Professor Van Ry

Reading over my two most recent columns on job hunting at community colleges, I’m afraid I might have discouraged some graduate students from applying. That was not my intention, although I can’t help being reminded of the answer Flannery O’Connor supposedly gave an interviewer who asked if she thought writing programs were squelching young writers: “Not enough of them.”

Seriously, though, I’ve been trying to be as candid as possible about both the advantages and disadvantages of a faculty career at a community college. But in my pursuit of honesty, I may have focused too much on the negative—specifically, on the fact that it can be just as hard to land a job at a two-year college as at a four-year campus, and sometimes harder. If that’s the case, some of you have no doubt wondered, then why bother?

I’ll try to answer that question here with a few reasons that you should not only bother, but seriously consider, applying to community colleges. <Read more.>

Via Rob Jenkins, The Chronicle of Higher Education.