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Too Much to Ask

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By Michael Loyd Gray

Since I finished graduate school, in 1996, I have applied for more than 100 faculty jobs in English departments. I've been a finalist a dozen times or more, and I have won the job several times. Call me a veteran of the flaming hoops that candidates must leap through just to get an interview.

I understand why departments put up some of those hoops. But when I applied recently for a vacancy at a community college in the Northwest, I encountered a hoop that no faculty job candidate should have to leap through.

If you've ever applied for a teaching job, you know that the first step is to send a packet including your CV, transcripts, and reference letters. Usually I also include a writing sample -- an article I wrote for English Journal -- and a two-page statement of my teaching philosophy, composed in graduate school, that still gets praise from committee members.

It's a given that you'll have to fill out the dreaded application form, which, as best as I can tell, is a cruel test to identify candidates who can write unintelligible answers in tiny boxes. At some colleges that may actually be the secret to getting hired.

But the community college in question added a new wrinkle. In addition to a series of essay questions from the search committee and a sample student paper to grade (an assignment that I think candidates should embrace to show off their grading skills), this college also asked applicants to pick a course from its catalog and design it. From the ground up. Complete with a list of potential textbooks, readings, and assignments. The college urged me to be "creative."

I can tell you right now that I doubt that I'll get to this project -- and a major project it is -- in time to meet the job's closing date. Even if time can be found to search out textbooks, read them, evaluate them, compile readings, design exercises, and formulate discussions, it's asking too much of candidates who aren't finalists but merely faces in the crowd of 200 or more applicants for each vacancy.

But forget about time and inconvenience. This demand is theft. It's blackmail. Candidates who aren't yet finalists shouldn't have to design a course to get an interview because it banks ideas and intellectual property without giving credit or compensation: "If you want an interview, design the course and maybe we'll invite you over to talk." That's wrong.

But that's the way it is at this Northwestern community college, according to an administrator there -- let's call him Mr. Bureaucrat. When I argued that course designs were intellectual property submitted by professionals who ought to be compensated for their efforts, Mr. Bureaucrat said, "My general response is that individuals make the choice of whether or not they will apply." He defended the requirement, saying that the hiring committee was seeking a course "proposal," rather than a full-fledged course "design."

But what's the difference, really? Whether you call it a design or a proposal, it would still require substantial development by applicants, and the more detailed and extensively developed "proposals" are going to have an edge in the search process. Most candidates, desperate for an interview, let alone a job, are going to send in their best ideas.

Fortunately, not all administrators in academe agree with the requirement.

"I don't think it is fair to require all candidates to design an entire English course as part of the application process," said Jerry Peak, human-resources director for Polk Community College in Winter Haven, Fla. "Considering the amount of work involved, it would be unfair to require candidates invited to interview to design a class without some form of compensation. We do not use the materials submitted by candidates in our courses without the permission of the author."

To be fair to Mr. Bureaucrat, the course-design requirement is not his rule alone.

For each position, "the full screening committee participates in determining what supplemental information they want to request," he said. "Both the human resources/staff employment office and the affirmative-action office review the committees' materials to ensure legal and EEO compliance. The focus is teaching and learning -- we are not a research institution -- and that drives the factors we look for in faculty hiring. The questions generally are directed to probe the candidate's teaching/learning focus as well."

In other words, some of the very people who should be sensitive to the concerns I'm raising -- faculty members -- are accomplices in this requirement.

And what happens to all those course designs submitted by applicants?

"All materials submitted for our hiring processes and committee-member-generated documents are returned to HR by the screening committees upon conclusion of the process and are archived in accordance with" state laws on public records and document retention, Mr. Bureaucrat said.

That's a lot of document retention. More than 170 candidates have applied for one of several English openings at the college, according to Mr. Bureaucrat. And doubtless many of them are actually qualified teachers capable of offering up some pretty good and "creative" courses.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't like having my pocket picked. I would be pretty irritated to hand over a course ready to go to a committee that maybe decides my tie is too narrow, or too wide, and doesn't give me the opportunity to teach that course.

Is it any more palatable if the assigment is restricted to finalists? Not much, in my view. It's just theft on a smaller scale. But then, a stronger case could be made for paying those four or five finalists a small fee for their course designs, and more, if the course winds up in the catalog minus its creator. Don't count on getting such a stipend, though, because most colleges won't even help pay for the travel costs to attend an interview.

Finally, the course-design requirement isn't even essential, in my view, in order to gauge candidates. There's simply enough information in the CV, transcripts, reference letters, writing sample, and teaching philosophy for a search committee to sift through the chaff to locate the wheat and winnow that mob of 200 candidates down to four.

A few reasonable essay questions -- things like "provide specific examples of your teaching techniques" or "describe appropriate evaluation procedures and grading policies you would use" -- can help the hiring committee make the tough decisions between candidates.

If after reading your application materials and your answers to questions like these a search committee needs to also see a freshly designed course in order to pick a handful of finalists out of 200, then maybe the committee members are the people you should be replacing.