I don't know, a 3-3 with grad students sounds a lot more palatable than a 4-4 at a CC. Is it a VAP?
No. It’s an “Assistant Teaching Professor” which is a fancy set of words for a long term instructor position. I could eventually become an associate teaching professor but that’s just more pay, never tenure. Either choice grants me at least a year off the market to get my life in order.
Imagine your worst student you’ve ever taught and all the annoying things about them that you loathed so much. That’s the high water mark in CC. Now imagine the worst social justice warrior from your grad cohort, the one that didn’t belong in grad school and eventually dropped out. That’s now the majority of your colleagues or your chair. Your dean will and your chair will more than likely have a PhD from a for profit university, and will run your college like a subway franchise. You will have no time for any publishing. Your career will be dead as you’ll feel inside.
Imagine your worst student you’ve ever taught and all the annoying things about them that you loathed so much. That’s the high water mark in CC. Now imagine the worst social justice warrior from your grad cohort, the one that didn’t belong in grad school and eventually dropped out. That’s now the majority of your colleagues or your chair. Your dean will and your chair will more than likely have a PhD from a for profit university, and will run your college like a subway franchise. You will have no time for any publishing. Your career will be dead as you’ll feel inside.
This is only partially correct. Your worst mistake is assuming that there are no good students at a CC. This is way off the mark. There are any number of smart yet under-privileged kids at a CC, and plenty of adult re-entry students. I've been ft at a CC, a regional, and a LAC, and I don't really think there is that much difference in the quality of students.
I met many people across our CC's multi-campus system. SJWs were not that common or intrusive, no worse than any other kind of school. Admins with for-profit online EdDs were indeed the norm, and they were almost all terrible. You're right about that, and that was the worst part of the CC.
I taught 5-5 of nothing but Intro, and it was the easiest job I ever had. I had more time to publish at the CC than I did at the regional and the LAC. I actually wrote my way out of the CC. I'm very glad to be gone, mostly because of the terrible admin environment.
Do I have a few good/great students? Sure. But of the 250 or so that I teach every semester, the vast majority are one or more of the following: Refugees that do not speak English; veterans with PTSD; high school students from horrible school districts enrolled concurrently; recovering drug addicts; people with some mental illness/learning disability; housing/food insecure people that can't buy the book and do not have access to internet; and people who barely graduated high school 40 years ago, now going back to school. I have to spend so much time dealing with all of their issues, working with one or two bright students is impossible.
Regarding the SJWs: this semester alone I had to go to 6 different professional development events regarding checking my whiteness; checking my class privilege; why we are no longer allowed to say latina/o, and must now say latinx or face disciplinary measures; why we must now signal our preferred gender pronouns in all official communications or face disciplinary measures; and my favorite.... #WHY_IS_OUR_FACULTY_SO_WHITE panel session lead by students and adjunct faculty.
So, let's split the differences. Your awesome experience teaching at CC is one polar extreme and mine is the other. Let the OP decide if they want to risk ending up at a school like mine.
Do I have a few good/great students? Sure. But of the 250 or so that I teach every semester, the vast majority are one or more of the following: Refugees that do not speak English; veterans with PTSD; high school students from horrible school districts enrolled concurrently; recovering drug addicts; people with some mental illness/learning disability; housing/food insecure people that can't buy the book and do not have access to internet; and people who barely graduated high school 40 years ago, now going back to school. I have to spend so much time dealing with all of their issues, working with one or two bright students is impossible.
Regarding the SJWs: this semester alone I had to go to 6 different professional development events regarding checking my whiteness; checking my class privilege; why we are no longer allowed to say latina/o, and must now say latinx or face disciplinary measures; why we must now signal our preferred gender pronouns in all official communications or face disciplinary measures; and my favorite.... #WHY_IS_OUR_FACULTY_SO_WHITE panel session lead by students and adjunct faculty.
So, let's split the differences. Your awesome experience teaching at CC is one polar extreme and mine is the other. Let the OP decide if they want to risk ending up at a school like mine.
