Dear Search Committees

We realize that some search committees are full of sadistic bastards, but many people who make decisions about how to run searches are simply clueless. Some of them haven’t had to job-hunt for forty years. Some just keep doing the same thing over and over again because it’s the way things have been done forever, even though it no longer makes sense. Let’s put together a list of suggestions for the latter group. Maybe send the link to a couple of people you know who serve on search committees. Try to get them to think about alternatives to their usual way of conducting a search. Please, stay respectful and if you’re talking about specific experiences, don’t name names (you can put those on the ‘universities to fear’ page. Make this a useful set of suggestions rather than a critique.

Dear Search Committees,

Some of the job applicants who use this wiki have put together a list of respectful requests. It’s too late for this year, but we are hoping that future committees might be more conscious of the state of the job market as they make decisions about how to run their searches. There are a lot of things you can do to make the job hunt process a lot less painful for your applicants, which should not change the quality or the results of your search.


 * 1) Please think carefully about what materials you require for your initial application. Do you REALLY need syllabi? Teaching dossiers? (And nobody seems to have a clear idea of what these are--so if you require them, at least tell us what materials you expect.) Think of all of the ABD applicants who have plenty of TAing experience but have taught from established syllabi, or haven’t taught their own classes yet--and who might be fantastic, natural teachers. Think of the others who will be scouring your course pages to tweak their 'dossier' to fit what they think your needs are. In this market maybe you’ll get 150 applications for a single job. In some fields, rumor has it, they are getting closer to 300. But even at the lower estimate, if half of the people applying have to make up syllabi from scratch, and it takes at least 2-3 days to write up a reasonable, well-thought-out syllabus, you have just cost the academic world 150 to 225 work days. And most of the poor souls who have worked so hard on these bits of paper will not even make it to the interview stage. Please, only ask for additional materials from the people who make the first cut. Have mercy on the many people who put so much time into applications for your job but for one reason or another have no chance at getting it.
 * 2) Try to tell applicants EARLY if you intend to invite them for a conference interview. The longer you make us wait, the more expensive it will be. Many of us do not currently have jobs, i.e., we are paying our own way. So if we get word on December 15 that we need to show up for the MLA or AHA in just a few weeks--right in the middle of holiday travel season--it can get pretty pricey. (And all for a single interview, in many cases. Take a look at the wiki stats from the past few years: the majority of interviewees are invited only for one interview.) Remember, many of us have school loans to pay back, food to buy, children to raise. If you are going to conduct conference interviews, give us a break and tell us early enough to get reasonably priced tickets. Perhaps you should consider listing your job with an August deadline instead of October. You may not be able to make the first cut before the semester starts, but surely you will figure it out by fall break.
 * 3) Or abolish the conference interview altogether. It is worth considering interviewing by telephone or with a web cam. Think of the numbers. Let’s say you interview 12 applicants. And a flight plus a day or two in a hotel, plus the exorbitant conference fees, can add up to $1000-2000, depending on how far we are flying and how late have to buy tickets. So in effect @ $1500 per person your search could be costing applicants, some of whom are the people who can least afford to put an extra lump of debt on our credit cards, around $18000 total. (If you are from one of these insane places that interviews 20 candidates, that’s closer to $30000!!!) And that’s on top of what your school is spending for 3-5 of you to go. You could buy and FedEx every shortlisted candidate a Skype camera for significantly less than it will cost to send just one search committee member to a conference for 3 days. The conference interview just doesn’t make any sense in such a tight job market with so many applicants for every job, and in such a bad economy. It is a huge waste of personal and institutional resources, which nobody can afford these days.
 * 4) While it would certainly be impossible for you to respond to each application with a thoughtful, personalized letter, consider giving individual applicants (especially those you interviewed at a conference or on the phone...or those from whom you requested additional materials) a line of feedback in their rejection letter. This needn't be too onerous. A sentence explaining "we decided not to consider any ABD candidates this year" or "we did not interview applicants with less than two peer-reviewed articles" or "you do not currently have the teaching experience that we desire in a candidate" or "other candidates submitted stronger writing samples" or ANYTHING would be helpful. Many of us have no clue why we are not seen as competitive candidates, and we get absolutely no feedback from you to suggest what we could do to strengthen our applications in the future.
