Academic jobs and the Survey of Earned Doctorates

The Survey of Earned Doctorates for 2016 (SED) is out (at least in data form). I was just playing around the numbers a little bit (I am in physical science), and I am finding the results quite interesting. The percentage of doctorates earned by temporary visa holders remains below 30%, which is a lot fewer than I would have expected. The percentage of women earning degrees in my field has not changed much since I got mine.

The really interesting thing is in the employment plans (at least in my field). For all we hear about the pyramid scheme that is academia, in my field, the "mismatch" between the number of qualified potential academic job seekers and the number of openings is not all that large. This is, of course, a very simple analysis, since it ignores the presence of people with other sorts of degrees that apply for positions in my field, as well as people with degrees in my field that go to other departments. It also assumes that all TT positions are equal, which is clearly not the case, since University type and location also make a huge difference.  So, what do I mean by a small "mismatch"? The ratio between the number of postdocs going in (defined for this scenario as "definite postgraduate study" plus the same percentage of those with definite plans applied to "seeking employment or study") is 3. Basically, according to the SED, there are 3 new postdocs produced per TT position available at US institutions in my field.

Now, I've talked about issues with the SED and other surveys before, when I looked at PhD overproduction 6 months ago. Those issues remain, and this is 1) only a rough estimate from questionable numbers and 2) ignores PhDs granted by foreign institutions who presumably make up a decent percentage of American postdocs. A survey of current postdocs and their plans would be much better. That said, given my previous discussions of search committees and their sorting of applicants, where at least half of the applicant pool is not qualified, 3 to 1 is not far from the minimum required to produce an adequate pool. This is especially true since many postdocs in my field plan on industrial positions, but want additional training (or the paid chance to live abroad for 2 years). This last bit is from anecdote and personal observation, since I don't know of any good surveys of just postdocs in my field on this issue.

Once we add in the postdocs with PhDs from non-US institutions, of course, the number of potential applicants for TT positions is much higher. And of course, applicants self-sort, since most people are looking for a specific TT job type (primarily undergrad, research intensive, etc) not just a random TT position, and most people have location preferences that determine which positions they apply to. Thus, colleagues at less well known universities in rural locations have problems filling out their pools sometimes, while colleagues in highly desirable locations have many hundreds of applicants.

Personally, my students are still finding jobs that they enjoy, so I don't feel any job-market induced pressure to decrease the size of my group below that which I can comfortably support. For better or worse, the recent numbers suggest that not much has changed in my field over the last 10 years or so.