Cal State U, Northridge | Music | This department and program is painfully straight, white, and male -- tenure and adjunct faculty alike, there is no representation of the student population in the teaching staff here. For a diverse school and urban Los Angeles area, they continue to hire straight white males over and over. When positions open, they are filled with more conservative male staff. Females students really must feel overpowered by males above them and have few role models for their profession. One would think music would be a diverse program, but not at this university. They seem to have a revolving door of department chairs that all fit this model too! As a woman teaching in this program, it is very problemaitc. Department is a relic and needs modern updating -- badly -- and to welcome some new diverse staff of color, diversity, and gender represenation. |
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Cal State U, Northridge |
English |
When I arrived at the MLA interview, I was informed that the department does not conduct campus visits. Learning this right after walking in the door made the stakes that much higher, and I might have prepared different questions to ask the committee had I known. It was a bit unnerving, honestly, trying to figure out how to react to this information on the spot-- weird kind of a test. The interview was cordial and the questions were fair, so I have no complaints there. The department held a social mixer at MLA, which I felt cordially compelled to attend (job interview, round 2!) since there was no campus visit to be. The social mixer was pleasant, if a bit awkward at times (hello, fellow job candidates!). My real gripe: after I sent a thank-you email to the department and got a cordial reply, I heard nothing for two and a half months. And then I got a rejection letter in the mail, not a phone call. The letter had a hand-written correction of a typo.
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Chowan University |
All |
I am intentionally leaving the subject area blank as I quite literally FEAR this institution. There's a more than negligible chance they would come after me in a litigious manner assuming they could prove I wrote this. I was hired tenure track as an Asst Prof. The first year went pretty good. I got excellent teaching evaluations and had several publications. The bad side was that there was quite a difference of opinion when it came to how I spent my time outside of committees, research, advising, and teaching (you know, the normal things professors do). There was constant pressure to go to every football and basketball game. There was constant pressure to have an on campus presence 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. They wanted your soul. It seems this difference of opinion was more serious than I thought as I was fired during the following year. There was no explanation, just a 30 second meeting where I was told my contract wasn't being renewed. I just found out that one of the head coaches was also fired without cause and he has a 5 year contract! He had just bought a house with his poor wife and kid and this one stoplight town. They'll likely have to foreclose. Bottom line: there is zero job security here. I really think the only way you are somewhat protected is if you subscribe to the Baptist cult and understand your subservient role. [posted April 2012] |
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Colby College |
Jewish studies |
Most obnoxious search committee I ever encountered. One committee members closed his eyes for several minutes during a conference interview. [posted Feb. 2013] |
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Colorado State University |
Communication |
For the second year in a row, this school requires a huge amount of evidence of teaching excellence that goes well beyond any other Communication Department -- even those more teaching oriented. "Submit letter of application that outlines your teaching experience, including experience teaching international students; statement of interest in and qualifications for teaching popular culture; detailed résumé or c.v.; recent supporting materials that indicate teaching quality in each of four categories: written reports of classroom observations, student evaluations, syllabi, AND three graded student papers and/or student performance projects/evaluations—one graded A, one B, and one C of the same assignment. Please also include the names of three references who can speak to your teaching." www.jobtarget.com/c/job.cfm?site_id=560&job=9868241. 3 graded papers? Classroom observations? This is ridiculous. |
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Eastern Kentucky University |
Communication |
Sloppy department and committee members picked me up with their cars. First one was a two-seat tiny sportscar, completely cramped. Second was the guy with tons of large white dog hairs everywhere that got all over my suit before my presentation. The search chair bragged non-stop about himself and in a two-day period drove me past the broadcast facility three times but wouldn't let me see it--he told me I wouldn't come there if I saw it so they wouldn't show it to me! When it came time to meet the dean his secretary said they had failed to set up an appointment and the dean wasn't free! They wanted me to teach a five-class per semester load at $20,000 less than I now make! And it's in a pretty depressing small town--there is certainly nothing to brag about at EKU! (Feb. 2012) |
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Eckerd |
Languages / Environmental Studies, Political Science, and Economics (Pretty much Behavioral Sciences in general.) |
Offer rescinded/Dec. 2010: Okay, so here is what happened. I'm still in shock so forgive me in advance if my account of the experience is a bit incoherent. I have been on three search committees myself and have never heard of anything like this happening...Last Wednesday, December 15th I had a job offer from Eckerd College, in Florida. I thought it strange to get an offer before many other schools had even called to schedule interviews, but I planned to accept the offer: I loved the school and the faculty--who were genuinely lovely to me during my three day campus visit. The Dean of Faculty (whom I had NOT met) who called on Wednesday with the offer gave me 2 days to accept or decline it--she wanted a response by Friday the 17th. Thursday was completely lost when the dean emailed her response to my request to negotiate a higher salary to the wrong address. On day 2, Friday, the dean made it clear (via email) that salary was non-negotiable. But when I asked (again via email because she wanted an answer immediately but was tied up in meetings and could not speak on the phone) about other considerations to offset what would have been a 10% paycut from my present salary, the dean rescinded the offer. By email. And then refused to take my calls. This is exactly what she wrote: "After having read your stated requests, specifically the number of years to tenure and the MWF teaching schedule, I am sorry to say that we are not able to sustain our job offer to you. At this time I am rescinding the job offer." I am still reeling.
STAY AWAY! This college is poison. There are a number of alumni who sit in positions of power and influence and who treat the institution like their private club. Either you do as you are told or you are ostracized and excluded. Many excellent faculty members have been denied tenure (despite stellar tenure files) on the whim of a few senior faculty. The present acting dean, who more than likely will become the dean next year, is part of this cabal. She is notorious for falsifying letters in tenure files, backbiting junior faculty who do not cater to her whims, and rumor mongering about her staff. The Chair of behavioral sciences has been in her position for decades and has actively driven out anyone in her collegium who crosses her. The school nearly went bankrupt in 2000 when their former president got caught using the college endowment to make failed real estate investments and while he was fired, his legacy appears to live on in the senior faculty. A new president in 2000 has righted the financial ship somewhat, but is absolutely powerless against the internal cabal who runs the school. If you desire an academic career, this is not the place for you. If you liked high school and enjoy being peer-pressured into hanging out with the popular crowd and doing their bidding, you'll love it. Faculty 'meetings' are often run by the Dean of Admissions as marketing meetings and the classes taught are generally very low quality, as the school preys on families whose children have not succeeded and who are willing to buy a degree. Anyone with integrity leaves. Many good people are stuck in golden handcuffs having played the game and gotten tenure, but having sacrificed their academic career in the process. Do not trust anything they say or anything they write about their hiring or tenure process. This institution is a dangerous joke. I have also heard they are soon to be censured by AAUP. [posted Nov. 2012]
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Endicott College |
Recent interview was atrocious. There is no organization with this school. Believes in scholarship, and ask for it during interviews, but has nothing to show. 4/4 lecture or 3/4 studio load. "Apply" for sabbatical and faculty funds, no set funds, even if minimal. Advisee load too high. Class ratio too high. Huge turn over in some departments.... not much of a "union", or rather association, with no real weight. Not even the courtesy of a letter on status of application. Had to find out about not getting it through adjunct and student. Dean was full of himself, and insecure at teh same time. Chair of similar ineptness. Wiley World to some..... NO follow up on interview.... met other candidates who had same issues. Beware. A joke all around.[posted Feb. 2012] | |
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Ferris State University |
Extremely unorganized. 5/5 teaching load – not a joke – you read that right! They appear informal and jovial on Zoom, but very dysfunctional in-person. Community College and commuter school vibe. Had higher hopes than I should have. Was asked if I was comfortable teaching such a heavy load. Sure, I replied. Seemed the whole upper admin was held together with scotch tape. Took months to get reimbursed for an expensive flight after contacting multiple people. I really regret the time I wasted as it was clear upon arrival that no one here cared. Very provincial school, unfortunately. | |
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Florida International University |
Communication |
They were really, really disorganized. I called, emailed, and called some more to get details about the interview ahead of time, but couldn't get any concrete answers from the search chair (who was surprised that I had questions) or the department head. They sent me a schedule 4 days in advance, and then changed the schedule a lot on the fly. The department head changed the start time from 8:30 to 6 am -- the night before the interview, by email at 9 pm. The initial interview schedule included a 2-hour "research and teaching talk" and no one could tell me who (or how many people) would be attending it, whether I would have access to any technology, or what was typical for the department. The 2-hour talk was changed to a 50-minute teaching demonstration FIVE minutes before it started. They told me I wouldn't have tech, then told that morning that I would and they expected a presentation (which I luckily had as a backup!), and then the tech wouldn't work. The IT people took 10 minutes of the 50 minutes before they gave up. I had to ask for bathroom breaks. The head of this department does not hold a Ph.D. and made several remarks about how offended she was by candidates withdrawing when they learned this. I received a form letter rejection, not even a personalized letter, let alone a call. This department might improve over the next few years as they hire new people, but for the 2011-2012 search, they were really disorganized and unprofessional. [posted July 2012]
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Florida State College- Jacksonville |
Arts and Sciences |
The people I met were nice enough and everyone was friendly and interested in my teaching experience. However, after I was brought back for a final interview I received an offer from a college which they are competative with. I accidentally let it slip that I was interviewing at this other college and was met with a really uncomfortable discussion of why I liked this school. When I emailed to let them know that I had been offered a position (without mentioning where as to avoid more awkwardness) and inquired where they were in their search I was told that they could not consider hiring me until I notifed my references of their interest in me and got my references to call them. Further, everything about their process was slow. Slow to figure out when my final interview was going to be, slow to check references (it took almost a month after my final interview to inform me that it was my job to get a hold of my references for them) and slow to reimburse me for my expenses. It has been well over two months since I sent in my receipts. I sent an email asking when I could see a check and was told that they had yet to send my receipts to the proper department, that I should hold tight and wait a few more weeks. Is it just me or is it insane that so many of us have issues with places paying for our travel? You invited me! (posted May 2011) Interviewed on the phone and that went well. They invited me to campus. After an interview and teaching demo that went incredibly well, they said they would be in touch within a week. They called back and said that they had pushed the hire date back six months, but they had been impressed with my interview and would call me in a month to schedule a phone interview with the president, a phone call the never materialized. They also stiffed me for $200+ in travel expenses. If you want to teach at a glorified tech school, this is your place. |
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George Mason |
Humanities/Social Sciences |
Interviewed in 2012. In a process that dragged out for months with lapsed communication after each step, when I finally did the on-campus the search committee members spent the whole time telling me how terrible it was to work there, how unhappy they were, how there was no money to do anything, and how badly they wished they could leave. No one could be bothered to give me a tour of the campus. The university was hiring like crazy and everyone was just too busy. Meanwhile, the graduate students were overworked and underprepared for their own searches on the market, and seemed deeply unhappy. People talked smack about the other candidates, which seemed unprofessional. I took a different offer, which also happened to pay more than 50% higher than GMU was offering. |
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Georgetown University |
English |
I received the "Confidential Applicant Form" via email today. Not only is a name and email reply required, not optional, to submit the form, the form was sent to over 100 applicants on the email list. How hard it is to bcc? Give me a break. |
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Hiram College |
English |
Interviewed in 2012. The interview process went well, but the hiring practices are corrupt, at least in this department. Who ended up with the job? The wife of the search committee head. I understand hiring spouses. However, in such cases in which one's spouse is up for a t-t job, one should not be permitted to head the search committee. Doing so raises ethical issues. |
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Kutztown University |
Speech Communication and Theatre |
I interviewed there in the spring of 2012. The search committee chair showed me around campus, bragging incessantly about his faculty rank and making sure to point out the places where "they" (i.e., minority students) hang out. The dean showed no interest in me during our conversation in his office, as was evident from the moment he began the conversation by shaking my hand, sitting on one side of his office, flipping though my CV (likely for the first time), dropping it on the table between us, and asking me to summarize the 20-page document. I immediately feared that this was a "Rooney Rule" situation gone awry -- that the school would not consider hiring me but that my scholarly record, relative to those of the other applicants, would make it hard for the department to justify not interviewing me to the Institutional Equity office. (For what it's worth, other faculty members later apologized for the dean's approach.) I eventually received an offer from the school's president - at 18K/year below my current salary. When I replied via a letter in which I requested a salary more appropriate for someone with my academic record, I received an email from the president, withdrawing the original offer (although I know that other faculty there used the same strategy to negotiate their starting salaries). |
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Lone Star College - CyFair |
Accounting |
SC was late for teching demo, and stopped my lecture when time was not up. [posted March 2013] |
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Mississippi State University |
History |
Interviewed at the AHA in Boston, 2011: easily the worst interview experience I've ever had. It was just me and one faculty member, who, while seemingly pleasant and "down-to-earth" (which was I think the vibe s/he was going for), asked me almost no questions at all ...in a 90 minute interview! When I did try to talk about my research or teaching, I was either told "I don't want to hear about that;" "teaching doesn't matter;" or given some uninformed question about my dissertation. At one point, the faculty member called me "naive" and when I asked if s/he had any questions about the 100+ pages of material that I had submitted earlier (at their request), s/he told me "no. I read it. I understood it. I have no questions." From what I gather from other wiki postings, my experience was not unusual. I wonder if the rest of the history department at MSU is aware that the first-round interviews are being conducted in this manner.
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| Northwestern State University of Louisiana | Engineering Technology |
Fall 2013, they called and begged me to come to teach for them, I accpeted a position, came to school a week before the start of the semester. The department was in shambles, labs was not functional, I have to work as a tech and teach 12 hrs. Professors did not respect each other, and yet they was looking for ABET accreditatation. Spring 2014, they hired another faculty member without an interview, during the semster the coordinator retired, they conducted a fake search for a new coordinator, I was part of the committee, the managment made it clear that nobody will take the position but the new hired professor, beacuse he was a convert from other rival religion also he has no teaching or managment experience, they rejected 13 candidates including a former dean and full professor with 15 years experience. He started his position trying eleminate all other faculty members based on illegal issues. He acted in the departemnt as a pitty tyrent or sipmply as a dictator. The managment was very passive, will not bother to correct any problem, they love to sweep every issue under the carpet. All of the above is on the student's plate, thus the students realize the above issues and thus act accordingly, you have to baby sit them, they simply do not want to do any work, in fact many of my students will leave in the middle of the class to go to work. Most students gradaute and will not be able to demonstarte any knowledge in the subject. You have no choice as a teacher, but to pass all of them regadelss of what percent they earn, i.e. my C was 30%. With the current managment avoid taking any position, if you have any ambition to for a progressive department, or to be treated fairly if you have a different believe from the head and thr cornies. |
| Northwestern State University of Louisiana | Sciences and Technology | Taught here for three years. This is a public university. Faculty meetings were begun with prayer (uncomfortable attendees were asked to volunteer to lead the prayer). There are a lot of interdepartmental rivalries and facuty members often display unprofessional behaviour in front of students, during lectures, or during office hours. They also involve students in jealousies/rivalries/territorialism with other faculty members, within and among departments. The administration are unable/unwilling to address these issues, in fact some administrative faculty were involved/participated in the problems. Students suffer as a result. Frustrated with the atmosphere, most faculty seem to give up and provide students with "study guides" (early copies of the exam questions) to boost their student evaluations. There seems to be little interest in actually fostering critical thinking and learning. The students need you, but this is not a pleasant place to work. |
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Oceania University of Medicine |
Basic Sciences |
Taught there for almost a full year. This is an online medical school out of Samoa. After being complimented on my performance for the entire time, they suddenly let me go 1 week after I was hired by a permanent university. Then, they failed to pay me $20,000 that I was owed. Run from it like the Plague. |
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Ohio University |
Communication |
The Lancaster campus. I was not allowed to meet the division head of the division I would be working for. They would not allow me to meet any students! And the teaching demonstration was made to three search committee members in an otherwise empty classroom. Then I did some searching online and discovered they had an internal candidate all along--who was teaching a class of students who should have been in the teaching demonstration! I was told then that the committee was split between me and the internal candidate but went with me since they knew if I turned them down they'd have a backup. The state contract system is odd and was not revealed before the offer was made. I was told I'd be given an initial "three year contract" (which I confirmed via email) and when I got it it was a one-year contract that was renewable up to three years after I passed annual review with the division head I had never met based on evaluations from students I never met. Obviously I didn't take this position. (Feb. 2012)
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Penn State Brandywine |
English |
I went to this institution for a campus visit. At dinner, the search committee made small talk amongst themselves and discussed random students and institutional politics. When I asked for water without ice (due to a sore throat), one SC member helpfully suggested that I had "probably grown up without the concept of ice" since I am scholar from the global South! The irony is that I think this member was trying to make polite conversation. The next day was disastrous. I was rushed from one meeting to another on an adhoc basis. At the end of the day, I was standing in the department lobby all alone with a suitcase waiting for my ride to the airport. I think that schools should practice common courtesy even when there is a chance that they might never see a particular individual again. This is one of my worst memories of the campus visit: standing alone in the lobby of a strange and unwelcoming institution and being yelled at by their cranky secretary (who did not budge from her room but preferred to yell from her seat) that my car had arrived. I was told that they would let me know of their decision in two weeks. As I had another job offer by then and had promised to get in touch with them if I had any news, I contacted them at the end of that time period to receive a very short email brusquely informing me that they would let me know by the middle of the following week. Nothing of the sort happened. I emailed again at the end of that week just for closure as I had learned from wikijobs that they had made an offer to another candidate the very day I had sent them that initial email and that it had been accepted. I am still waiting to hear from them. I'm assuming that I will get a short impersonal email informing me that the position has been filled. Actually, I will be super impressed if this institution gets its act together to send me any information at all! I met these people; I ate two meals with them. They did not strike me as evil fiends. Despite the slightly self-conscious muttering, they struck me as generally a good lot. What happens at the institutional level that all interpersonal interaction leads to this phenomenal boorishness? [posted March 2012] |
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Quinnipiac University |
Mathematics and Computer Science |
Conducted phone interviews without the full search committee, so very limited opportunity to ask questions. The questions that they ask were so open ended, but you were told to provide a brief response, so there was no real sense of what kind of information they were really looking for. After the phone interview there was absolutely no follow-up until nine weeks later, at which point you receive a generic email (not even addressed to you but instead addressed to "Dear applicant" to inform you that "all of their available positions have been filled". If that is truly the way they create a collegial environment then I am thankful I have accepted a position elsewhere. [posted April 2012] |
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Saint Bonaventure University |
English |
I wouldn't say "fear" but be wary of some 1) unprofessionalism and 2) potential departmental division (for a relatively small department). Unprofessionalism: A peer and I both had conference interviews with the search committee and we both had radically different experiences. I felt mine was conducted appropriately and was actually a pleasure but she said that her end-of-day interview was met with exhaustion and some derision (as in "So... your dissertation, [dissertation title], what's your spiel?" asked with utter boredom, according to her). For my direct experience, prior to the campus visit the search chair sent two emails that were clearly written for another campus invitee and then were changed only by swapping out the names at the greeting. The first one referred to the other candidate by name near the end of the email (as in "Dear Y, [body of email] We're looking forward to your visit X!") and the second one described the teaching demo not generically, but referencing another candidate's area of specialization (as in "The demo will be 15 minutes long.... and your work in [area of specialization not mine] would be a suitable topic for that demo"]. To a degree, because of these emails, I felt positioned as the "after thought" candidate at the same time I was privileged to info about my "competition" that gave me an advantage that simply wasn't fair to them (our fields our small enough I could easily identify the other candidate referenced by name). Finally, in terms of unprofessionalism I felt to some degree blindsided on the drive to the aiport where the committee member driving me a) did not speak the most respectfully about the department's masters students (in terms of academic abilities) and b) asked a short series questions about how much administrative service I would be willing to take on (and therefore off of his/her spouse who was also a faculty member in the department). That made me wonder a) why didn't the entire search committee ask/care about this and b) why would a department member speak about administrative service so clandestinely and in a way that framed it as incredibly undesirable. In terms of departmental division - this is total speculation - but I thought I detected some division created by the gulf between more recently hired faculty (mid-2000s forward) and faculty who had been there for 20-30+ years that would have made me somewhat wary about how to navigate if I had been selected for the position. I accepted a position elsewhere and let the search chair know before I heard any decision from them. [Posted about 2012 search.] From past entry: Extremely congenial and pleasant on-campus interview last week of November for a January start date. Told before leaving campus I would hear from them the following week. No communication for weeks, not even in response to request for update on progress. Finally, on CHRISTMAS EVE I received an EMAIL REJECTION. Not the worst of nightmare stories, but not very considerate either. [Posted 1/08] |
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Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville |
Theatre |
Once the other candidate was hired, I was denied part of the travel reimbursement that was promised prior to the campus interview. On the other hand, my principle liaison at the department was delightful, communicative, and respectful. The problem was with the bureaucrats. [posted July 2012]
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Southwestern Oklahoma State University |
College of Arts and Sciences |
I had a truly surreal on-campus interview experience here a few years ago. I was brought to campus as a finalist without a preliminary phone interview. The SC member who picked me up from the airport had the radio tuned to a Christian radio station and made frequent references to religion on the 70-minute drive to Weatherford. When I arrived on-campus, the other SC members did not seem familiar with even the most basic details of my CV. It felt like they had been handed a file by someone in an office who said "this is one of your finalists." Their explanation of teaching responsibilities, support for research, and tenure/promotion procedures were vague to the point of being utterly useless. I also got the distinct impression that there were deep interpersonal tensions within the college. The faculty I interacted with seemed to be hovering over each other, like they were carefully watching everyone else's words, waiting for somone to say the "wrong" thing. On a positive note, I can say that the university did reimburse me for all travel expenses in a timely manner and quickly made their hiring decision. I have never been so relieved to be turned down for a position! |
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Stephen F Austin |
History |
Three junior faculty departed in the summer. Two left with very hard feelings. One left to be closer to family. SFA has the second lowest pay in Texas universities. Older department had very little turn over. Junior faculty very divided. A very small town that is extremely remote. Teaching load is heavy. One adjunct fired in the spring for a personal conflict with another member of the junior faculty and one member of the senior faculty. [posted Oct. 2011 ... note several more entries for other depts. at this school in "Older Issues" section.]
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Texas A&M Commerce |
Humanities |
Stiffed me for travel expenses, no notification of conclusion of search-even for finalists. |
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Texas A&M University-Texarkana |
All |
To make a long story short, they just got investigated by the state for corruption. The report will remain sealed so you cannot read it. Reported in Texarkana Gazette. Former faculty filed whistle blower reports. This is a very very bad place to work. (revised 8-2011) Probe by state was rapidly followed by the resignation of the president. Rumor other admin will follow. Unsure how this will affect working there, but good to know if applying that the admin is in turmoil! see Article in Chronicle of Higher Ed, link here!!
