The Perils of the Academy - pt. 2

Another way to hustle some money in the academy is to look at outside jobs. I have the added advantage of wanting to move away from my drug dealer neighbor, so an outside job search comes naturally. [I really love my colleagues at "Elephant U" so leaving is also a difficult proposition.]

Two weeks ago I had a phone interview and was immediately invited for a campus visit. That night my wife and I had a long discussion about living in 'rural-land' and the school/job. When I mentioned the salary range, the discussion was over. I turned down the job interview there. It is much prettier there. It has seasons, snow, an active tourism economy, etc - overall a very nice but secluded place. I found out one day after turning down the interview that it ranked significantly higher than "Elephant U" in the US News and World Report Rankings this year. I still have one job application pending elsewhere, outside of a metropolitan area of ill repute on the east coast. That job is at a good liberal arts college. I will seriously consider it if offered.

This is one of the most difficult processes for me - the choosing, not the interviewing. I love interviewing for jobs and thinking about all of the possibilities in the world. I love the feeling of meeting new people, presenting my research, and interacting with new types of students. When it comes to deciding if I would move, it kills me. I learned a couple of years ago to not interview at a place where our family would not move. I was offered a sweet teaching gig at a prestigious all girls school. Guess what we chose - a mining consultancy.

The strategy in searching for jobs is that if you get an offer, you can end up at a better school, or you can take your offer and bargain a better compensation package at your current school. You could even get the schools counter-offering and pushing up the salary or assigned time benefits. I have actually seen this in practice and it is a marvelous thing. Unfortunately, "Elephant U" is a union school and I fall under the collective bargaining agreement. Thus, I cannot bargain anything - even with a really good offer. When I talked to my current department chair about my interview, he provided this insight "we are like major league ball players, except that the money isn't good and we can't just tear up our old contract and negotiate a new one when we want." At non-union schools, this is not correct, but where I am, this is true. This leaves me only with the exit strategy. Not much of a strategy to improve your salary, huh? In case I haven't said it before, I hate unions.