 * 5) Be humane (that applies at any number of stages). But this particularly applies when it comes to telling candidates that they have been rejected for a position.  Be as timely as possible with your notifications, particularly for short-listed candidates.  By seven weeks post-campus visit, we know we probably didn't get the job, but we'd like being told this rather than having to ask a search committee member at the major conference-- a conference that you knew we would be attending.  Also, don't leave a rejection voice mail on our cell phones- that is not classy.  Neither is sending a short listed candidate the generic rejection letter- as stated in comment #4, some type of personalized statement- even if just scribbed at the bottom of the form letter- would really be appreciated.
 * 6) Have something good to say in your ad about your school and/or its location.
 * 7) Be clear about the position for which you are hiring prior to posting the ad. We understand that departments often are limited to one new hire when, in fact, they need might have a need for several new positions. And we know that it can be difficult to come to a consensus about which position to fill. However, you are pretty well guaranteed to get plenty of qualified applicants for any standard posting. If you probably aren't going to hire in a given subfield, including it in your posting only pulls in another 100+ applicants who all put a great deal of time and effort into a job that they never really had a shot at.
 * 8) Please pull your ad from the departmental website when the position is cancelled or filled.
 * 9) Please make it clear what you want in the ad. Don't send me an email saying my application is "incomplete" because I didn't send transcripts, or teaching evals, or something else that your ad did not ask for.
 * 10) Accept letters of recommendation upfront and directly by mail or email. Do not use an online application system that requires referees to upload their letters personally. Do not use a system in which you ask only for referees' email addresses, so you can contact them and ask for a letter if the candidate is shortlisted. Most job candidates are graduate students, or ex-graduate students, of a university department which has a dossier service, lightening the administrative burden on referees. Remember that a referee may have five or six advisees on the job market, each of whom may end up applying to 50 jobs and postdocs: that means hundreds of recommendations. And the same referee may also have another ten advisees at an earlier stage of their PhD who need recommendations for grant applications. This is potentially a huge burden of work for people who are providing this vital service on top of doing full-time jobs. It is incumbent on search committees to lighten this burden as far as possible. Any search committee which makes it more difficult than it need be, by requiring referees personally to submit their recommendations, is showing a great deal of disrespect to people who are their colleagues.


 * 'I agree with much of the above, although I know some SCs will give weak excuses about not having the administrative support to send 300 letters or whatever. The searches I like best are the ones that only ask for a letter and cv upfront. Ask for recommendations, writing samples, and syllabi AFTER you've made the first cut. If you need to ask for transcripts, only ask for them once you've reached the interview round. And although it seems cold, I appreciate the SCs who just state bluntly: if you haven't heard from us by X/XX/XX - you are out of the running. At least I know for sure where I stand. And for the love of GOD, put it IN YOUR AD whether you plan to interview at a particular conference. SURELY, SCs must know when they plan the search whether they'll be using a conference or phone interviews. Give the candidates a heads-up, would you?




 * 'While I appreciate where the poster is coming from, I don't know if I can co-sign #4. a) The unexplained rejection is not limited to the academic job market; b) it's not really the SC's responsibility to serve as my job coach; c) there may be specific reasons why they didn't choose, me, but what if there aren't?  Would it really be satisfying or illuminating to get a letter saying "you weren't a good fit"?;  d) you could also get a lot of conflicting feedback this way--one committee says "your writing sample wasn't up to par," another says "we loved your writing sample but we wanted a more experienced instructor".
 * 'I do not agree with the above objection at all. The aim here is not simply to provide feedback to the candidate, but also to hold search committees accountable for their decisions.  If academia is to be a meritocracy, then hiring decisions should be transparent and justifiable.


 * 'Sadly, this is a liability issue: a prospective employer can be sued if they list the reasons they did not hire a given candidate. While the vast majority of us would really appreciate honest feedback to help us improve future applications/interviews/campus visits, offering such feedback could potentially open up institutions to lawsuits and it is my impression that this is why so many of us receive the generic rejections.
 * 'Okay, fair enough. Then make that clear and forgo with the hollow phrases, such as "there were a number of outstanding candidates..." Is that unreasonable?  ' 
 * No, it's not unreasonable, and I agree that the hollow, passive-voice construction is extremely annoying.
 * So - how would it help for them to say "Your writing sample could have been stronger" if the real reason was "we feel we already have too many Hispanics in the department and your name was Chavez. Really, we're looking to hire an Asian or two, as that part of our diversity standards is lacking" or "your name sounds like a white male and 80% of our department is already white males.  We want to be more diverse."  They could get sued for that, so if they tell you some other reason, it will likely be false and may even cause you to make changes you don't need to make.