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| The University of Hong Kong | Physics, Biology, Chemistry | All lab tech in Dept of Physics has been sacked except one person. Almost all non-tenure staff in Dept. of Chemistry and School of Biological Science has been sacked amounting to half of the original staffing. Older APs and Professors are either force to retire early or relagate to a pity small office. No policy on handling legacy research data and materials. When a lab is closed, everything in the fridge would be gone and your decades of work may gone down the drain. Administartion is highly utilitarian and wicked-business mined. Worst still, it is under attack by other local university (sacking dept. head here and replace with someone in another pro-government university). Labor Union here is useless. They won't even protest or call the mass media. STAY AWAY unless you have close CHINA tie. |
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University of Chicago |
Society of Fellows |
Interviewed for the Society of Fellows in the Humanities in March 2011 (was offered the position but turned it down for a TT positione elsewhere). I was flying internationally and the ticket was very expense. I was told on multiple occasions that I would be reimbursed in full. As of December, 2011, the administrative director of the Society of Fellows has refused to reimburse my airfare. I contacted the scholarly director of the program (who only oversees finanical matters from a distance). He has promised that he will advocate for me and that I will be fully reimbursed. However, as of 12/2011, the reimbursement has not come. I am sure that my situation was not typical in that I was flying from far away, but I do regard the handling of the reimbursement so far as unethical and unprofessional, and fundamentally misleading in that full reimbursement was guaranteed. The administrative director of this program appears to not recognize U of Chicago's ethical responsibility to reimburse prospective candidates and has arbitrarily determined that the ticket is too expensive to reimburse. If I am ever reimbursed, I will post an update. |
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University of Mary Washington |
Music |
I don't know what's going on with this department, but I've heard things from multiple sources that make it sound like an absolute nightmare of a workplace. Here's my own experience: recently, I was adjuncting at a different school and was tipped off by my chair that UMW would likely have an adjunct position opening for the next year. I sent a polite email inquiring about the possibility, and several hours later, received a hostile and borderline aggressive email from the chair of the department who was apparently angry that I had the gall to ask whether or not a position might be opening. The chair followed that email up by sending a series of equally angry and increasingly unhinged-sounding emails to MY chair, timestamped from between midnight and five AM (there were three or four emails in total). The adjunct position was indeed later publicly advertised; needless to say, I did not apply for it. |
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University of Montevallo |
Had the weirdest interview ever for a TT position. No questions were asked, the interviewer kept on talking about the school and it felt like some sort of an orientation session rather than an interview!! It was a full virtual tour of the campus and the department and the staff, and it felt like they wanted me to listen to their eulogy to the school--they were definitely not interested in testing the potential of the candidates!! I kept on nodding while they went on speaking and speaking and speaking!. Finally, I almost butted into their monologue, panicking that I did not get a chance to sell myself. Sadly that didn't help and seems I paid the price for interrupting the interviewer's sweet monologue! [posted April 2012] | |
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University of Newcastle, Australia |
If you have integrity you will not survive at the University of Newcastle. See our website for details: stop-b-uon.blogspot.com There are so many horrific stories. | |
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University of South Carolina |
College of Arts and Sciences |
Interviewed in department, had wonderful experience--I love this program, they are wonderful, so I am not specifying the Department--was quickly offered job by chair with no indication or expectation of problems, constructed packet, start up package (fri), had Dean reject packet (mon) and retract offer. Was notified that my packet had been rejected (tue), regrets from Chair, asked to not discuss again....feel utterly and completely heartbroken. I'm staff at University currently, so watching the end of the process--"my job" being slowly given to someone else--is utterly devastating. |
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville |
History |
An extremely dysfunctional department where people of color or of Asin ehtnicity are denied tenure. In a tight job market, it can look attractive but it is highly toxic. Job advertised this year in American history but search committee chaired by modern Germanist. One of the Americanists on the committee does not believe that Atlantic World specialists are true "Americanists". You can apply but know that a report compiled by the Provost's office documented bullying and harrassment by senior faculty against junior facutly (though only one member of the search committee was involved). Future positions in medieval Chinese and Arab history will open up next year. Pay is not great but area is cheap. Apply at your own risk. If invited to a campus visit, ask about recent tenure cases and department culture. Trust your instincts if you feel a weird vibe. [posted Dec. 2011 - see also "Chronic Issues" below] - I am a faculty member in this department. In general, I think that the department has come a long way on these areas. But we ran a search last year with one candidate who came in and gave a stellar talk. He was impressive in person too, curious about others' work. His evaluations were stellar and his references could not have been better. After the job talk, one of our younger professors asked a question that was so off topic and so aggressive (both). (It was along the lines of "So you're saying apartheid wasn't all bad?", which of course was what the candidate had spent his life in African history to show.) It was embarrassing and the candidate was duly flustered. What was worse was in discussions later, several faculty members used this against the candidate and refused to acknowledge that the question was way off base. It became clear that the fix was in: the committee wanted to hire a person of color, and even if this candidate was unmatchable on paper, that is what would happen. I sat there listening as faculty talked in glowing terms about the qualities of another (black) candidate, who does essentially journalistic history. He writes in the present tense, has no top level journal articles, and attempts to make no interventions in the literature. That's not what he sees academic history as about. Nevertheless, he floated towards the top of the pile while our outstanding candidate was effectively nixed. It was a mess. I felt rather embarrassed about how that unfolded. - I find it interesting that this "faculty member" conveniently forgot to mention that the person hired by the department for the open position in African history was not someone of color. - Well, the Department didn't end up hiring anybody, so... - Actually, they offered it to two candidates of color. Both declined, because every institution is doing the same thing and is trying to hire poc |
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Ursinus College |
Jewish Studies |
Obnoxious search committee. Contacted for first interview days before the conference where the interview was to take place. One of the members mocked my answers when I asked whether I answered his question fully. |
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West Virginia Institute (Montgomery, WV) |
English/HR, 2010-11 |
Unclear job call. Emailed Human Resources, received no clarification. Emailed again and CCed department contact. Received a sarcastic email from HR to the tune of, "Well, if it's so hard to apply, why are you applying?" (And very informally written, as if they were texting me.) Applied anyway. Made the shortlist. Notified by email with a CC of the other applicants. (Not a BCC, but a CC from the SC, so I could see all the other applicants' names.) To WVU-I's credit, the SC was upfront with how little the job pays (in the second line of the email, no less: "You've made the shortlist. This job pays low $30,000s.). Politely declined a phone interview, via email, and received no response. Received a second request for a phone interview last week. My feeling is that they don't have their act together, and this chaos spreads to the department. What little contact I have had with them has been unpleasant. |
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West Virginia University |
College of Arts and Science |
Underpaid, overworked, underresourced - December 2010: The salaries WVU offers new tenure-track faculty are 20,000 below the national average as recorded in the Chronicle for Higher Education (think mid 40K, little start-up $, no time off or course reduction before tenure, and little or no library resources, a major airport with real flights that is 1.5-2 hours away, no raises or promise of raises in the future, no family leave policies whatsoever, and very poor and expensive state run health insurance). Impossible to get research done with all the hidden labor around teaching, advising, and service. Think twice before applying here. |
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Western Kentucky University |
Psychology |
9/2012 - Not necessarily a "jeer" - Just an odd situation. A grad school friend of mine was interviewed for a clinical position in spring of 2012. He said he loved the town and department, and that the clinical faculty strongly hinted that he would be offered the job, though that did not happen. He asked someone there about what weaknesses the department mentioned while making their decision, and he was told that his publication record was not strong enough. This is all potentially fairly normal, but as I talked to him I began to wonder: what kind of department spends the money for a search but only invites a single candidate for a position (leaving no backup choice), gives a huge hint that he or she will get the job, then leaves the position unfilled because of weaknesses that were obvious in the CV they'd had for weeks? They could have saved a lot of money and hassle by just not interviewing the person in the first place. Having been in academia a little longer, I told him I could imagine a few possibilities to explain what had happened:
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Yonsei University |
Underwood International College |
I applied here and MLA interviewed in 2006/7 season. The interview was fine-- long-ish and not the usual even though the 2 dept interviwers were one white guy and one asian-american. They pretty much said by the end they wouldnt hire me-- I was too specialzied or theoretical or something like that-- they wanted a very old school great books person to teach western civ. No complaints though. However anyone applying to work randomly in Asia and not least Korea should LOOK OUT and look before you leap. It will NOT be like an American or Western gig, even if they say so. This post above is a great example as to how/why. I've never take such a job if you knew the real working conditions-- but if you do know them (talk to someone there!!) then go for it if you feel like it.
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Chronic Issues: Schools or Departments with Problems Extending Well Beyond a Single Search []
University of California, Riverside
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School |
Department |
Issue and Date | ||
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All |
All |
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) keeps a Censure List of schools that do not follow "generally recognized principles of academic freedom and tenure". It can be found here: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/about/censuredadmins/ | ||
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Antioch University |
The entire system but especially the Los Angeles campus |
I taught for two years at the AULA campus and on the whole had very great colleagues and some amazing students, but the administration rivals what one would find in a totalitarian regime. The faculty has zero power and Antioch might as well be producing widgets for all the attention the university gives to student learning. The classrooms at AULA are antiquated (I've worked in high schools with vastly superior resources) and the only incentive at this institution is to make money - lots and lots of it. It was easily the strangest place I have ever worked. Antioch University bears no resemblance to the now defunct but once great liberal arts college of the same name. AAUP recenlty sanctioned Antioch for its lack of transparency in dealing with the closure of the college and the dismissal of tenured faculty. For the record: I was an interim appointment who did not get the full-time position (they gave it to a very talented woman whose credentials were more in line with the program I was running). Rather than being bitter about this experience (which one might be), I'm so incredibly grateful to not have to work at this place anymore. Being unemployed feels better than having a job at Antioch.
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Arkansas Tech |
All |
Regrettably, I must agree with the poster below. While my direct colleagues were kind and mostly competent people and the students were generally good people, the university has numerous handicaps that make this a hard job to love. The administration still operates according to a 1950's style authoritarian logic. Decisions are made only at the top; there is no such thing as shared governance; and the administration punishes swiftly those who disobey its whims. I hope this changes now that the old king has stepped down. The university culture has long been about teaching. The president was quite fond of telling new hires that if they were more interested in research or if they didn't like to teach, they'd be gotten rid of. Unfortunately, student evals are practically the only measure of teaching effectiveness used for promotion and tenure at Tech. Furthermore, student retention is of the utmost concern. As a result, faculty members are implicitly encouraged to be as lax as possible. Graduating seniors confided that they had never written more than a five page paper. And graduate students have told me that mine was the first course they attended to require the citation of sources. Finally, the compensation is poor. Tech professors regularly make ten thousand dollars less their counterparts who work 40 minutes down the road in Conway. And the quality of life is pretty brutal too: Russellville is a small, poor town full of conservative, evangelicals in the middle of a dry county. You will not find world cuisines, museums, healthy grocery stores, the fine arts, or much of an intellectual culture. You will find a lot of hunting, a lot of churches, and a lot of de facto segregation. Working here means making less, teaching less, enjoying your private time less, and (if you are not a straight conservative evangelical) probably remaining single for the duration of your stay. ... This is a great place if you are not progressive, have no aspirations, are lazy, can function in a rigid good ole boy hierarchy, and are perfectly comfortable with mediocrity.If, on the other hand, that is not you, be prepared to be vilified and left jobless after working much harder than any of your colleagues.
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Bard C |
English |
FYI: By all means apply, but I recommend taking a job at Bard only as a completely LAST resort...(REBUTTAL APPEARS IN DISCUSSION, ACCESS ABOVE BY PRESSING THE DISCUSSION BUTTON NEAR THE EDIT PAGE BUTTON) [Note: this refers to what is now called "TALK" in the new wiki format: see Talk:Universities to fear for more extended discussion of this school]
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Bard C |
All |
Bard is a troubled institution. There are many reasons for this: an unusually powerful and unstable administration, including the president and the Dean of the College, a complete lack of faculty governance and resulting infantilization of the faculty, and a culture of fealty, fear, and lies. The college has a disturbing history of firing/not retaining faculty of color and gay men in particular, although all probationary faculty are at risk, the college's own tenure and promotion guidelines are regularly violated during third-year and tenure reviews, and the college has a peculiarly strong sense of itself (fit) grounded in the whims of its well-known and long-tenured president that works to enforce narrow senses of faculty roles and placement (i.e., racism and homophobia). It's relationship to curriculum programming is parochial; many of its older, tenured faculty are remarkably conservative in a disciplinary sense, and do not nor want to understand contemporary training of graduate students; searches are regularly voided by the president, and search committees themselves often engage in blatant and openly discriminatory hiring practices (for instance, not considering any applications from women of color, in the example of one search); and the differences between those empowered and those disempowered is based not in performance, teaching, or research, but in one's proximity to the president and his acolytes, in particular the current Dean. The Dean's Office regularly lies to faculty, does not follow established college procedures, and engages in patently illegal personal decisions. The college has such a troubled litigation history that there is an academic labor lawyer in New York City that *specializes* in Bard cases. Confidentiality agreements usually contain this disturbing trend (none is being broached here, btw). Use caution when applying and/or considering an offer from the college, especially for interdisciplinary-based applicants, applicants who are gay men or of color, and anyone who desires a healthy working atmosphere.
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Barnard C |
All |
Because of its relationship with Columbia, Barnard has in effect no ability to govern itself. It cannot and/or will not support its own faculty. Its faculty go through two tenure processes, the first at Barnard, the second at Columbia. Columbia gets the final say. This means that even if Barnard votes to grant a beloved faculty member tenure, Columbia can still turn the person down, and the person will be fired. There have been a number of shocking well-publicized cases of this kind, and also of the type where the Barnard tenure committee will deny a faculty member tenure in anticipation or fear of a rejection by Columbia. This points to the pervasive, utterly depressing inferiority complex and Columbia-loathing (which has nothing to do with Columbia and everything to do with Barnard) which characterizes the Barnard faculty and administration as a whole. Barnard faculty have to meet Columbia's standards for tenure, yet Barnard faculty are paid less, teach more, and do not have access to benefits including housing and access to the school for faculty children. Finally, the crowning insult: Barnard tenures fewer women than Columbia--more evidence of the institution's crippling self-loathing complex. It doesn't help that the place is stacked with "spousal hires," the less-qualified wives of Columbia profs. A nice place to teach for a few years, but don't go anywhere near the tenure process, and don't expect any kind of collegiality. | ||
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Brigham Young University |
History |
Routinely hires TT faculty in Asian history who never make tenure. Last BYU Asian historian to get tenure and stay was over 40 years ago! Three have been fired/denied tenure in the five years, all with multiple pubs including books with very good presses. Problems at both department and college levels. | ||
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Bucknell University |
English |
If you are just starting out and you care about having a scholarly career whose significance extends beyond a small college in an extremely isolated, socially conservative Pennsylvania town, and if you care about being happy and fulfilled in general, Bucknell is absolutely a place to avoid. I’m taking the time to write this because I believe that if this wiki had existed at the time I was a job candidate, and if someone had posted an account of what life here was actually like, I would have trusted the misgivings I had when I got an offer and not allowed my impatience for a tenure-track job to take precedence over my better instincts. (These misgivings are common among candidates invited to campus, by the way: it’s rare for the English department to get its first-choice candidate.) In English, the bottom line is that over the last decade a high percentage of new tenure-track and visiting scholars have left voluntarily and with great relief, and two others were denied tenure. English at Bucknell was long hailed as one of the more collegial departments on campus, but this boast has become fainter in recent years as in-fighting has increased, especially (but not only) between the creative writers (who lend the department most of its broad appeal and distinction) and the scholars (who, except for a couple of outliers who keep to themselves, are decidedly less distinguished than the writers but hold much more power within the department). Still, a job candidate is certain to be told that English is full of kind, exceptionally collegial people. What you should know is that the ostensible collegiality in English at Bucknell masks terrible problems, problems that ambitious and independent-minded scholars routinely find disheartening over time. These problems include: (1) an overwhelming emphasis on popularity rather than critical sophistication, both in and out of the classroom. In terms of pedagogy, this results in a privileging of theatrical modes of teaching, lax standards of grading, and course topics that recur virtually unchanged year after year. Most courses are either explicitly out of touch with current scholarship or superficially sexed-up re-packagings of surprisingly conventional ideas disguised in a rhetoric of sexual provocation and pop-cultural allusion. English is widely known to Bucknell students as a fluff major, a fact periodically brought up at department meetings but usually in fatalistic terms, as if faculty members’ own teaching, grading, and self-promotion have little or nothing to do with their department’s reputation. The pervasive conflation of “good teaching” with high enrollments and gushing student evaluations in a context of grade inflation and shamelessly dumbed-down-teaching-for-entertainment makes it excessively difficult to offer--and to be valued for offering--courses that would be highly enrolled at R1 institutions and at better, more progressive liberal arts colleges; (2) a near-total absence of discussion of original research, or substantive communal support for research, largely because only a small minority of faculty in the department have a serious and ongoing commitment to scholarly projects at all, and very few of those projects are single-author books and articles that participate in significant recent debates. All that you’ve been anticipating as part of your job to come--all the stimulating intellectual exchanges, all the tough well-informed questions, all the dedicated engagement with the wider profession--you will not find here. You may think you can find substitutes elsewhere, at conferences and among friends, and that’s true to a point, but emotionally and intellectually it’s a considerable setback to work among people who are so little engaged with 21st-century debates, whose standards of scholarship and faculty achievement are so different from those prevailing in the wider profession, and who, in some cases, palpably resent and patronize scholars aiming to do R1-level research; and, the biggest problem of all, certainly the most damaging for young faculty who have just begun to build up their confidence in the profession: (3) a provincial small-college culture of backbiting and gossip-mongering by faculty throughout the university, and in English by a core group of deeply insular tenured colleagues who see themselves as the good citizens of the department. One tenured faculty member in English who has long felt herself a target of this clique but who, like numerous others, puts a misleadingly happy face on the department in public (and for job candidates), has more than once said to me privately, “A lot of people have to feel bad for them to feel good.” Bucknell’s clubby factions in power feed their members’ illusions and prejudices, inflating each other’s accomplishments while offering only the most grudging and niggardly accounts of colleagues, visiting faculty, and even guest speakers who don’t affirm their status and priorities. I have invited brilliant and gracious scholars to campus whose talks provoked responses ranging from blunt indifference to a scorn that would have bewildered me if the colleagues in question weren’t so patently unhappy with their own careers and disconnected from the larger profession. Faculty in English who don’t fit into the department’s controlling clique usually try to avoid the slow acid drip of its influence by keeping to themselves, offering little meaningful support to young faculty. Their shows of warmth and effusive smalltalk in the hallways amount to little when it comes to standing up for young colleagues’ interests. A further aspect of the demoralizing provincial culture at Bucknell is a regressive, obliquely destructive gender politics, difficult to address because those who most effectively maintain it are the department’s self-professed feminists and leftists, who unabashedly defer to conservative old men in power in hopes of being popular and securing professional favor. These ostensibly progressive faculty, and to a lesser extent the influential men they defer to, are the main ones who will reach out to you when you join the department, offering friendship that amounts to a prolonged effort to assimilate you into their norms of teaching, scholarship, and (an aggressively heteronormative) community. If you fail or refuse to be assimilated as they see fit--socially and pedagogically--their friendship becomes remarkably competitive, passive-aggressive, and belittling. More broadly across the university and the little town of Lewisburg, there is an intimidating subculture of gossips, sometimes vicious but often just careless, bored, and starved for any kind of stimulation at all, who are overt enough that even students notice and can become implicated in their destructiveness. A Bucknell undergraduate recently confided her shock to me after her literature professor gossiped to her during his office hours about a colleague’s marriage problems and sex life, and about another colleague’s confidential tenure case, to which he was privy only because his wife, a professor in English, was on the review committee. While particularly egregious because it involved a student, this exchange was typical of Bucknell patterns of faculty interaction in the sense that an affable, seemingly collegial, and relatively unaccomplished faculty member insidiously shaped public opinion about others in a way that made him feel better about himself, a way that violated and diminished his colleagues behind their backs and made his interlocutor complicit in that process. Spare yourself the sadness and disappointment of having to make a life in this dull little place. I promise you the benefits aren’t even close to worth it. [posted July 23, 2014]
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California State University, Channel Islands |
All |
Campus visit involves faculty "cohorts" (2/07 and ongoing) -- The entire campus is involved in two-day cattle calls of 30-40 applicants forming a "cohort." It's very much a beauty/popularity contest, and unfortunately, many of those in the cohort were inside candidates and/or spousal hires. My cohort included several pairs of candidates for the same position, and one member of the hiring committee didn't even show up the second day. Also, after the campus visit, referees were contacted and asked to fill out lengthy forms that included questions including whether the potential hire has a neat appearance and uses proper hygiene!?!?!?! Needless to say, my referees were horrified, and glad I didn't end up there...
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Centenary College, New Jersey |
All |
Lowest paid faculty in a very expensive state. No tenure and endless evaluation of faculty. The college is up to its eyeballs in debt. The culture is incestuous and poisonous, with all administrative hires coming from the inside. Research is actively discouraged. The library is something a junior high school would be ashamed of. Some good students, but many more who are remedial and unprepared for college. It's only fifty miles away from NYC, but you would never know it. | ||
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Central Michigan University |
English |
I came across a posting for a new tenure-track position and did a little research (assisted by a friend in the department). Scads of bad news. The new president of the university and the new provost are bean counters, which has made the environment toxic (the faculty union even struck for the first time in its history). It's hard tell if the new searches will really run. Even before that there were red flags in English. They disguise spousal hires as real searches; right now there are at least five t-t couples. Despite (or because?) that there's a high attrition rate. In a news article in the student paper one member of the department mentions that they've lost half of their new hires since 2000. They haven't been able to keep any new hire of color. Per my friend, some of their fulls and associates would leave if they could. They've got a new dean and a new department head too, so there's no guessing how things will go. Pay is low for the state, and Michigan is trying to follow Wisconsin's lead. (September 2011) | ||
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City College of San Francisco |
English |
Some great faculty, but pay sucks for the area. So many students and faculty that you'll be treated like a number. I'd advise working there if you're in a somewhat small department. Watch out for bureuacratic nonsense. WARNING! HR department will reject your application just because they feel like it! Extremely rude! I was told I was rejected because I didn't meet the minimum qualifications - a B.A. in english and experience. I called because not only do I have a BA and a MA and Ph.D. in English, but I've been teaching for 10 years. "You don't have a B.A. in English. You have a B.A. in Creative Writing," I was informed. Um, lady, I think I know what my degree is! It was infuriating. I instructed her to look at my transcript, but she said she didn't have it. then I told her to look at my CV and she got all pissy and said, "Well, it says 'creative writing emphasis.'" What kind of lousy HR does this place have if they can't tell the difference between a degree and an emphasis? She was incredibly rude to me. BEWARE!
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Columbia College (of Missouri) |
Any |
A nightmarish institution to be sure. The College is run by a President who is rarely around and is only sticking around until he gets a science building started. The Academic Dean is laughable. At least three lawsuits have mentioned sexual harassment and/or discrimination. Extreme favoritism is shown to all of the male faculty to the point that rules are blatantly broken in their favor. The 'diversity' of the faculty is laughable-- 3 Asian faculty in a sea of white professors. College is run by the AHE segment of administration that governs evening, online, and military base 'campuses.' No genuine academic leadership, but lots of bottom line business model stuff. A College that thrives on nepotism. If you've got a family member that works at CC, you've got a job. Likewise, if you're average and just not very good at your job-- CC is the place for you. Offices like Alumni Affairs, PR, and 90% of AHE is full of inept individuals. Students for the most part are Business or Criminal Justice, so your mind can wander with all of the open-minded, critical thinking students you'll have in your class. Technology is a joke at the school, yet there's a bunch of it filling the classrooms. It's a shame it rarely works when needed. The town itself doesn't even recognize the school, instead choosing to focus on the University of Missouri and the nearly bankrupt Stephens College. Please do not come here. If you can't get another job anywhere else, then come. You'll fit right in. New president hired 5/1/14. New science building opened fall 2014. Changes in progress summer 2014. | ||
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Davidson College |
English |
The English department at Davidson is a genuinely poisonous environment. Relations between established members are such a minefield that you’re guaranteed to lose a limb or two now and then. The salary is good, though, so there will be takers for their jobs. Here’s the advice I can offer. No one will tell you anything straight when you visit for your on campus interview. You’re pretty much certain to have to field questions about whether you have a spouse who’ll be asking for work at Davidson. However you handle those questions, you should understand that they will not hire your spouse to any ongoing academic position. Don’t be fooled by any equivocations you hear, nor by the spousal pairs already at Davidson; they got in under a different administration. The current president and dean won’t allow spousal hires. You’ll have to teach a class on your campus visit and to impress you pretty much have to entertain more than actually instruct. Don’t pitch your class low (Davidson believes its students are celestial geniuses), but don’t get lost in theoretical abstraction either. Be guarded. Take special care to fend off anyone who wants to act conspiratorial or draw you into some kind of alliance (that advice applies both to the campus visit and your subsequent career at Davidson). If after all that you get the offer and decide you’re willing to take it, gird yourself. You won’t be made to feel welcome by senior faculty in the department. There are some younger faculty you can trust. You’ll have to work out who they are. For the old guard, just don’t believe a word they say. Listen very carefully to the gossip they float and try not to contribute to it yourself. As I noted already, resist being drawn into alliances. But stay chipper too. Cheer for the hothouse liberal arts college party line — hey, maybe you actually believe in that kind of education. Be very pliable too. They want junior faculty who won’t make trouble. They don’t love serious research profiles. Most (not all) of the department is low-range plodders whose research ambitions died before they got started, and there’s a lot of tolerance for stupidity and chest-thumping instead of quality scholarship. Basically, no one has a good time before tenure, and if you make tenure, you may also turn into one of the trolls who live there. There’s a lot of misery – try not to get infected by it. I should note that these observations do not apply to other departments. Plenty of people have a fine experience working at Davidson. Make friends with folks in other departments. They’ll be sympathetic. The upper administration is very conservative and dopey, but they generally stay out of your way, as long as you’re not a trouble-maker.---This poster seems to have a problem with liberal arts institutions in general which seems to be clouding his/her judgment of the school. Davidson is not an R1 and so you shouldn't be upset when big time scholarship doesn't come out of it.
