Has the faculty search gotten worse?

[Anonymous]

When I was at my alma mater Amherst College, new faculty time was exciting. Bold researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Oxford were the norm with the occasional Amherst alum coming back. Now, there are almost no star researchers or faculty worth their stuff: https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/2024/august/meet-our-newest-faculty .
Just look at that most recent list of faculty. It looks so foreign to me the lack of publication and experience. Expectations have severely diminished, and it is concerning. Now it is all about the right face but not the best Professor, sad.

[Anonymous]

It's very disappointing OP! The best researchers have all gone into industry from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Being a professor doesn't have the "perks" it used to, so now everyone-even the humanities PhDs-are not even attempting postdocs and moving into industry. Academia is rotten.

[Anonymous]

Those are fine professors. No, they aren't household names, but everyone has to start out assistant and make themselves known. There's an economist from UChicago, a Princeton classicist, and a legal studies professor from Harvard. An uninteresting lineup but they'll make themselves known.

[Anonymous]

One would think that the amount colleges charge in tuition would enable them to pay their faculty very well.

This is further proof of the rot.

[Anonymous]

You're seeing the effects of the diversity push and the lack of salary. Younger professors at these LACs have also been publishing way less than their older counterparts did. There's a laziness to academia.

[Anonymous]

Amherst has hit bottom. Stay away!!!

[Anonymous]

It's strange people are naming professors and their publication record. We don't even know that much about their background....

[Anonymous]

Amherst troll again? Wow. You've really been amping up your efforts as of late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amherst troll again? Wow. You've really been amping up your efforts as of late.

Doesn't seem like a troll. They're an alum

[Anonymous]

Isn't the literal point of a liberal arts college to bring in faculty TEACHERS not researchers. Amherst shouldn't be bringing in mega-genius researchers with pages of publication history, because that is not the purpose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amherst troll again? Wow. You've really been amping up your efforts as of late.

Doesn't seem like a troll. They're an alum

And they could just be lying? This is a fully anonymous forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amherst troll again? Wow. You've really been amping up your efforts as of late.

Doesn't seem like a troll. They're an alum

And they could just be lying? This is a fully anonymous forum.

Sure you can be a troll too. See how unproductive that conversation is, better to actually engage and figure it out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's very disappointing OP! The best researchers have all gone into industry from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc. Being a professor doesn't have the "perks" it used to, so now everyone-even the humanities PhDs-are not even attempting postdocs and moving into industry. Academia is rotten.

Cry me some more tears. As a new faculty at UVA everything is fine, and the DEI rot has begun to abate. Normalcy returns.

[Anonymous]

Academia doesn't pay.

So the best and brightest aren't teaching these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was at my alma mater Amherst College, new faculty time was exciting. Bold researchers from Harvard, MIT, and Oxford were the norm with the occasional Amherst alum coming back. Now, there are almost no star researchers or faculty worth their stuff: https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/2024/august/meet-our-newest-faculty .
Just look at that most recent list of faculty. It looks so foreign to me the lack of publication and experience. Expectations have severely diminished, and it is concerning. Now it is all about the right face but not the best Professor, sad.

There's some noticeable decline. Their older legal studies faculty have JDs from Yale Law School and now they have faculty without JDs...teaching legal studies. This is a really strange hiring choice.