My experience was the opposite of awesome. I had to attend all kinds of HR “training” time-wasters too. After the first few I would take a magazine or laptop and just blatantly ignore the proceedings, but even so it was miserable. If we’d had SJW insanity on top of that it would have been twice as bad. I doubt I could have resisted trolling them, and would probably have gotten myself in trouble.
But I actually don’t mind working with terrible students who are motivated. It’s emotionally rewarding to me to be able to make a positive difference in someone’s life. That’s an experience I never once had teaching at m
...See full postI'd take the R1. This means more freedom and time to do research (that's what I like - not teaching), and I would use that free time to consider pivoting to an alt-academic role or find another source of income (consulting, etc).
But that's a personal choice. I value my personal freedom a lot.
And to add: my most awkward interview ever was one that took place in March. It was awkward because it took place a week after the university had decided to let all their lecturers go (all the way back in 09, height of the crisis).
I had lunch with one of the lecturers during the interview. He was taking classes in the social work department trying to become a licensed social worker because he had been a lecturer there for 7 years, and there were pretty much 0 jobs being listed that late in the market cycle.
well, for whatever reason my long post was deleted. I'm not going to type it all out again, but here is the short version:
Worst case scenario for the non-TT job:
predicted economic crisis hits in the next two years, your position gets cut, because they will always cut non-tt positions first, and suddenly they tell you this in march and there's no time to look for something else. Or maybe a TT has a class cancelled because of low enrollment and they take over yours. Meanwhile, you are making 16k less, with less security, higher COL, probably not saving for retirement or buying a house.
Worst case scenario for the CC job:
- your students are bad, your admin is bad, but no one cares that you lecture out of the publisher's powerpoints. You teach on autopilot, but are able to save for retirement, maybe buy a house and accrue some equity, and you use that extra money to do something interesting in the summer. Worst thing that will happen is that you'll get your feelings hurt when people pretend not to know you at ASA.
Sure, maybe you are the one person who will publish more once you start a 3-3 job in a new city, and that will lead to your dream r1 offer. But do understand the risks.
You have no idea what it's like to be a non-tt faculty.
And yes, I actually have a ton of CC friends.
It speaks to the rot at the core of academia that people really think that "hey, make 16k less and have less job security - the prestige of being at an R1 is worth it!" is in any way reasonable.
The bottom line is this: there are over a thousand CCs out there. Some of them suck, some of them don't. But across the board, non-tt have 0 job security. None. Anywhere. And we're on year 10 of an economic expansion. The next recession isn't a matter of if, but when. But hey, maybe the op will get lucky and that R1 won't have to lay off anyone when the recession hits.
Seems like a tossup, which is probably why it's such a tough decision. I'd say
- If you have something in the pipeline that's about to get published, hopefully several somethings, then R1. You'd be looking at it as a temp job for a year or two, while your stuff goes through publishing pipeline. You'd then be applying for jobs with the R1 letterhead, etc.
- If you don't have promising stuff in pipeline, then making your way to TT R1 (and maybe even R2) is a longshot regardless of which you choose. You should probably then consider just how much you like teaching and academia in general. If you like teaching, then CC TT seems good. If you don't, and there's not stuff around the corner that will make your CV much better, then maybe another industry altogether
I was at a CC for 12 years. Started as Asst Professor at $49k and left at $98k. Today I’m at a top 250 QS World Ranked University. It is possible to move up but you must keep up R1 or R2-level outputs.
At the CC, I only had to be on campus 4 days a week, 34 weeks a year. Most of the students were really nice and many transferred to a local R1. It’s totally doable to take the CC job but people will look down their noses at you while also resenting you for your high pay, time off, gold plated health insurance and TIAA CREF contributions. It actually sounds like you might be looking at my former employer!
I’d take the R1 and crank out insane outputs. Ask for a 2/2 your first year and stay on the market...unless you just want the security of the pay of the CC.
Good luck.