Musicology Job Wiki Roundup 2010 – Some Data and Hiring Figures
July 24, 2010 at 7:44 am Ryan Raul Bañagale 11 comments
With the academic year fully behind us, it seems as good a time as any for Amusicology’s annual job wiki roundup. See previous posts by Drew (2009) and myself (2008).
I’m splitting this year’s coverage into (at least) two separate posts. The first, simply gathers the data. A few caveats explaining the quote-unquote nature of the “facts” found below:
- The data is only as accurate as reported on the wiki itself. I did not take the time to verify each posting/placement. In other words, WYSIWYG.
- Numbers are based off of accepted positions only. Unlike years past, information from “canceled searches” or “rumored acceptances” columns has only been included where indicated specifically.
- Position specifications are based on the information provided in the listings (not necessarily who they ended up hiring).
- Some hires (especially those with degrees from more than 5 years ago) represent lateral moves
- Some ABDs have finished their degree and updated their degree year accordingly, others remain unchanged.
Here We Go:
As of the July 4th weekend, 49 known placements from 26 different institutions.
This includes Tenure-Track, Adjunct, and Post-Doc positions.
Parenthetical annotations indicate that one hire was ABD (*) or completed their PhD more than five years ago (#).
Schools with 5 placements (2):
UCLA-musicology (*); University of California, Berkeley (*##)
Schools with 4 placements (1):
Columbia (**)
Schools with 3 placements (2):
New York University (*#), University of Illinois (#)
Schools with 2 placements (8):
Eastman, Harvard (*), Princeton (#*), Stanford (*), University of Michigan (#), University of Pennsylvania (**), Wesleyan (*), UCLA-ethnomusicology
Schools with 1 placement (14):
Chicago (*), Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (#), Florida State, Koln, Heidelberg (#), Minnesota (#), Northwestern, North Texas, Southampton (#), USC, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UNC-Chapel Hill (*), U. Virginia (*)
For Comparison:
Year on Year High Placements:
| 2009-10 | 2008-09 | 2007-08 | 2006-07 |
| UCLA and Berkeley (5) | UCLA (4) | Chicago (7) | Harvard (7) |
| Columbia (4) | Columbia, Florida State, Berkeley (3) | UCLA (6) | Columbia and Pittsburg (6) |
| Berkeley (5) |
Breakdown of the 2009-2010 Tenure Track, Adjunct, and Post-doc hires:
28 Tenure-Track Positions
Degree Year (# of placements)
2010/ABD (6); 2009 (5); 2008 (3); 2007 (3); 2006 (2); 2005 (1); 2004 (3); 2002 (2); 2001 (1); 1997 (1); 1991 (1)
Average year of degree completion for those getting TT jobs: 2006/2007
15 Music History/Musicology TT Jobs
- 9 non-specified
- 6 specified: Pre-1750; Baroque; 17th/18th; 19th/20th; After 1945; and American
6 Ethnomusicology TT Jobs
- 5 non-specified
- 1 specified: African Music
2 Music History/Musicology/Ethnomusicology TT Jobs
5 Non-specified TT Jobs
- Asking for jazz, popular music, traditional music, and/or performance/applied instruction
13 Non-tenure Track Appointments (Adjuncts, 1-, 2-, & 3-year posts)
Degree Year (# of placements)
2010/ABD (7); 2009 (2); 2008 (1); 2007 (1); 2001 (1); 1977 (1)
Average year of degree completion for those getting non-TT jobs: 2008/2009 [excludes PhD from 1977]
5 Musicology non-TT Jobs
4 Music History non-TT Jobs
3 Ethnomusicology non-TT Jobs
1 non-specified non-TT Job
8 Postdocs went to 4 ABDs and 4 recent (2008-10) PhDs
In addition to the numbers above:
8 canceled searchers
10 searches of unknown status
12 listed as still in progress (short list established/held interviews)
12 with rumored acceptances
Including the “rumored acceptances” and the 2 additional hires that have been added to the wiki since I started pulling together the data on this post, the grand total of hires to 64 out of 91 total positions posted during 2009-2010.
By comparison (total number of hires/positions posted):
| 2009-10 | 2008-09 | 2007-08 | 2006-07 |
| 64 of 91 | 66 of 107 | 108 of 129 | 65 of 78 |
So, there you have it.
Some thoughts on the job wiki will follow in a subsequent post.
Entry filed under: job wiki, professional development, Ryan Raul Bañagale. Tags: employment, job wiki, jobs, professional development.
Amusicology 
1. wini | July 24, 2010 at 8:15 am
I think it would be worthwhile to add a gender analysis to this, including the discipline statistics on women and men in graduate school.
2. Ryan Raul Bañagale | July 24, 2010 at 11:04 am
Wini, this a very important consideration for sure, worthy not only of its own post, but also a conference panel of some sort. As you are probably aware, there was quite a lengthy discussion on gender in the comments section of the job wiki this year, spawned by the observation that no TT historical-musicology jobs had gone to women this year. I plan to address some of that in my follow-up post. That said, I’m weary of making any large-scale claims on this (or any other) hiring issue based on the somewhat shaky nature of information gleaned from the wiki. Especially given how significantly numbers shift from one year to the next. It would be VERY helpful if the AMS or SEM were keeping (or made more readily available if they are keeping) such statistics.
