In December 2014, my wife and
I took a fairly routine trip to visit her parents in Quito, Ecuador, for the
winter holidays. It was our first trip back since I had finished my Ph.D. the
previous summer. December, of course, is prime time in the academic hiring
season, and my job search was already yielding better results than the previous
year when I was still A.B.D. I had strong interest from a few colleges and
hoped I might get at least one campus visit that spring. My plan was to return
to the United States, prepare for my interviews, and hope to become one of the
lucky few to land a tenure-track job.
Today, I am writing from
Ecuador to offer this advice to new Ph.D.s in the humanities: Pack your bags.
When I learned that a
university in Quito was in the midst of a hiring spree, I spent the first few
days of winter vacation preparing my application, just to see what would
happen. Two days later, I received a response from the university’s chancellor
asking me to come in for an interview at noon on December 24. That’s right —
Christmas Eve. My three-hour interview included everything from standard
job-talk fare about my research agenda and teaching philosophy, to discussions
about the Higgs boson and the Tao Te Ching (the chancellor is a physicist and
studies Eastern philosophy). In the end, we shook hands and agreed to
communicate by email about possible next steps, which included follow-up video
interviews with a vice chancellor and a dean at the university.
If that sounds like a
pleasantly unconventional experience for a faculty interview, that’s because it
was. Even though my U.S. job search looked promising, I was also frustrated
with some of its inherent absurdities: compiling bloated dossiers; being
required to spend several hundred dollars (if not $1,000 or more) to attend a
major convention just for a preliminary interview; and enduring the mutually
uncomfortable campus-interview experience in which some departments seem to
spend more time airing their dirty laundry than objectively evaluating job
candidates.
In contrast, the application
process in Ecuador was clean, simple, and direct. The university knew what it
wanted from a new English professor, and I knew that I had what it wanted. So
what if the chancellor wants to interview me on Christmas Eve and give me a
personal tour of the campus? Great. I’ll bring the eggnog.
Less than a month later, I was
offered the job. My new employer gave me another month’s time to decide if I
really wanted to uproot my life to move to South America. By then, I’d already
completed a second campus interview in the United States, and had my visiting
assistant professorship (or VAP, as it is widely known) renewed for another
year, too. I was fortunate to have several options and a window of time to
decide. Ultimately, though, I would have been a fool to stay in the United
States.
Here’s why.
First, I had to ask myself:
Would moving to Ecuador pay off — literally? I wasn’t going to move to a new
continent just to stay broke. I could do that at home.
In my case, the starting
salary in Ecuador was actually a few thousand dollars higher than my VAP
salary, and not much lower than I could have expected as a new assistant
professor at many U.S. colleges. (Ecuador has used U.S. dollars since 2000, so
currency conversion and exchange rates weren’t an issue.)
Raw salary, however, was only
a starting point. Several other financial factors contributed to my decision to
move abroad:
It was clear from
cost-of-living differentials that even a comparatively modest salary in Ecuador
would be worth more than a better-paying job in the United States. For my
circumstances, I used several cost-of-living calculators and found that life in
Quito costs roughly 60 percent to 70 percent of what it costs to live in
Greensboro, N.C., where I had been living for the previous eight years. In
short, I could earn a lower salary and still fare much better financially in
Ecuador than at home.
Taxes in Ecuador and many
other countries are much lower than in the States. The IRS requires U.S.
citizens to file a federal tax return no matter where you live, but the
tax code includes provisions that diminish the effects of double-taxation on
foreign wage earners. For example, the "Foreign Earned Income
Exclusion" exempts your salary up to a certain amount (currently set at
$100,800) after you live abroad for a full tax year. You will pay taxes both
here and in the country where you live during the first partial year, but your
income will be exempt in the United States afterward. (Unless, of course, you
earn more than $100,800. In that case, don’t complain. You’re doing fine.)
Student-loan repayment terms
can also change when living overseas. Under the standard repayment plan, for
example, I was paying around $980 a month. Once I adjusted to the
"income-based repayment" plan on my VAP salary, my monthly payment
dropped to around $480. However, my current repayment is $0, and will likely
stay that way for up to three years because of a
provision in the income-based repayment plan for situations in which your
calculated monthly repayment amount is not enough to cover interest. Moving
overseas maximizes the benefit because my taxable income in the United States
will be virtually zero, even if I earn a substantial raise. In the meantime, I
can take the money that would have been used on student loans to build
financial assets.
Of course, I also worried
about how taking an overseas job would affect the direction of my academic
career. What happens to my research agenda? What if I ever decide to re-enter
academe back home? The university does not have a tenure system akin to the
U.S. version; the majority of faculty here are under permanent contract in one
of two categories as either "professor docente" (teaching professor)
or "professor investigador" (research professor). I hold the latter
title. How would that lack of tenure affect my candidacy at a U.S. college? I
do not yet have clear answers to these questions. But I realize now that those
concerns were largely defined by my narrow vision of what an academic career
should be.
As a scholar of
African-American and U.S. multiethnic literature, I knew that I would have
limited resources for my research if I moved overseas. How could I possibly be
a productive scholar without instant access to the MLA database or a research
library’s special collections?
The truth is: Aside from
presenting papers at a few conferences, I hadn’t been all that productive
anyway, research wise, since writing my dissertation. I was spending most of my
time and energy trying to get a job rather than doing my job.
Even though I now teach a
heavy load of four courses a semester, somehow I have found the time to write
more than I have since completing my Ph.D. In just seven months, I have
submitted a new article manuscript to a selective journal, I am drafting a
second article, and I’ve started work on expanding my dissertation into a book
manuscript. Any research I cannot do overseas can be done during trips home
during the summer — the time when most of us get our research done, anyway.
I’ve also regained a sense of
purpose in my teaching and research. In U.S. higher education, the job market
for humanities Ph.D.s can feel demoralizing, and with good reason. It’s no
secret that the humanities have been facing a deteriorating
job market for decades and that the market
in English and foreign languages, in particular, has been especially grim.
Furthermore, humanities professors consistently get paid much less
than faculty in other fields such as business and the hard sciences. It’s no
wonder that many of us are so willing to accept lower salaries than our
academic peers. The implicit message is that we should just be grateful to have
jobs at all.
Don’t get me wrong:
Competition for international jobs is stiff, too. But in my case, at least, it
was a relief to feel that the job didn’t come served with a side of
indebtedness. It also saved me from the possibility of facing years of
rejection on the tenure-track market. Yes, rejection is an inevitable part of
the job search, publishing, and life in general. But many young academics would
do well to remember the lesson most teenagers learn in high school: You
shouldn’t base your self-worth on whether the prom king or queen will go out
with you. The same goes for hiring committees.
For too long, the academic job
market has compelled new humanities Ph.D.s to see our careers in black and
white — either "make it" into a tenure line at a U.S. institution, or
leave academe. But there are more options beyond our borders. Ph.D.s in the
sciences figured that out years ago, and humanities Ph.D.s are just
now learning to follow that lead.
So is it time for you to apply
for a visa, too? That all depends on what kinds of challenges you are willing
to face.
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