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Davidson College |
? |
(05/12) My department is too small to be identified here but I can assure you that there are severe issues in departments other than English. While it may be true that not all departments are bad, the underlying review process at this school is potentially problematic for anyone if they happened to have a difficult department chair at the time. This is due to the fact the department chair has an extrordinary amount of power in the decision and the process is not transparent. Meaning your chair can write whatever they like in their letter with no accountability. Yes, it can be completely untrue, but you are never allowed to see the accusations made or defend yourself or even make your own case for yourself. The criteria for renewal are basically the same as tenure: Excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. In that order with scholarship a close second to teaching. Nowhere is "excellence" defined in anyway nor are the criteria defined in anyway. The term "excellence" is completely open to interpretation. For example, you can have course evaluations that demonstrate excellence in teaching yet your department chair can explain them in a way to the Dean in their letter that turns them into a weakness. (Particularly if your dept. chair is an alpha character who feels threatened by students liking you more than them) What they will not tell you when you interview but are known facts among faculty is that the college has a history of not renewing at the 4th year, this is so they can get rid of someone without the due process of going up for tenure when they would have to have everything documented appropriately including an external review. At the 4th year they can get rid of anyone without having to tell you anything at all. They like to say that this is a favor to the candidate for whom tenure is not looking good, rather than being denied tenure it gets them a chance to move on more quickly. This is unfair to the candidate who might hope to have until tenure to "prove" themselves. This college also has a demonstrated history of denying tenure (or getting rid of early) minorities and women who "are not up to par." Davidson likes to think of themselves as the "Yale of the South", a little pretentious would probably be an understatement, you're either in the club or you're not. You do not even get an opportunity to make a case for yourself when you go up for renewal, you are entirely at the mercy of what your chair and colleagues in the department write about you in their private letters that you will never get to see and they may not understand your field of expertise at all which makes it that much more difficult. If you are denied renewal, they will hide behind lawyers and not be willing to give feedback because they feel it opens themselves up to arguement from your side. Don't confuse kindness on the part of your collegues with actual support. It means nothing. They can be quite skilled at pretending to support you too, yet stabbing you in the back and you're left in the dark. Yes, even colleagues you became close with and ate dinners at each others houses frequently. One would hope they would give you some advice/guidence as a decent human being might but don't count on it. Even though the handbook dictates so, they will not necessairly give you feedback or help you or guide you to be successful they will just judge what they think about you without regard of the evidence. There are some great faculty who work here and in every other way it looks like a wonderful place to be but I wish I had listened to the nagging voice when I was hired that said "If it looks to good to be true, it probably is" Some people will have no problems at all, but if you are one of the unlucky ones, there is absolutely nothing to protect you to ensure you have a fair review process, which is a big gamble to take. If you have nothing to lose like leaving another job then it's not such a gamble, and you can go in prepared to ask plenty of questions. I found out after the fact that this is all too common here, I wish I had been warned. | ||
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Denison University |
Any |
Communication: The media studies track has been a nightmare as far as tenure and promotion. While it looks like they may have found a solid tenurable set of personnel now, in the past decade more than seven different media studies professors have rotated out of this department. This has NOT been a problem with scholars of rhetoric, where the department has seen much better success in tenure and promotion. The problem seems to be lack of responsible mentoring, fit with a student culture who sees media studies as an "easy A" but are flustered when they earn a "B-" and then take it out on the professor (note, despite professing otherwise, tenure is largely based on "positive" student evals), and a curriculum that does not lead to any kind of media studies focus. People who have been pushed out the university are talented and have found themselves leading programs at both national and international levels. If you are a media studies scholar, be advised that this department has structural problems that they need to correct before you can be assured that they know what they are doing with these lines. History: Got an on-campus here two years ago. Full-day interview during which about half of the folks I was scheduled to talk with didn't even bother to show up; no access to food or liquids (no lie, I spent the 5 minutes I was given to prep before my job talk drinking water out of my palm in the women's bathroom); faculty member who was supposed to take me to the airport stopped off to go shopping and so I missed my flight (bright spot: at least I had time to eat at the airport, which i wouldn't have had otherwise-- that would've been a long freakin' 18 hours); never bothered to notify me I didn't get picked, found out from the wiki. Worst job interview experience EVER. | ||
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DePaul University |
All |
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Dixie State University (currently undergoing a name change) |
All |
This is about the university administration and the culture of the university more generally. I was hired as a postdoc in a department in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The university advertised itself as all about student success, which seemed fine when I accepted the position. However, once I began the job, it became clear to me that the only thing the admin actually cared about was making money. My teaching load was 5 + 5, and I had so many students there was no way I could actually give them all the support they needed. Additionally, the position was advertised as entirely teaching-focused (which is not really a postdoc, but whatever, the teaching load was in the ad so I knew what I was getting into, sort of). However, once I arrived, the university touted my hiring (and the other postdocs I was hired with) as evidence of their commitment to developing their research profile. However, as a non-TT member of faculty, research support was scarce (in terms of being able to apply for grants or any other sort of research funding). Also, with a 5 + 5 load (and I should say that TT faculty have a 4 + 4 load), my time for research was practically nonexistent (especially with the other things/"training" the university added on to my schedule). Finally, the salary was not great (and I don't think it's much better for TT faculty). I got a better job elsewhere and so I was able to leave, but the kicker was that in my offboarding paperwork, my title mysteriously changed from "Postdoc" to "Visiting Assistant Professor" (which is what the job actually was, based on duties)—obviously this had no effect on me as I got a job somewhere else, but that different title could have had an effect on me while I was on the market. Think long and hard about applying for a job here. | ||
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East Tennessee State University |
College of Arts & Sciences + ALL |
The CAS recently implemented a policy to allocate funding to departments based upon the departments' ability to retain students. This may also be happening in other units as well, though I am not certain. This ridiculous approach leaves no room for differences in departments' needs or type of student. Furthermore, the university administration, in an effort to make up budget short falls from falling enrollment, have taken away virtually all department funds secured through online and outreach programs as well as summer courses. This is leaving departments with no funds for travel expenditures, and continuing education/professional development. Oh, and did I mention they are contributing a significant amount of money to re-start the college football program? So while the academic departments are suffering, we are getting football!
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Edward Waters College |
ANY |
Worst graduation rate in the nation. Controlling administration who have contempt for students and faculty. Will fire faculty members without warning because they disagree with administration. Misuse of grant funds. Will tell you that their average student is at about a junior in high school level, but in honesty most students read at a 5th grade level. Located in the most violent part of Florida (statistically). Drive by shootings feet away from faculty offices....I wish we were making this up. | ||
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Elon University |
All |
grade inflation: 35 percent of all undergraduate grades are A or A-. Note: as of last year, the figure hit 40 percent. It's fun asking about this during phone interviews.--The independent research grades at Elon are not pass/fail. They are graded on a letter scale and averaged in with regular class grades. A typical faculty member averages 2-4 research students. Most faculty take on only the brightest students for research. Including independent research grades with regular class grades artificially inflates the number of As.
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Empire State Coll., SUNY |
most of lib arts fields |
School is in massive transition (since 2006 or so), mostly in good ways, but has deeply pervasive ideology that weighs everything and everyone down. It feels like a religion or cult, and several newer folks feel this. I am TT jr faculty here; most people I know, old & new, are miserable and either eager for retirement, or on the market trying to leave, or successfully have left, or just resignedly doing time. Nontrad school with many pluses, such as motivated nontrad students, but minuses far outweigh the pluses. Depending which branch you're in, you might never or very rarely see any students in person; no regular classroom classes--teaching is done online or indep. study or in groups that meet very infrequently (like twice/month max). You are expected to give A's to everyone; this is part of old ideology that is changing, but that gives you an idea. Anything resembling an academic standard, outcome, or deadline is considered reprehensible. Ideology also claims that traditional schools are fascistic and useless. School seems to have a lot of integrity in more professional or vocational fields (business, social work, etc.), but in lib arts, not so much. Also, it's a 12-mo contract with 5 overlapping semesters: no summers, no holiday breaks. You get vacation days like in corporate jobs, but there is never any time to take them with the 5 overlapping terms: you're always running 2 or 3 at once.
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Georgia Tech |
Biology |
Ongoing...poorly managed departmental teaching assignments increasingly made out of the scarcity and panic that follow laissez-faire denial.
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Hanover College |
The entire college |
First, the good: the faculty at Hanover College are some of the most passionate, dedicated, and creative educators I've ever met, and it was a privilege to work with them in the two years I spent at Hanover as an assistant professor. That said, I do not recommend that anyone accept an AP position here - unless they understand that the rug may be pulled out from under them at any time. The college is having financial issues that the administration seems reluctant to discuss with prospective employees. During my interview process and after I was hired, I was led to believe that the college was on solid footing. Then as well as now, language in the college's brochures and websites as well as its ratings with Moody's indicate that the college's financial outlook is stable. That is not the case. Just a month before I started my first semester of teaching, the college suddenly went into crisis mode. It froze all spending and laid off more than a dozen employees. I arrived in Hanover unsure as to whether my TT position would go beyond a year. As one of my colleagues told me, before the crisis, the most contentious issue at faculty meetings was whether to become a non-smoking campus. None of the faculty knew that something so dire was at hand, though they were frustrated by the fact that they hadn't received raises in many years. The college recently approved a new curriculum as well as an engineering program, though its liberal arts programs - including anthropology, music, and art history - have received short shrift in terms of faculty hiring (in fact, at this time, neither anthropology nor art history have a full-time, TT professor). It has continued to advertise for and hire administrators and athletic staff. Its discount rate has continued to climb as enrollment has stalled. It's quite possible that - with the promise of a new engineering program, its popular science and education programs, its devoted faculty, and its beautiful campus - Hanover may be able to pull out of its current financial slump. But for anyone participating in a job search here, just be aware that "tenure track" may mean little, first because of the uncertain financial situation and second because the new president is considering adopting a policy by which the tenure decision relies not only on your performance, but also on the needs of the college at the time that tenure is considered. In other words, you could work yourself to the bone for seven years, give your heart and soul to the school and its students, get outstanding evaluations... and then get kicked to the curb when your services aren't needed. Of course, such crises are occurring at small liberal arts schools across the country. I just want to make sure that any prospective junior faculty go in with a complete understanding of what is happening. | ||
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Harrisburg Area Community College |
All |
This school is floating in a sea of controversy: the former vice president has pled guilty to wire fraud (http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/11/ex-hacc_vp_nancy_rockey_pleads.html), the current president is set to go to trial in December 2014 (http://www.cpbj.com/article/20140331/CPBJ01/140339975/HR-chief-named-in-lawsuit-no-longer-with-HACC), the school’s bond rating has been decreased (http://www.cpbj.com/article/20130228/CPBJ01/130229759/Standard-and-Poor's-lowers-HACC's-bond-rating), the school is also on academic probation from its accrediting institution (http://www.yorkdispatch.com/ci_22090297/hacc-placed-accreditation-warning-status), and, more generally, the administration fosters a culture of sub-mediocrity (http://www.collegemeasures.org/2-year_colleges/institution/harrisburg-area-community-college-harrisburg-pa/scorecard/strategic-measures/). This is only the tip of the iceberg. Hiring decisions are extremely nepotistic. When you’re on the administration’s good side, you can do no wrong. When you’re on the administration’s bad side, you can do no right. My department was particularly bad, but I want to maintain a degree of anonymity. Avoid Harrisburg Area Community College at all costs, they just might destroy your career – of course with this job market it’s a chance most of you are willing to take. [posted May 2014] | ||
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Hendrix College |
Foreign Languages |
Beware! Toxic department that does not operate in a cooperative way. Faculty across campus describe this department as "crazy" and "backstabbing." Highly territorial, with no fostering of mutual success - very much the "I've got mine and screw you" mentality. Several hateful tenured members have willfully torpedoed the efforts of more than one junior colleague. The dominant language can sway the vote on any issue - including tenure decisions. Conflicts arise out of the competing interests between the modern and classical languages, which are housed together in this department. Very heavy reliance on adjunct and NTT instructors for such an expensive private school. Good school academically, but terrible department. Stay away!
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Hong Kong University |
Comparative Literature |
really just a film department with a bad reputation for hiring its own people: former students, personal friends, old co-authors. very Hong Kong. | ||
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Loyola Marymount University |
English |
Be very cautious before you accept a part-time job in the Freshman English Program. Pay is low, and misrepresentations abound. Administrators will tell you multiple times that they are hiring you for the school year, then rescind the offer for Spring semester teaching mid-December. You will be lectured by priests about the necessity of educating the whole person. Said priests fail to recognize that paying something close to minimum wage and not offering health benefits does not exactly constitute employing the whole person. FEP administrators will also tell you that students' parents are paying something like $350 per class session, essentially warning you that you are on campus in a customer service role. The entire campus is set up to mystify the distinction between full- and part-time faculty so that parents don't complain. | ||
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Missouri Valley College |
All |
Faculty at Missouri Valley College work on year-to-year contracts, with notification of non-renewal ordinarily done by mid-March. The administration seldom gives a reason for non-renewal; no reason is needed because of the one-year contracts. Promotions to higher rank are awarded, upon application, on the number of years employed at the college. A raise in salary does NOT accompany the promotion. There is a faculty senate, but its recommendations are routinely ignored by the administration. When a faculty senate committee recommended faculty raises several years ago, the committee members were brought before the administration and admonished. A faculty member who proposed a new program was ridiculed at a faculty meeting by the Academic Dean, who later apologized publicly, but the faculty member’s contract was not renewed the following year. Academic departments and majors are added or dropped at the discretion of the administration, usually with no input from the faculty. Many of the faculty, both full-time and part-time, are retired k-12 teachers from the local community. Little funding is provided for professional development. Nearly all students are recruited by the athletic coaches and virtually every student is given a sports scholarship. In recent years, some of the brighter student-athletes have been awarded “academic” scholarships. Each year, the administration determines how many incoming freshmen it needs and assigns quotas to the coaches based on that number. Admission standards are essentially the same as NAIA eligibility rules and are therefore so low as to be nonexistent. On a brighter note, the many international students recruited to the college raise the level of academic performance, increase cultural diversity, improve performance of the sports teams, and bring in money for the college through their tuition. March 2013. | ||
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Morehead State University, KY |
Any |
"High school with ashtrays" is the general nickname for Morehead, according to alum Chris Offutt (from his book "No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home"). Then there's the story of the academic job applicants, who, driving into Morehead and seeing the falling-apart small town (blocks of empty, shuttered and decaying buildings along Main Street), just hang a u-turn and head back to Lexington. The town itself seems stuck in about 1932, and the helpless, self-pitying, and sometimes nasty attitude of the natives is reflected in that of the administration and many of the faculty at MSU, who try with mounting desperation to make the classes as easy as possible for students who enter not only with weak academic skills, but who quite often are here only for the financial aid (MSU has very generous support programs). Because of the wretched state of employment for professors in the U.S., MSU has attracted many well-educated instructors who find themselves marooned miles from anything like civilization and surrounded by a population that not so secretly finds them too uppity because they like books. The school seemingly has reason to be afraid, very afraid: about ten years ago the school was almost closed due to poor enrollment, and the threat is still alive. Oh, and if this all is not enough, here's the comment I got from the first Morehead native I encountered: "You better be nice to everyone 'cause just about everybody here walks around armed."
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Northeastern (MA) |
Jewish Studies, History |
They were interviewing for a two-year fellowship this year and their interview process was the most unprofessional I'd ever seen. The first time I was interviewed it was with the department chair's 10-year-old CHILD in the room, playing on his gameboy. And, then, in my second interview, I was treated to a display of crazy rudeness by another prof in the department, who cut me off every time I spoke. I wondered if others had experienced such things during their interviews. I've heard it's not a healthy place to work.
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NYU |
General Studies |
no response EVER...06/2007.....One wonders whether they received your application? My school's dossier services provider just sent my colleague's dossier to a school in the Midwest...when she applied to a school in Florida, with a completely different name. You might check to make sure your application was properly sent before black-listing a school?
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Roger Williams University, RI |
Any |
2012: Very strange, very hostile phone interview with the American Studies/history dept. There seemed to be about four to seven people involved, though maybe some never spoke. The conference phone device kept getting moved, which caused a lot of static and noise on the line. I tried to joke about it a little but it fell flat. It was all very awkward and quite cold. Their first question was, "Why do you want to work for American studies at Roger Williams?" Answered that. Then, a very blunt very hostile creative writer said she didn't see a lot of history courses on my grad transcript, and would I feel comfortable teaching history courses there? Actually, there ARE a lot of history courses on my transcript, but they were a secondary focus. Kind of like a minor. Also, I tried to explain the role of history in my teaching, but there was only blank silence on the end of the line, I wondered why they were calling me if essentially they had already decided I wasn' qualified. And WTF does a creative writer know about that kind of judgment call?! There were NO questions about my background, my research, how I pull history into my work, NOTHING. Only, basically, "Can you teach our courses?" So obviously, I got called as a formality. The person in the visiting position now that seems to correspond most with this position is a publication powerhouse who also has obviously been heavily mentored by the chair. I don't know if she was an internal candidate, or if she flew the coop and there was some acrimony there, But bad bad vibes all the way. Any incoming poor bastard who gets that job should beware: it seems like a VERY exploitative situation.
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SUNY Potsdam |
English & Communication |
A toxic and hostile department where no good deed goes unpunished. Zero leadership, mentorship, or support for junior faculty. Senior faculty are checked out and uninterested. Personnel issues handled as popularity contests. Stay far, far away! [UPDATE: Since this was originally written in 2012, things have only gotten worse. Not only is the school itself at the very bottom of the priority list for the system as a whole (it's on the verge of being combined with a neighboring community college and no one on campus seems especially concerned with that development) but the department has become a toxic swamp in which a small number of senior faculty dominate. This group has teaching loads that are often half the number of courses or students as the rest of the department and hold administrative positions for which they are often unqualified or for which it is impossible to be unqualified because there's no actual work involved. For years, the department has managed to hire one good new faculty member after another only to burn them out or run them off with petty favoritism and a crushing and inequitably shared workload. Could be a great place to work, but isn't and is getting worse.] The Provost at SUNY Potsdam is especially terrible. Recently when a faculty member who had zero scholarship, terrible course evaluations, and was voted out by their department, she overruled them all and retained him. Just after this another professor who had a perfect record in terms of scholarship, service, and teaching was denied tenure because of "low enrollment". There is a new president, which gives hope, but understand that the school of music is essentially 1/3 of this school and therefore it is the rest of the university's job to support it. [UPDATE (early 2016): For what it's worth, that exceptionally awful provost has now moved on to Siena U. and is being replaced by someone who seems by all accounts to have a pulse as well as a conscience, both of which would be vast improvements. The English and Communication department also has a new chair and that has drastically improved the situation described above, though there is still a smal contingent of faculty who do the least teaching, but the most talking. Thankfully, they spend most of their time trying to find administrative jobs outside the department with release-time attached, so they are increasingly marginalizing themselves, thereby dramatically improving the functioning of the department, if not necessarily its discourse.] | ||
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Texas A&M University Texarkana |
Institution-wide |
The school is being investigated for the very reasons posted in the next post. See link: http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/2012/02/22/university-system-probes-local-campus-128343.php - That should pretty much tell you what to expect. [posted Feb. 2012] | ||
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Texas A&M University-Texarkana |
All |
(Moved from above) The spirit of academia runs through the veins of every skilled and dedicated professor. At Texas A&M University-Texarkana (TAMUT), this spirit is routinely undermined by a top heavy and under qualified administration. A series of poor decisions, which seem to stream endlessly from the President (hired from a community college), and Provost (hired from a high school), continue to drown the academic spirit, integrity, and livelihood of many of TAMUT’s finest professors. And though many professors are able to find ways to live with this loss, the individuals that lose the most are students. It took just a few weeks for me to recognize how much professors are abused at this institution. During my new hire orientation, the head of HR told a group of new professors that “students who attend the university are no different than customers at McDonalds. It doesn’t matter what we feed them, as long as we get more customers to buy our product we will be successful as an institution.” Shortly after this event, both new and veteran professors were required to attend a meeting arranged by administrators on recruiting new students. The charge by the President was that professors were “to spend up to 3/4ths of their time recruiting new students to the university.” Excel spreadsheets containing hundreds of phone numbers of prospective students were sent to professors, who were required to make unsolicited “cold calls.” Groups of 5-6 professors could be seen piling into a van and traveling several hours to various towns to find new students, instead of spending time advising existing students. This bizarre transition, from teaching to telemarketing (and then “traveling salesperson”) took professors by such great surprise that they did not know how to react! Sadly, a Stockholm Syndrome could be observed in many of my colleagues, who accepted this backwards, corporate ethos as normal and even endearing. Professors at TAMUT frequently work late into the evening to catch up with their 4/4 course loads (neglected during “Sales Hours”). It’s no wonder that both new and veteran employees are leaving this institution in waves. I hope that some day TAMUT will wake up, and provide its professors with the tools and resources needed to regain academic integrity. While I’m not very confident that this will happen anytime soon, I continue to keep these professors (especially those who do not realize how much they have lost) in my prayers.
