Over at his blog, Kids Prefer Cheese, Mike Munger lays down the numbers on writing, publishing articles, tenure, and how this all relates to salary. It takes two journal articles per year to get tenure.  Good journals.  Not great journals.  If you can publish in great journals you can get away with fewer publications.  But barring consistent genius, you should [...]

Philosophy Program Officer Bill Glod sat down to talk with Georgetown professor and Bleeding Heart Libertarian blogger Jason Brennan about Dr. Brennan’s new book, Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press). Over the course of the interview they talked about being a libertarian, the recent rise of left libertarianism, social change, and libertarianism in academia.   Listen and watch previous [...]

In an older blog post on EconLog, Bryan Caplan lays out some guidelines for writing non-fiction that other people will actually want to read. This is great advice to think about when writing for broader audiences as a public intellectual, but it is just as important for academic writing: 1. Pick an important topic.  If someone asks you, “What are [...]

The applications for Humane Studies Fellowships went up last week. If you’ve been thinking about applying, but just haven’t gotten around to finishing your application yet, check out this profile of HSF winner John Thrasher for inspiration! The Humane Studies Fellowship offers grants of up to $15,000 for students intent on advancing classical liberal ideas. We fund students from a [...]

Recently on Kosmos PhD In Economics? Start with undergrad math Don’t Be a Lunchtax (Especially on the job market) How to Organize a Panel at a Conference Keeping Arguments Civil and Productive Advice for Libertarian International Relations Theorists Upcoming Kosmos Online Lectures Register today for our free online lectures and career advice seminars. Tuesday December 11: The Emancipation Proclamation Revisited-Phil [...]

Many students first get interested in classical liberal ideas through basic economics; even if “it usually begins with Ayn Rand” an encounter with Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson is usually not far behind. So it’s natural to want to pursue a career as an economist both for its own sake and as a means of advancing liberty. And in fact, [...]

If you are currently on the job market in academia this article contains a good illustration of precisely what you should strive to avoid. The pseudonymous author literally seems offended that he/she has not been offered a tenure track position yet despite multiple attempts on the job market, including multiple interviews and site visits. Touting his/her own credentials, the author [...]

At the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the question as once again arisen regarding the employment options available to humanities PhDs, specifically historians. Everyone seems aware that there are several problems PhD candidates planning on academia face, the most serious of which are increasing adjuncts and a limited number of tenure-track positions available. In 2010-11, the most recent year for which statistics are [...]

Often, classical liberal ideas are communicated through arguments—either adversarial arguments, in which one tries to persuade someone who rejects classical liberalism, or some facet of it, of its truth, or what might be termed promotional arguments, where one is presenting the case for classical liberalism, or a classical liberal position on an issue, to someone who is undecided on the [...]

If you embark on an academic career, the chances are high that at some point you will be expected to organize and participate in an academic conference panel. There are multiple benefits to this facet of academic life: It’s a chance to not only “workshop” a paper in progress, but do so on a panel of your own design It’s [...]