by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2009 | Career
Let’s crunch the numbers a bit more. Large departments naturally win more jobs, so let’s see who performed best over the last couple years relative to how many people they graduate. Yale, Harvard, and Princeton win out, each winning a number of top jobs each year roughly equal in size to one-third of an annual graduating class. (This is ignoring departments that only a generate a few graduates per year.)
Now, which subfield gives you the best chance of landing a top teaching job?
We examined the subfields of our 205 assistant professors, and then we compared that with the number of people graduating each year in those subfields (which we calculated using the lists of “dissertations completed” compiled by CAA for 2007, 2006, and 2005).
From best subfield to be in to the worst:
1. African Art
2. Asian
2. Medieval/Byzantine
2. Ancient
3. Renaissance/Baroque
3. Modern
