Yesterday, I linked to a blog post that claims to offer detailed data and analysis on "approximately 3,200 placement records since the year 2000." While (as subsequent commentary on my post revealed) there are obvious problems with the material outside North America and more subtle ones with the ones inside, the proposed approach can give an important perspective on recent hiring. The author is calling for the right sort of assistance: "if you believe my data is mistaken, please send me the appropriate and complete data for your school, so that I can update the data." Once the data have been improved one might be able to do some interesting comparison with past Philosophical Gourmet reports.
Because I was utterly unfamiliar with the author, Andrew Carson, I also expressed concern about his/her identity in my post. A friendly reader pointed to a linkedin page, and I contacted the person via email. Carson agreed to do a brief interview, which I have reprinted (and slightly edited) below. Obviously, this does not settle any concerns about the author and his methods, I now believe we are dealing with a good faith effort to help improve the profession. Obviously, how Carson deals with the new data that people sent him will be most illuminating. Here's the interview:
Yes, I am a real person. I received my MA in philosophy from Northern Illinois University in 2012. I have since left academia and am working in Data Science (hence my interest in the intersection of philosophy and data)...
I did the post because I like philosophy and I like data, and I figured I could bring the two together. I know lots of friends recently in grad school and they are all concerned about getting a job after they graduate. I’ve also had friends get stuck in adjunct positions. I wanted to let others thinking about graduate school know what they were up against and to go into it with eyes wide open, especially since I hadn’t seen anything like this before. I hope to just get this info out there and get people less focused on the Leiter rankings (I know people were obsessed with those in applications).
I left academic philosophy because I judged that the job market wasn’t improving, I wasn’t as passionate about academia and teaching as others were, and I wanted to be able to provide for my family. And the position that I am currently in opened up, so it seemed like a good opportunity. So more of a prudential decision. I still love philosophy, but I figured it would be in my best interest to not do it professionally.I will post the raw data as soon as I can [get] to the article. I just used Excel and SQl Server to analyze the data. Nothing fancy.It looks like I’ll be needing to do some revisions on the article over the weekend to fix some errors, makes some clarifications, etc., so I hope to have it updated soon.
Recent Comments