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| Tulane U |
This school is truly a nightmare. When I visited for the campus interview, the dept chair threw out the F word like crazy and nobody in the room even reacted to it. This should have been the sign for me NOT to accept the job offer. After I started working here, I saw how hierarchical, power-oriented, and nepotistic everybody on campus were. On campus, you're treated like crap in general, yelled upon when senior people (including admin staff) are in a bad mood, and often threatened by your tenured colleagues for speaking your opinion during faculty meetings. If you're lucky, your existence isn't acknowledged until you get accepted as one of these trolls, oops, I mean tenured. I was fortunately treated like the invisible man until I got tenured. After that, suddenly people started saying hi to me and finally, I was treated like a human being for the first time. But no matter how nice these losers treat me now, the damage has been done and I can't regain the optimisitc innocence that I once had. I despise these people and the institution that created these monsters. In order to protect their fragile once-upon-a-time southern ivy reputation, nobody will acknowledge how miserable they actually are at this place, even on the internet. It seems like I am the first to tell the world. Run if you can, as fast as away from this school. Don't get stuck like me. [posted April 2014] | |||
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University of Alaska Fairbanks |
College of Liberal Arts |
Recent update of 2022. Since the last assessment CLA has gotten much worse. Cronism is chronical. All it matters is whether you are liked and subsurvient to the dean. Mind you: THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT AND EVEN APPRECIATION FOR RESEARCH. It is a reign of aggressive mediocrity when those incapable of producing any publications bully those few who still do. Bullying is vicious and rampant and on increase. Some departments are way better than others though, f.x. English department still has integrity with an excellent chair, as does an excellent and world-known department of Anthropology. The worst departments are Foreign Languages, Justice and Psychology, which are mostly or only online. If you are a serious and ambitious young scholar in humanities or social sciences, I strongly advise you to stay away. The reasons to avoid UAF have nothing to do with what the university delusionally tells itself are the reasons: the long, cold, dark winter, the isolation. Instead, you should stay away because this is a bad institution.This university claims to be a flagship research institution, but it does not care about the CLA, which it actively denigrates as the “teaching college” whose main purpose is to support the more prestigious hard science programs. Life in the CLA is brutal. There are three types of faculty at in the CLA at UAF. (1) Great, smart, effective scholars and nice people, most of whom have been at UAF for decades and are generally discouraged at the CLA conditions; (2) Miserable, fearful, very academically weak faculty who work there because they can’t go anywhere else and are internally colonized to the point where they agree with whatever abuse the college puts out; (3) Faculty oblivious to conditions because they are precisely the socially incapable persons you would imagine would end up at university so completely isolated from the world. This last group is filled with insane paranoid fears that have little to do with the real problems of the college.What are these problems? First, off this college has had more deans than years for at least the past five years. In the two years I dealt with them, they had four different deans, and fired one after only seven months on the job. In the process, promises of promotion and hiring were rescinded, faculty were threatened with increased teaching loads and risk of firing and everyone was urged to do more for no more pay. Second, the university is run by people who treat faculty as the enemy. Most of the senior university leadership are from private or public industry and are contemptuous of the university. Most the leadership is anti-education, libertarian corporate types. The foxes have been sent to run the henhouse. In addition, the university itself is dilapidated and ugly and there is little interest in upgrading its facilities. Google-image “Gruening Building UAF” to see an example of your future home. Third, the college itself is a mixed bag. It does have some great faculty (I mean that seriously), but even some of the best are simply beaten down by the negative and oppressive environment. Many departments should operate with the Benny Hill theme playing in the background. Interlibrary loan some recent theses from outside Anthropology, Psychology, and History if you want a disturbing look at what gets you an MA at UAF. A 25 page MA thesis is not unusual there. While some in the college are fighting for change in that area, the plurality of faculty are so backwards and awful they belligerently believe that definitively bad work is good work. You’ll think it’s permanent academic opposite day. Such incompetence makes sense, though, since some of the MA granting departments include faculty were do not even have degrees in the field and have never published a single item. Indeed, unpublished, internally-hired candidates with dubious interdisciplinary Ph.Ds from UAF lounge on the tenure track while multiple well-published young faculty with degrees from prestigious schools (Cal, USC, etc) languish in visiting positions and are often simply not renewed. The most embarrassing part is the obvious retention problem of the college. The faculty of the CLA are old. Very old. This is because the university is hostile to young faculty. The university has convinced itself that retention is difficult because UAF is isolated and cold and dark and only the truly hardy can make in it Fairbanks. They openly prefer Alaskans as candidates for that reason. In reality, despite all the problems, plenty of young faculty want to stay both because they see that Alaskans deserve and desperately need quality instruction and because Alaska is a truly beautiful place. But UAF does nothing to support them. If a young TT faculty member goes to the dean and says they want to stay but need more travel support, they are literally told that if they don’t like it, they can go somewhere else. The CLA regularly fires young visiting faculty instead of putting them on the tenure-track because that’s the easiest way to cut budgets. All the while, the permanent faculty get older and crazier. Their tricks. UAF has several tricks they will use to try to convince to you to come there. These are a few:
If you decide to go to UAF, make sure you really love your colleagues in your department because they are all that you’ll have. | ||
|
University of Arkansas - Fort Smith |
All |
Beware this institution for overt, demonstrated, documented prejudice. In April/May of 2012 the institution had a major problem with a transgendered student who was invited to give an informal talk in a psychology sex and gender course. The university administration, upon learning of this student being invited to talk in a class, completely trampled the faculty member's academic freedom and notified the instructor that the student was not allowed to give a presentation. Furthermore, the university banned this student from giving any talks on campus. Meanwhile, one of the permanent psychology faculty members provided a letter of support for the student. Mysteriously, this faculty member was no longer listed in the university catalog's faculty rosters nor course schedules during the following academic year. The student-run newspaper reported on this story and it was picked-up by numerous local and national media outlets. Apparently UAFS had a long track-record of discrimination against this transgendered student by barring her from using any bathrooms on campus except those that were designated for either male/female use. The whole event caused even the Obama administration to get involved. To see for yourself, Google "Jennifer Braly" and the institution name. The institution's job ads are also misleading, advertising new faculty hires using the standard "assistant professor" designation. However, the institution *does not* have tenure. From the obvious backwards stance on diversity to the overt disregard for academic freedom, avoid this institution. | ||
|
University of Calgary |
Faculty of Arts |
This university has an institutional culture based on gaslighting, incompetence, and corruption. One professor in the Political Science department supports legalizing child pornography; another professor in the same department was publicly caught laundering money through his research accounts to direct funds earmarked for "science education" to be used to create and support an anti-climate science group. Dean of Arts worked personally to ensure the pedophile didn't get kicked out, and fosters a toxic environment of bullying and nepotism; while claiming to "reward excellence", they maintain a clear pattern of ousting junior faculty who resist being bullied. At least one VAP was offered a TT position, and was only told after signing the contract that it was invalid because HR forgot to check the person's immigration status (despite being warned by the candidate themselves). University President [[1]]resigned because of undisclosed conflicts of interest, and the university appears dead-set on making no meaningful changes to address its systemic problems. [posted 2019] | ||
|
University of California, Riverside |
Humanities and Social Sciences |
Several tenure cases have been denied due to ridiculous claims by either departments or the committee on academic promotion. Interestingly, most of these cases were professors of color. Most junior faculty get the hell out if and when they can. Most senior faculty set in their ways at best; at worst, on some sort of sick mission to take junior faculty down in the most cutting way possible. Smart junior faculty with exciting research agendas are shot down for ambitious projects; it's better to publish a lot in mediocre journals than to try for top tier. Visiting assistant professorships will never, ever become tenure track, no matter how much one tries to make nice with the department. Any sort of support for spousal hires is a joke, no matter how talented the spouse; Provost is paranoid that the school will be thought less of. In general, UCR has a weird superiority/inferiority complex; they think they are a big shot R1 university but they're really on the bottom of the UC totem pole and can't seem to accept that. [posted Feb. 2013]
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| University of Canterbury (New Zealand) | College of Arts (includes humanities and social sciences) |
Avoid this place like the plague! Has a hideous history of closing programs and laying-off faculty, including often even distinguished faculty in mid-career. UC has liquidated fully one-third of its faculty in the humanities and social sciences since 2008. The institution’s quality, research capacity, international rankings and reputation have all declined sharply since 2009. The university’s deep-seated institutional and especially administrative problems predate this period, however. Students have fled this university, partly because their faculty and favorite departments have been brutally liquidated. Enrollment numbers fall further each year, abetted by the destruction by earthquakes of the still largely unrebuilt city of Christchurch. The administration sometimes fraudulently claims that faculty positions are “equivalent to tenured positions in North America,” as one recent ad disingenuously put it. Don't be fooled by this claim! As in the UK, formal legal tenure was eliminated by neoliberal politicians here decades ago. New Zealanders, even university faculty, generally have no understanding of the legal concept of tenure and are often surprised when told of its meaning in the North American legal context. New Zealand universities have virtual legal impunity to lay-off even accomplished mid-career faculty. Many observers believe that the University of Canterbury has done so particularly in instances involving faculty who are viewed by the administration as outspoken, or whose student numbers may have declined, as well as for other reasons in ways that would be legally unthinkable at North American universities. Do yourself a favor: stay away - very, very far away from this truly nasty institution! It is rife with bullying and mediocrity, and goes to extreme lengths and measures to silence any faculty who would dare seek to make life different here or criticize the autocratic administration. | ||
|
University of Guelph (Canada) |
Psychology (Applied Social) |
The University of Guelph has a long history of extremely strong ideological bias in the applied social area, and this leads to good candidates getting screwed in the search process. The problem isn't the department, but just the area. They stack search committees with passive-aggressive people who have clear conflicts of interest (like an advisor and their own graduate student) to get their desired outcome. They ignore feedback from the rest of their department and others in their own area who don't agree with their methods. They take absolutely forever to inform candidates of search outcomes, and administration refuses to answer any questions they're emailed. Avoid if you don't want to get involved in destructive area politics! | ||
| University of Hawaii at Manoa | All | Very high turnover rate among junior faculty. Poor and disorganized upper admin. Strong nepotism and hostile to those from outside Hawaii. | ||
|
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
I have no direct experience, but this blog post freaked me out: "It was a culture organized around ego, self-importance, defensiveness, and pretension. Nobody trusted each other. There were no alliances." | |||
| University of Massachusetts Amherst | any |
One of the faculty on my job visit took me aside (we had met before) to tell me the new provost is consistently denying tenure to people (women especially) despite the unanimous recommendations of faculty. Great university in some respects, but proceed with caution. [Update: the provost in question departed the campus in summer 2017, after fewer than three years in the position.] | ||
|
University of Massachusetts Boston |
English |
The current administration is so oppressive and the department so disorganized that we're losing people. We now rely on a 2/3 non-tenure-track faculty to teach our undergraduate program. But for the occasional gesture, we treat them as an invisible, inferior servant class who should keep quiet and know their place. I've seen it. This is, structurally, increasingly an apartheid-like situation, and I am morally appalled. The official administrative line is always a sunny "Let's move forward," but the cliche is true: doing things the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. [posted March 2012]
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|
University of Michigan |
Social Psychology |
This is a top rated department but candidates beware. This area has ongoing problems in hiring and retaining women and people of color. Women rarely get job interviews, and on the occasions that women have received offers (typically only famous senior candidates) they quickly discern these issues and decline to accept the position. Female faculty have an extremely low retention rate, since this is an area in which it is acceptable to overtly say that studying gender or diversity-related issues is not valuable. A generally unfriendly and at times hostile environment, that sees mentoring graduate students as a "waste of time." | ||
| University of Missouri, Columbia | Campuswide |
The university has governance structure that is fully controlled by administration, including appeal and grievance processes that are supposed to be the internal faculty affairs. None of the dozen or so grievance cases since 2008 when the grievance process changed format, with an appointed representative of the university administration (in direct violation of AAUP recommendations) were resolved in favor of the faculty submitting the grievance. I was quoted a tenure rate of 90%+ when I was interviewed. Ask for clarification: this figure was the ratio of the applicants who received tenure to those who submitted their tenure files. If you take the ratio vs. those who started as a fresh assistant professor out of Ph.D. program or a post-doc, the ratio is closer to 50%. The university has an ingenious tactics of failing young faculty at their third year review, which contributes to about 25% attrition. Another 5-10% or so of the fifth year assistant professors would be denied by their departments to have their tenure cases even submitted at all. The remaining 10% or so are natural turnover of people who voluntarily leave for personal or professional reasons. Scandals of different magnitudes shake the university and the town it sits in pretty much every year. 2012: the university forces closure of the nuclear engineering program, which was home to several active advocates for faculty rights (http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/education/infighting-threatens-university-of-missouri-s-nuclear-program/article_6d10a7d5-1c63-55de-a6d0-e34eaf3718cf.html); 2013: a tenured philosophy professor slams the door over intra-department personal conflicts, with a story about it making the title page of CHE (http://www.columbiaheartbeat.com/index.php/mizzou/661-102813; http://zacharyernst.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-i-jumped-out-of-ivory-tower.html). 2015: graduate students are denied health insurance (https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/08/18/missouri-ends-subsidies-grad-student-worker-health-insurance, http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/university-of-missouri-ends-funding-for-graduate-student-health-insurance/article_a58ab3d6-890c-58e8-9da3-87a5a90ef757.html). | ||
| University of Missouri, Columbia | Communication |
The comments made by the department chair, Mitchell McKinney, about a female faculty member as being "loud" and "boisterous" and being able to be "heard throughout the building" (which, by the way, is quite a large building) are appalling. Graduate students in that program have told me that he is incredibly sexist and his sexist opinions and ideas resonate throughout the department. Case in point, the department made a new hire in 2013 (beginning in fall 2014) who began looking for another job immediately in the spring of 2015. This deparment is disgusting and dysfunctional. If you can get million dollar grants, have at it -- otherwise, I wouldn't recommend this department to my enemies.
Not defending the university or department in every respect, but I will on this. Many other people would agree that this female faculty member is loud and boisterous, can be antagonistic, and can talk down to people. They just may not feel as comfortable standing up and saying it. No graduate student I know has described McKinney as sexist, and this is clearly a post written by someone with an axe to grind. | ||
| University of New Haven | Entire institution |
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| University of Northern Colorado | English/Film Studies | I write this as an insider of sorts. I've worked at UNC for a great many years and have a few friends who are currently in this program. And, as an administrator and faculty member, I've heard plenty that makes me cringe and wonder how in hell this program has avoided a major law suit thus far. See the listing above for more details about the ongoing, chronic, deplorable problems associated with this department. As one of my colleagues who works within its walls explains, it's where motivated researchers and dedicated, ethical professors go to die--or, misogynist, bullying faculty find refuge for their power-mongering, hateful behavior. As a previous poster mentioned, they have engaged in bullying and the coercesion of the untenured (who are allowed to vote) in attempts keep good faculty from receiving tenure, promotion or pay raises. This became such a problem at one point that they had to bring in outside monitoring to ensure that at least the counting of ballots wasn't corrupted. That did nothing to resolve the behind-closed-doors bullying. Graduate students have reported issues with harrassment and senior faculty making inappropriate comments on and regulations of women's clothing. The list goes on and on. While one or two of the loathesome folks have retired, several remain--and, sadly, they seem to be having an influence on even more recent hires. Because they've been under the microscope lately, they've tried to put on a slightly better face for the upper administration, but I suspect we'll be hearing horror stories from across campus for years about his hate-filled, deplorable little corner of academic hell. Join their ranks at your own peril. | ||
|
Univ. of Northern Colorado |
English |
Where to start? A third of faculty have left in the past 2 years. Mean and/or deadwood colleagues, horrible college president, low salaries, and an unattractive location.
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|
University of Notre Dame Australia |
I know multiple people who have been bullied by this institution to the point where they either quit or were fired on suprious grounds. They are now being paid to keep quiet about it. (If you don't take the money, the institution will make a serious effort to ensure you never get another job in Australia.) I am commenting here because job candidates should know how horrible this institution is, and because I am not being paid to shut up. If you take a job there and perform competently, you'll make everybody else look bad, so prepare to suffer. | |||
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University of Ontario Institute of Technology |
Social Sciences and Humanities |
*Extremely toxic work environment. The "dean" (who is the chair) and associate deans bully untenured faculty and trash tenured faculty. Faculty and these managers alternate between paranoid speeches "I know certain people are out to get me but they are just jealous and I will destroy them!", encouraging untenured faculty to shun the most productive faculty members, and oddly forced efforts to pretend the branch location is great and is not a branch!!!!!
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University of the Pacific |
Biology |
This department has a very high turnover rate among junior faculty. | ||
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University of Richmond |
English |
In spite of its beautiful campus and slick PR, the University of Richmond is best described as a "Potemkin Campus" where the best face is shown to prospective employees and students but where the ugly reality of the campus atmosphere becomes clear within a couple of years. Though the compensation is good, there is little to no support for families with children, and childless tenured faculty hold and exercise great power on campus. I was actually told by senior students that they had noticed a propensity for the university to eliminate newly hired professors that became popular with students. In spite of glowing but misleading documents like "The Richmond Promise" with its claims to community, respect for diversity and transparency, these values are rarely put into practice except in a token way. Though the surface atmosphere is cordial, the actual culture is hostile and competitive rather than collegial and collaborative - with a few notable exceptions. After being invited to an email discussion about digital tools in the classroom, I was targeted by the chair for suggesting that tenured faculty needed to develop their digital skills. Within a year my position was eliminated along with that of another popular and successful professor, perhaps to cover the costs of a sexual harassment settlement brought against the Dean who continues to be employed by the university. If you seek a supportive, collegial and creative atmosphere, you probably should look elsewhere.
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Univ of Southern Mississippi |
History |
Interviewed with them at the AHA convention at Atlanta in Jan. 2006 - The SC informed me that they would be in contact by the end of January, but of course I haven't heard a thing from them(12/3/2007)
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University of Southern Queensland, Australia |
Music |
I taught in this university for three years. I will remember them as the worst time of my life. The university is situated in South-East Queensland, a region renowned for its racism and corruption. The music department routinely alters the grades of its students based on religious and racial factors. Any academic to challenge these practices is ostracized, at best, and fired on a pretext at worst. The Dean of the faculty and the vice-chancellor of the university are aware of the levels of corruption in this and many other departments of USQ but are unable or unwilling to address the problem. During my employment three close colleagues had nervous breakdowns, two of them are now permanently unable to return to work. The academic quality of the department is barely highschool standard and the administrative load consumes around 80% of faculty members' work hours. Research is actively discouraged - being labelled as 'selfish' and a 'reward which should be earned'. The university maintains links with white supremist organisations in the surrounding area and has been investigated for various shady financial dealings. I would warn any potential employees to seriously reconsider applying for any position at USQ. Accepting a job there was the worst decision of my entire life. It took me 12 months of professional counselling to recover from the psychological damage done to me there. I almost walked away from academia altogether and it was only the caring support I received from subsequent colleagues that pulled me through. I have seen careers utterly decimated at USQ - give the place a very wide berth!! | ||
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University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
College of Arts and Sciences |
The College itself has been a nightmare for minority junior faculty. See: www.wbir.com/pdf/georgewhite2.pdf and http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=47895 The mindset is medieval. See: http://www.leavingacademia.com/on-being-postacademic/ Given the bullying and manipulation of key administrators within the College of Arts and Sciences (http://www.artsci.utk.edu/administration.asp), it's a surprise that anyone stays here. The corruption extends all the way up to the Provost of the University (http://provost.utk.edu/bio/martin_bio.shtml). See: http://www.counterpunch.org/price08102009.html and http://web.archive.org/web/20130516061331/http://sfaanet.ning.com/profiles/blogs/inquisition-in-knoxville-the
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University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
History |
12/2/11 People of color and ehtnicity are routinely denied tenure. No attempt is made to recruit graduate students of color. This southern university has ONE unhappy TT black historian who is so alienated that s/he holds office hours away from the dept and has never been in her/his office. The UTK way is to say the right things about diversity but do nothing about it. No domestic partner benefits or university-wide policy on maternity leave. Also women are paid less than men for doing the same job. | ||
|
University of Texas |
Theatre and Dance |
Horribly toxic and dysfunctional. A complete dead-end for young faculty and grad students. Some faculty refuse to teach at all, ever, and dump their GRADUATE courses on lecturers. Department disconnected from the city. Faculty refuse to participate in local arts scene or national conferences in Austin, including SXSW. Run, run, run. | ||
| University of Tyumen, School of Advanced Studies | School of Advanced Studies | This is not a liberal arts college. It's an experiment in game theory run from a far-right management cult in Moscow called Skolkovo Management University, part of the Skolkovo tech park said by Garry Kasparov to be a money laundering front. SAS is run autocratically by a sociopathic individual who is getting rich on federal grants while keeping faculty, staff and students in a state of near frantic precarity. He has repeatedly reduced individuals' salaries by up to 80% to make an example of them, for such crimes as failing to put their institutional affiliation on a conference proceedings or having their published peer-reviewed work criticised by his personal team of reviewers. Morale in this school is kept deliberately low by such means and by constantly berating faculty for their laziness, and students for their mediocrity, though the former are expected to do world class research under impossible conditions and in impossible time frames, while the latter are expected to function like eilte Ph.D students in a language most of them speak at intermediate level. Students and faculty alike have been attracted here with empty promises and a canny internet marketing campaign. Seriously, a lot of the complaints on this site are on the trivial side, but this place, like the Russian state that funds it, is corrupt to the core, and working there is a nightmare. | ||
| Utah Valley University | Ridiculous interview experience. Dept. Chair showed up 20 minutes late to our meeting; citing traffic (in rural Utah mind you). And they asked me 3 times what school I was from. Faculty member refused to give me tour that was scheduled. No one from search committee came out for a dinner with the search chair and I, despite repeated invites. Faculty often interrupted teaching demo or would answer questions that I was throwing out to students. Dean was utterly disinterested; kept rocking back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head. He didn't ask me a single question. Very unengaging group of people. And the real kicker: no word from them after they went with someone else, just an impersonal, automated email from HR. Textbook example of what not to do if trying to recruit better faculty to your university. | |||
| Valparaiso University | College of Arts and Sciences (2021-22) | Major budget problems, discontinuances of whole programs and departments, layoffs of tenure-track faculty. Serious enrollment decline problems. Admins clearly have no sense of what they are doing, and just hiring and laying-off and hiring and laying-off willy nilly since mid 2010s to present. Most faculty trying to get out if they can. Could be okay for a 1-2 yr VAP especially if you are Midwestern and White, but security for tenure-track and tenured lines will be iffy and dependent on program enrollment. Odds of long-term institutional survival seem slim given falling Midwestern/Christian population, dropping admitted student quality, and enrollment cliff ahead. If you have safe harbour, avoid the the headache and wait for a more functional and stable place.|
Wake Forest University |
English |
Seems to have a problem with retention: a lot of TT faculty have left in the past 3 or 4 years.
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Wake Forest University |
History |
Had an AHA interview with them. 2 interviewers, a male and a female. The female was telegraphing...no, screaming...that she had absolutely 0 interest in me and was bored by having to sit through the interview. The male's idea of an "interview" was just to challenge in a d!ckish way. [This comment is on the history department].
