In this solo presentation, Steve Tippins (Beyond PhD Coaching) explains how the academic job market has fundamentally changed in recent years. He notes that hiring cycles now start as early as July/August, with positions advertised for the following academic year, meaning that most opportunities are posted a full year in advance. Budget pressures have forced universities to accelerate the hiring process—preliminary interviews, campus visits, and offers can now occur by the end of the calendar year. At the same time, there is a growing split between traditional tenure‑track roles (lower teaching loads, research expectations, tenure) and non‑tenure‑track positions such as lecturers, teachers of practice, or professors of practice, which carry heavier teaching loads, lower salaries, and no tenure, offering institutions flexibility during financial downturns. Tippins advises prospective candidates to begin preparing their application portfolios, secure references, and think about the job search a year before graduation. He concludes by inviting viewers to join a free dissertation support group and to reach out for coaching.
Chapters
Hi everybody, this is Steve Tippins from Beyond PhD Coaching. What I want to communicate today is the job search process, and particularly the academic job search process, because it's evolved over the last few years in particular. And just as an aside, I've chaired hundreds of dissertations, helped hundreds of people finish their degrees, gotten tenure, Several times. So I've gone through the process myself of getting jobs. So typically you want to be aware that if you are in August of any year, that's— or even July now, that's when positions get announced for not the fall of this year, but for basically August of the following year. So if we're in 2026 and it's July or August, most of the jobs that start getting posted are posted for begin dates of August, September of 2027. That's not all the jobs. There will be jobs that come out later, but I would say at least 80% of opportunities for 2027, using this example, are going to come out by October of 2026. 6, somewhere in October. So that means even though you're thinking, I'm going to graduate in— finish in March of 2027, and then I'll start looking for that academic job, you're going to miss most of the jobs. You need to be thinking about that the summer before the next year. Years ago, when I came out of graduate school, the year before, we started to apply, and jobs started getting posted in late August, early September for many disciplines, and then they would go and close the application process somewhere in maybe October. Maybe they'd do preliminary interviews at a conference or now online, and then they'd call people in for campus visits, the final 3 that they're interested in, more often than not in January and February, and announce in March. That was the old model that existed for a long time. The world has changed a lot. I started seeing jobs for 2027 starting to be posted in July of 2026, months earlier than before. So you've got to be on this much faster. The budget world for universities has changed dramatically. So what I think is happening is that schools find out they have positions and they're now jumping into the market as quickly as possible trying to find candidates and find a finalist and find the hire as quickly as possible to lock them in so that the administration doesn't say, oh, we're having some budget issues. We're going to pull that position back because it hasn't been filled. So you need to be aware that they're moving forward faster on things now. So you have to be prepared faster. Because now the trajectory may be, I'm going to post in July and I'm going to stop considering people in mid-September. And I may be bringing people onto campus. So after I've done preliminary interviews for 10 to 20 people, I'll bring my 3 finalists in, in November, December, and make a job offer even before the end of the calendar year so I can lock things in. Because over the last 2 years or so, you've seen a lot of positions posted, and then because they were following the older model and the delayed moving forward with things, you then saw advertisements saying, oh, this job isn't going to be filled. It's, it's not something departments are happy about, but you need to be aware that you have to be thinking about this much faster and much earlier in the process. While you're finishing up your degree, you really have to be thinking about and putting together your application portfolio, getting your faculty members to serve as references so that you can be applying for these jobs. The other thing I want to mention is you're seeing a big split among jobs, meaning there's the tenure-track assistant professor, then associate professor, then professor. Technically, there's no such thing as a full professor. It's your professor. Tenure and you're researching and your teaching load is 2, maybe 3 courses, or 1 depending on your institution per term. And that's great. But as budgets have gotten tighter and tighter and tighter, we're seeing a lot more positions now move over to be what are lecturers, teachers of practice, professor of practice, something like that, where It's a job. You get paid. You're going to teach more. You might teach 3 or 4 courses a term. You're going to get paid less, and you're not going to have tenure. There's not going to be an expectation of doing a lot of, if any, publishing. So what many deans have done is saying, oh, I've got a job and I'll make up a salary of $120,000 for a tenure-track line, but we're crunched for budget all over the place. I know I can— I need to fill this position. Why don't I hire a professor of practice at $75,000? Now I've got all the courses plus that a tenure-track professor was going to cover for maybe $45,000 less money. I can now use that $45,000 for other things, travel expenses, whatever I need the money And another bonus is if there ever is a downturn in this major, it's much easier to get rid of people who aren't tenured or never have the option of being tenured versus people who have tenure. And that's a harder battle for them to fight. So it gives them more flexibility moving forward. But still, even those positions, they're starting much earlier in the process. So be aware of this because I don't want you thinking, I'm going to start looking September 15th and wow, here's a deadline of 3 jobs I was interested in that was September 15th because things have moved forward. If we can ever help you at Beyond PhD Coaching, please join our free dissertation support group and reach out if you have questions. All the best.
