People often ask me how the university, and my department in general, is being hit by the budget crisis. I think people assume that because tenure-track academics tend to have more job security than other careers (although various Assistant Professors I know who are scared to death it’s going to be really hard to get tenure now would argue with me), that we aren’t being hit.

Well, we are. Like in any other sector of the economy, we’re being asked to do more with less. Bigger class sizes, fewer buyouts, less travel, less discretionary spending, higher expenses for just about everything. Most new construction on campus, except for those that have endowment funding, has been halted. Most new hires have also been frozen, and the ones that were previously guaranteed and are going forward this year are taking on this bizarre new tone, wherein people are fighting over the positions like packs of wild dogs.

Everyone wants to see their own field of influence grow, and everyone wants more colleagues to play with (and to take some of the load off their own shoulders). I’m certainly guilty of this kind of wishful thinking myself. But you know there’s trouble when every search you hear about on campus has people describing their co-workers as less friendly and more like this:

Would you like to see this face sitting across from you at a faculty meeting? Everyone’s feeling the crunch of scarce resources, and I think the search I’m involved with personally has been pretty civil, so far. But the year isn’t over yet. I wonder how much fuzzy fur I’ll see sticking out from under the regalia at graduation this year.