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| Wesleyan University | Film |
I was a semifinalist for a asst prof job here. My impression? Disorganized and incestuous.. On very short notice I was scheduled for an interview at SCMS. Wasn't planning to attend that year but paid out of my own pocket to go. After the interview was told the search was being pu ton hold until the fall. Then nothing. Repeated inquirites to the department went unanswered. I learned they eventually did hire someone who has their BA from, guess where, Wesleyan! Just like their last hire! Buzz around SCMS the following year was that the search was rigged in the one guy's favor all along and they screwed over another finalist. Who knows? But you've been warned! | ||
| Kutztown University of Pennsylvania | Computer Science |
I was invited there for a campus interview recently. That is the worst experience I have ever had. Nothing is good about this University and the computer science department. With a 90% acceptance rate, my class was full of redneck kids who have nothing to do with computer science. Most of them were playing with their mobile phones during my teaching presentation and those who were looking to me, had earbud plugged in. After the presentation, one faculty asked if anyone had questions. In response, all attending students left the classroom indicating that they did not understand or like my presentation. What a joke! Faculty members are dumb, not welcoming and ignorant - apple does not fall far from the tree. Guess what? Majority of the faculty members graduated from Kutztown University! They do not know the basics of computer science and do not like a challenging environment. Certainly, most of them have not published any research for many many years. Few of them asked dumb questions after my presentation which I answered gracefully. Others were taking notes quietly. There is no intellectual environment in the department. If you think this is enough, you are wrong. Here is the most dangerous part - during a private meeting, a Jewish full professor indicated that he needs sexual favors for writing supportive letters essential for tenure and promotion. WoW! I am glad that I never heard anything back from this shithole. | ||
|
Wesleyan University |
History |
I had the worst campus visit imaginable here. It started when the chair told me he would meet me in front of a building at a set time, and he was 25 minutes late. It was literally 15 degrees, and I stood outside waiting for him, calling his office, and fuming. The schedule they set for me bordered on the inane. I had two interviews followed by a 45 minute break, another two, 45 minute break, and this went on and on for two days. I kept thinking that if they condensed some of the breaks, we might actually be able to condense the whole visit into one day. I was to have lunch with students-- only one showed up and she had to leave early-- and then my talk was attended by all of six people (it was also held in a room that was stifling hot). They clearly didn't get the memo about treating candidates warmly and respectfully. Indeed, they made me feel like I was burdening them just by being there.A completely disfunctional department. I had a *very* bad experience at Wesleyan. They were fine up to the time I left campus. There was a little hostility during my interviews with faculty, but I won't blame the department for that. The department chair was supposed to call me regarding the deparment's decision but never did. And that was last October. They came after me, for God's sake, then they treat me like a pariah. Never got a letter or e-mail telling me that they had decided to hire someone else. All I'm asking for and expecting is a little respect, especially since they brought me to campus. After I left, several faculty members wrote to *apologize* for how I was treated, which leaves me with the impression that their poor treatment was a matter of general knowledge. Another former faculty member at Wesleyan told me that I'm probably better off without the job, given the History Department's reputation across the campus for its dysfunction and for driving away some of it's most talented and imaginative faculty. Also, he/she asked me why it is that a school with Wesleyan's overall reputation had no one in it's history department I had ever heard of before?
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Old Issues: Specific Problems with Searches or Departments from Dates Prior to 2010 (and any undated material) []
Reed College
University of Iowa College of Education EXTREMELY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR FACULTY OF COLOR!!! Look at the HIGH turnover rates. I f you are a yeoman or token, feel free to apply. If you value your sanity and self-worth, RUN AWAY. Extremely TOXIC environment. Dean, Associate Deans, DEOs ALL contribute to the culture! if you speak up, you WILL BE targeted and retaliated against. Be ready to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING to protect yourself! You will be expected to do illegal and unethical things. Apply and accept a position at your won risk, you have been warned! University of Illinois|
School |
Department |
Issue and Date |
|---|---|---|
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American |
English |
The rudeness, perhaps even outright hostility, at conference interview was breathtaking. Not how to impress potential colleagues with your collegiality, folks!
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American |
all |
Bring your own water, and expect to have to pay for everything (coffee, lunch). They don't get the idea that if you're there for 10 hours, teaching classes, giving job talks, and meeting with faculty members, that perhaps a glass of water or a cup o joe might be a necessity at some point in the day. When I asked for a glass of water 5 minutes before the job talk, I was sent to walk down a block to a vending machine to buy my own bottle of water. Expect no one to attend your job talk except for a couple of students that are asleep before you even begin. Also bring a campus map (they won't have one handy for you). I was abandoned at random places on campus a couple times when the faculty members decided to wander off for no particular reason (I think they forgot they were giving a job talk). Which is symptomatic of a broader problem: they don't care at all whether they hire you, someone else, or no one. (comparatively minor issues: no response to any emails post-interview, no contact after visit.
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Appalachian State |
Communication Studies Physics |
Did not reimburse candidate for hotel or travel expenses although this was promised. Faculty did not go to interview meals with candidate. No time built into schedule for lunch or time to prepare for teaching demo or job talk. Faculty member monopolized question time in class so there was little opportunity to interact with students in the classroom. Physics: Bad Interview 2007: Chair was dismissive. I don't know why so many "nobodies" are so arrogant get real this is APP STATE! It even rubbed off on some students. However, there were some decent and respectful faculty. |
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Bowling Green University |
Art History Social Sciences Department |
Scheduled my conference interview for 7:30 PM. They had been interviewing nonstop since 9:00 AM. They did not know the interviewing room closed at 7:30, so instead of decamping to a hotel room they took me to the lounge outside the crowded hotel bar and grilled me for 45 minutes in the middle of the confusion (talk about lack of privacy). Questions like "Our students don't like to read. What texts would you use in your courses?" The position was for Renaissance, Baroque and 19th C. - they asked if I could also teach American, Pre-Columbian and a Non-Western field. At 8:00 PM they decided they were hungry, sent one committee member off to buy wraps and proceeded to eat them in front of me during the interview. I have never endured such lack of professionalism in my life - and the head of the committee was a fellow student in my Ph.D. program. I have also heard from colleagues that it's just as bad once you get the job. (2/2005) In the 2009/2010 cycle I was offered a postdoc at this University. I asked for a few weeks to make my decision since I had recently had an on-campus interview for a tenure track job and an interview for another postdoc. They agreed. Then about 2 weeks later they said the postdoc funding had been recinded an they were recinding their offer of the postdoc.Good thing I got that TT job, because oherwise I would have been screwed! |
|
Buffalo State University |
Fine Arts |
I can understand not having the money to front up for a plane ticket, but when I told them I would be driving to the campus visit (900 miles round trip) I was told to save my gas receipts! Dept. chair corrected that while I was there ($.50/mile), but they couldn't affort to take me to dinner, and when we got ready for lunch, the chair picked out 4 committee members, stating that they only had enought money for those four, and "if we go over budget, I'll have to take up a collection". This while I am standing there listening to them! Associate dean gave me a pep talk about all the money to governor was planning to pump into the SUNY system, but could not (or would not) tell me about the salary range, the benefits, or the tenuring process. I left in the middle of a snow storm knowing no more about the job than when I arrived. Six WEEKS after the interview, I wrote asking for an update, and was told in a five-word e-mail that the job had already been offered. Pity the person who accepted it. It will be interesting to see if I ever get my reimbursement. |
|
Butler University |
English |
The search committee treated the MLA interview like an oral prelims exam. After about five minutes they'd convinced me I'd never want to work with them--I got the impression they didn't really like their jobs, their students, or their school. |
| Butler University | General Education / Core Curriculum | After leaving this institution where I adjuncted for one semester, the institution shared all of the content of my course from the site I created on their Learning Management System (LMS), which was Moodle, with a new adjunct instructor for the course. The course I built on Moodle contained everything one would need to teach the course: syllabus, assignment descriptions, rubrics, readings, etc. Though their website states that the university does not own instructor-generated content, when I found out that they had shared my entire course without my knowledge or permission, I was told that they had a right to do this because it was "university-directed." It was not. Furthermore, this is not common practice. At my current institution, policies are very clear to protect the intellectual property of instructors. Everything generated for a course on an LMS belongs to the instructor. Butler showed very poor form and no remorse whatsoever. |
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California State University, Long Beach |
Chicano and Latino Studies
|
Job offer withdrawn after I asked if they would allow me _unpaid_ leave in the event of receiving research funding (and revealed I was pregnant). Never reimbursed for expenses submitted following campus visit.
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California State University, Los Angeles |
English |
One SC member asked (during campus visit) if I was married...I wore my wedding ring, so I didn't get that question, but I was asked if I had kids. Ridiculous. |
|
Cal State Northridge |
Child Development |
This department is not functional as an academic department. There is widespread favoritism and non compliance with approved ethics in hiring and departmental administration. |
|
Cardinal Stritch Univ. (Milwaukee) |
English |
invites more candidates for MLA interviews than the SC have time to interview. Double books interview appointments and bumps whichever interviewee confirms his/her appointment last. There's no indication that there's anything tentative about your appointment until they write to tell you've they've dumped you for someone else. |
|
Central Connecticut State University |
Theatre |
on-campus visit for TT, was never contacted again in any way, ever.....4/2007 |
|
Coker College |
English |
A department to definitely be wary of. They wrote inviting me for a phone interview and then apparently rescinded the offer. I received an email in late November 2008 informing me that I was selected for a phone interview to be conducted in early January 2009. By the third week of January I had received no further communications about setting up the details for the interview and so I wrote an inquiry email to the chair of the search committee. I received a prompt response that the committee was behind schedule and was just finishing up compiling their short list of candidates. So what exactly was the point of the original invitation for an interview if they were just going to whittle the list down further? After another month went by I wrote again and have never heard back from them as of yet. April 2009. |
|
Colby |
History |
Utterly disorganized campus visit. Confusing schedule, where I found myself wandering around trying to figure out where I was supposed to be. Some members of the search committee didn't seem to particularly care about me one way or another. Told I didn't get the position via email. I had 3 campus visits, and I was treated with much greater respect by these other institutions.......2008 be sure to check out the wiki from this year's History search experience, too. tragic Can't believe the #metoo movement missed a man in this department. Also tragic. |
|
College of Mount St. Vincent |
Department? |
Never reimbursed for some travel expenses after interview. Also, SC members were disorganzied and indifferent....Date? |
|
College of New Jersey |
All |
set up a specific time and date for a phone interview. Waited patiently by the phone. Was emailed later that they tried and there was no response.Explained that there must be some sort of miscommunication becuase I was waiting by an open phone the entire time. Emailed another member of the search committee explaining the problem and relating my interest. Was emailed back that the interview process has already begun becasue they are under tight time constraints.
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College of Staten Island |
Sociology |
Provost was rude and superior during interview (mid-90s) |
|
College of Staten Island |
English |
bad all around; head of search committee was rude and abrasive; nobody on the committee actually had experience in the area that they were hiring for; during MLA interview, they complained about the hotel room, then asked me to hurry up so that they could eat lunch (seriously); invited to campus interview, where I was left alone in an office for an hour, then left alone again for TWO HOURS, in another office, in an entirely different dept!; job talk was pushed back until 7pm; was supposed to get a ride back to my hotel, but instead was left in a dark parking lot to wait another hour for a cab; my rejection email was addressed "Dear Candidate"; after all that, they hired someone with two other different specialties, allowing them to save money.
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College of William and Mary |
Philosophy Hispanic Studies in Mod. Langs |
no contact of any kind after interview. Department also has terrible record of tenure denials to star junior candidates. (An recent chronicle article documents this, which may have culminated in the removal of the chair.)
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Daytona State College |
Psychology |
Invited for a campus interview; I would never purposely work with these people, totally backwards-seeming and actually kind of rude during the interview. I hate to call anyone names, but the word 'hillbilly' comes to mind in describing several of the people I met including administration. I believe the job was recently reposted, and I'm not surprised after meeting them that no one has signed on to work with them. |
|
Drexel |
I-School |
Hard to imagine how an SC could be more rude than this one. It's no suprise they are still putting out new ads (in March) for a position they have been unable to fill due to their basic dysfunctionality. |
|
East Tennessee State University |
English |
Haven't reimbursed travel expenses two months after a campus visit. No word from them about the status of the search, either. |
|
East Stroudsburg University |
A Humanities Department |
Completely unprofessional faculty and administration. Senior faculty openly lamented the state of the administration. The Provost asked how to change the culture among the campus faculty. Junior faculty were completely unwelcoming and unwilling to meet during the three evenings and two days spent on campus. Learned from DC and SC that junior faculty were "intimidated" by my academic experience. After being told by the SC that I should "expect the offer soon," I was encouraged to start looking for houses. No offer made. |
|
Edinboro University of PA |
English and Theatre Arts |
It's hard to imagine a more dysfunctional operation. The department hires unqualified faculty and promotes a culture of apathy to protect the incompetence of the senior faculty, many of whom aren't even qualified to teach in their respective areas. Go to http://www.pa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/pa_gov/2966 and do a search for "Donald Sheehy"; "A cesspool of corruption" is perhaps the most adequate descriptor. |
|
Emory University |
History |
Nightmarish AHA interview. Six department members, plus two graduate students attended. The department members took turns asking highly aggressive questions and openly denigrated my book topic. They acted supercilious. A case of Ivy envy. And it wasn't just me: Three friends had the same AHA interview experience.
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Fairleigh Dickinson University |
Education (Quest) |
Interviewed once, called me back, (once at 5PM, second time at 10PM) went back for second interview. Interviewed for over an hour. Never let me know that the job was taken. Even emailed search chair who wrote me that she would get back to me. Never heard another thing. |
|
Fayetteville State University |
Department? |
Worked there. Was very painful. Students were aggressive and not willing to do any work. |
|
Fayetteville State University |
History |
Beware, Beware, Beware! Search Committee has almost no voice--chair of department makes final decision on whom to hire. Was a finalist--my references were not called, scheduled meetings with administrators did not take place while I was at on-campus interview (or after), internal candidate with less qualifications was ultimately hired. Most of search committee did not bother to show up for my job talk--not surprising given that it was given in a class during FINALS WEEK! At least one faculty member pulled me aside to warn me to NOT come to FSU if I had any other options. I came to campus early spring, did not get rejection letter until late mid-July, long after I thankfully accepted elsewhere. Did anyone notice that FSU's posting date was after they began to look at applications? I saw the listing in the last AHA Perspectives and it said the application review began in January. What a weird search--spend the money to send us your application even though we are already deciding about the job. I wonder if it is a VAP hire and the search is just a bogus formality!!!!
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|
Fayetteville State University |
Math |
2008 - They were very unprofessional. Didn’t reimburse my travel completely, didn't invite me for dinner, etc. After the interview, never got any news, or even a rejection letter! The Chair didn't reply to my email when I asked about their decision time-line!! (Students were nice, very responsive in my teaching talk.) |
|
Franklin and Marshall |
Theatre |
Changed teaching topics on me twice in the week leading up to the interview.I was left "on my own" for hours at a time in a two and a half day interview (with the amount of actual interviewing I did, it should have been one day). Members of the search committee openly read the newspaper while I was teaching my second sample class.
|
|
Florida State Univ. |
Interdiscip. Hum. |
Never heard from them. No receipt of application; no rejection letter (2006/07 search). |
|
Gettysburg U |
English |
Was interviewed at MLA; was not contacted again. Learned I was rejected from further consideration by seeing on Wiki that an offer had been made. Not the most cordial behavior (Spring 2007). |
|
Georgia Southwestern State University |
English |
Avoid at all costs. Adjunct if you must. Q: Can anyone say more about the English department? What is wrong? (Jan 12 2010)
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|
Goucher College |
Jewish Studies |
Complained to me about how tiresome interviewing is - completely blew off and interrupted my talk in order to adjust the speakerphone for member in France - Can you believe that they NEVER REIMBURSED me for my flight? A complete waste of time. |
|
Grambling State University |
French |
Ad in the JIL does not correspond to their own website's ad. Application submitted and then informed via email that several documents (university HR forms, writing sample, syallabi) are missing even though the writing sample and syllabi were never requested at all, and the HR documents were not listed in the JIL ad. Documents quickly sent off for consideration to postal address to which all application materials were to be sent. Received a call two days later telling to send the documents. Attempts to return the call were never answered so I just emailed the documents to the department chair. These, apparently, were never received because the department chair emailed two weeks later demanding (in bold, all caps, oversized font) that I email him the documents. Unprofessional is a kind way to describe these folks. |
|
Harvard |
History |
Typically only hires its own Ph.D students.
|
|
Heartland Community College |
English |
The Ph.D.s in Lit have completely taken over the composition curriculum, rewriting so that classes all have to do lit (which the students deeply resent). Very, very fractured department with long-standing issues. Also never hires its own adjuncts! (This one was glad, actually.)
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|
Hobart and William Smith Colleges |
Religion |
Interviewed with HWS at AAR in 2007 and I never heard from them again. How unprofessional! |
|
Hsiuping Institute of Technology/Presently University of Technology |
Sleazy practice of grade inflation as customer service at Hsiuping. |
While I was there, and I doubt things have changed, the "students"/customers are under the tacit understanding that after they pay their tuition money, all they have to do to get an inflated grade is be present for attendance roll call, and are not expected to do anything to earn credits. The administration actually does nothing to alleviate the situation. Personally, I protested, but was only repeated bullied and ridiculed about not fitting into the culture of this so-called school before being fired altogether for refusing to play along. |
|
Illinois Central College |
all |
Worst medical coverage I've ever experienced. "Self" insured. College and management firm reject everything; employees end up paying most of their own healthcare costs. Their self-insured PPO's list of reasonable and customary charges is a laugh riot. College and management firm reject every claim, regardless. Otherwise an okay place to work (as long as you don't mind being in the middle of nowhere.)
|
|
Indiana U - Bloomington |
Social Sciences |
Campus interviewed, never heard anything again. Obviously, can read writing between lines, but that is poor professional etiquette! Colleagues like to joke that I'll finally hear back 5 years from now. |
|
Indiana U - Kokomo |
English |
Had conference interview, followed by phone interview. After that, the committee contacted my recommenders (unbeknownst to me) to verify they were who their letters said they were, and made them answer a bunch of questions their letters already addressed. Asked me for a bunch of syllabi but declined to be specific about what they wanted. Then never contacted again, until I got a form rejection from secretary. Just weird. 2007 Search. |
|
Imperial College London |
Luecocyte Biology, National Heart and Lung Institute |
These people will misrepresent their facilities and research space (show you round when students are away) just to get you (as a principle investigator) to bring your reserach funds to their department. They are well versed at using your reserach funds for purposes they were not intended for (eg. to support favourite students who have run out of funds and make up other shortfalls). A favourite trick is where your line manager who is also named collaborator on your grant "asks" you to carry out research for his friends which is outside the remitt of funding provided by the grant awarding body. Complaints are met with " taking things further will ensure you are not re-employed at the end of your contract". The line-manager then puts it about that you are incompetent and not maintaining project progress (his intention anyway). He also lets it be known to more seniour people and hopefully those awarding grant that he should have been awarded the grant. Other permanent members (senoir, now head od departments) will encourgae you to write out grant proposal applications. Once you have put the idea down they will lose interest; you will hear no more or if you are lucky they will tell you thaey intend to use the proposal for somebody else in their team.When you fail to get another grant through (because you have not achieved all the set out goals thanks to the shortage of facilities etc) your entry cards will stop working after 2 weeks. And there are many more unprofessional practices - you are okay if you are permanently employed - but don't fall out of favour or they will work you out. (2006-2009) |
|
Ithaca College |
History |
on-campus for a VAP, then no further contact at all. Ever........3-2005 |
|
Ithaca College |
Biology |
rejection letter sent out over 1 YEAR after application sent |
|
Jackson State U |
Biology |
Never paid interview expenses 11-2007 |
|
James Madison U |
English |
Told me how tired they were at interview, asked very specific questions about vrey specific classes that were apparently part and parcel of the position in question, but were not even obliquely alluded to in the ad. Never contacted again after conference interview (2006 search; they ran the search again this year).
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|
James Madison College at Michigan State U |
On-campus visit for a tt position. No communication thereafter even when I contacted them upon receiving another offer. Rejection letter never sent. Travel expenses never reimbursed. | |
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John Jay College, CUNY |
English |
Very clueless seeming. After they scheduled their conference interviews, they emailed all the candidates. They did not BCC or anything like that. The email listed the NAMES of all the candidates. To make matters worse, this email, sent at the last minute before MLA, informed all candidates that each interview had now been moved 15 minutes later. No thought given to the fact (nor apology made for the fact) that the SC was inconveniencing candidates (and perhaps throwing their entire schedules). Then, when went to interview, hard time locating committee. The room number they said they were in was not correct. 2007.
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| Kingston University (London) | Music | The Department has had a long history since at least 2004 of bullying and staff being signed off work for long-term stress-related sick leave.
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|
Lehigh |
Art and Architecture |
What a disappointment. Poisonous booth interview, one interviewer extremely hostile, 20 minutes of being lectured to without much of a chance to present myself. Admitted that they had made the job announcement as general as possible to attract applicants - then told me there were no caps on the classes and I could have as many as 250 students a semester with no TA's. Won't be making a decision until early May. Of the five interviews I had at CAA this year, this was the worst. (2008) |
|
Lincoln University (MO) |
Agriculture |
This school is a nightmare, i escaped after one semester! 2003 |
| Linfield College | Administration | Summer 2017: I had a Skype interview that started 10 minutes late. Once the interview was underway, it was apparent that the committee was not prepared and didn't understand the intricacies of using Skype (e.g., I had trouble hearing all participants and couldn't see most of them). The Dean (my potential boss) was not present at the start of the interview and no one had questions prepared. Once I introduced myself, one member rambled about how the school was not located in Portland and then asked me to respond to her soliloquy. At this time, the Dean showed up, though I wouldn't know it since he was off camera. He made no apologies, but the interview more or less stopped while the committee greeted him and stroked his ego for several minutes. They asked me if I had questions and then mocked them. The Dean pompously asked for clarification of my run-of-the-mill questions, then he lectured until he arrived at some semblance of a response. Not the craziest interview I've ever had (believe it or not), but it does get a high ranking. |
| Linfield College | All/Administration | The college is experiencing financial difficulties and threatening to lay off tenured and tenure track faculty. The administration has declared that it is neither bound to the handbook nor to AAUP guidelines. The new president comes from an institution without tenure and does not support tenure. |
|
LSU-Shreveport |
Biology |
The school is severely impoverished, Honored no hiring promises 1. recinded most of start up money, 2. no phone after 1 month, no phone number until the last week in fall semester, 3. no office after 2 weeks, 4. computer was 96K RAM, 5. 1 yr budget for 8 labs was $75, 6. student enrollment dropped through floor. 7. school was investigating exigency or joining with the medical school (also declaring exigency at the time), 8. older faculty were treated disrespectfully by administartion (the faculty in biology were great), 9. school glued tiles back up on the walls instead of replacing for pictures go to link http://www.studentsreview.com where a former student posted them, 10. Was told their were 20 students in the MS program although there were only 2, 11. told their research center was being flooded with money and that it should rival Savanna River (UGA) when it could not afford photocopy paper (it now rivals savanna river because savanna river has been disbanded!), 12. some faculty did not distrubute student evaluations instead filling them out themselves. 13. They were opening my mail, reading it and then putting it in my folder, 14. when I finally got my office it was filled with garbage and I had to clean it out, 15. the laboratory space I was given was a public hallway between classrooms, again filled with garbage (see former link to pics) that I had to clean out, 15. I was forcefully asked to spend research grant money on unrelated teaching supplies, 16. One retired prof stole some of my specimens and was continually monkeying around in other profs offices.......... 11-2005 |
|
Loyola Marymount U (L.A.) |
English |
Interviewed with them, never heard from them again after the interview. Not a huge deal, but not very professional either. 2006/07 Ditto-12/07. |
|
Loyola Marymount U (L.A.) |
History |
Interviewed here in the recent past. The S.C. Chair was unprofessional--e.g. wanted to know the ethnic/racial background of my recommenders. He seemed conflicted about inviting me for a campus visit and told me so, and looking back I wish he hadn't. I should have turned them down.
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Loyola University New Orleans |
Theatre |
They changed their TT search last year in mid-stream, from one area of the discipline to another, without readvertising or notifying any of the candidates. The "committee" consisted of one individual, the chair. Scary. 2007
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|
Max Planck, Leipzig |
Evolutionary Anthropology |
The on-campus interview involved no actual interviews or scheduled events of any kind apart from a 20 minute job talk with a few questions after. Absoutely no interest expressed in the candidates whatsoever. They even seemed blatantly defensive when asked the most basic of questions about how the position would work as no information was provided upfront. If this experience was any reflection on how they approach science, organize the simplest tasks, or interact with each other or outsiders I would be very cautious about actually working there. They could not have done more to give a worse impression of the place. Future applicants good luck but beware!
