A new study analysing political science job-market outcomes for the 2023–2024 cycle finds that 26 per cent of candidates on the market ultimately secured tenure-track professorships, challenging the idea that graduating from a top-tier university guarantees an academic post. Published in PS: Political Science & Politics, the analysis flags a number of factors as better predictors of success, including a strong publication record, entry into a high-demand field, and being a woman or an underrepresented minority candidate.
Historically, a rigid prestige hierarchy has shaped perceptions of academic hiring. Previous research suggested that elite universities supply the bulk of professors, and that the top 20 per cent of programmes produced the majority of tenure-track hires while the bottom half yielded far fewer. The current work argues that relying on where a candidate earned their PhD can be misleading because it overlooks the size of graduate programmes and the many teaching posts at smaller institutions that do not offer PhD training.
“Existing work has claimed that where one earns the PhD is critical to whether they find a professor job, and some even suggested closing more than half of PhD programs,” Scott W. Desposato, Simón Bolívar Chair of Latin American Studies and a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told PsyPost.
“But this body of work assesses placements by looking at professors at PhD-granting programs. Thus, they don’t control for the size of the PhD programme (bigger programmes should have more placements, even if their training is the same as smaller programmes) and they ignore the many professor jobs at small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and other universities that don’t have phD programmes.”
“As I write in the paper, it’s like studying fitness by seeing which country won the most medals in the Olympics and concluding that the best way to be healthy is to move to that country,” Desposato continued. “That would be a crazy way to study fitness, and it’s the wrong way to study the academic labour market.”
He emphasised the need for systematic evidence to guide PhD students. “Faculty are full of advice about what students should do to succeed on the job market,” he said. “But their recommendations are based on anecdotal observations. We try to be systematic and scientific in our research – so why wouldn’t we want some real evidence from which to make recommendations to our PhD students?”
The study followed a group of active job seekers and then checked back on their outcomes a year later. Desposato identified 413 political science candidates who were active on the market during the 2023–2024 cycle, gathered from the Job Market Candidate pages on various university sites in autumn 2023, and included only those nearing completion of their dissertations or recent graduates—excluding anyone already in tenure-track posts or who had graduated before 2023.
Researchers collected details from candidates’ websites and résumés, including the rank of their university, their subfield, teaching experience, awards, and publication records. To assess publications, the study tracked both quantity and the prestige of journals in which candidates published.
The researcher also coded perceived gender and underrepresented minority (URM) status based on names, pronouns, identity-specific awards, personal statements, and appearance, a measure intended to approximate how hiring committees might perceive candidates.
By autumn 2024, about 26 per cent of the candidates had accepted tenure-track professorships. Notably, the prestige of the degree-granting institution had virtually no bearing on whether a candidate secured such a post.
Placement rates did not show a clear pattern by institutional rank: the top 10 departments placed 25 per cent of their candidates, while departments ranked 71st or lower placed 35 per cent. The researchers caution that the lower-ranked group was underrepresented online—only 13 of the 60 lower-ranked departments listed candidates—meaning the observed figures for that tier may be influenced by sample size. In the group’s breakdown, the university with the most dramatic impact was the University of Missouri, which placed nine of its 16 candidates; the rest of that group placed five of 24.
Rank, however, did appear to influence the type of job secured. Candidates from top-ranked programmes were more likely to obtain postdoctoral fellowships, which are commonly seen as stepping stones to tenure-track roles at doctoral‑granting universities. By contrast, graduates from lower-ranked programmes tended to secure positions at smaller colleges or universities without doctoral programmes, or they accepted temporary teaching positions.
More than 70 per cent of candidates held some form of academic job within the year, with postdoctoral fellows seeing the strongest tilt towards tenure-track openings: about 30 per cent of postdocs moved into tenure-track posts, compared with 15 per cent of those who were working as visiting lecturers previously.
Publications emerged as among the strongest predictors of landing a tenure-track job. Candidates with no published work had a 16 per cent placement rate, while those with one to three publications reached 32 per cent. In statistical terms, imagining a baseline candidate—a non-minority man studying American politics at a 30th‑ranked department who had not yet finished their degree and had no publications—the model estimated a 27 per cent probability of securing a professorship.
Having co-authored an article in the American Political Science Review, a top journal, raised that probability to about 41 per cent, and a solo-authored article in the same journal pushed it to roughly 52 per cent, though the latter estimate carried more uncertainty. Only around five per cent of candidates had published in a top-tier journal. Teaching experience did not appear to help; candidates with seven or more teaching roles actually showed a lower placement rate of 18 per cent.
The field of study and demographic identity also shaped outcomes. Applicants specialising in American politics fared best, with nearly 40 per cent securing a tenure-track position, compared with 20–24 per cent in other fields. There were roughly as many American politics job listings as candidates (118 each), while comparative politics saw 189 candidates for 71 listings.
On demographics, the study found no evidence that female or URM candidates faced hiring disadvantages. Raw placement rates were 19 per cent for non-minority men, 32 per cent for non-minority women, 36 per cent for URM women, and 39 per cent for URM men. In the models, a baseline non-minority male candidate had a 27 per cent probability of securing a tenure-track position.
Compared with URM male candidates, URM male applicants reached a higher due to their potential advantages in the model, with female candidates sitting at roughly 44 per cent. However, the study notes this advantage was evident primarily for positions at doctoral universities; for jobs at colleges without doctoral programmes, gender and minority status were not significantly linked to placement. Desposato notes that the finding aligns with other work suggesting similar advantages for female, minority, and American politics candidates in related datasets.
“The effect sizes for URM/female were particularly large,” Desposato pointed out. “Members of those identities had a much higher placement rate than white/Asian males.”
Professor Artur Nilsson of the University of Bergen, who was not involved in the study, described the results as striking. “The most striking finding was that departmental rank had so little effect on placements, whereas both female gender and minority status had such large effects compared to the other predictors,” he told PsyPost. “That publications and research topics matter too is not surprising.”
Interpreting the findings requires caution. The study provides an observational snapshot of a single hiring cycle and cannot prove causation. For example, a strong publication record might directly influence a search committee, or it may simply reflect the quality of the dissertation that also attracted attention.
The models accounted for broad subfields such as American or comparative politics but not narrower specialties that may have been in higher demand. Desposato describes the data as “observational” with numerous selection issues, noting that racial and identity dynamics may interact with field popularity or external alternatives to academia. He also acknowledges that data depend on which departments publicly list candidates, potentially omitting some on international or non-listed programmes.
Looking ahead, Desposato hopes to apply the same approach to other disciplines and to track candidates over several years. He also anticipates that forthcoming experimental studies by other scholars will help address the limitations of the current design. He argues that graduate programmes should publish hard numbers on how their students fare, warning that many advertise an “excellent placement record” without substantiation and urging honest messaging about academic versus non-academic pathways for PhD students, especially as demographics and institutional structures shift.
“This is especially true given demographic change,” Desposato concluded. “Many small colleges are going to close as enrollments decline. Most of those colleges offer political science or government as a major, and those professor jobs just won’t exist anymore. I expect a difficult academic job market for PhD candidates for the foreseeable future.”
The study, Where You Go, What You Do, Who You Are: Predictors of Political Science Job-Market Outcomes, 2023–2024, was authored by Scott W. Desposato.