 * Have to interject with regard to the legal liability issue (have a law degree). There is a liability to disclosing to someone else why an employee was terminated, etc... There is no liability issue for disclosing to a candidate why his or her application was rejected unless, of course, you are admitting to discriminatory hiring practices.
 * There are perfectly legal contexts to use diversity as a qualifying requirement. What is described above ("we're looking to hire an Asian or two...") IS illegal.  The whole point of making searches more transparent (and I think part of the logic behind the Wikia sites) is to hold search committees more accountable and eliminate these type of discriminatory practices.  Am I wrong here?
 * No, you ain't wrong. I'm just saying that there's no way they'll ever admit to it if that's their reason.  They'll never admit to something discriminatory like that, so they'll come up with some other reason.  Greater transparency isn't going to occur by having them include a sentence or two in a rejection letter.  They'll just state it was due to a "better fit" or "a weak writing sample" or "we needed someone who did late mediaeval rather than early" when it was "we wanted to hire an Asian because we don't have any on staff, but we can't admit to that because we'd get sued, so we created some other reason." One of dissertation committee said he'd been in way too many searches where this type of illegal hiring practice was openly discussed, but "diversity" was held up as the rationale that justified it.  My guess is 90% of search committees would not engage in something like this, but for the few that might, would having them include a reason in the letter help at all?


 * 'Personally, I prefer face-to-face interviews over phone interviews (I perform much better for some reason), so I am not quite in agreement with getting rid of conference interviews although I can see where the poster is coming from.
 * 'Regarding campus visits, please try to make them humane. Reimburse candidates promptly, and double-check where they would like the reimbursements to be mailed. Reimburse candidates for other expenses related to travel, such as airport parking and meals while in transit. During the visit, consider candidates' needs regarding food and downtime. No one wants to be on a 48-hour audition but no one wants to be wandering a random campus for hours either. And please be precise about what you want candidates to prepare for the campus visit. It's also helpful to give a local magazine, newspaper, or real estate listings to the candidate.
 * 'In response to #1 above, although it is a time consuming activity I had no problem with syllabi and the teaching dossier. As researchers our jobs are to exhaustively search all sources for info on this topic.  I have to say that I found assembling the teaching dossier to be a stimulating and helpful excerise.  It did help that I have a good amount of teaching experience even though I'm only ABD, which leads to my final point.  We all have various strengths and weaknesses.  For some of us, teaching experience is a plus and for some of us it's a minus.  Some of us have more experience in foreign archives and some less.  Well rounded candidates who have taught 5+ of their own courses and conducted 18 months of well funded research(via presitigious awards) are few and far between and I am certainly not one of them.  You may think you're an excellent or natural teacher from years of TA experience, and perhaps you are, but experience without the benefit of someone else's syllabus counts.  I can confidently state that there is no comparison between TAing and teaching your own course.  Personally, I actually find the latter to be easier in most respects but for many it can be more difficult. My point here is that we need to tailor our applications to our strengths while at the same time trying to improve our weaknesses.


 * The point here is that committees should be sensitive about wasting the time of so many people who ultimately have no chance at the job. A good search committee should be able to tell from a CV and letters of reference whether or not they will be interested in a candidate. If they don’t like the CV, ancillary documents like syllabi and teaching dossiers will not change their mind. Whatever document they use to make their first cut, that is the one that they should require. Secondary materials should be requested at later stages. With 300+ applicants it seems doubtful that committees who ask for lots of material even read all what they have required every candidate to compile...maybe that should be the rule of thumb: search committees should feel obliged to read every page of required material that every candidate has sent. (Lots of British searches ask only for a CV at the initial stage. Not even a cover letter or rec letters. IMHO, that seems more humane, and more sensible as well.) Furthermore, the above poster may not mind the time-consuming exercise, but some candidates do not have so much spare time. The bottom line is that a time-consuming application process privileges those people who have a lot of time to work on their applications: 1) ABDs or postdocs who have funding and lots of time on their hands (thus further privileging people from schools that give better funding to their grad students, e.g., the Ivies once again). 2) Anyone who does not need to work (thus further privileging the wealthy). 3) People who don’t have children. But what about the guy who just finished his PhD and is spending the Fall teaching six sections of Western Civ or World History just to pay his student loans? What about the ancient history grad student who has been teaching 20 Century US to pay the rent, and thus does not have appropriate syllabi to send? What about the folks who (sometimes accidentally) had children before getting a tenure-track position? These people might get weeded out just because they were not lucky enough to land their first jobs in their own specialty, and/or do not have copious amounts of available time to put into their applications. By default many searches continue to reward a certain career trajectory, and if your career has veered off for one reason or another, you lose.
