I just saw this article, by Henry Raymond, in the Chronicle of Education that rivaled even the worst of my interview woes:
The committee members repeatedly warned me that their students were not as academically equipped as my current students, and that I’d have a terrible time adjusting to a new caliber of teaching. (My experience with the sample class I taught actually led me to believe that they were underselling their own students.) By the fifth time they had so alerted me, I began to wonder whether they had already settled on a candidate and were trying to get me to withdraw my candidacy.
…
But while I was expected to sing for my supper, the department made little or no effort to woo me. There was, in fact, quite literally, no supper. Or lunch. At one point during the day, the chairman handed me a prewrapped sandwich from the student cafeteria, served on a paper plate. I was allowed to feast on this meal — two pieces of cold, white bread, concealing a thin layer of stale turkey and a piece of American cheese — while the committee members, who were not eating, plied me with more questions about myself.
Later, on the campus tour, the chairman made a point of showing me the faculty dining room and telling me how good the food was there. I wondered at that point whether the entire day was a test pilot for a new run of Candid Camera. (They had spent considerable money on plane tickets and hotel rooms. Were lunch or dinner going to break the bank?)
…
Maybe, then, in the end, Large Metropolitan University got it right. It’s a tight job market, and they don’t have to impress anyone. They have a precious commodity at their disposal — a tenure-track job.
But, still, they didn’t get their first choice, and if they don’t change their modus operandi, other candidates will turn them down in the future, too.
Even in the world of academic employment, what comes around does occasionally go around. Search committees might remember that there is a price, however small, to be paid for indifference.
Actually, I think your story’s worse.
But the guys I turned down? Much the same reasons. The only decent person there was NOT in charge, and she was getting seriously screwed by management… she paid for my lunch, and explained that she wouldn’t be reimbursed because “to be fair to all candidates” they only got one meal each.
!!!
Why would I go to a place that was so obviously being nasty to its current employees?
In some respects, perhaps its best that some institutions behave this way during the interview process. It gives you a more accurate gauge of what working there will be like. If they want desperate people and/or masochists, it’s their choice, right?
Indeed, this story now moves in my ranking of the top horror job hunt stories of all time. Just when you think you have seen it all, along comes someone to show you how much worse rudeness and lack of consideration on the part of the employers can be. I always find it disturbing that the search and interview process can be so one-sided. The candidate has to jump through all sorts of hoops while the employer can conveniently forget that they are being looked over as well. I guess the fact that, as the writer points out, they are holding the rare commodity of a tenure line job gives them a license to behave in ways that would be inexcusable in other work environments. And while the author is applying to a professor’s job, it is not that much different than those librarian candidates applying to jobs which are classified as faculty and tenure line in the larger universities. In the particular story, the fact that the university seemed to undersell the students so much particularly disturbed me. Maybe its the educator in me, and while I know that the real world, there are some students that one can’t reach, overall I like to think I will eventually reach all of them somehow. So, when their own teachers undersell them to strangers, it just strikes me as wrong. However, to those out there still looking, don’t be discouraged. Most places may seem rude, but there are some out there that will make up for it.
One parenthetical comment. When I see Universities being “cheap” with applicants (ie, not paying for travel, or not feeding them), I have to wonder where the money is going? The cost of higher education has rapidly outstripped inflation over the past decade. (My undergrad institution cost me less than $1000 a semester to attend 12 years ago. The price has gone up more than 5x since then.) If they aren’t spending this new income on faculty, where exactly is the money going? Buildings? Technology? Burned with kerosene in 40-gallon drums? Am I missing something?