Job Placement 2011-2014: Overview on AOS

In keeping with the earlier post on gender, this is an overview post on the distribution of (first-listed) areas of specialization among placed candidates. I now have data on 722 candidates who have been placed in tenure-track, postdoctoral, VAP, or instructor positions between late 2011 and mid 2014 (ending today), drawn from ProPhilosophy (2011-2012 and 2012-2013) and PhilAppointments (2013-2014). I aim to make the spreadsheet with this data available by around July 1st (I will continue to add new data until that date). 

Once I removed duplicate placement records, I found there to be 787 placements and 722 placed candidates. Of these placements, 527 or 67% are tenure-track or tenure-track equivalent positions, whereas 260 or 33% are postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions. 

Updating the earlier findings on gender, it is still the case that there is no significant difference between the mean percentage of women in each department who achieve placement and the mean percentage of women graduate students in each department (as reported in the 2013 APA Guide to Graduate Programs), nor is there a significant difference between the mean percentage of women who achieve tenure-track placement in each department and the mean percentage of women graduate students in each department. I did find a significant difference (t-test, p<.05) between the mean percentage of women who achieve postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions in each department (22.57%) and the mean percentage of women graduate students in each department (32.58%). 

The distribution of areas of specialization over this three-year period is as follows:

Metaphysics, Epistemology, Logic, and Language: 30.9% of tenure-track positions and 35.9% of postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions.

Ethical, Political, Legal, and Value Theory: 33.2% of tenure-track positions and 35.5% of postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions.

Historical Philosophy: 24.2% of tenure-track positions and 12.7% of postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions.

Philosophy of Science: 11.6% of tenure-track positions and 15.8% of postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions.

Thus, the plurality* of tenure-track positions went to candidates in value theory fields, whereas the plurality of postdoctoral/VAP/instructor positions went to candidates in M&E fields, with value theory fields a close second. 

With gender I did not find a significant difference (chi-squared test) between the actual distribution of women and men with and without reported priors and an equal distribution of women and men with and without reported priors (that is, an equal distribution assumes that the overall percentage of women is equal to that of the percentage of women in each category--those with and those without reported priors).  Likewise, I did not find a significant difference between the actual distribution of areas of specialization for those with and without reported priors and an equal distribution of areas of specialization across these categories (that is, an equal distribution assumes that the overall percentage of M&E is equal to that of the percentage of M&E in each category--those with and those without reported priors). Thus, it does not appear that the AOS makeup differs between those with and without reported priors, just as the gender makeup of these groups does not appear to differ. 

*Updated: see comment below.