 * I think the important question is how specific the material asked for is. It seems perfectly reasonable that a person applying for a job as a teacher and researcher be expected to provide evidence that he or she can both teach and research, and the best evidence is a syllabus and writing sample respectively. Anyone applying for a job that requires a PhD will presumably have a writing sample anyway. If a candidate has not previously taught a course individually, it doesn't seem overly burdensome to spend a day at the beginning of the application season coming up with a sample syllabus. If a candidate is able to spend whatever time they have perfecting a single writing sample and a single syllabus which he or she can then send to all applications, then that seems manageable and justifiable. What is problematic is when search committees require submissions to be individually tailored to their own requirements, as if the candidate is only applying for that job, and not 50 other jobs at the same time. So the search committee shouldn't ask for a syllabus for a particular course: they should be able to infer that if a candidate can come up with a good syllabus on subject X, he or she could also come with a good syllabus for whatever subject the department needs, assuming it is within the candidate's field of expertise. They also shouldn't introduce onerous restrictions on the writing sample. An upper page-limit is probably necessary to avoid candidates sending in their entire dissertations or books if these aren't wanted. But the limit should be in accordance with the average length of an article or chapter - 40-50 pages - as these are the kinds of things that candidates have available. Asking for a sample of only 20 pages, or only 3000 words, means the candidate has either to take an extract from a longer work, which inevitably means a lot of fiddling with introductions, conclusions, extra paragraphs explaining the context, etc. It is this perpetual tailoring that leads to job applications taking up the vast majority of the fall semester for most final-year PhDs. It ultimately means that whoever the department ends up hiring will be less prepared for the job than he or she would have been had he or she not spent so much time preparing applications rather than finishing his or her dissertation.



**Hm, no, sadly, I've been on 5 search committees and the writing sample is crucial. Do we love your work? Then we figure out how to get you in the door. Do we hate it? No amount of fanciness can overcome that. So we ask for it upfront, always. And I am really sorry about that, and about the costs. It took me years to pay off the $5K I accrued in MLA costs over my years on the market. I like the cover letter-CV first method (with additional materials requested later on a case-by-case basis), but I don't think it fits how SCs like to work. In my experience, SCs gather all materials and go through a marathon session to identify "no" and "maybe" candidates. Then they revisit the "maybe" pile in more detail. They don't want to wait around for additional material, because the SC members are busy finishing the semester themselves. Literally: this entire process takes place over the span of a few days. As for syllabi and teaching portfolios: candidates should have them prepared. If a candidate waits until September to put together a sample syllabus, that is not the SCs fault. Keep a folder of potential courses you'd like to teach, with ideas for assignments and exercises, reading selections, etc. Add to it whenever something comes to mind. If you can't think of interesting course proposals, it is unlikely that ANY university will want to hire you for a teaching position. As for personalized rejection letters: I am not aware of many other professions that have adopted a similar practice. If you want feedback on your work, present at conferences and submit to peer-reviewed journals. I do agree with the suggestions about letters of recommendation (#10) and the job postings (#6-9). I would suggest that candidates take advantage of their respective professional association's job market resources, along with theChronicle of Higher Ed. A more far-reaching concern: PhD programs should admit PhD candidates with an eye towards the future academic job market, and not only to meet the university's TA requirements. Obviously there are more qualified PhDs and ABDs on the market than there are TT/VAP positions this year. Graduate programs bear some responsibility for that, since they have grown their grad programs NOT to keep up with university/market demand for TT positions, but rather to keep up with undergraduate/administrative demand for cheap TA labour.
 * Re: #9, ads should say if an official transcript is required when the dossier-service copy is not accepted.  I have had  to spend extra money to send (quickly) official copies of all of my transcripts to be considered for positions.  Really, do you need official transcripts from everyone?  Can't you just ask for official transcripts from candidates that make the interview stage?
