[michaelt]

According to https://data.aaup.org/academic-workforce/ there are 270,000 tenured professors in the United States.

Assuming a tenured professor holds that position from age 35 to age 65, that's 9000 tenured positions to be filled per year.

According to https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2023 there are 57,000 research doctorates granted per year.

So 84% of people granted PhDs don't make it in academia.

[mold_aid]

Hi - please don't assume that retirements become job postings. Tenure lines have to be granted in many cases; if a dean is told by the provost to trim, then tenure lines are not granted after a retirement. My department has not matched its attrition rate for some time now.

[xhkkffbf]

I thought the 40% number seemed lower than my experiences suggest. But this is a solid point that suggests that even 84% is too low. I guess it could be as high as 90%.

[jojobas]

Many of them never wanted to be in academia in the first place, or at least shouldn't have wanted it. If you're in a class full of people who want to teach this same class, you might be questioning why you're there.

[dahart]

Perhaps too simplistic since tenure is not the only way to “make it” in academia. Many people have academic careers without making tenure. You’ve also excluded people who publish impactful work, spend time teaching, and leave before seeking tenure. It might be fair to say 84% of graduating PhDs don’t make tenure, it’s just jumping to conclusions to say they don’t make it in academia.

Also don’t forget there’s a large time lag between graduating PhDs and when they get tenure, so today’s 270k graduates might be shooting for the next decade’s 15k or 20k tenure spots. Or… who knows they might be shooting for the future 5k spots if the rumors about colleges trying to reduce their use of tenure are true.

“Non-tenure-track faculty account for about half of all faculty appointments in American higher education.” … “About 90 percent of all full-time lecturers and nearly 50 percent of all full-time instructors are nontenure track.” https://www.aaup.org/report/status-non-tenure-track-faculty

[geysersam]

Sounds like a lot more than I'd expect, especially considering ~50% of those 57000 doctorates probably don't even want to continue in academia. It's starting to look like the odds of landing a tenured position are quite good.

[red_admiral]

Yes, I expected the 40% to be much higher too. I guess once you go from PhD to postdoc it changes a bit, but again just looking at the numbers the pipeline gets a lot narrower at each transition.