Negotiating or Shooting Herself in the Foot?
Dear friends of women in science,
Recently a philosophy PhD was offered a tenure track position at a small NY college. She sent a response saying she was excited about potentially joining the faculty but she had a few requests that she hoped they would consider. She tried to make it clear that she wasn't demanding any of these things. Instead, the school took back the offer, according to an article in Slate by Katy Waldman that you can read here. The response let her know that she'd made herself sound like a research university candidate rather than a liberal arts college person. What did she ask for? A higher starting salary that she said was more "in line with what assistant professors have been getting in the past few years."A semester of maternity leave. A pretenure sabbatical leave. No more than three new class preps per year for the first three years. A delayed start date so she could complete her postdoctoral training.
Let me say up front that not all small colleges are alike. I was academic VP at my college for five years so I can say confidently that these items would not have received the same reaction where I teach as she received. We do expect our faculty to be researchers and to be connected with their fields, and our policies reflect that.
Comments on this situation have been bifurcated. Some think she was totally justified (often women not in academia) and others that she was amazingly blind to the situation she was in (often from small college adminstrators). I feel that the admininstrators acted without much sensitivity, considering that she said she thought these items might vary a lot in how possible they would be and she was not demanding them. Considering how hard it is for women to negotiate at all, I hate that she tried and lost the job as a result.
I do need to add a few caveats. She could have asked for a salary in line with those paid to assistant professors at that school. Not all colleges are above average in salaries and fairness is important. She could have checked on materity policies and junior leaves, etc., and found out if they had ever granted any before listing those, then asked for the most reasonable few. Especially if hardly any of these requests seemed compatible with having the adminstration be fair to all new hires.
I would probably have groaned if I got such a list from a job candidate, feeling that the candidate was comparing my college to Harvard and Yale and that she had little understanding of how much other faculty would hate her if she demanded and got off-scale perks and salary (and how impossible it would be in a small community to keep it private). But then I think I would have talked with her about these issues, not cut her off with a withdrawn offer.
Anyway, even though this situation is about philosphy and not science, it is about women's power to negotiate and to be assertive in asking for what we think we are worth. What do you think she should have done?
cheers,
Laura
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Hi Marian, Susan, Helen, and Denise,
It seems like the consensus is that she should have the right to negotiate but perhaps also she should have done better research into what the expectations were for the institution to which she applied. And, that her expectations fit better with research universities. Denise, I'm sorry to hear your experience of small liberal arts colleges matches hers and predicts a "low man on the totem pole" approach to junior faculty. That's certainly not true at Pomona College, but as I mentioned earlier, the small liberal arts college covers a spectrum of expectations of faculty. She definitely could have found out where Nazareth lies on that spectrum. Thanks for all of your thoughts!
cheers,
Laura
This is an interesting case in large part because it draw attention to the differences in how research universities and liberal arts colleges think of faculty. I have held positions at both types of institutions, so I know how the faculty and administrators at each tend to think.
Research universities think of new hires like sports teams think of new recruits: You hire the best and give them what they need to perform at the top of their game, thereby keeping the team up there in the rankings and the level of play consistently improving. So they hire the best PhDs and then give them what they need to publish, attract grant money, garner awards and speaking engagements, as well as teaching and committee work. In order to accomplish all that, their faculty need low teaching loads, start up funds, intramural funding, travel funds, and, in the case of scientists, lab space and equipment. There is also an understanding that family formation (particularly for scientists) must be accommodated, usually through time off or teaching reductions. So the accommodations this job candidate requested were reasonable for a tenure track position at a top research university. Without these things, she would never make tenure.
To people from a small liberal arts college, however, her requests probably sounded like a spoiled brat asking for the moon. These colleges consider a faculty member's primary (and sometimes only) function to be teaching. They also tend to think of new hires as "low men on the totem pole": New hires get the worst teaching assignments, the worst office, the worst equipment, and so on, and "work their way up" through years of service. These faculty take pride in the fact that they eschew engaging in scholarship and research in order to focus exclusively on teaching. Tenure is a matter of being on the payroll for the requisite six years.
So from the items she requested, it sounds as though she was indeed a better fit for a research institution. If they had agreed to some of her requests, the other faculty would have resented her mightily for getting "special favors". If they had denied them all and she went there anyway, she probably would have been resented for even asking for those things.
But withdrawing the offer? That is a pretty harsh way of handling the situation. Simply stating that none of the things requested were possible should have been sufficient.
With respect to the adjunct issue raised here, I also would like to see a topic thread opened on this. Notice that at Nazareth College, the number of part time to full time faculty is nearly 2:1. So think how the requests this job candidate made may have been viewed by the majority of faculty (even though none probably have the right to voice their views or tender a vote.)
Laura
I agree she should have been savvier and done her homework up front, but to withdraw an offer? There seems to be more going on here. Evidently they were taking her attempt to negotiate as a sign that there was not a good fit there. This certainly should not be a lesson for others that negotiating is not appropriate. And I do wonder if a male candidate would have been so abruptly cut off. Hopefully she'll find a better fit soon!
Certainly her approach is typical for big universities. It's hard to know what the salary range is for a particular school. She probaby should have done a little more research, but being forward shouldn't have been a job killer. And it seems to me the appropriate response was for the chair or someone to phone her up and say, "Got your note, we need to be clear on a few things, you DO understand what sort of school this is, right?" rather than yank the offer.
A concern is this: if she'd been a guy, would they have just agreed he had gumption, and said "no" to his requests, no harm no foul?
Laura,
Should she be able to negotiate, yes. Did she do so in an appropriate manner, possibly not.
I look forward to your discussion on adjunct pay. I recently took "semi-retirement", moving from a "big" industry job to teaching at my local college. However, the pay for a part-timer (adjunct) is so low that I refer to my job as my "volunteer" position. I am earning less than half what I earned in my first job, 30 years ago, and in my first job I got benefits!
Marian
Hi Small College Woman,
Yes, they have to have an unpaid leave legally. But a lot of us, even small colleges, do have a paid leave. It usually doesn't cost the college too much because the per-class cost is way less than a full time tenure track salary and there are usually funds for short term replacements. That's another issue we should probably discuss (adjunct pay).
cheers,
Laura
Oboy, Laura, this one is hard. I sympathize with her having learned to negotiate and probably her getting advice about what to ask for. But I feel she didn't have a clue about Nazareth's finances or how a small community works. I do think they should have talked with her instead of firing her before she got there, though. And do they not have a maternity leave? They have to legally, right? Was she asking for a paid leave?
SCW