 * For what it's worth:
 * Agree completely with your last point, but I'd like to take it in a different direction. (My comment falls under venting, so if you feel it doesn't belong here, please say so, and I will move it to the venting page.) PhD programs everywhere should prepare PhD candidates to market themselves for both non-academic and academic careers, and to seek out both sets of opportunities. There is a huge world out there, and it's much bigger and often more rewarding than academia. It makes me completely crazy that so many talented, smart, and creative individuals who have a PhD cannot see out of the tiny, often rigid and stifling, box that is the academic career path, because they've never worked outside of academia or have never had anyone model a non-academic career path to them. There's almost a conspiracy of silence in higher education around what to do with a PhD. You can do anything you want with a PhD. There are so many jobs available outside of academia to someone with a PhD. You don't have to limit yourself to scrambling after poor-paying sessional positions, or a life of chasing after one contract or another, moving from place to place (unless you are absolutely dead set on an academic career and are willing to put up with the incredible competition). I watch my talented and bright colleagues, convinced that the only positions they could ever dream of getting are on the very bottom end of the academic totem pole, bang their heads against the wall for some crumb of a position when they could take their talents and degree to business or government and earn a decent salary with sane hours with less of the idiosyncracy, pettiness, and insularity that colors the academic hiring and promotion process. So that's a plea for PhD programs to appropriately professionalize students throughout their graduate training, by teaching them how to identify their transferable skills, write winning cover letters and CVs for any position, interview for any position--and most critically, not sell themselves short by locking their futures (imagined, at least) into an industry that is choked with talent and short on opportunity.
 * Yes, there is a "conspiracy of silence" about what happens after your PhD. Most departments like to display track records of their recent graduates or ABDs on their websites to give an impression that everyone landed on a great academic job, while ignoring the other half that didn't. Your professors are more than eager to clone themselves through you, so they will encourage you to follow them blindly...to the dead end, that is. Then you get a PhD, they drop you like a cow dung, and another cycle of new graduate converts begins. The first step towards changing current academic climate is honesty. Just tell people what to expect when they begin a decade long journey into this PhD industry. Do not alienate those who decide to look beyond academia or give people false hope to keep them around for a cheap bargain (adjunct, TAship, etc.).
 * I don't know where you got your PhD, but my colleagues and I put an *enormous* amount of effort into helping place our graduate students into TT jobs (I am tenured at a top-five public R1). Some of our doctoral candidates are responsive to criticism and even -- gasp -- thankful when they beat out 150 others for a tenure-track job with our help and good advice. Others have ridiculous standards (won't take anything out of state, spousal issues prevent moving altogether), refuse to work on job letters and other materials enough to have the desired effect, or are snotty or diffident in interviews. When these students get discouraged (as they often do) after one bad year on the market, you can bet that I don't exactly encourage them as much the second, or the third, time around, and I may even make my letter less gushing if they piss me off enough. I don't expect a box of chocolates every time I take out time to vet job materials, conduct a mock interview, or just talk a candidate down from high anxiety (none of which my own dissertation advisor did for me), but it may be that some of the whiners on this wiki are rude to their advisors or expect more than any dissertation advisor can possibly give them. We can't serve you all up jobs on platters - especially if you refuse to relocate, won't settle for a SLAC, or can't manage to be articulate about your own research with a bunch of strangers.
 * What complete bullshit. Beyond being simply dismissive (referring to the "snotty" and "whiners" of this wiki), the Dearly Devoted Dissertation Director ignores the basic and fundamental realities of the market in order to opine that he/she is under-appreciated and ignored.  Should people take reasonable advise to make themselves better candidates? OF COURSE. The DDDD, however, lays the problem of the market NOT on the overabundance of PhDs, the shrinking pool of tenured jobs, the growth of contingent and adjunct faculty or on the completely miserable economy, but instead on inflexible doctoral candidates. Seriously?  Could the DDDD be more out of touch and self-referential? Not likely.  If advisers consistently produce PhDs that have "ridiculous standards," then that is a reflection on the adviser and the institution more than it is on the individual students. And if the tone of the above message is indicative of the *enormous* efforts I can see why their students are so unreceptive.  Furthermore, there are just too many PhDs and not enough jobs.  Someone on this wiki noted that faculty, departments, and universities (i.e., the ones who Marx would describe as owning the modes of production) need to be open and honest about the market at the beginning of the process (as in before the PhD).  The market is not driven by candidates (good or bad), but by structural economic realities and pricks like the DDDD.
