A few days ago I wrote about the average time it took academics in the UK between receiving their PhD and getting an permanent academic job, 4.32 yrs, but that was an over all average and not broken down by any other factors. I have since looked at these numbers by the decade in which a person received their job. Again, using the same data set of 159 (36%) out 442 archaeologists who currently hold permanent positions in the UK-
| Decade | Number | Percent | Average time |
| 1970 | 11 | 7% | -0.45455 |
| 1980 | 15 | 9% | 1.333333 |
| 1990 | 56 | 35% | 5.267857 |
| 2000 | 66 | 42% | 5.030303 |
| 2010 | 10 | 6% | 4.5 |
The most striking thing is that in the 1970’s on average most of the people who got permanent positions did so roughly right away. Of course this survey only takes into account archaeologists still working so there might be some survey bias in the results. That number jumps up significantly in the 1990s-present. It looks like now, on average, about 5 years are spent between a degree and permanent employment. It is a lot tougher road now then it was 30 years ago to get into academia archaeology. Of course people have been saying this for years but now here are some hard numbers to back up those “facts”.
November 25th, 2011 → 6:53 pm
[…] Not Your Fathers Archaeology- Time between PhD and Archaeology Academic Jobs. (dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com) […]
November 28th, 2011 → 8:23 pm
[…] few posts I have looked at how long it takes between a PhD and an Academic Job both overall and by decade. As part of that same dataset I also collected information on where academic archaeologists got […]
November 29th, 2011 → 9:37 pm
[…] is actually close to random. This wouldn’t be bad but really the shelf life of a new graduate for academic jobs is 4-5 years after they get their PhD but the best odds are in the first year or …. Which means you need to have a job you qualify for come up over a 2-5 year period. Maybe 50 jobs a […]
November 30th, 2011 → 8:17 pm
[…] so I substituted in the year that some received their degree. While these numbers are not perfect, the majority of staff do get their jobs within a few years of getting their PhD so they are a good proxy. This resulted in a slightly smaller data-set, 244, which is still more […]