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McMaster University |
English & Cultural Studies |
Boorish department likely run by social introverts and misfits. Submitted application in October 2008; still "waiting" to hear from the distinguished knuckle-draggers in the SC. I wonder if it's the pollution from the steel mills in Hamilton that produces such inconsiderate behavior. Have since accepted TT position in a much better place, but thought I should warn any ingenue against expecting much from this laugh factory. It's a pattern I've seen in other southwestern Ontario universities, but we'll save those stories for another time.
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|
Michigan State University |
English |
campus visit and never another peep from them, not even a form letter.
|
|
Michigan State University |
Forestry |
tt interview, faculty was hostile, rude, and not on the same page about the search - though the search committee itself was OK. Ever been actually heckled at an interview seminar? Made up my mind before the second day of the interview I wanted no part of the place. Found myself in the hotel at the end of day #1 looking for a flight out, but couldn't find one. Also never heard from them afterward with further correspondence or rejection...................2007 |
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Minnesota State University, Mankato |
All, English |
MSU Mankato is approaching the state-wide budget crisis by firing probationary (tenure track) faculty. In the English Department probationary faculty are being fired because of budget deficit in Literature and possibly Comp, but the CW and Tech Comm searches are moving forward. Hostile work environment.
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|
Missouri S&T |
Humanities and social science departments |
-Additional update from 2021: History is in fact a well-run department these days, whatever it may have been in the past. -Just to add a more recent update from 2018. I have worked at MST for a few years as an adjunct in an HSS department and have found it a very decent work environment. MST is primarily a STEM focused university, but the humanities and social science departments are surprisingly good and reasonably well supported by administration. No need to fear this university from my perspective. -An engineering school in the middle of nowhere where the non-engineers feel horribly picked on and ignored at the same time. Severe town/gown problems. Huge state funding issues. History, English, Chemistry and Psychology are all dysfunctional departments. |
|
Montclair State |
Sociology |
Immensely dysfunctional department; Never-ending application requirements; Never reimbursed for travel Expenses.............................Spring 2003 |
|
Murray State |
History |
Very troubled department re: professionalism in the promotion and tenure process. Tread lightly and carefully if you take a position. Fall 2008
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|
Murray State |
English |
Strange MLA Interview. Interviewers did not seem to like the school, the town, or their students. They began the interview by asking me to read a one-page write up by the search chair detailing that Murray is in a dry county and that there's an Applebee's in town, etc. I appreciated the effort to be real, but really, on the first date you don't tell people about the wart on your ass.
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|
Murray State |
Art History |
Murray is def. in the middle of nowhere. The SC showed a positively unhealthy obsession with alcohol, which appears to be their only solace. The dept. chair only refunded (most of) my travel expenses when, after waiting weeks for a reply my inquiries, I began writing to other dept chairs politely asking if he'd met with some sort of nasty accident, or something. |
|
NIA |
? |
Travel never reimbursed. They said they did but never received it. It seems they did not even check where they sent the money. Terrible administration. |
|
Newman University |
History |
This university has such shaky finances that it regularly sheds tt faculty. Tenure means nothing and all non tenured faculty work on a year-to-year contract. Stay away from this place...it is a nightmare |
|
New Mexico State University |
Biology |
One of the most disorganized searches I've ever known. First, all application materials had to be mailed to a specific e-mail address. However, the was no way to affirm that the application was received. Because I had a major change in my CV (two articles being published), I tried to contact that e-mail address and the department head, and did not get any reply. In fact, the very first time I heard from them was four monthsafter the deadline, and a month after the short list had been established, and I was not on it. Was it a rejection? NO! It was an affirmative action form! What was better was that: (A) it was worded: "This form has no bearing on the selection process for the position for which you have applied". No truer words were ever written , since they had already rejected me, and (B) it was an attached PDF form that NMSU wanted me to print out and mail to them at my own expense! Of course, I never got any rejection email, nor any other communication from them aside from that tacky AA form. I heard that they finally invited some people to interview six months after the deadline. 2008-2009 2017 - This university has no money and faculty are fleeing in droves. We have had serious budgeting issues for years, and it isn't getting better. Every year they make deep cuts: firing staff and refusing to hire new faculty. The extra work piles on those who choose to stay, and, when the next year rolls around - there are more cuts. While everyone is struggling, those who play the game manage to get raises & promotions - even if they are not the hardest working or the most deserving. The President talks a good game about creating a "caring community" but make no mistake - it is a hostile, racist, and sexist environment. |
|
Nevada State College |
English |
They made a job offer, gave the hiree less than a week to review the contract, and then retracted the offer. Unprofessional at best.
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| Nevada State College | Humanities | Invited for an on campus interview, took over a month to hear back from them about a potential date to fly out there. Said they would reimburse travel expenses then cancelled the interview outright a week before the on campus visit date. Had I already booked flights/hotels (which I was going to do later that day) I would be out over a thousand dollar with no possibility of a job offer and no recourse for reinbursement. |
|
North Carolina A&T |
Biology |
Extensive line of questioning during on campus interview about race, marital status, and parental status. For several months after the on-campus interview, had to go through increasingly difficult and convoluted process to get reimbursed for airfare and hotel, and the reimbursement still has not been processed. |
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North Carolina Wesleyan College |
English |
Run with all speed in the OTHER direction! Director of Writing is CRAZY and hates women! Rude and dismissive during interview; flirted with male colleagues. Passive-aggressive on a good day.
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|
North Georgia College and State University |
Modern Languages |
Interview process was relatively okay and I was offered the job. Apparently, however, they thought my request for a revised offer letter that included the new terms agreed upon throughout negotiation was demonstrative of a "lack of faith" which they seemed to take personally. They rescinded the offer and then blamed it on my need for this letter, and suggested that I be more careful in asking for this in future negotiations with other institutions (they claimed this advice was a show of "mentorship" on their part). I suspect there are larger administrative, financial, or other issues going on that they preferred not to admit. I wouldn't say that this place should be avoided altogether, because the interview process was pleasant - I was going to accept the job - but their behavior ultimately proved to be extremely unprofessional. I have never encountered a situation with a job offer in which an institution (or a corporation, for that matter) has flat out refused to provide a revised offer letter after the terms have changed. Again, not a bad institution inherently. Just be careful. |
|
Northern Arizona |
History |
AHA interview conducted in aggressive, almost hostile manner. Interviewers had 15-20 or so pre-written questions, the bulk of which had to do with how one might teach/how one's work related to post-colonial, subaltern theory. This focus was not emphasized in the job advertisement, yet the interviewers became almost belligerent when this interviewee stumbled on providing crisp and detail-oriented answers to these type of questions. Admittedly, they have a theoretically oriented graduate program, as is evident on the department's website listing courses... but the snide and sarcastic reactions of interviewers were notable, nonetheless! by 5 minutes into the interview, i was wondering why they had bothered to interview me!?!?!
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Northern Kentucky |
Biology |
Have heard on grapevine that they have cycled through at least 2 people for their cell biology position in the last few years because they did not meet supposed tenure requirements. One had a large NIH grant. You will not be teaching what they tell you will be teaching in the interview. |
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Northwest Missouri State University |
Biology |
Telephone interview in which I was introduced, then asked to tell something about myself. Before I had a chance to start talking, one of the people in the room shouted out, "This is a teaching school not a research institution." Then, several of the people in the room started laughing. Yes, I had a large publication portfolio, but I had applied because I wanted to work in a regional. I also knew the productivity of the faculty when I applied. However, I was completely unaware of the level of rudeness I would encounter. A few months later, I sent an email to the Dean informing him of the exchange, the circumstances, etc. He simply said, "No one in my faculty would behave that way, it must have been someone in the room who was not part of the search committee." Ok, so either their faculty are rude, or the school has a habit of letting any idiot in the room during a private search interview? I thought about this for a good year before posting it here to make sure it really warrented posting. |
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Notre Dame |
Chemistry |
wonderful interview experience, but then nothing. No rejection letter, no reply to a follow-up. Looking at their website suggested they never filled the position.
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Nova |
Information Technology |
On-campus interview leading to the proverbial black hole. No offer, no rejection. Do SCs really not have the courage to tell people that they are not going to be hired? How hard is that? |
|
NY Institute of Technology |
Management |
Incredible bullies. Senior faculty twist arms to be non-working co-authors. Only tenured faculty can vote on any issue. This is a campus that operates with the style of an organized crime family. For a long time, faculty only came to campus M-Th, blowing off Friday. Many, many faculty have complete other 40-hr a week jobs, and don't show up for their office hours. In management, the MA level faculty were insulting, nasty bullies to anyone with a PhD. A majority of the non-tenured faculty have PhDs; a majority of the tenured faculty have masters only. Most faculty have "published" weak, disgraceful stuff like articles consisting only of bullets points with no abstract, citations, or bibliography. Competent non-tenured faculty are run off if they don't become the complete slaves of tenured morons. Avoid. Not really a college. |
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Oberlin College |
English |
Had what I thought was a lovely interview at MLA and never received a rejection letter. Contacted SC chair after a month or so to express my continued interest in the position (sad, I know) and was informed they had been very busy with their search and hadn't gotten around to notifying those people they weren't bringing to campus. Was told I remained a "candidate of interest," and was asked to update them with information about my search. This I did, again highlighting my interest in their position. Never heard another word. (2008)
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Oklahoma State U |
Spanish |
Friendly faculty. Dept. viewed as service department. Limited professionalization support. Never reimbursed. |
| Oklahoma State U | all | The administration is 100% top down. Faculty have little say about department functioning or their own teaching assignments. Longterm staff have more power than faculty. Some departments have graduates from their own program as faculty, more often than you would expect for this caliber of a university. Department heads and deans offices will promise things on interviews, but when one arrives on campus, the promises may not be kept. It is extremely tedious and time consuming to purchase items from start up packages or external grants. Central accounting sometimes calls with an accusatory tone suggesting that one has done something inappropriate. They treat faculty like criminals or naughty children. Getting reimbursed for travel or research purchases is slow and sometimes impossible. Most reduce professional travel because the hassle is too much. There are new buildings, but the ones that faculty and student use for academics and research are crumbling, flood frequently, have mold, have electrical problems. The unit on campus that should help with these things are slow, unwilling to do jobs, maybe incompetent. When a faculty member has a problem, there is no real grievance procedure that works to bring resolution. Even when a grievance committee rules in favor of someone, the administration (according to the faculty handbook) are under no obligation to accept the verdict or take any action at all. |
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Pacifica Graduate Institute |
All Programs |
Took a position here and regretted it immediately. No infrastructure, no support, no funding for faculty. Programs rely heavily on adjuncts who are paid the lowest rate I've heard of. Lots of talk about myth, spirit, psyche and "tending the soul of the world," but this is a deeply profit-driven institution with no integrity. 90% of hires are internal. |
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Prairie View A&M University |
Sociology |
Never tenure anyone, ever, regardless of quality. Equal opportunity. Black turned down as often as white. Tenure lines extended illegally rather than tenure person sometimes. Tenured sociology faculty cancel about half their classes. One faculty told students that she was cancelling because she had a beauty shop appointment. One tenured faculty used a non-tenured faculty as a runner to pay her bills. |
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Pratt Institute |
Social Science & Cultural Studies |
Profoundly disorganized. Applied for a few openings over the years. Only heard from them if I received an interview. Received no acknowledgment or rejection in the other cases. Had a campus interview, which required a teaching demonstration, but never received a syllabus for the course I was visiting, despite my many requests for one. Half-a-dozen disciplines packed into one department with a chair who, from what I could tell, had no expertise in any of them. The dean was no better. Good luck. From all appearances, the faculty hate the students, themselves, and each other. Despite heavy application fee for grad program; absoultely no follow-up. No acceptance/rejection letter. Completely unacceptable.
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Providence College |
English |
Initial job posting asked for complete dossier (cover letter, curriculum vitae, official graduate transcript(s), a writing sample, and three letters of recommendation); cost a bundle for postage and dossier delivery service fee. The school then sent a notice to me (and, according to this wiki, multiple other applicants) that my materials had not been received, and that I had to rush delivery of materials if I wanted to be considered for the position. I spent an additional $12 rushing materials, only to find out many others were in the same boat. It seems pretty obvious that they lost a bunch of applicants' materials, yet they made it sound like it was my fault. Way to make the destitute applicants pay for your mistake. |
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Queens College, CUNY |
English |
NO rejection letter at ALL after MLA interviews. Chair was abrasive. One SC member airy and snobbish. Could have at LEAST sent a rejection note.
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Reed College |
Any |
You will meet with the Dean of the Faculty. You will expect this to be an occasion to address logistics and practicalities. Instead you will be grilled skeptically and condescendingly about your work for 29 minutes and then asked if you have any questions. Otherwise, a wonderful place, but be prepared for this if you interview there.
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Reed College |
English |
Was a finalist, and was treated incredibly rudely by two members of the search committee who favored an inside candidate (ultimately hired). Both were rude; one refused to speak to me during a candidate dinner (2 hours, sitting next to me); the other declared "I guess you think we're pretty stupid here!" early in a private meeting. Three other members of the department contacted me and essentially admitted the bad behavior of certain colleagues, who go overboard to get what they want. |
| Reed College |
French |
Terrible communicators. After interviewing me at the MLA in 2007, they never bothered to contact me, not even with a rejection letter. Unprofessional. |
|
Spanish |
The person who called me for an interview mixed me up with someone else and called at the wrong time based on the time zone. Think, my appointment was for nine in the morning and came at six. And the person was rude to me about it! Once we established that it was an error in time zones, the person did not apologize and was really somewhat belligerant throughout. I was very glad not to hear from them after that interview, and when I read the two above ("any" and "English") I got a little flashback of that interview. Wow, nervy, that's all I can say... | |
| Rider University | Sociology | 2009/10: Never reimbursed for travel expenses |
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Rocky Mountain College, MT |
Allied Health and Any |
They lost accreditation (under probation). Constant appeals and court cases. Very unstable and manipulative; humiliating. High turnover rate of staff/faculty (3 out of 10 left in several months). Some very nice people, but not the place to work. No care about your career. Be careful.
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| Rutgers-Newark | Sociology | During the dinner part of my on-campus interview the chair's wife asked what my ethnicity was (I'm white/mediterranian and people often think I'm hispanic). I have no idea what that was about but I thought it was really weird. |
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Saginaw Valley State University |
Chemistry |
Worst interview ever.
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Saint Francis University |
History |
On-campus interview in January, no further contact for 4 months, then a hand-written note saying 'gee, I bet you already got a job." ....1-2005
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Saint Bonaventure University |
English |
Extremely congenial and pleasant on-campus interview last week of November for a January start date. Told before leaving campus I would hear from them the following week. No communication for weeks, not even in response to request for update on progress. Finally, on CHRISTMAS EVE I received an EMAIL REJECTION. Not the worst of nightmare stories, but not very considerate either. Posted 1/08 |
| St. John Fisher | English |
Racist, dismissive, and hostile. I was told before an on-campus teaching demonstration, "There won't usually be this many African-American students in your classes." A very bitter and hostile English faculty member barely lets anyone else in the department get a word in. It's obvious who's running the show, because the rest of the faculty and even the chair at the time seemed afraid to confront this person or even react to her outright racist comments. I hope they just brought me to campus as a placeholder because they already had someone in mind for the job. If this is how the department treats one of three candidates they selected for campus interviews (out of probably hundreds who applied), I hate to see how they treated the person who took the job. No wonder they're searching again so soon! |
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St. Joseph's University |
science |
Blatantly never reimbursed after several requests.
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Saint Vincent College |
English |
Campus visit accomodations include a room in a monastery replete with Jesus decorations apparently made by mental patients in the 1960s. Fifty year old twin bed and linens confiscated from a convent. No TV or hair dryer, of course (tonsures dry quick on their own). Jim Touey, new president, a good buddy of W. who reschedules your interview with him 6 times, then announces that he doesn't understand how you can possibly be interested in gender studies and uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church. On a good note: the bells from the Basilica will wake you up at 5 AM!
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San Jose State University |
English |
Entire department seemed pleasantly nutso, in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of way. Work load that would kill a mule. How is it, exactly, that the head of a MFA Program in Creative Writing does not have an actual book in his genre? Impending budget cuts should destroy any lingering morale.
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Sanford Brown College (Hazelwood campus, MO) |
Adjunct anatomy in physical therapy assistant program |
I taught A&P and after the first test, of 60+ students I only assigned 2 F's, albeit a lot of D's. The Dean told me I had too many F's in my class. It turns out that this for-profit college kicks you out of the program if you don't pass....and they don't let folks fail. My A&P lab had over 60 students in it and they were given a box with half a skeleton in it, a few extra skulls and then a few cats that were shared by over 10 students each. I quit in mid-semester due to ethical concerns. |
| Savannah State University | All |
Campus has a history of violence, including stabbings and shootings, but administration tries very hard to hide that information. Faculty are often not informed of incidents. Severe turnover among senior leadership. Provosts are replaced virtually every year (5th provost in 4 years about to be hired), deans and department chairs are fired or resign frequently. No explanation is ever given and there is zero transparency. This gives certain senior faculty a huge amount of power on campus. These faculty will frequently hold faculty lines open so that there is less competition for summer teaching and more opportunities for overloads. These senior faculty will frequently "take over" low level required classes in the summer to guarantee that they will be paid a full amount for summer teaching, while junior faculty suddenly can't teach classes they have been teaching through the academic year. These same senior faculty dump all busy service on junior faculty. This is reflected in salaries and resources. It is not uncommon for senior faculty to make over twice as much as a junior faculty. It is also not uncommon for senior faculty to have individual offices while assistant professors share offices with 2, 3 or 4 other faculty. Administration has zero respect for faculty time. "Mandatory" meetings, trainings, advising sessions are frequently announced with less than 24 hour notice, during instructional or office hours. These meetings and trainings are generally useless, and will revolve around another 1 hour speech by the president. These take precedence over everything, with faculty who had scheduled and approved conference travel sometimes being asked to cancel those plans. It is absolutely unclear who gets promoted, who gets merit raises, and who is summarily dismissed or denied tenure. Some protected faculty will miss all meetings and service obligations and receive a merit raise, while others who have published, have good student evaluations and do their share of service get no raise, or don't get their contracts renewed. Tenure is also a fiction, as tenured faculty have to undergo a "post tenure review." This creates massive turnover at the junior level, with few faculty ever staying more than 2 or 3 years. The president's budget and mission seems to be to reward herself and her leadership. Open Georgia records indicate that SSU's president has spent more on travel than any other president of the University System of Georgia, something that has happened every year since 2014. In 2014, for example, she spent more on travel than the presidents of Georgia Tech, Georgia State and the University of Georgia (the three flagship research institutions) combined. Meanwhile, faculty often have to buy their own printer paper for lack of resources. In order to sustain all this spending on leadership. the university has no mission or vision, other than keeping enrollment as high as possible for as long as possible. Add/drop dates are changed every semester after it has started so that more students can be enrolled (sometimes students attend class for the first time one month into the semester), faculty are asked to personally call prospective students and students who have not re-enrolled, and there is a general pressure to lower standards so that more students graduate. The president has suggested that faculty should not ban cell phones in class and should tolerate tardiness of over 10 minutes. The former head of institutional assessment once suggested getting rid of textbooks and using wikipedia links instead.
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Shepherd University |
English |
They see themselves as the “Ivy on the Potomac”. Recent university status. President has denied raises for faculty for 2 year even though there was funding to give raises. The English dept (where I interviewed) has several passive-aggressive personalities (esp. senior faculty). The head of English ed program is a real piece of work…beware! I passed.
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Slippery Rock University |
Geography |
Very bad communication. SCC was exceptionally curt in emails. In face-to-face meeting at AAG, apparently were "confused" about search progress saying the apps had not been reviewed at all. Found out a few weeks later that apps had been reviewed and that candidates had been brought to campus to interview before AAG even happened! Posted 2009.
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Slippery Rock University |
History |
On-campus interview, but no further communication after that. Posted 12/07
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Southern illinois University-Edwardsville |
Biology |
Lost my application packet twice, after sending messages confirming receipt! 2004 |
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Stephen F Austin |
English |
Awful, terrible place, from former employee .......................11-2007.... English dept. is troubled.... other depts. are excellent and very collegial (history, sociology, poli sci).
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Stephen F Austin |
Forestry |
Phone interview, then sent numerous emails and made several calls of inquiry w/othe decency of acknowledging my questions. Clearly, didn't hire me, but so rude on phone, I had already made my decision. |
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SUNY Institute of Technology |
Health Services Management |
Hired faculty under fraudulent circumstances. Chair of this department is apparently a "chair for life," unlike any other department in the management school. No elections ever. Twisted untenured faculty arms in at least two cases to be non-working co-author. One left; one non-renewed after 11 out of 12 good teaching evals, four articles and a book in press in two years. MBA and unpublished faculty make fun of PhD and productive faculty. History of corruption on campus generally. Ex-dean hired to give a yearly talk touting his investment business using $1,000 in union funds as honorarium. Many tenured management faculty have 40 hour off-campus jobs. This violates NY public officers law. Decent president run off by faculty and deans when he showed signs of reforming campus. |
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Sweet Briar College |
Art History |
Brought to SBC to interview for a three-year position I was met by the passive-aggressive professor and his ditsy wife, who, after a token campus tour, abandoned me for a day and a half in the wilderness that is SBC. Nothing to do, no place to eat after breakfast.I only hung on because the prof told me that he was going to see that I got on-campus housing. Turns out he'd been told weeks earlier (before I even had applied) by the Committee that no way would this position rate on-campus housing. I got the job (who else would do this?) but turned it down. It took them 2 years to find someone else. |
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Sweet Briar College |
? |
Unwilling to schedule a phone interview in lieu of a conference interview, even though SC chair expected me to go to a conference I was not planning to attend with less than two weeks notice. Their initial response to the knowledge I was not attending the conference addressed me by my first name and was written in a tone worthy of scolding a petulant child. This email also made me feel that being ABD was some sort of disease and I should be grateful that I was being considered for the job at all since their other candidates were supposedly much more qualified. I wrote back to them explaining that my inability to attend the conference was due to my full-time job and all of my potential job substitutes were presenting at the conference in question, leaving me stuck at work or faced with losing my job for having to close the facility I work in to comply with their interview request-- which would compromise my professional integrity in a job directly related to my specialty field. Their second response was more formal and claimed to understand my situation, yet they refused to schedule a phone interview and told me they would contact me if other options arose. I never heard from them again. Apparently, some schools expect applicants to kowtow to their interview demands even when hotel rooms and plane tickets are nowhere to be found for the destination in question. Lesson learned: Plan on going to the conference in question until I get a job. |
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Texas A&M University-Texarkana |
all |
the dead end of dead ends |
|
Texas A&M University-Texarkana |
doesn't matter |
administration lost my tenure portfolio. |
| Texas A&M University--Texarkana |
all |
I have it on very good authority that the MANY previous negative comments here about the institution were summarily erased by members of the administration. I think this tells you everything you need to know.
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Texas Tech Univ. |
Natural Resources Mgmt. |
What a hick place. Good ole boys run the place. High teaching loads, lousy pay, and turnover like you would not believe. Church on every corner, cotton fields as far as you can see. Herbicide and cow poo smell everywhere. |
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Texas Tech U |
English |
Interviewed at MLA, but never contacted again. Rejection came in the form of a bizarre boilerplate email from "Human" resources. Just not courteous behavior. 2007 search.
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| Texas Tech U | Comm |
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Tulane U |
English |
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Trinity C, Hartf. |
Lang & Culture Studies, Spanish |
More than a place to fear, this one is a place to avoid, unless you are desperate.