 * Thanks, above poster. I agree, for the most part. (The DDDD's post is hostile and defensive). Universities and supervisors are not doing their jobs in training their students to be successful once they get that PhD. It's not enough for advisors to encourage their students to go on the academic market, and then when they see they aren't succeeding, to drop their support. Advisors need to make their students aware from the start that the academic market is over-crowded and to encourage them to consider alternative career paths. (That requires training students early on to identify their transferable skills). Then, they need to train them on how to find a job. (Someone does. It's not going to happen on its own). Anyone who's gone straight from undergrad to PhD is handicapped at job-finding skills and short on professionalism. PhD students generally have less practice at landing jobs than most potential employees at their age. If their students have poor interview skills (or can't write a cover letter and don't know how to design a concise two-page CV), supervisors need to train them. Or they need to work with the university career center to set up mandatory training for their students. I've seen many of my PhD colleagues left to sink or swim themselves on these tangible but less visible skills that are critical to finding a job. This training needs to start in year one of the PhD program. But the DDDD also makes a valid point: some students are too immature and too inexperienced to recognize how much they have to work at developing these skills. They're hostile to being trained. They don't have the persistence and commitment. Or they think that jobs should come on a silver platter with the PhD. I think this is an age/maturity problem. (Peevishness and a sense of entitlement are not fun to work with, I know). In addition to supervisors & departments acknowledging their responsiblity to professionalize students, students need to bring more maturity to the PhD in the first place so they are receptive to being professionalized. To me, that translates into raising the bar on PhD candidates by accepting only those students who have had some work experience outside of academia, or older students, or those who can demonstrate they already have developed a degree of professionalism.
 * Interesting, but I don't think age has anything to do with maturity and most of my graduate colleagues seem to be well prepared for an academic job regardless of age. Some faculties are still in their twenties and they are doing fine. I have seen senior faculties acting like kids, throwing tantrums at grad students behind closed doors or badmouthing their colleagues who outperform them. It makes you wonder what they have learned all these years. Age doesn't always speak for a character.
 * No, you're quite right. (And you made me laugh). I only suggested age as one proxy for maturity. I simply would like to see a greater emphasis on professionalization as part of the training of PhD candidates. I'm suggesting it might make a difference if you admit those students who already have some of those skills in place.
 * I'm so happy for you. I meanwhile, have a PhD from a top 15 university in my field, worked closely with my dissertation advisor and our faculty placement committee (which did a very good job helping us with interviews. CVs, and cover letters), was very well-behaved, and have several publications.  I'm also open to working to pretty much anywhere - I applied to over 100 positions this year (so far) and just under 100 last year.  I'm willing to relocate, willing to take a lectureship or even a 5-5 teaching load.  I even have had phone interviews and one campus visit.  Yet I have no job.  Some of us have done everything "right" and still don't have squat to show for it.
 * To the person above, can I ask what field you're in? Because in History, even applying to every possible job and post-doc it'd be a stretch to go above 50 applications.  Just curious.  Also, good luck, I hope this year is your year!
 * I hope it's my year too. I have a PhD in English, and I did a dual emphasis in Rhetoric and American Literature, so I'm applying to Rhetoric/Composition, American Literature, American Studies, Generalist, etc. - Lecturer, Visiting Prof, Post Doc, Tenure track - I'm grabbing 'em all - and everywhere I can - small liberal arts places and big R1 universities.  I ain't picky and I don't care none if I get a heavy teaching load.  I have one interview at MLA to show for it.  Of course, that's one more than last year.


 * There are simply too many well-qualified candidates from top universities and not enough jobs. This is a fact that every prospective graduate student (at least in the Humanities) needs to consider before embarking on this "career" path.--ok, but--aside from stating the obvious--isn't it a little late for that? Everybody here already has a degree, and how is this relevant for a "Dear Search Committees" page? -- My point is that the search committees are in a rather difficult position and the process really sucks for them as well.  They operate under terrible constraints imposed their institution and their department.  Yes, at the end of the day, committee members all have jobs so nobody has his or her future at stake.  But as participants in the process they have to endure quite a bit of crap.  And I imagine that sifting through 200 fairly similar applications and selecting the "best" 15 can't be fun.
