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5Sep2006 Filed under: right work Author: Marcia HansenQuestion for you…
Do non-tenure track contract positions ever turn into job offers for tenure track positions? In other words, does the contract position enable the Uni to check you out first and see if you’re a good fit for the department before they commit to offering you a tenure-track position? Or, do they really want to hire someone temporarily and have that person do committee work and have that person prove they can commit to the ongoing work of the department, for the sole benefit of the department? If the last part is accurate, then please tell me contract positions pay decent.
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About m2h blogsMarcia Hansen works by day as a marketing manager in social media. At other times you'll find her traveling about speaking, writing, and learning. And, if she's lucky, it's on her Honda Shadow 1100.
Please note -- the postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer's positions, strategies, or opinions. If you want to know more about me, you can visit my About Marcia Hansen page above, or my home page at MarciaHansen.com.
collin
September 5th, 2006 at 9:21 am
When I was first hired at Old Dominion, both I and one other person were brought in as one-year replacements while they performed searches for those tenure lines. Both of us were eventually offered those lines, so it was happy all around.
That being said, there’s a difference between those kinds of positions, and those that are advertised as NTT, fixed-term kinds of gigs. In my case, they couldn’t afford to not have someone doing that teaching, and there was no appreciable cost differential between my 1-year spot and the TT position I eventually received. Often, specifically NTT positions pay less, involve more work, and would require more money to “promote” to a TT gig. The chances of that happening, I would imagine, aren’t very good at most schools. It’s tough to generalize, but I wouldn’t advise a student to take a NTT position unless there was a pretty rock solid guarantee of the chance at something more permanent.
Does that help?
cgb
George
September 5th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I’d say it depends on the job. There will be plenty of people who claim one kind of conventional wisdom or another. On the one hand, some will say that if they’re used to thinking of you as NTT, they’ll never hire you TT. On the other hand, some will say with equal fervor that it’s the Uni’s opportunity to check you out before offering you the TT gig.
In my opinion, even the department doing the hiring doesn’t know right now whether, in the end, they will offer you a TT job or not. They may get a hiring line they’ve been fighting for. They may lose a hiring line they thought they were going to get. There may be infighting in the department about who or what (in terms of specialty) to hire. Still, if the only job offer you have in the year you go on the market is a NTT job that is appealling to you, I would advise you to take it.
In my experience… They pay better than adjuncting but not as well as a TT job. They involve more teaching. They should *not* require service (e.g. committee work), but if you have time for service, it might not be a bad thing to jump into. I saw three NTT faculty come and go in my last job: none of them were expected to do service, but some of them did a bit of it, anyway.
Such jobs will, I believe, look pretty good on your CV as you look for a TT job. Not a huge bump to your profile, but not an insignificant one, either.
marcia
September 6th, 2006 at 6:54 am
Thanks, that helps!