3. Michael Scott Cuthbert | July 24, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I was immediately surprised that there were only as many acceptances noted for 2010 as for 2007, but then I remembered that of course the Wiki wasn’t considered as important for job hunting at first (because it wasn’t particularly well-known) as it is today. A caveat worth including because, as some of the comments to your AMS presentation made clear, many people in the field have no idea that the Wiki is updated by everyone (and not by Ryan Bañagale or the AMS or some other official organization).
4. Latest Data Recovery, Data, Tech, Technology, Computer Auctions | Internet News | July 24, 2010 at 2:04 pm
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5. sociosound | July 25, 2010 at 12:38 am
Thanks for keeping us updated. Looking forward to the second post…
Danielle
6. Bob Judd | July 26, 2010 at 9:46 am
Thanks Ryan– I agree that data monitoring is very important, and worthy of more investment on the part of the AMS (and other societies). The more people that tell this to the AMS board of directors and the Career-related Issues committee, the more likely it is that some funds will be directed to this effort. It often boils down to getting the money to pay the person to do the data collection and analysis. So: tell the committee and board members, esp., those you know personally! I’ll try to myself; but when there’s a grass-roots clamor for something, the committee people tend to prioritize more highly.
Cheers,
Bob
7. Michael Scott Cuthbert | July 26, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Dear Bob — I agree with everything that you say and I will be one of the people pushing along with (I assume) Ryan and Drew and others to push for getting more of this data out there. But I wonder if the best way to ensure that such changes take place wouldn’t be to have more people like Ryan actually ON the Career-related Issues Committee. More and more, I am becoming of the belief that the AMS needs a more open process in appointing officers and committee members — a process with open nominations and statements from those nominated on what they plan to do if elected. For instance, I find it difficult to vote for a president based on number of publications and their presses; the last election I had to decide between two major scholars, one an important figure in my subfield whom I respect a lot, the other an important figure at my alma mater whom I respect a lot. What I didn’t have is any sense of was how I could use the information I was given in order to decide who would be a better president than the other. (Even though I was sure either would be good in the job) I have the same indecision all the way down the slate. Is there any mechanism where the process of holding elections could be modernized?
8. Ryan Raul Bañagale | July 26, 2010 at 10:19 pm
@Bob: I’m glad to hear that funds might be made available for such an undertaking given the right amount of push. I think that everyone who uses the job wiki would voice support. I hope that they will do so (even if it means losing a bit of anonymity in the process!)
@Michael: The reason I’m pushing for AMS to take over such accounting is so that I don’t have to! ;~0
Seriously though, you raise a very good point about committee (and board) appointments.
I’ve talked with several colleagues, graduate student and faculty, who have wanted to be more involved with groups such as the CCD but weren’t sure how to do so. With the former, I always suggest getting in touch with the current chairs. It is my understanding, however, that few AMS committees allow graduate student members. This is unfortunate because graduate students (generally) have greater time and motivation to participate (CV builder) attend to certain tasks–the gathering of hiring data, for example. I understand the need to maintain a certain level of experience amongst the committees, but I wonder if there might be more room for student involvement. One idea would be to allow ABDs.
There is an article in a recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education about the need for greater guidance for junior faculty with respect to academic service within the university. I think the same might be said for professional orgnaizations (adding in, of course, those members on the verge of becoming junior faculty!).
9. Drew Massey | July 27, 2010 at 8:01 am
Ryan –
Thanks for running the numbers this year!
I’m not sure that the AMS necessarily needs funding in order to start tracking this kind of data – after all virtually all other committee work is volunteer. There are numerous other scholarly organizations that track this kind of data. MLA and AHA, I think, both do this, to say nothing of more quantitatively-oriented disciplines, so there are models of how to track the data.
Having written last year’s synopsis, the data munging is not all the onerous and I think that it would be very illuminating to have an official, AMS-vetted count of trends in the discipline.
10. Bob Judd | July 27, 2010 at 8:14 am
Thanks Drew, Ryan, Myke. I’m listening! All good points. Drew, I’d just say that for AHA and MLA, I am virtually certain that they have staff to do the data. As I’m sure you know, their offices and staff are exponentially larger than the AMS. The thing is, the data managing (and the similar data stuff for the Grad Ed committee– see the report in the Feb 2010 AMS Newsletter) is really important, and we need to figure out how to do it right. Asking for a volunteer to handle it is possible, but seems a bit on the “asking too much” side of things to me.
11. Brigid | July 27, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Just a quick caveat regarding my department–UNC had three grad. students hired this year (one TT, one VAP, one post-doc)–two of the hires were made in the last 4-6 weeks, so maybe they didn’t make it into the initial data set. I’m under the impression that, perhaps due to delays caused by budget restrictions, some searches were conducted relatively late this academic year.