This morning’s WSJ contains an article entitled: “What Helps New Ph.D.s Land Jobs in Academia? A Passport.” With most American schools suffering from various levels of financial distress schools are canceling faculty searches and putting into place hiring freezes. So, where is a new PhD graduate to look for a job? Apparently in Asia or the Middle East. Some of the schools featured in the article are located in China, Qatar, and Kurdistan. However, the drawbacks are: networking with US colleagues is difficult, access to library material is questionable, and there is a certain stigma that goes along with these positions (what, you weren’t able to hack it in the US market so you went to a low-level war zone in Iraq for a job?).
Certainly there are positive aspects to a position at these schools, but I’m hoping that the economy will rebound (for many reasons) so that I don’t have to teach in a flak jacket…
Carol Newsom from Emory said something quite similar . . . unfortunately, I really don’t have much of an interest in going so far away. But based upon what Dr. Newsom told me, Asian schools are very interested in American Ph.D.’s.
This is similar to my experience. It is how I ended up in Lithuania. I can testify to the lack of library resources, but thanks to the ATLA database and some friends, I was able to write two conference papers and one book while I was there. Networking wasn’t that bad, as I made some European connections through the European Association for Biblical Studies. And I did travel back to the US each November for the SBL.