We have several research and teaching positions at Columbia Statistics, in all areas of the department.
Cool! As regular readers know, lots of interesting work is going on here in the statistics department; also there are lots of research connections and collaboration opportunities throughout the university.
P.S. In the earlier version of the post these were listed as postdoc positions, but that unofficial label seemed to be causing confusion, so I’ve simplified the description. All relevant information should be at the above link.
If it is a postdoc why call it an assistant professor?
Title inflation?
Maybe an assistant professor (limited) includes a teaching component and they’re reserving postdoc for postdoc fellowship (more research based?). Or maybe a hope to convert the limited term to tenured at some point in the future (expanding program), and the negotiaton with the university would be easier with that name than something called a postdoc.
Rahul:
I don’t know! I guess these titles are not precisely defined.
Reminds me of how a burger flipper is now called a food service executive!
Rahul:
When my sister worked at McDonalds they didn’t let her flip burgers. Girls could make fries, serve customers, or clean up, but only boys were allowed to flip the burgers.
There’s probably more to this, but I’m reading “Assistant Professor (Limited Term)” as “Assistant professor with no chance of tenure” (i.e. not tenure track), which sounds awful — basically like an adjunct position but more misleading. What exactly is your department doing, Andrew?
Raghu:
I’m not 100% sure of this but I think these are fixed-term positions, which seems ok to me as long as it’s clear what’s being offered.
I’ll try to write more later, but for now a question: Is the salary for the “fixed term” position more or less than that of a normal tenure-track Assistant Professor?
Raghu:
I actually have no idea what the salaries are. I’ll see if Marcel can respond directly in this thread.
Elaborating, especially regarding “…which seems ok to me as long as it’s clear what’s being offered.” This is a tricky issue. In an abstract sense I agree — rational people should be able to enter into whatever arrangements they want — but the context of what is actually happening at universities makes me disagree that this approach is good for anyone.
Technically, there’s nothing wrong with offering poorly paid adjunct positions, for which there is no shortage of applicants; no one is forcing these people to apply, and the university may want to hire the cheapest people possible. I don’t think the proliferation of adjunct positions is good thing, though, since its overall effects on academia are pretty bad. (I won’t go into all the reasons here.) This “fixed term Asst Prof” position sounds like a glorified adjunct position — sure, people will apply, but what’s your goal? The convenience of non-tenured positions for your administration to cut? My department would be up in arms about this. (And to its credit my university has been consistently good, and getting better, at hiring tenure-track faculty rather than adjuncts.)
I asked about salary because if the argument is that a rational person would want the “fixed-term” assistant professor position, I would think that the salary should be *higher* than normal, which would be a way around my qualms. For a regular assistant professor position, or really any tenured position, there’s an implied tradeoff of salary for stability. The “payoff” for being an assistant professor is tenure, i.e. a job for life. Put differently, if someone said I could trade my current (tenured) position for an equivalent professor position without tenure, I’d only do it for a considerably higher salary. It would be nonsensical to make the trade for the same salary, and truly absurd to take a *lower* salary and lose tenure.
Coincidentally, yesterday: “Editorial: Colleges’ overreliance on adjunct faculty is bad for students, instructors and academic freedom”
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-28/editorial-colleges-overreliance-on-adjunct-faculty-is-bad-for-students-instructors-and-academic-freedom
While I agree with your points here’s an anecdotal observation.
Many of the adjuncts I came across were really the best instructors. Especially in the sciences.
The unfortunate reality in the top universities is that professors who bring in the big dollars via research funding get rewarded better than the best teachers.
This perverted incentive has resulted in a proliferation of superstar researchers who have neither incentive nor aptitude for teaching.
Raghu:
Yes that’s what I thought.
Seems fishy. False advertising?