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U of Alabama-Birmingham |
English |
They contacted me by email about a VAP position, wanting to set up a phone interview. I provided a phone number where I could be reached at one of only three hours they had available. Three days before the interview, they wrote to confirm date and time--they had the wrong phone number, so I again provided the one to use. I sit by the phone--no one calls. I go home, and they had left messages on my home number--never checked the two emails I sent, apparently, and just called any old number they found on my cv (including trying me at my departmental office--who's taking calls there?). I check my rage, and email them (this is now a weekend), politely reminding that I had waited patiently for their call, and asking if we could reschedule a time (while knowing perfectly well that some or all of the members would be pissed off at me, or the search chair for screwing up the number). On Monday, I receive an email telling me that they only had that time set aside, and have had to make their decision. THEN TRY TO PASS THE BLAME ON TO ME!! The chair never once acknowledged any fault or mistake and showed not one bit of common human decency in her reply. I sent a message to all of the committee members describing this and noting that their (her) behavior told me all I needed to know about working in that department. 2/08 |
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U of Alabama-Birmingham |
English |
Dysfunctional department. There is a high turnover of junior faculty, especially in creative writing. The department is still recovering after three years of no real leadership. The new chair seems promising but is still in his honeymoon period. The faculty has not yet turned against him. In terms of sexism, this is a very sexist department, sadly. |
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U. Alabama - Tuscaloosa |
English |
4/4 load, but most non-TT faculty must teach 5/5 or moonlight to eat. Non-TT faculty prevented from teaching graduate and some upper division classes, while forced to do "service" (admin) work. Overload classes NOT counted as service for non-TT faculty. Non TT-faculty not allowed to teach large classes or have teaching asistants (no matter how many students you teach). No say in faculty governance. Not allowed to represent department on campus committees. (FYI, those are departmental decisions, not College or University rules.) Recently forced non-TT faculty from shared offices into cubicle farm - imagine trying to prep in a windowless room with 25 other instructors. Old offices awarded to undergrad orgs. Below average salary, no research support, travel support only for pedagogy conferences. Faculty refuse to hire current non-TT faculty into open TT positions. End-of-year evals done by random chance. If the first comment the Chair sees is positive, you're a good teacher. If the first comment she sees is negative, you may be fired. Tuscaloosa has a very low standard of living, unless you want to drink beer and watch football. NO COFFEE SHOPS, little in the way of art, cinema, yoga/alternative healing, organic, etc. While these are available, there is typically only one provider in the city. Restaurants vary from bland to poor. Cost of living is very high (more than New Orleans, Austin, or Atlanta). |
|
U of Alaska Anchorage |
? |
I was hired as a Term Instructor and accepted the position. It's an open secret at this university that term instructors (who comprise 1/3 of the faculty) are bombarded with service obligations, nearly on par with tenure-track faculty, while they do not have the job security or rights of tenure-track members. My list of service obligations is growing, and I have very little in the way of stopping it. After a year, I can say that while it's possible to get some research done in my free time, I have really struggled to do this, and sometimes had so many service obligations that I had trouble keeping up with my teaching. Another issue: while I have been promised a renewal of my contract back in October, this still hasn't happened and will not happen until August. Do they really expect absolutely everyone who is hired (out of a national market, in many cases, and with Ph.D.s in hand for this kind of position) to sit in Alaska, not apply for jobs because they've been made a verbal promise, and wait anxiously for their contracts to be renewed / non-renewed? It's humiliating and unsettling not to know for sure if I have a job with them next year. There is also a slew of other issues for term instructors that they will not tell you about until you suddenly find yourself in a really messy situation. That said, I love my students, many of my colleagues are great people, and we have many talented, motivated ones up here. It's a joy to teach here, it pays really well (as well as a tenure-track job would), and Alaska is beautiful. I just wish I had more time to teach, and to do my own stuff.
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| University of Alaska Anchorage | Math & Natural Sciences | Hired as a TT faculty at UAA and left in a few years. It's a beautiful campus, and there are some good people around, but there are several problems with this place. AVOID this place at any cost if you can.
1. The university has been underfunded for several years. The university has been going through prioritization every few years. It went through financial exigency for a few months in 2019. The faculty had to complete an expedited review of all the departments and justify their presence. Read the news. Quite a few departments and programs are being eliminated. A few TT faculties in the university have been shown the door (or had to find another program), whose programs are going to be discontinued. It can happen to any department. Highly stressful and uncertain situation. Low morale among faculty. It'll take years to build up this place. 2. Declining student enrollment is a big issue in an expensive place like Alaska (which already has a meager population). Few students from the lower-48 go up to this place for studies. You often run the risk of your classes being canceled. 3. Some departments (Geology and Biology, etc.) have been losing TT faculty every ~2/3 years, which is very high compared to other schools. Also, some departments have had several failed searches again and again. This itself speaks of the atmosphere in some departments and the college. It's not a very collegial—hostile work environment. 4. This is an open-access university serving the local community. However, this also means you'll get students who are highly underprepared for college studies. Good and rigorous student research can be a far cry. This will affect your teaching and research in a few years after joining. 5. It's a very solitary and laid-back place, not for everyone. Most people just do their bare minimum. Once you are stuck and do not publish good research articles, it'll be significantly hard to get out of this place when the budget deficit hits hard and affects your department. Beware of this place! 6. The research administration office has been highly disorganized for years. They have lost research staff in that office regularly. This makes negotiating with sponsors very hard and not always timely. 7. Unnecessary red tapes are everywhere! For simple agreements (that would take 1-3 months in other places), they can take up to nine months. Not enough accountability. 8. Good-quality research activities in the sciences are not always encouraged and supported. 9. The library does not have enough books in sciences, but they got recent books in comics. 10. This may apply to people of color. Although the student population is highly diverse, you may be the only faculty of color on the building floor where your office is. In some departments, there is a high degree of implicit bias. Perhaps, this also affects recruiting to an extent. 11. The pay is not good enough for TT faculty in sciences in an expensive place like Alaska. 12. Not enough employment opportunities for spouses.
Although the university cannot do anything about this, the adverse nature must be mentioned. 1. Beware of large earthquakes (M> 5). It can happen anytime. 2. Beware of bears and moose on the campus. 3. Campus roads are not regularly plowed after snow. Icy road conditions remain there until April/May. 4. The winter is long and dark, and many people get depressed and become unproductive. |
|
U of Alberta |
Mod lang |
Rude young colleagues, borderline hateful/psycho (they preferred another candidate, yet this is not the way to act in a professional setting). Unnecesary hostility. They hate their students, and older colleagues. Jan 2008. |
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U of Arkansas Little Rock |
Modern Languages |
Dysfunctional department. Chair is wonderful and supportive, but high turnover among junior faculty. Conflict between senior faculty and administration, between senior faculty and junior faculty in recent past.
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UC Berkeley |
Humanities |
Department chair scheduled a phone interview, but never called. It took months to schedule a campus visit and SC changed the format of job talk at the last minute. On campus: there was no meeting with the dean, some faculties were hostile and said they didn't want to hire anyone, one SC member cancelled dinner meeting while the other showed up 40 minutes early, department chair cancelled an interview at whim, program director failed to show up for his own interview, university librarian stood up the candidate and later explained that nobody made an appointment with him that day. One outside faculty warned that the department was trying hard to sabotage this job search and was too dysfunctional to do anything. Was asked inappropriately personal questions. No official rejection call or mail. |
|
U of California-Irvine |
Art History |
What a low-class institution! I received this email rejection:"Dear applicants to the position in early modern art at UCI:Please pardon this group e-mail, but writing in this manner will get the word out to you all sooner than if we took the time to write individual letters.I want to let you know that the position is now filled. The pool this year was extraordinarily strong, and our faculty felt that a very large number of applicants would have been able to make a contribution to UCI. We are grateful to you all for the time you devoted to preparing your materials for our consideration. I wish you all the best in your future professional endeavors, Sincerely, ***** [Commitee Chair]"
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| U of California-San Diego | Communication | Department extended an offer to my friend and then rescinded it without a logical reason. They claimed it was because friend wasn't graduating in May (despite friend having finished the dissertation to be defended in June and making that timeline clear in the cover letter, and despite advisor offering to push up the defense after the rescinded offer). When friend's advisor called department to offer to push up the defense date, department urged his advisee to reapply in the future. |
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University of Central Arkansas |
Biology |
The department had some kind of strange weirdness about it. I interviewed with each faculty member individually and all had different and incompatible versions of what was required for tenure. A few faculty, whom I was familiar with, were very nice, but most turned me off. They have instructors that throw their weight around as if they have superior stature to other faculty, and to some extent appear to be treated superiorly. During my talk, one temporary/permanent instructor (not a professor)continually interrupted me with some of the more idiotic questions I had ever heard. Then, to top it off, no students and only a few faculty showed up in the evening social! When I came to the school, I was somewhat familiar with it. I brought my wife and told her to scope out the housing market because I would get the offer. I did get the offer. After the crazy interview process, I turned it down. I did like the campus and the region, but the department was the most bizarre places I ever visited. And, I've been around! |
|
University of Chicago |
Art History |
I've seen this often enough I feel someone should comment. Beware of Chicago's annual pancosmic/panchronic, fake tenure-track searches that inevitably 'fail'. They have become a laughing stock or pariah for this (depending on if you have a job or not). Every to every other year they put out an absurdly wide call in three or more fields simultaneously. Some of these are lines still open from a faculty member expiring or retiring years past which they don't want to lose, but can't agree among themselves to fill. Approach it like buying a lottery ticket, but unless they contact you under the table, don't take it too seriously nor waste energy on it; (dates 2003-2009).
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University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music |
Musicology |
extremely dysfunctional department, full of bad politics and sniping; students regularly bad-mouth the dept at conferences and there is a high attrition rate. Standards for tenure are really low, so I guess if you want to slack and still get tenure, this is the place. 2005
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University of Guelph |
Engineering |
There are 7 engineering programs in this school. All of them have low standard due to administrator's interfering with faculty's teaching. The director of the school bends the system for keeping the system going. No academic freedom or whatsoever. The morale and the spirit is poor and low. |
|
University of Guelph |
Biology |
Every candidate interviewed for the position had such a horribly negative experience that at a conference we got together for a beer to commiserate. One candidate was so angered by the experience that they contacted the chair of the dept (who was also the chair of the search committee) to complain, and was told that the interview process also involved role-playing to determine which candidate best performed in a hostile and confrontational work environment. If that was their criteria for hiring, I'd hate to see what a bunch of a-holes populate the department. One committee member did such a good job of being a class-A prick I was convinced it wasn't acting. To this day, because of him, I view anyone who researches small mammal ecology with contempt and disdain. Needless to say, the person who was offered the job accepted it but then spent the first year searching for another job elsewhere, and then got the hell out of there. Perhaps things are different with a new department chair and a departmental re-organization, but Dr. Prick is still there, so I'd be sure to double-check he's not on the hiring committee if you apply.--Since you don't give his name, how will we know if he is or not? And I hope you're joking about your own prejudice. If so, it ain't funny. Don't mistreat some hapless small mammal ecologist candidate someday because you had one bad experience. - - He's the only small mammal ecologist in the department, so it isn't hard to figure out. And yes, I was joking - I know some very nice mammalian ecologists. |
| University of Hawaii-West O'ahu | History | [4/2020] The first red flag was when I received an email from the academic personnel specialist assisting with the search last December 10, letting me know that an email had been sent to me via NeoGov on Nov 29 to invite me for a Skype interview. I checked all of my folders, including junk mail, but I couldn't find the email. The SC also gave me a specific date for the interview, Dec 18, and a choice of two time slots, both of which were during an already-scheduled flight. Fortunately, the SC agreed to reschedule the interview.
Eventually, I received a campus visit. The chair and another academic personnel specialist assisting with the search answered all of my pre-visit questions and gave me a schedule in a timely manner. After arriving from halfway around the world, my Feb 3 visit overall was fine--the chair was very gracious and enthuasiastic about me, everyone else seemed nice, and I had a positive impression of the university. The only hiccup was a scheduling mistake that the chair made--I ended up only meeting with one of the two vice-chancellors for academic affairs for a rushed 10 minutes. The other VC assured me (echoed by the chair) that I would hear back within a week or two. More than 3 weeks later, nothing. On Feb 26, I emailed the first academic personnel specialist I mentioned for an update, as well as reminding him that if anything was emailed via NeoGov, that I probably hadn't received it. He responded, saying a decision hadn't been made yet, and it was still with the VC who was making the final selection. Another week and a half--nothing. So I emailed the SC on March 5 for an update--he said the search had not yet closed, and couldn't say more. Again, nothing, until March 18, when I emailed the academic personnel specialist for another update. No response. It had been a month and a half since my campus visit. I also knew that much of the country, including many universities, were starting to shut down, so I took that into consideration. So I waited some more. Until April 9, when I emailed the SC for yet another update. The next day he responded, wondering why I hadn't heard from the VCAA's office, because they had, in fact, finally selected a candidate and closed the search. The following week, on April 16, I received an email from the academic personnel specialist, apologizing for the fact that I never received the formal rejection letter that was dated on 3/30, and that was sent via NeoGov--the same service they used to send the Skype interview email that I never received, and that I reminded him in my first email requesting an update. The rejection letter itself was a form letter consisting of two sentences. Basically, "Thanks, Nope, Bye." So, it took UHWO almost two months to close the search, never sent me updates unless I asked for one (and even after the timeline surpassed the 1-2 week timeline I was given), didn't respond to one of my requests for an update, and couldn't even correctly send me the formal rejection letter that barely acknowledged my efforts or existence. Again, I want to take into account the current pandemic and how much it's disrupted searches and univerities in general, but c'mon. This was absolutely ridiculous. Proper, timely, and humane communication can and should still take place even during a pandemic. My mentors and colleagues agree--this is not how a search should be run. |
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University of Idaho |
Any |
[5/19] The university is dysfunctional at several levels and been mismanaged for a long time. The worst part is that there is no accountability for the mess created by the administrators. The incomptency and bureucracy has percolated to all levels of heirarchy and is visible in all aspects.
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Black Studies |
campus visit, then nary a word from them ever again. | |
| University of Illinois at Chicago |
This institution eats its young. Heads are rolling high and low and this is not a safe place to entrust with your career.
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Univ of Kentucky |
Geography |
A whole department of pompous assholes! Their reputation, which in human geography is good, is not even that well-deserved. I've never felt so uncomfortable or so unwelcome in all my life. At conferences since, these assholes don't even make eye contact. Posted 2009. |
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Univ of Kentucky |
English/Rhet-Comp |
These folks aren't really to be feared, but they should be taken to task for failure to build collegiality or confidence, esp. since both seem key to achieving all they want to achieve for RC. For starters, MLA interviews were conducted by only one person in the field. Bodes strange for a group that's bigger than that and eager to build. Also may be a sign that RC is doomed to follow the beck/call of lit and linguistics, the dominant areas in that department. Next, that one RC person seemed defensive about hir recent decisions and accomplishments, and s/he also seemed somewhat competitive with more than one candidate. Last, this is a group that needs to heed #12 on the Dear Search Committees page. |
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Univ. of Louisville |
All |
Except for some, faculty was ok. Some centers with ethics problems. Interview lunch/dinner include family members of faculty (inappropriate use of the university funding). I was called to show up, but no faculty there; Promises not warranted; Disorganized; Questions not answered. Offers inconsistent among candidates. Before accepting an offer, better to check if faculty leaves recently. (Agree with what the above has to say, many times over. Had a professor tell me: "Why do you want to study public housing? They should just bulldoze it all." History department is full of old, white men, like the example I just gave. Sad, because the city itself seemed somewhat interesting.) |
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Univ. of Louisville |
Gheens Center |
Explained the job as a 5 year contract, but it was annual contract. The way how the center is handled is micromanipulative and self-centered. It is painful to see happy faces of faculties and postdocs are becoming gloomy. Good faculties left. Is it appropriate that a director at a medical school cannot secure a NIH grant for her lab? Much effort is not on good science. The director's attendance is poor; she is mostly at home, claiming full time. Unless collaborate with her, you will have hard time getting signature, using facility and equipment; or may be forced out for no reason (she is good at making up). Unhealthy center at any level. |
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U. of Maryland, Baltimore County |
All |
I know processing new employees takes time and doesn't always go smoothly, but you would think this university would treat their new employees a bit more nicely and set the right tone. No. The university did not pay me or give me healthcare for the first several months, while they processed my employment paperwork with the State of Maryland. Instead of telling me in advance about this extended delay (which they knew happens with every new hire every year), they told us on the first day of orientation. Instead of seeming embarrassed or apologetic, the staff joked that I shouldn't get sick in the meanwhile and said I shouldn't have waited until the orientation to start the paperwork. Of course, I was not told about this problem at any point during my interview, campus visit, negotiation process, or apartment trip after I had accepted the offer. Instead of helping me, they blamed me for not knowing about a bureaucratic process that they never told me about. In the end, I had to spend hundreds of dollars on independent healthcare during these months, all the while working without pay. There are serious problems at this university when it comes to providing healthcare and other forms of support such as parental leave to their employees. I cannot imagine what the experience would be like for someone who is in a service position, adjucting, or not tenured. UMBC owes me thousands of dollars in research expenses, which they haven't reimbursed me for more than 9 months. The department says it's up to Business Services. Business Services says it's up to the State of Maryland. The State of Maryland says it's up to UMBC. Round and round it goes. Meanwhile, faculty are essentially subsidizing the university with their meager salaries! All of this is taking place during COVID-19 and eviction extensions, when people need money the most. I really don't understand why people keep saying UMBC is one of the best places to work for. I ended up paying sales tax on my department purchases and income tax when they reimbursed me. This is ridiculous. My department really doesn't care they would rather make me lose money than be competent. |
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U. of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) |
Information Systems |
A committee member directly asked me during campus interview: "I see you have a beautiful ring. Are you married?" and followed up with: "So, what your husband is going to do if you come work here in our department?" |
|
U. of Maryland, College Park |
Communication |
Has plenty of good people, but it's been in a transition phase for the past several years and is prone to in-fighting and factionalism. Not necessarily a terrible place to end up, but not a model for a functional department either. UM's teaching and service requirements are overwhelming in comparison to peer institutions. 2015 Update: It's been 5 years since I wrote the above entry. The communication department has changed significantly during that time, mostly for the better. I would still advise that job applicants ask lots of questions about department culture, to make sure it's a good "fit" for them. |
| University of Maryland College Park | Public Health |
There are some very good, kind people scattered around, but SPH is an intensely dysfunctional school with some very underqualified, scheming, temporary or pernicious administration at all levels. Would suggest extreme caution before taking a position here. Bait and switch. |
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UMass-Boston |
Performing Arts |
For a position in musicology, the one musicologist in the department (a female) was excluded from the all-male search committee and then forcibly prevented from attending the question and answer session! What woman would accept a job there?! No else in the department even participated in the visit or observed. |
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University of Miami |
Art History |
In many schools, the combination of the Art and Art History departments is a bit uncomfortable. At UM the pairing is poisonous. The administration supposedly doesn't like art history and so have allowed the M.A. program (the only one in S. Florida) to die. Art historians who leave are not replaced. This all pleases most of the Studio Art people, especially the two co-chairs, for they believe that they will be able to pick up the "extra" positions and funds. There is no art history chair; major duties (planning courses, scheduling, picking faculty) are allowed to be carried out by the undereducated, untrained, and not very bright slide librarian. The 3 tenured faculty (it was 10 a few years ago) are paid a great deal more and teach many fewer courses than I did. My 2-year lecturer position, for which I was paid $30,000 per year, required teaching four courses of up to 40 students each semester. I got a raise in the second year only because one of the 2 senior faculty gave me his raise(!!) Of course, at least I had a fulltime job; most of the survey and some of the upper division courses are taught by M.A. adjuncts who survive by not assigning work and giving out lots of As--esp. to athletes. The one thing that makes this bearable is that most of the students are intelligent, cheerful, and willing to work. A clamorous minority are not; they will cheat in any way possible and the Art dept chairs do not support the professor who objects. There is no support for research or any sort of funding for the lecturer. You are pressured to take on extra work, such as Honors classes, but given no support or acknowledgment. What's bizarre is that art history classes are very popular: this could easily be a thriving department producing distinguished graduates. Go on welfare instead of working here.
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Univ. of Michigan |
History |
Applied for a job, had a conference interview at the AHA. After that, nothing. The chair of the search committee wouldn't return my emails and, when I ran into her at a conference later in the spring, she refused to talk to me or make eye contact. Totally unprofessional.
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Univ. of Michigan Dearborn |
Humanities |
Twice I have applied for advertised adjunct positions. The first time I received no acknowledgment or rejection. The second time I applied, I contacted the department to confirm receipt of my application, to which they replied they would send a "formal letter" "soon." I never received a letter. Of course, this isn't the end of the world, but frustrating and indicative of a general lack of professionalism (or tendency to treat adjunct instructors as slightly sub-human) :) 2006 & 2007. |
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University of Nevada-Reno |
All |
I don't even know what to believe anymore. I was offered a tenure track job here. I had a signed contract. Before I took the job, I asked the provost point blank about the budget issue and he assured me that tenure track faculty would be the last to go and that the search wouldn't have been authorized if it was in danger. Two weeks after I accepted and turned down other interviews (at schools I was very interested in!) that same provost cut the whole department claiming "budget" and suddenly rendered me without a job. The chair was so sympathetic and nice, and then I discover he's been telling other people for months he thought the department might be toast. Many other job searches in a bunch of departments were suddenly pulled and candidates were told way after the fact. Even after this, I found myself embroiled in nasty politics amongst all these dysfunctional untrustworthy folks. I'm not going there. I don't know who amongst them was honest. I don't know how I could know. That provost is now president and the dean who also misled me is provost. And now all I know is STEER CLEAR. If nothing else, nobody wants to stay in a smoky casino with thin, thin walls. Yuck. |
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University of New Hampshire |
Women's Studies and English; Languages, Literatures and Cultures |
I would seriously caution anyone entertaining the possibility of going to UNH. I went through the interview process and was in talks with one of the committee members who was not only insulting and officious, but the offer was nearly 20k than what I am getting now as an ABD instructor who will defend in April. They did offer the caveat that I could adjunct to "make up" the difference to bring it to a still less than livable wage. We all understand that in this current economic environment hard choices are being made, but what you "live with" should be "livable." The head of the search committee, after asking me if the "salary" was a problem, felt it necessary to add "Well, some of the other candidates don't have a problem with the money." When I asked about supplementing the income, I was informed that other teaching could be offered. So... full load teaching, and still not making enough to pay rent, loans, etc? What concerns me most is the unabashed rudeness and complete disrespect for me and my work. After apparently interviewing successfully with them at MLA, I found that I was being reassessed by the "smaller committee" before being presented to the larger search committee of eight members. If you are going to apply for a "joint appointment" that means dealing with twice the personalities and dysfunction. Buyer beware. If my experience is an any indication of their "practices," think twice. 1/28 The head of the search committee in LLC tried to find out what my religion was by asking for my opinion on YMCA and my marital status by asking about my living situation at home. I assume the department was worried about retaining faculty in a cold climate and remote region. So they wanted someone who was religious and married with children. It was one of the worst violations of ethical interview rules I've experienced. In my case, UNH did not fully reimburse me for the campus interview. I had asked beforehand about their reimbursement policy and followed it. Then, they tried to avoid reimbursing me after the fact. If you think about their deeds, it doesn't matter how nice they are with their words. Be careful about what you're getting into. Perhaps much has changed. I received a full reimbursement for my campus visit. My campus interview went extremely well. Everyone with whom I interacted was professional and respectful. I could tell that they had read my file closely. The faculty that I met were collegial and smart. My negotiations with the Dean--particulary salary--were quite successful. I have nothing but positive things to say about UNH--both the Women's Studies program, the English Department, and the administration. (12/21/2016) |
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University of New Haven |
Communication |
Ad said opening was to start in spring or fall term, I applied in October, was brought to campus and offered the position--but only if I came in January. Current school wouldn't let me out of contract and the New Haven chair threw a fit even though they had misled, claiming I told him I could come in January (100% false--all I said I could do was ask to get out of my contract). So I waited months to get reimbursed for plane and rental car. Repeated emails and calls went unanswered. I finally mailed a bill to the business office--that got their attention! The guy threw a fit again, the dean's office called apologizing and eventually I got paid. Unstable department at an otherwise nice school. -- How recent was this? |
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University of North Texas |
Biology |
Never reimbursed for part of travel expenses ...................Spr 2007 |
| University of North Texas | UNT System Business Service Center 1112 Dallas Dr. Ste. 4000 Denton TX 76205 |
Excessive bullying and mobbing by Administrative staff to underlings. Past UNT business officers have a sorted history of cooking the books (google it). Working here is hell on earth. |
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University of the Pacific |
Biology |
Be very wary of the Biology Department at UOP. In 2009 they had phone interviews followed by campus interviews for five candidates and found NONE OF THEM SUITABLE. They video tape your teaching demo and then basically use that as ammunition for why they shouldn't hire you by picking apart the candidate's teaching. Then, someone from the search committee posted horribly negative comments on the Ecology wiki about the job candidates- telling the entire wiki they were horrible teachers and shouldn't have applied for a job at UOP because it is a teaching school. The search committee member then went on to diss previously hired faculty on the wiki by saying they wish they hadn't hired the person because they were now seeing what a bad teacher they were. The department is relatively small and appears extremely disfunctional and back-stabbing. Run for your lives! |
| University of South Carolina | Management Infomation Systems | A generally typical on-campus interview. They were asking for two top tier journal publications per year along with a full teaching schedule. I was asked by the department chair if I was lying about a large, multi-year grant award I had co-authored. No, I wasn't lying but this question was a first for me! The chair seemed puzzled by my quick departure from her car when we arrived at the airport for my departing flight. |
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University of South Florida |
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Univ of Southern Alabama |
Geography |
Not sure why they interviewed me. They (by one faculty member's own admission) already knew who they were going to hire before they called me up! Too bad, the people seemed nice otherwise, despite their subtlely racist comments. Still, big waste of my time and a detriment to my opinion of the university and department. Posted 2009. |
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Univ of Southern Indiana |
English/Lib Arts |
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| Univ of Southern Maine | All | Talks the diversity talk but is 100% committed to colorblindness. Any efforts focused on institutional racism or on students/staff/faculty of color are sabatoged; all the while, the white administration and faculty whine about working in "the whitest state in the country." Toxic environment for POC. Also see other user's comment on the University of Maine System. |
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University of Tampa |
English |
Interviewed with them at the 2008 MLA in San Francisco. I think that the chair was badly hung over, or possibly even still drunk - she barely spoke, we were in her room, and the empty wine bottle was prominent. The other interviewer shuffled randomly through my papers, picking questions as she noticed particular lines. Also, we started late, they didn't apologize, and they didn't even, technically, introduce themselves. I was utterly embarrassed - for them.
