Graduate Mentoring Program Articles

Place Matters in the Academic Job Search

By I. Moriah McCracken

From: ASLE News Spring 2007

As writers and researchers interested in the environment, we recognize that human life is encapsulated and affected by the ecological systems surrounding us. We spend countless hours and semesters introducing students to the environment, so they too might appreciate how the “outer” world affects them and how they are responsible for the sustainability of the planet. But our talk of the environment often stops just short of place. That is, we don’t tell our students, or admit to ourselves, that in the academy, place—geographic and material locations— is not supposed to matter.

A myth in the academy suggests that place does not matter for weary PhD candidates embarking on their first job searches. After years of coursework and shoestring budgets, graduate students want a job, any job, regardless of location. But this statement did not reconcile with the experiences of my colleagues, and when I claimed in my dissertation prospectus that place does not matter in academia, the members of my dissertation committee protested.

So, I set out to test the assumption that place does not matter in the academic job search. In October 2006, I distributed the first of two online surveys, which provided empirical data with predictive validity about my research population. 62 doctoral candidates in Rhetoric and Composition participated in my pre-job search survey, which asked a variety of questions about the role of place in their ongoing job searches. The responses I gathered suggest that graduate students are not quite as rootless as institutional myths might have us believe.

When asked to indicate their attachment to a home site, a majority of respondents (76%) said they are attached to where they are from. In fact, 34% of respondents selected “very attached,” and 42% selected “somewhat attached.” The respondents’ answers point to an investment in their home sites, and these answers challenge the notion that academics are attached to ideas and books, not geographical locations.

Moreover, their attachment to place appears to affect the candidates’ job market searches. When asked “How important will the geographic location of a university be when you decide to apply for a job?” 58% of respondents selected “very important,” while 6% selected “not at all important.” These numbers become even more significant when we consider that 5% of respondents indicated they are willing to live anywhere for the right job, while 71% of the respondents said there are certain places they are unwilling to live.

My initial survey data counters academic myths which suggest that PhD candidates are simply looking for employment. Perhaps this correlation is tied to the availability of jobs in Rhetoric and Composition; I cannot say with certainty at this time. However, I can report that when asked to name their top criteria for selecting jobs, 34 respondents included “geography” and/or “location” in their answers. As a follow-up to the open-ended question, I asked respondents to select the other factors that might affect their job search. From the list of 11 possible choices, 54 of the 62 respondents selected “geographic location of institution.” The location of the institution was followed in popularity by teaching load (43), salary (40), and institution type (37).

Though the specific reasons place matters may still vary widely—for some environmental considerations may be a factor while for others proximity to family members may be more important—the preliminary analysis indicates that place does matter for the PhD Candidate conducting a job search in Rhetoric and Composition. The full results of the pre-job search survey will be available through my personal website (http://www.immccracken.com) after March 25, 2007.