Having [finally] graded your remaining POLS 907 assignments, I wanted to raise again an issue that I mentioned throughout the class, but I feel could use reiterating: If you are interested in obtaining academic employment at a U.S. institution, at this point in your careers you should be seriously working on a professional paper or papers that can be presented at a conference and can be submitted for publication at a good journal. (1)
Based on the experience we had with the job applications this year, you should not think of this as an option, but rather as a necessity. The application files that we received that did not have examples of professional writing literally did not receive a second glance. To compete on the national market, even for jobs at 4-year liberal arts institutions, you must have some professional writing that has at least been presented at conferences.
A presented paper, by the way, is the key. Publication in a good journal is certainly helpful, but not necessary. (We actually hired a couple of people on the basis of three or four conference papers that had yet to reach the publication stage.) But those have to be professionally-done papers -- if you present something that is poorly done, you hurt yourself. (2) Anyone on the faculty here can recognize a flawed paper: listen to their advice.
Some of you have already done papers or exercises for me that I've suggested might be further developed. You may have had similar feedback from other faculty. My point with this memo is to say you are now at the point where you need to make a decision to commit to a single project (or a couple of projects) and put in the 40 to 80 hours of additional work (at least, assuming all goes well) to turn that into a presentable paper.
Contrary to what you may have been told, I am not trying to "monopolize the graduate students" with this suggestion -- have you noticed me sitting around looking bored lately? (3) Please work with anyone you want in the faculty! You might also find it effective to work with each other -- for example a very common pattern is for a student who has good substantive knowledge about an issue to combine efforts with someone with good computer and statistics skills.
In the past I have been reluctant to co-author with graduate students due to some unfortunate experiences I had with this while in graduate school. However, in the current market situation, I've concluded that this policy has become counter-productive and I am willing to consider co-authoring papers, provided the topic does not require excessive start-up costs on my part. That does not restrict you to KEDS data; it just means I don't want to work on problems, data, or methods that I don't think have any future.
So my revised rule is that I will co-author with a graduate student provided I am the second author (that is, the student must take primary responsibility for the paper, and will appear as first author.) Again, I would emphasize that this is only my policy, it is not necessarily even a good policy (there is certainly a long and respectable history in this profession of graduate students getting their start as third or fourth authors -- essentially in an apprentice role.) So shop your ideas around and despite the fact that I'm writing this memo, please consider working with any and all other faculty.
But write those papers!!
I've been doing some analysis of job placement success based on the data published by the magazineLingua Franca, and KU is looking pretty good [see http://www.linguafranca.com/resources/hirings_and_tenurings/jrpolysci.html ]. Based on the empirical record, you are at least as likely to get a job coming out of this place as are you are coming out of institutions that I would have thought would place a lot more students. (4)
The Lingua Franca data also confirm my sense that places such as Harvard, Chicago and Berkeley place the lower half (or, in fact, probably the middle third...) of their graduate classes in the same sorts of institutions where KU is placing its graduates -- Gary King's students are in fact part of your competition -- but then I've been telling you that since the first day of POLS 706.
The jobs are out there; you can get them coming out of KU, but the only way you are going to be able to do this is to go well beyond your graduate classwork. Classwork is the departure lounge, not the baggage claim.
1. The exception would be if you luck into a job by personal connections; i.e. pick up part-time academic employment in Ottawa, Kansas after a professor there gets kicked by a cow.
2. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" -- Abraham Lincoln
3. To say nothing of the prompt and thorough feedback that you receive from me on written assignments...
4. For example, in 2000, KU placed more students than Brandeis, Brown, Cornell, Iowa and Rice, and the same number as Georgetown, Maryland, Penn State, Rochester and Vanderbilt. Your mileage may differ. University of Chicago holds the 2000 record with placement of 19 students.