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University of Texas, El Paso |
English |
Had an interview several years ago, for which one member of the search committee wasn't present, the chair napped for several minutes (I'm not kidding), and the third person, a junior member, cringed in horror.
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University of Texas, El Paso |
Mathematics | Was not re-hired as a full-time lecturer because my pass rates in Calculus 1 weren't high enough. I was informed of this decision in April (2009), hardly a good time to begin looking for a new position for August. Fortunately, I had been planning to leave anyway, since the previous summer (June 2008) all the lecturers in mathematics were summarily fired and told to reapply for their jobs for Fall - and our teaching load was raised (from 12 to 15 hours). |
| University of Texas, El Paso | Administration | I worked at this university from 2012-2014, and it is a poorly run excuse for an educational institution. People hire their unqualified friends into positions of power. Since no one has any prior experience in education and/or leadership, they rely on backstabbing, gossip, and bullying to "motivate" employees. Good luck getting anything done on campus. Every office is full of excuses, and operates on the CYA policy. Not a pleasant place to work. |
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University of Toronto |
Cinema |
Time wasters who keep posting and re-posting their job ads. Their sense of self-worth is not matched by their facilities and autonomy in the UT itself. |
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University of Toronto |
Jackman Humanities Institute |
This is for their postdoctoral fellowship. Their online application system is a total mess, leading to endless error messages and the inability to actually upload documents. On top of that, they posted a Dec. 2nd deadline on multiple pages of their website in the last few days leading up to the deadline (originally it had been Dec. 1), but then claimed it was a mistake and did not accept applications received on the 2nd. AND still refused to aknowledge that there were big problems with their application system. Clueless and arrogant.
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University of Vermont |
Art History |
Well, it's been accepted by someone since the UVM Jobs machine just emailed it out. Wishing all the best to whoever took the job -- seems like you'll have some wonderful colleagues!
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University of Vermont |
English |
Asked me to wait outside for 15 minutes before MLA interview so that they could finish reading my materials, almost making me late for my next interview. First question was about how anyone "could possibly care" about the field in which they were hiring. Then launched abruptly into a disquisition proving the inferiority of my university town to Burlington. Got competitive about a prominent theorist who had lectured at UVM, claiming I couldn't possibly be right about this theorist because he had met him personally. Didn't end up hiring anyone for the position. Never received a rejection letter. Lousy interview (on their part). They changed interview time on me twice before the date of interview, and then began my interview eleven minutes late. Two junior faculty and the dept. chair were the committee--basically one junior faculty was trying to show up the other and show off for the dept. chair. It was all totally childish. The questions were absurd--I was asked to provide two sample syllabuses of courses I'd like to teach in their department to upper-division majors and minors; in the interview, they asked noted that they didn't know most of the texts on the syllabus, and therefore students wouldn't either, and asked me to explain how I would make these courses accessible to freshman and sophomores--what a joke. They were also very rude and presumptious. They think everyone envies their jobs. UVM is falling apart (has been for years) and foreign languages is becoming laughable.
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Univ of West Georgia |
English |
Total jerks during the interview, it was appalling. Their search ended up failing, too. No wonder. 2006/07.
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University of West Georgia |
Foreign Languages |
Run. . .do not walk. . .
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University of Wisconsin at La Crosse |
English |
This department is so bitterly divided, they have no sense of who they are or how they come off to others. During my interview, I got the distinct impression that they were hiding things from me -- especially the professors in the department who are unhappy here and there seem to be LOTS of them. When I took a job at another school, one of the search committee members tried to convince me that a 4/4 load really was less stressful than a 3/3 load. I didn't buy it.
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University of Wisconsin Platteville |
All |
While there are certainly a great many nice, competent people, and some small islands of professionalism in the storm, the cannibalistic culture of University of Wisconsin-Platteville would become apparent if one could see the number of people who flee—or at least attempt to flee—every year, a phenomenon which is not relegated to one particular discipline or college; however, Social Sciences, English, Education, Music, and Geography are particularly crazy and destructive to people who work in these departments (be forewarned!); faculty tend to be defensive, territorial, and resentful of anyone involved in research and publication. Those faculty who aren’t beaten down generally just go through the motions. Since so few of these folks involve themselves in anything other than sectarian politics and/or loud publication in vanity presses, expect to be inculcated with the “we are a teaching college” mantra if you even mention ongoing research. And the “teaching college” ideal actually seems to be damning to the university’s mission to teach—most teaching is only adequate and often sub-par (with exceptions, of course). Few ambitious, creative, capable professors stay for very long. And crazy can also be found in odd, random places such as IT (filled with rude and/or incompetent people), the “textbook rental center” (double ditto the previous), now the library, and even the bookstore (triple ditto). To make matters worse, the administration frequently pays outside “consultants” enormous amounts of money to advise them on how to run their own university, and admin has hired an increasing number of expensive administrative officers while faculty and staff are some of the lowest paid in the country (and don’t expect them to negotiate on salary). In addition, UWP has spent enormous amounts of money on technology which does not work (including the worst student-employee time-clock in existence); and spends a great deal of time, money, and energy on “diversity initiatives” in an overwhelmingly Caucasian population of students (the theory seems to be that as long as there’s ongoing rhetoric about “diversity,” perceived short-comings within a non-diverse community can be overcome). Okay, to be fair, Biology, Chemistry, and Math are fairly stable environments (so test the waters if you must), but the crazy sometimes even gets its tentacles into the college of engineering at this STEM school, and recently UWP has lost some of its very best engineering professors for ridiculous reasons. Their “US News” ranking and the university’s claim to an 80% acceptance rate are extremely dubious (the university admits virtually any student who applies). Take a job here only if you are desperate for employment and only if you have a reasonable plan to publish your way up the ladder in fairly short order. Take note you new-comers: publish! Publish! Publish! UWP should be a stepping stone, not a destination. Get out as soon as you can. [posted May 2014] |
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Vanderbilt |
Education |
No receipt of application, no communication at all, ignored my e-mails for more information, despite contacting the 'contact person' April, 2008
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Villanova |
Communication |
Just witnessed their NCA party where they had invited prospective candidates to meet and greet with the faculty. The faculty made few attempts to circulate, were decidedly disinterested when they did speak to those people they had invited, and illustrated an overall contempt and disrespect for the entire process. Judging from this dysfunctional display, I would be wary when interviewing with them.
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| Virginia Commonwealth University | Computer Science | 2018: Twice during my interview, directly after a faculty member said "hello" to me they asked for my h-index. Another time an interviewer asked detialed questions about rankings of my former affiliations and rankings of venues I publish in. Another faculty member told me that every semester the department circulates spreadsheets showing everyone's dollar totals from grants and contracts and everyone's teaching scores. Overall it felt like a pressure cooker environment. |
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Virginia Commonwealth University |
English & Women's Studies |
[original post replaced] Where do I begin about my campus interview here? Years of therapy will only tell the tale. I have never encountered such open prejudice in an academic setting. There are some wonderful people in English there. I still think of them almost a year later. But, there are others who are "like no other." The prejudice runs the gamet, btw. One faculty member was not only openly racist and homophobic, but had "old school" comments to make about Irish people and the children of alcoholics! The minute I got there, faculty members started caling VCU, "Viet Cong University."This not only in reference to student protesters in the 70s, but because of the Vietnamese population in the area today! It goes on and on. Beware of the Commonwealth!
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Virginia Wesleyan College |
English |
very unpleasant atmosphere, seems a divided department in many ways. |
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Warren Wilson College (NC) |
History |
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| Washington State (Pullman campus) | Management Information Systems |
Classic "bait and switch" job posting. Did a phone interview for a "tenure track" position. Halfway through they started asking if I would be more interested in a job that was totally focused on teaching - the implication of what they were really getting at was clear. I tactfully redirected by emphasising the importance of a balance between teaching and research and that I was looking for a tenure track position. They then asked if I was currently employed. When I told them I was, there was a very audible groan of dissapointment - they discovered that were not speaking to an unemployed and desperate person. I was deterred from laughing at their foolishness by the fact I had used my hard-earned vacation time to talk to them. I kept my eye on the posting and several months later it looked like they finally came clean - they posted it as a 3 year contract and only a Master's degree would be required. |
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Wayne State |
Education |
was told "women never get tenure" also were really rude in general.............2-2005 |
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Wellesley College |
Music |
In 2006, was asked point blank in a campus interview by two faculty members about my marriage. They did this one-on-one, independently from one another. In one case, I was asked whether the career of my husband, who is also an academic, would compromise my commitment to the institution if I were hired. |
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West Virginia State University |
Biology |
Submitted copies of my official transcripts three times, the third time I asked for return receipt and they lost them again. 2005 |
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West Virginia Wesleyan College |
Most |
Chronic financial problems (15+ years) means that the job you apply for may disappear or be re-classified as non-TT even after you interview. A formal review by the Dean concluded that turnover of tenured faculty was almost triple that of their peer group. Turnover of junior TT faculty is much higher. The local newspaper brags that about 1/3 of the faculty are alum; they don't just think that this is normal, they think this is better than normal. |
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Western Illinois |
History |
Has a habit of not communicating with persons who have interviewed for positions (seconded 2004). More than one applicant has identified the department's practices as rude.
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Western State Colorado University |
Political Science |
An old guy, supposedly the former department chair, who smelled of flatulence picked me up from the airport. He proceeded to give me a tour of the two-horse town, which included instructions on how to drive ("slow, slow, slow, like a snail"). The faculty were nice enough, though they kept asking me whether I skiied, snowboarded or bicycled. I humored them and said hat I did all of them, even though I didn't (and still don't). All they could talk about was how wonderful the area was for these recreational activities. It's like they didn't want a quality scholar or teacher but instead they wanted a workout partner. When I met with the students in private all they did was complain about how the department chair was trying to brainwash them with his "liberal nonsense" and how he took no prisoners when it came to embarrassing students who came to class late, even when they had a bonafide excuse. They ended up hiring the inside candidate, which was a relief to me. I got a PFO letter about 6 months later. When I told a fellow panelist at a conference that I had interviewed there, he shared this atrocious story about someone he knew who had taught on a temp contract in the same department, was eventually fired and harassed on the way out. I'm glad that I dodged that bullet! |
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Western Washington University |
History |
2014. Strange campus visit. Invited me to campus on a holiday, when half of the faculty took a three-day vacation and were absent. At no point did they inquire about my research, my publications, my conference presentations, my future research plans, courses I have taught, or my academic history. They did not request a copy of any of my writing and gave no indication of having read my CV. Unprofessional dinner, with two faculty getting tipsy and discussing the bad parenting of an absent staff member. After I returned home, having decided I was uninterested in the position, no contact for five weeks. I assumed they moved on, as had I. Then, to my surprise given that they didn't know me at all, I was offered the position. I told the chair "No Thanks." Why would I take a position on the other side of the continent when my future peers were so uninterested in who I was as a professional? Good school, but department did not present itself well. |
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Westfield State College |
Art |
The visit itself was fine. The people were welcoming. What I found atrocious were the conditions under which I would have been hired. They were looking for an art historian to teach all introductory art history surveys all the time - with a 4/4 courseload and only two different courses to teach, this position will be a nightmare. To make it even more absurd, higher-level art history courses are taught exclusively by a woman with a doctorate in education, because she "was hired to teach seminars." Furthermore, every so often I could teach a mid-level survey or a course online, but then I would have to wait my turn in a rotation with adjunct faculty! This was over a month ago, and I have even already been offered a good job at a decent school, but I just had to vent! |
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Wiley College |
General Education |
Completely disorganized from top on down, everyone passes the buck for problems with the school rather than trying to correct things. Few to no resources to work (paper for printer, chalk, etc.). Lots of division within and among the departments. 11-2007
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Wilkes University |
Biology |
No response to multiple inquiries about a job ad that instructed potential applicants to inquire about the job before applying. |
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Williams College |
History |
They have a strong predilection for hiring their own graduates. If you are up against a recent PhD or ABD who has a Williams BA, you can practically forget about getting the job, no matter how qualified you are. On an on-campus visit, they treated me superbly. I have no complaints about that.
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| William Woods University | All | Spring 2019: Applicants should be aware that they will face significant financial problems that are getting worse as enrollment drops, and with a leadership change that will probably happen in the next few years (the current president has been there in some form for over 40-years). They have a very centralized/strong administrative style that is not innovative despite new initiatives that say otherwise. According to the most recent form 990, 95% of revenue is enrollment driven, and they ran a successive 4% deficit. Faculty turnover is alarming: 15% of current positions are open. Starting compensation is low (mid-$40K). |
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Winston-Salem State University |
All |
Great on-campus interview with faculty, a pleasure to meet and work with. Dean seemed a little kooky, but whatever, how much interaction does your average joe-schmoe faculty have with the dean on a regular basis? Faculty enthusiastically wanted to hire me, dean overrode the decision, apparently hired a friend. Bush league. |
| Wright State University | Education |
On campus interview had some awkward moments:
I gave them a day of my life. A simple, "thanks, but no thanks" would have been appreciated as a professional courtesy. |
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Wright State University |
Creative Writing |
Very Bizarre MLA Interview where the interviewer did the following:
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Young Harris College |
Communication/All |
For more information about the issues related to this department and the college in general, see the notes in Academic Job Wiki Communication and Media Studies 2012-2013. The highlights: pressured contract negotiating, a federal lawsuit related to hazing culture and the ouster of two professors, and tremondous faculty turnover overall. A good summation taken from the other linked wiki:
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York College |
History |
Interviewed for an adjunct job. Drove down on my own expense. They told me the job was mine and asked for availability and how many classes I wanted to teach. They strung me along for three semesters promising me that they had work for me. Would have appreciated a straight answer from the beginning. |
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York U (Toronto) |
English |
Rude, rude, rude and painfully inept department. They also don't get/remember what it's like to be a visiting candidate on campus; also seemed to have a major (verbal) chip on their shoulder as a result of (1) not being in the US and (2) not being the U. of Toronto. Regarding #1, their "anti-American" hostility was so overt (and just plain boring) that even an Anti-American US citizen candidate (like me) was offended. Also, one committee member requested a particular paper (during campus visit) and then a different member of same committee said (to my face!) that "the paper topic was a poor choice." They just don't get it and are really (really) full of themselves in a way that the only truly insecure are. Agree whole-heartedly with previous post. Had conference interview with them and they couldn't care less about talking to me (started with them complaining about how tired they were of interviewing candidates). They were unyielding in asking how my research agenda would change as a result of teaching at a Canadian school (without giving too much away, my research is pretty firmly rooted in American studies and it would be hard to imagine adding on a whole new Canadian element to my research interests). I answered the best I could but I really just wanted to ask them, "Why did you even want to interview me? Didn't you read my dissertation abstract? Or letter?"
- Went through a massive and time-consuming application process in Black studies but rejected WITHIN 24 hours because it was a fake search and they ended up hiring the wife of a faculty member. Don't waste our time! |
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York U (Toronto) |
Chemistry |
I've applied twice in the past for Chemistry TT positions at York, most recently in 2006. They NEVER get back to the candidates - except for demanding to know your citizenship (which presumably gives them an alibi to flip the lever on a candidate they don't like). The head of the search committee was in a different building, and remote from the Chemistry Department. Maybe it was because of my nationality (US-American) that they were so unfriendly? Even though I was already living in Canada? Looking through the facultys' pedigree, it smelled like nepotism.
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| York U (Toronto) | Engineering |
Worst interview experience everrrrrr!! I cannot tell how disgusted I am by this school. It all started when they invited me to a campus interview for 2 months later. I then didn't hear from them until 1 week before the interview date when I HAD TO CONTACT THEM to arrange for the flight and the hotel. The chair of the committee was so rude as when I contacted him the day before interview to ask when/where we meet on the interview date, he replied: "we will meet as we planned"!! He didn't even bother to provide me with his office number. And the department assistant never replied my emails! Compare this with my other interviews, e.g., one in the State where they arranged a Lemo to pick me at the airport and the chair welcomed me in the hotel lobby. Anyway, I found his office and met him there. He could not be any more cold and careless since very early in the morning. After every meeting, they simply throw me out and asked to wait in the hallway for the next prof to come and pick me. In the teaching session, they were all playing with their laptops or talking on the phone and could not be any more disrespectful, and they tried their best to humiliate me with silly questions which was out of the scopes of the course I was demonstrating. It was extremely hostile and un-collegial environment all together! DISGUSTING! The research session went on the same way. They forced me to finish in 30 minutes while they asked questions for 5 minutes only and then there was 25 minutes waste of time, me sitting outside and they went back to their offices! It was obvious they didn’t want me since morning and never tried to hide it. I am wondering why did then invite me at the first place! There were of course three of four nice persons there as well, but the chairs and … STAY AWAY! and PLEASE spread this word! Everybody in academia should know about them! |
| Kansas State University | Curriculum & Instruction |
Beware a job offer from this department. There is conflict between the goals of the University as stated by the administration and the beliefs of the tenured faculty in this department. The department faculty is not diverse at all, consisting mainly of their own graduates and other Midwesterners. I was highly sought after during the search, interview, and negotiation process. After my arrival, the situation was quite different. It was an unpleasant situation. |
| University of South Carolina Beaufort | Social Sciences | Quite a few things to discuss and some personal stories that could be shared, but that would be tl;dr. So the quick hitters: faculty morale across the campus is in the toilet. I served on hiring committees and have apologized to people for helping to hire them. Faculty put on a smiley face and say great things about unique opportunities there, but what it means is that students are unprepared and you will have no support from administration. This means funding to work with students outside the classroom on research is basically going to be out of pocket for you. Also, the pay is well below the cost of living of any of the surrounding areas. There is a lot of natural beauty around the area, but yearly hurricanes (and climate change deniers) make it a little frustrating. If you are retiring from another institution, you may like it as it can be low stress, but if you are starting out or in the prime of your career, this is not a place where you can grow and really do something special. Also, the administration lies to the faculty about what is going on behind closed doors and want faculty to remain in the dark about funding and how it is being spent. |
COMMENTS[]
Considering how many universities likebharathiar university and colleges never follow up (rejection letter, etc.) on interviews or visits, has this become the standard? Is it even worth complaining about anymore?
- Response #1: No. It's absurd to bitch about this. I cannot count the number of universities that never acknowledged receipt, post-conference interview, post-campus interview, etc. Are you really going to counsel colleagues to avoid applying to X university simply b/c you they sent a formulaic rejection letter or b/c they never sent out a rejection letter? Get over yourselves!
- Response #2: Maybe it's absurd to get bent out of shape about form letters and such, but it seems fair to ask search committee members to remember that applicants are also colleagues, and those of us who are in this business for the long haul do well to keep that fact in mind, whichever side of the interview table we happen to be on. For more, see Advice to Search Committees, #12.
- Respnse #3: I don't think it is hubris to be asked to be treated like a human being. Formulaic letters are one thing but deafening silence is demeaning. A tiny excuse is that chairs of search committees (I was one myself and have served as a member of several other search committees) are told never to notify candidates that have been short-listed for the AHA in case none of the campus candidates work out then you don't want the other AHA interviewed candidates to have already taken other jobs. However, I think this is a cruel and stupid rationale. When I chaired the search, I insisted on notifying candidates we interviewed at the AHA but did not invite to campus. I had to do it "unoffically" though by email. Beware those who use the "legal" excuse as cover for their own laziness. The candidates are people and must be treated with at least some modicum of decency.
- Response #4: If you only submitted an application, it's not worth complaining about. Following a campus visit, sending a rejection when another candidate accepts the position is appropriate.
General Q: how is it possible that any department can get away with NOT reimbursing a visiting candidate for travel expenses? It's appalling. Surely MLA (and other organizations) could do something to monitor or even "motivate" departments who engage in this kind of conduct (e.g., not allowing them to list job postings on the Job Information List the following year). Grad students especially need to be protected from such things.
Q: Can we rename this page "Universities to loathe"? Or, "Universities to hate"? Either go better with "love" as a polar opposite. (I don't know about anyone else, but when I've a bad experience, I don't fear, I loathe). (x2)
Q: This is a fantastic resource, and thanks to whoever invented it! However, it seems like it ought to be encouraged to have people put at least rough dates on their postings below? I don't know how old some of these postings are, but we all know bad administrators can go away and problems be addressed, and it would be fairer to the schools represented if people knew that the complaint was a year out of date, for instance.
Q. Where do find comments from past years? I'm having trouble navigating this site. Please help! (Posted Oct 2012)
Q. This is a great page, but difficult to navigate. Dates/job search years would be useful. Also, entering information seems impossibly complicated -- any way to simplify this or perhaps start a new page?
Q. At what point do we put all universities on here because someone has had a bad experience? When does whining turn into loathing? And how does one evaluate an anonymous rant?
Q. How does one bitter comment about a department earn that department a place on a list entitled "Chronic Issues"? Is it fair to a department to imply that one disgruntled remark indicates "chronic problems"?