 * Can I ask something? Is there anyone on the market now who was not warned by their dissertation directors, graduate advisors, whatever, that they could do every single thing right and still not end up with a tenure track job when they were done? I am a prof and I keep telling every single person who contacts me that they are probably best served doing something else with their lives; that chances are that they will not have a job after putting in close to a decade of their lives preparing for one, that they will likely be in significant debt at the end of the process, etc, etc. It seems to discourage very few. Maybe of fifteen people I talk to, one will thank me and decide to go to law school. Five will apply and not get into grad school. Nine will apply to get into grad school and five will not get any financial aid. I tell them that it's a very competitive profession, and by not being offered a teaching assistantship or a fellowship, they have already failed to make the first cut, and that they should definitely not borrow money to go to grad school. Hardly anyone listens. Then of the four that do get accepted, with good financial aid, I will tell them that they can do absolutely everything right and I still cannot give them any assurance of getting a job. I have about a 50% placement rate with my students who complete the degree under these optimal conditions. It's better than the national average, but it's not good enough. *Re: It's nice that you tell them the truth. That's what real teachers do. Unfortunately, I have been told otherwise. The people I work with would drop names of their more successful students, who landed on jobs at ivies and R1s, and suggested that I'd get the same if I followed their advice. This year I found out that they were just a handful of exceptions. There's no entry, no exit for this lost generation. What a curse. Be a good prof and tell your students to quit before it's too late. We only live once.
 * To the above poster: you are, of course, spot on. I can only relate my personal experience. When starting the MA, I was "warned" by my advisor that the market was "not good," but this was eventually qualified by the assertion that a mass of baby boomers would soon be retiring, improving the odds of finding a job. I was in my early 20s, the GA pay was, if not great, at least steady, and by the time I left that institution (which offered only the MA) to pursue a PhD, I naturally felt like an academic rockstar. That'll happen in those small departments. Anyway, same speech was given at Big PhD University by the DGS. He meant well, but I don't think many heeded his words. I didn't. In my situation, NOT attending was unthinkable (at least it was then). I mean, holy geez, I had received funding. I MUST be special. How could I NOT wind up with a TT job? More important, coming from a blue-collar family, success, to me, was always synonomous with education - the more the better. You know them blue-collar types - they have funny ideas of "success." I guess my point is two-fold: When you're in your early 20s, the frontal lobes of your brain (the parts that deal with forethought and consequences) are not fully formed. To be politcally correct about it, you're essentially a mental invalid when it comes to life decisions until you hit 25 or so. In other words, short of a Marine drill instructor kicking my ass and explaining the realities to me, nothing was going to stop me from going. If graduate programs would catch students early - I'm talking first semester MAs - and be ruthlessly blunt about the situation (and I mean RUTHLESS), it would probably be better than these perfunctory warnings that are usually given out and then promptly ignored. I doubt this will happen, though. Can you imagine professors ranting and screaming at prospective graduate students, telling them to get out while they can? That success and happiness is not dependent upon getting that damn degree? I can't, but I think that's what it would take. But I'm not going to put this entirely on the profession, as if it's some kind of cult bent on enticing the youth of American into its ranks only to discard them later, a pathetic shell of their former selves (though some would argue otherwise). Nah, this was all me, and how I defined "success." I wanted to be called "Dr." So here I sit, 10 years after I started my graduate education, PhD in hand, heavily in debt (funding or no, getting married and having a life will cost ya), no savings or retirement to speak of and no real job in sight. I don't feel like a failure, but I do feel a bit foolish and lost, and I suspect I'm not alone. It's not the end, naturally, but it is a reordering, especially of how I have defined success and happiness over the last decade. It's scary, but also kind of liberating.
 * Many advisors DO NOT adequately warn their students about how awful the market truly is. My PhD department has a "job board" that lists the names of those students who get jobs in a given year, and it is fundamentally misleading. At the fall reception welcoming new students, the chair of the department (during my years at the institution) always made the same speech: "I glanced at the job board on my way down here, and I noticed that the number of grads who got academic jobs is approximately the same as the number of students in the new cohort. SO YOU DID THE RIGHT THING BY NOT GOING TO LAW SCHOOL." Of course, he never mentions that many of those students had been on the market for several years; that many of the positions are not tenure track; that quite a few of the new cohort will ultimately drop out, but not before blowing a fortune. It's utterly irresponsible of these departments, especially those that do not offer multi-year funding packages to all (or even most of their admitted students). All prospective grad students should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwWrdZkiTU