Journal Pone 0285330

PLOS ONE
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Beyond market share: Accounting for doctoral

program size in recent rates of anthropology
faculty job placement
Madeline E. Mackie ID1☯*, Heather Rockwell ID2☯
1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, United States of
America, 2 Departments of Cultural, Environmental and Global Studies and Cultural and Historic
Preservation, Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island, United States of America
a1111111111
a1111111111 ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work.
* MadelineMackie@weber.edu
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a1111111111
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Abstract
Job placement trends in higher education at US institutions are bleak. Within anthropology
and other social science disciplines this problem appears to be particularly pronounced.
OPEN ACCESS
Recent studies focusing on placement in Anthropology using market share analysis have
Citation: Mackie ME, Rockwell H (2023) Beyond suggested that specific doctoral programs offer a greater chance of placing their graduates
market share: Accounting for doctoral program
in faculty positions. Here we expand on that work, looking beyond market share to the num-
size in recent rates of anthropology faculty job
placement. PLoS ONE 18(5): e0285330. https:// ber of graduates placed in positions relative to the total number of program graduates. Our
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330 results suggest that while large programs do indeed command the majority of tenure track
Editor: Victoria E. Gibbon, University of Cape Town placements by market share, much of this may be a product of the high numbers of gradu-
Faculty of Health Sciences, SOUTH AFRICA ates from these programs. Smaller programs can be proportionally as successful at placing
Received: January 5, 2023 their students in tenure track positions. The majority of PhDs in anthropology should antici-
pate gaining employment outside of a tenure track position. Training students for positions
Accepted: April 20, 2023
in private industry, government, and other non-faculty opportunities is essential.
Published: May 24, 2023
Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the

benefits of transparency in the peer review
process; therefore, we enable the publication of
all of the content of peer review and author
responses alongside final, published articles. The Introduction
editorial history of this article is available here:
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330 Obtaining employment in the current academic job market is increasingly difficult. Limited
opportunities and low pay create a market where competition is fierce for the few lucrative aca-
Copyright: © 2023 Mackie, Rockwell. This is an
demic career paths available. Fields such as history [1, 2], women’s studies [3], English [4], and
open access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License, which anthropology [5, 6] all report serious disparities between the number of graduates and the
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and number of academic jobs. The availability of academic positions at US institutions is particu-
reproduction in any medium, provided the original larly bleak. One study of faculty position availability in science and engineering fields found
author and source are credited. that given the rate of production and the availability of jobs, only 12.8% of all graduates will
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are obtain tenure track academic employment [7]. This news is particularly troubling when paired
within the paper and its Supporting Information with a large number of PhDs entering the workforce [8], a static tenure track job market [6],
files. and an overall decrease in undergraduate enrollment [9]. With tenure track positions in the
Funding: The authors received no specific funding academy becoming increasingly scarce, graduates must look to opportunities within the pri-
for the research design and implementation. The vate sector, government, or non-tenured academic positions [7, 10, 11].
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330 May 24, 2023 1 / 14

PLOS ONE Accounting for doctoral program size in recent rates of anthropology faculty job placement
funds for publication were provided by the Noreen While finding academic employment is often portrayed as a meritocracy, studies have
Stonor Drexel Cultural and Historic Preservation shown there is more to this story [e.g., 12–14]. The hiring process, and what is needed to suc-
Fund at Salve Regina University, awarded to HR.
cessfully land a job, appears ever more opaque and is constantly changing [12]. Recent gradu-
Competing interests: The authors have declared ates report feeling underprepared and under-mentored for the world they are entering [15–
that no competing interests exist. 18]. The demands on junior researchers to have high scholarly output, in the form of single or
lead authored peer reviewed publications and grants, is massive leading to extreme pressure to
have a near tenure-ready packet to even be considered for academic employment [12, 19, 20].
The dearth of available positions within the academy can be attributed to several factors. A
high production of PhDs relative to the available positions, while serious, is only partially to
blame [7]. The retirement age of academics is the highest of any industry, resulting in fewer
new faculty hires [21]. Mandatory faculty retirement by the age of 70 was prohibited beginning
in 1994 which was followed by a rapid increase in the percentage of faculty who are over the
age of 65, and this trend shows now signs of going away. Two-thirds of faculty over the age of
50 say they intend to work past the age of 65 [22, 23]. Faculty reluctance to retire is typically
linked to either personal preferences or finances, with the former being more common. Nearly
two thirds of surveyed faculty cited a desire to keep working was related to job satisfaction [24,
25]. When faculty do retire many universities opt to replace these tenure track (TT) positions
with inexpensive part-time lecturers, adjunct faculty or other non-tenure track positions [21].
As of 2019 more than 60% of faculty positions were held by non-tenure track full time or part
time contingent faculty members [26]. With the impending demographic cliff of 2025–2026
[9] and an overall increased cost of operating institutions of higher education, incentives are
high to minimize labor costs [27]. However, this shift towards cheaper, non-tenured labor may
have cascading effects on academic freedom [28], quality of education for undergraduates
[27], and the creation of an academic underclass [29, 30].
Scholars in many fields have identified a sort of academic caste system, where certain pro-
grams seem to provide the vast majority of TT PhDs in their respective fields [29, 31]. In a sur-
vey of history, computer science, and business academic placements it was found that 25% of
institutions produced 71–86% of all TT faculty [1]. In some fields this problem is even more
egregious. In history, for instance, half of all TT professors received their degree from only 8
institutions [1]. While it could be argued that this is evidence that certain programs are simply
producing better quality, more prepared academics, there appears to be little correlation
between degree granting institution prestige and future productivity with other factors like
access to resources driving faculty success [14, 32]. Some studies have even suggested that this
hiring pattern stunts efforts towards diversity and equity [30, 31, 33]. We would like to
acknowledge and emphasize that TT positions are certainly not the only viable, or often the
most lucrative, positions available to anthropology doctoral graduates [e.g., 34, 35]. However,
they are seen as the traditional career route for doctoral holders and have been the focus of
multiple studies in the past. In addition, when surveyed the vast majority of graduate students
in anthropology report aspirations of tenure-track employment [36]. Following recent studies
from the University of Georgia [5, 6, 12], we seek to further explore the relationship between
degree granting institutions and a competitive advantage on the job market.
The Georgia studies highlight a similar pattern to other fields, that certain programs domi-
nate most TT jobs [5, 6]. To briefly summarize their relevant findings, job placement rates of
anthropology PhDs into TT positions at U.S. universities have plummeted in recent years.
Their results suggest that only 21% of graduates obtain TT employment. Currently there are
over 100 programs in the U.S. offering doctoral degrees in anthropology, yet many TT posi-
tions in all areas of anthropology are dominated by a small number of institutions. Programs
such as the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, Harvard, and Univer-
sity of Arizona appear to hold the highest percent of the job market share within the field [5].

A limitation of the Georgia study was that it was unable to account for the “number of grad-
uate students admitted to each program, nor the degrees conferred by each department [6 pg.
14].” The study acknowledges that being unable to control for the sample size of each group
may over-favor large programs. We argue that this is an important aspect of the current crisis
and vital for future doctoral students who may be selecting a program to attend based upon its
success in placing students in TT employment. If programs holding the largest market share of
tenure track positions is, in part, due to the quantity of their graduates, this would suggest that
their share of the market has more to do with sample size than it does with competitive
advantage.
This work also seeks to bridge the timeframe between the original analysis (2014–2015) and
2019–20, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. The economic downturn of 2008 caused many insti-
tutions to cut more faculty lines than typical and offer incentives for older faculty to retire.
However, based on our results, it appears that after this time institutions returned to more
“typical” hiring and retirement patterns. The 2008 turn may be a good predictor of what will
occur in hiring patterns in the Covid era but as it is too soon to see the effect of the pandemic
we have chosen to limit our analysis to the pre-pandemic era.
Materials and methods

Employed anthropology faculty
Like previous studies [5, 6] to create a list of employed TT faculty we turned to the American
Anthropological Association’s (AAA) AnthroGuide from 2019–2020 [37]. The AnthroGuide is
compiled by the AAA through submissions from anthropological institutions across the
world. The guide includes listings for most, although not all, degree-granting US institutions
(BA/BS, MA/MS, and PhD) and provides basic information including faculty lists, highest
degree granted, and program descriptions. We augmented the list by adding some institutions
not listed in the 2019–2020 AnthroGuide, particularly focusing on PhD granting universities.
In these cases we used departmental websites to add the faculty from the following institutions:
University of Illinois Chicago, Eastern Oregon University, The New School for Social
Research, Rutgers University, Stony Brook University, University of South Florida, University
of South Florida St. Petersburg, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of California
Los Angeles, Vanderbilt University and Saint Louis University. While there are doubtless
some schools missing from our employment list, we are confident it is complete enough to
identify major trends in faculty employment based on graduate institution.
For each institution we listed individual faculty member’s academic rank (assistant, associ-
ate, or full professor), subfield, graduate institution, the year they obtained their degree,
employment institution, and the highest degree offered at employment institution (S1 Table).
Generally TT faculty are identified using the titles “assistant”, “associate”, or “full” professors
so only individuals with these position and titles were included in this analysis. Any faculty
member with a position title indicating a non-tenure track appointment were excluded from
this analysis (n = 334; e.g., lecturer, researcher, visiting professor, adjunct, curator, post-doc-
toral fellows). We acknowledge that this could exclude some TT faculty members or include
some individuals who are not TT but likely have steady employment, however given data
restrictions focusing on these titles is the most reliable indicator of TT employment and is con-
sistent with previous studies [5, 31]. Subfield of study (archaeology, biological, or sociocul-
tural) were assigned based on the descriptions provided in the guide or on the individual’s
faculty webpage if no description was provided in the AnthroGuide. Anthropology faculty are
often found in departments combined with other fields of study (sociology, geography, etc.).
In these cases, we identified faculty members responsible for non-anthropological subjects and

excluded them from our faculty list. Individuals who received doctoral degrees from interna-
tional institutions (6.1% of TT faculty) were grouped into a single category and were excluded
from the final placement analysis.
Anthropology doctoral graduation rates

In addition to a list of faculty employed in anthropology, and occasionally archaeology depart-
ments, we compiled a list of graduates by doctoral anthropology program using data from the
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) by the National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics (NCES). The NCES is a federal entity under the U.S. Department of Education
and the Institute of Education Sciences that tracks statistics on American education institu-
tions including higher education [8]. Any institution that participates in federal student finan-
cial aid programs are required to participate in IPED surveys [38] which includes information
on degrees conferred by field of study and degree level. This is the same dataset used by the
Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education [39] to determine research activity
categories which are often highly sought after in higher education. Using the IPEDS Data [40]
we collated the total number of conferred anthropology or archaeology doctoral degrees by
year from 2000 to 2019 (S2 Table; six-digit CIP Codes 45.0201, 45.0202, 45.0203, 45.0204,
45.0299, 45.0301).
We considered using a second common dataset used to track doctoral graduates: the Survey
of Earned Doctorates (SED). The SED is an annual survey sent to all doctoral graduates at
accredited US universities to collect data on topics including education history, demographics,
and fields of study [41]. However, there are some differences in the number of anthropology
graduates reported between IPEDS and SED each year which are attributed to SED being
based on degree recipient responses, which tended to underrepresent the number of actual
graduates, as well as differences in specialty classifications [42]. For consistency in our analysis,
we only used the graduation numbers summed by year from the IPED responses.
Occasionally data from a specific year, or string of years, was found to be missing from the
IPEDs data. In these cases, we used departmental websites to check if this was reflecting no
graduates that year or the creation or demise of a doctoral program at an institution. We made
note of these cases in our data analysis and ensured that they were counted as null data instead
of no graduating students (S2 Table). Throughout this process we also spot-checked random
graduation years by institution using the publicly available alumni lists found on many depart-
ment websites or dissertations submitted to Proquest. NCES data were generally consistent
with other sources of graduation counts, although sometimes there were differences in specific
numbers of graduates by year; we suspect this is the result of reporting differences in time scale
(e.g., academic year versus calendar year, defense date versus graduation date, same year versus
previous year). This should not be an issue in our analysis since graduation counts are aggre-
gated into sets of years.
Data limitations and biases

There are several additional limitations and notes about both the faculty and graduation data-
sets used in this analysis. First, we intentionally choose to collect data and focus on employ-
ment for the 2019–2020 academic year which was not yet affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
when our employment data source was compiled. Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic has
caused, and continues to cause, significant changes in higher education hiring patterns. As
early as March 2020 we saw university wide hiring freezes and many delayed or canceled
searches. By limiting our data analysis to time periods before this we are removing any atypical
pandemic related hiring changes. We believe this allows for a stronger overall analysis, but we

also acknowledge that the pandemic will have temporary, and potentially lasting, effects on
university employment practices into the future.
Second, the graduation rates used here were specifically pulled from anthropology, and
occasionally archaeology, degree programs. There are several institutions who offer more
interdisciplinary or specialized doctoral degrees which are anthropologically influenced that
would not be represented in these graduation rates. Their absence is not meant to suggest they
produce unsuccessful alumni, but instead reflect how the NCES tracks completions. Addition-
ally, the TT faculty list used here was limited to faculty employed in anthropology depart-
ments. A notable number of anthropologists are employed in TT faculty jobs in other
academic programs or in administration. Some institutions identify these individuals in the
AnthroGuide as “affiliated faculty in other departments” which included 501 individuals in our
2019–2020 data compilation (S1 Table). We did not include these individuals in our main
analysis as they are not consistently reported by all institutions. However, based on the sample
available the majority (71.1%) of these positions are filled by sociocultural anthropologists
(cultural or linguistics) followed by archaeologists (18.8%) and biological anthropologists
(9.6%) potentially indicating some subfields are more departmentally mobile than others. Like-
wise, we noted a small number of faculty who held TT anthropology positions in the 2019–
2020 academic year, but had doctoral degrees not in anthropology.
Third, we again emphasize that not all graduating doctoral students desire a TT position.
There is no way to know what percentage of doctoral students seek a TT job, but we should
never expect a school to have 100% placement in TT positions as students will have career
goals outside of the academy. It is vital to remember, there are many anthropologists working
outside of higher education, or in non-TT positions at universities, and low TT placement
rates do not equate to low overall employment rates. Finally, this analysis focused on TT fac-
ulty teaching at four-year institutions (minimum BA/BS granting) and there are many faculty
at two-year colleges and technical schools. This is not meant to devalue their positions, but
these positions are not the focus of this study.
Results
In total we tracked the employment of 3194 TT anthropology faculty at 305 different institu-
tions during the 2019–2020 academic year (Fig 1). We found that sociocultural anthropologists
(which includes both cultural and linguistic subfields) make-up the largest portion of faculty
positions (n = 1734). We also found that the majority of faculty across all sub-fields are
employed at PhD granting institutions (n = 1948). This is not because most institutions grant
PhDs, but instead reflects the size of doctoral versus masters/bachelor programs. Of the 305
institutions tracked; 105 grant doctoral degrees, 59 grant masters degrees, and 141 institutions
grant solely bachelor’s degrees in the 2019–2020 academic year. On average doctoral institu-
tions employ 18.6 faculty while masters granting institutions averaged 8.5 and bachelors only
5.3 faculty per program.
The TT faculty dataset also offers insights into the challenges faced by recent graduates. It is
unsurprising that there are few (n = 15) faculty members with 2019 graduation dates employed
in the 2019–2020 academic year. This reflects the fact that very few graduates obtain TT
employment when they are all but dissertation (ABD) or even immediately after graduation.
Our numbers suggest that those who do get a TT job in academia will likely do so within seven
years of graduation as after this we see a plateau in TT faculty positions (Fig 1D). Another
recent study showed a similar timing for a hiring plateau, although it was complicated by the
2008 recession [6 Fig 5]. Notably, our data do show a very slight dip in placement rates from
those who graduated from around the 2008 recession, but in general this drop has mostly

Fig 1. Summary descriptions of 2019–2020 TT anthropology faculty positions. Frequencies of (A) academic rank, (B) subfield based on research descriptions, (C)
highest degree offered at employment institution, and (D) doctoral graduation year for 2019–2020 TT anthropology faculty.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330.g001
disappeared. This suggests individuals who graduated into a recession were less impacted in
their chances of being hired than previously indicated. This may have interesting implications
for placements rates for graduates from the current and post-COVID era.
To investigate our main question regarding program size and its relationship to job place-
ment we focused further analysis on the TT faculty who graduated from 2000 to 2019 and held
positions in the 2019–2020 academic year. This was a total of 1829 individuals, just over half of
the full AAA dataset (57.3%). NCES shows that during this time a total of 10,705 degrees were
awarded from 107 Anthropology doctoral granting institutions (Fig 2). In other words, of the
more than 10,500 graduates between 2000 to 2019 only 1829, or 17.1%, held TT jobs in the fall
2019.
To take a deeper look at what programs are most successful at producing TT faculty we
looked at placement rates by graduate institution. First, we eliminated any program from our
analysis with less than ten years of graduation data (n = 12). This was done both to give institu-
tions a large enough sample to show trends and to account for the fact that the average time to
receive an anthropology PhD in the United States is 9.6 years post-baccalaureate [43 pg. 3, 44
Tab 1–12]. This means there may be a considerable time lag between the founding of a pro-
gram and the graduation of its first PhD student. For each program with at least ten years of
graduate data (n = 95) we calculated both their market share (what percent of the overall mar-
ket they held based on their last 20 years of graduates) and what percentage of graduates from
2000–2019 were in a TT position in Fall 2019 (Table 1).
Similar to previous analyses, we found that some programs are highly visible based on mar-
ket share alone. Two programs controlled 9% of the field’s market share, with >4% each and

Fig 2. Graduation rates compared to TT faculty graduation year rates from 2000 to 2019.
20 institutions are responsible for placing 50% of the TT anthropology professors nationwide.
However, the relationship between market share and high rates of alumni having TT jobs is
not as clear cut. While half the institutions have graduated less than 100 total students in the
last 20 years (n = 47), during this time the ten highest graduate producing institutions awarded
between 241 and 329 doctoral degrees students each, for a total of 2862 students (Fig 3). This is
more than a quarter (26.7%) of the total anthropology doctoral recipients during this time. In
comparison the lowest quarter of anthropology doctoral programs (n = 24) produced only 751
graduates. The dramatic size differences between programs highlight how market share analy-
sis, while certainly useful, will systematically undervalue small and even medium sized pro-
grams. Here programs are divided into small, medium, and large size categories based on the
Table 1. Programs ranked by market share percentage and TT placement rate percentage based graduation rates from 2000–2019 and faculty positions in 2019–
2020 academic year.
University Market Share % University Placement Rate %
Univ. Chicago 4.9 NYU 28.8
Univ. Michigan 4.3 Univ. Texas San Antonio 28.6
UC Berkeley 3.8 Univ. Chicago 28.5
Harvard 3.7 Penn State 27.7
Univ. Arizona 3.6 Harvard 27.2
NYU 2.9 Univ. Arkansas 25.8
CUNY 2.4 Yale 25.5
Univ. Texas Austin 2.3 Emory 24.5
Yale 2.2 Univ. Arizona 24.0
Stanford 2.2 Univ. Michigan 23.7
Columbia 2.2 Stanford 23.0
Univ. Florida 2.2 Northwestern Univ. 23.0
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330.t001

Fig 3. Graduates versus tenure track frequency. Number of total doctoral graduates from 2000 to 2019 compared to the number holding a tenure-track anthropology
position in the 2019–2020 academic year.
average number of graduates per year between 2000 and 2019 as this reflects relative size of
student cohorts. Large programs are those in the highest quarter of average graduates with
seven or more students per year while small programs are those who graduate three or fewer
students annually (S3 Table). Our results suggest that while large programs do indeed com-
mand much of the market share this does not necessarily mean that prospective graduates
from these programs have a significantly better chance of landing a position than those from
smaller degree granting institutions.
If instead of market share we look at the percent of total graduates between 2000–2019 by
school who held TT positions in 2019–2020 we see a different story. Using this method we see
the median program has 14.0% of its alumni in TT positions, with the first quarter of all pro-
grams producing >18.8% of graduates in TT positions (Table 1). When examining the highest
quarter of schools ranked by market share (>1.25%) we find that TT placement rates vary

Fig 4. Market share versus TT alumni rate. Percent market share compared to percent of alumni in a tenure-track position in 2019–2020 (S3 Table).
widely between 12.8% and 28.8% of graduates holding TT positions (Fig 4). When we rank the
programs based upon their TT placement rate instead of market share the schools ranked in
the first quartile change significantly. While large market share controllers like NYU, Chicago,
Harvard, Arizona, and Michigan remain in the first quartile in terms of TT placement, pro-
grams having market shares as small as 0.2% now appear in the highest 12 TT placement rank-
ings (Table 1). Small to medium sized programs with high TT placement rates include UT San
Antonio (small), Univ. Arkansas (small), Penn State (medium), Emory (medium), and North-
western (medium). These programs all control less than 1.5% of market share each, but
roughly a quarter of their graduates are getting TT positions (Fig 4, S3 Table). While certainly
small graduate numbers can work in favor of certain programs during TT placement analysis,
as one alumni TT faculty member weighs heavier in their TT placement rate, this suggests that
market share alone may not be the best judge of a program.

Discussion and conclusions

Market share does not necessarily best represent tenure track faculty placement rates by pro-
gram. Many larger programs which make up a notable portion of the market share are doing
an excellent job finding their graduates’ academic employment. However, when program size
is accounted for, many medium and small programs are just as successful at training future TT
academics. Both programs can offer different advantages with large programs often having
access to both financial and social capital, as shown by network analyses of faculty at PhD
granting institutions [30, 31 pg. 23]. While smaller programs may offer more individual atten-
tion and mentorship for their students/alumni. Prospective students should be aware that
some large programs do well placing their graduates, however there are also a number of
smaller programs producing just as many TT academics when size is controlled for so choos-
ing a program solely on market share, or any other single factor, is not advisable.
This study also highlights larger changes needed to better serve doctoral seeking anthropol-
ogists. Here we make suggestions first for programs and later for students seeking programs.
Given that so many who enter graduate programs have academic job hopes, schools with PhD
advisors and programs focused on training students for academia should consider adopting
policies that will help maintain or possibly reduce cohort sizes. We acknowledge that cohort
sizes can be at least in part driven by standards for maintaining university research status [39],
but policies that focus on consistent student numbers should not affect these markers. This
can allow for individual attention, mentorship, and support while maintaining, or at least not
growing, the number of doctoral anthropology graduates flooding the market.
More importantly programs need to embrace training students for the myriad of other ful-
filling and lucrative career paths outside of the academy for doctoral recipients. Graduate pro-
grams should foster a culture where work in industry, federal service, state offices, university
administration, and cultural resource management are not seen as settling, but something
worthy of aspiring to or as the primary goal. According to some, the demand for PhD archae-
ologists in cultural resource management will be increasing as the field is predicted to add
more than 8,000 new jobs in the next 10 years [34, 35]. There is also increasing numbers of
anthropologists gainfully employed in other industries like tech. Some of the programs
highlighted here are undoubtedly already training graduates for careers outside of academia,
but this needs to be encouraged and highlighted more. This needs to happen within programs,
but also at administrative levels. Since program evaluations can privilege academic employ-
ment over other alumni outcomes [e.g., 45] programs may face pressure to focus on training
students for TT academic appointments. Programs should advertise their alumni placements
both inside and outside the academy and make this data easily available to interested students.
Everyone, including those at schools without doctoral programs, should be having open and
frank discussions with their students about the challenges of obtaining employment in acade-
mia. Students should be explicitly told that many, if not most, positions outside of the academy
often do not require a degree beyond a masters and students should be encouraged early on to
investigate these avenues of employment. This is not to say that students should be told to never
get a PhD because certainly there are many reasons to choose to pursue a doctorate, however
students should be aware of doctoral employment challenges before entering a program. Addi-
tionally, doctoral programs should encourage students to develop diverse skill sets that they can
use to pursue multiple career paths. This should include adjusting curriculum and leading the
charge to broadly train students in skills useful beyond the academy because even at the stron-
gest TT placement institutions the majority of students will not end up in TT academic jobs.
Meanwhile these results also have important insights for prospective or current doctoral
students. Prospective students should be advised in their search for a graduate program to

look not only at market share, but at placement rates when making choices about doctoral
institutions, especially if they have aspirations for a TT position. Picking a graduate school
should not only be about if they hold a majority market share of TT anthropology positions,
but also about mentorship, cross-training opportunities, and networking. While this paper,
and others in the past [e.g., 5, 6, 31], generally use the term placement to refer to programs’
abilities to produce TT faculty, it is important to remember that a graduate institution itself is
never solely, or primarily, responsible for an alumni obtaining TT employment. As has been
highlighted in other studies [12], students need to distinguish themselves to be considered by
future employers who often weigh a variety of traditional factors including publications, presen-
tations, grant getting, or teaching experience as well as other intangibles that are generally out-
side of the control of the candidate. While a student is predominantly responsible for fostering
these factors there also appears to be some programs and/or mentors who have designed their
graduate programs or have a track record of graduating students who have the experience and
skills that are particularly valued on the TT market. The TT alumni rates here should not be
considered the only factor in picking a doctoral program. Students should consider who they
are planning on working with as well as a variety of other factors like financial support, location,
program size, and experiences of past graduates. Finally, any doctoral program will give stu-
dents the skills applicable for careers within and outside academia, but diversifying graduate
training for paths outside of academia provides students the flexibility to pursue multiple career
paths and does not harm their packet should they choose to pursue TT employment.
We recognize that many have previously written on the depressing nature of the academic
job market before, and that for many this paper is not shocking. However, it does offer new
perspectives on the choice of doctoral program emphasizing that one does not need to be
restricted to schools which dominate the market share if one wants to be successful on the aca-
demic job market. For any students who may be reading this, as has been highlighted in previ-
ous work, getting a TT position is not only about having the experience necessary to become a
faculty member, but also a bit of luck for the right position to appear at the right time [12].
Prospective graduate students need to be savvy consumers, and closely examine programs to
which they are considering applications. We emphasize that TT placement rankings alone
should not be taken as a reflection of the quality of any specific program, but instead one factor
students can consider when selecting a graduate program. Graduate program applicants must
have frank discussions with program coordinators about where their graduates are obtaining
employment and how their program will help you cultivate abilities that will make you an
appealing candidate for position in and out of the academy. This study shows that there are a
wide range of small and medium sized programs in the United States that offer the opportuni-
ties for students to gain the necessary experience to be well positioned in a competitive market;
however the fact remains that in today’s market the majority of graduate students will find
employment outside of tenure track positions.
Supporting information
S1 Table. 2019–2020 TT anthropology faculty.
(XLSX)
S2 Table. Conferred anthropology and archaeology doctoral degrees by year.
(XLSX)
S3 Table. Anthropology doctoral programs ranked by market share and graduate place-
ment.
(CSV)

S1 File. R code replicating analysis and figure creation.

(R)
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Nathaniel Kitchel for reviewing a previous version of this manuscript
as well as two anonymous reviewers for suggestions on how to improve the paper.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Data curation: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Formal analysis: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Investigation: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Methodology: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Project administration: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Validation: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Visualization: Madeline E. Mackie.
Writing – original draft: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
Writing – review & editing: Madeline E. Mackie, Heather Rockwell.
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PLOS ONE

Beyond market share: Accounting for doctoral

Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the

PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330 May 24, 2023 1 / 14

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Materials and methods

PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0285330 May 24, 2023 3 / 14

Anthropology doctoral graduation rates

Data limitations and biases

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Discussion and conclusions

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S1 File. R code replicating analysis and figure creation.

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37. American Anthropological Association. 2019–2020 AnthroGuide. Arlington: American Anthropological

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