Post by tnrd on Dec 31, 2009 17:06:53 GMT -5
A few points.
$75K may not mean as much as it sounds depending on the city (e.g., NYC or San Fran) and associated housing costs.
$35K sounds like a nice startup sum for sociology. Usually these are in one lump sum and can be spent over time, but it's worth checking the specifics.
In my experience, if you can negotiate having an RA for not the first year, but later then that may be worth it. You'll likely spend most of the first year (but certainly the Fall) getting used to the place, adjusting to being a faculty member, learning campus, getting to know your colleagues, preparing for teaching and doing the actual teaching. Even if you do have time and mental space for research, you'll want to get things out from your dissertation and wrap up existing projects. It is extremely unlikely that you'll be in a position to start assigning relevant duties to an RA from day one, which means that you'll be wasting this resource. I guess the one way I can see an RA being useful that early on is if you know exactly what help you could use with turning your dissertation/other work you've already done into articles.
As to what constitutes a weird request and whether it is worth asking, it's hard to know what's crazy and so it may well be worth asking about anything that's on your mind. The key is more the tone and style than the specifics of the substance. Also, instead of asking something too narrowly (e.g., "free tuition for my spouse at the institution"), I'd explain to the person I'm negotiating with what my concern is (e.g., "my spouse would like to complete a degree in x and I would like to know whether any assistance is available for that either through getting the degree at this school or another way").
Salary is worth trying to negotiate a bit, because all subsequent raises will be in percentage terms and so there is an accumulated effect over time. That said, at this stage of an academic's career, most important is time. So negotiate on what will give you more time to do your research, e.g., course reduction, RA help, TA help, leave time, small number of new teaching preps.
$75K may not mean as much as it sounds depending on the city (e.g., NYC or San Fran) and associated housing costs.
$35K sounds like a nice startup sum for sociology. Usually these are in one lump sum and can be spent over time, but it's worth checking the specifics.
In my experience, if you can negotiate having an RA for not the first year, but later then that may be worth it. You'll likely spend most of the first year (but certainly the Fall) getting used to the place, adjusting to being a faculty member, learning campus, getting to know your colleagues, preparing for teaching and doing the actual teaching. Even if you do have time and mental space for research, you'll want to get things out from your dissertation and wrap up existing projects. It is extremely unlikely that you'll be in a position to start assigning relevant duties to an RA from day one, which means that you'll be wasting this resource. I guess the one way I can see an RA being useful that early on is if you know exactly what help you could use with turning your dissertation/other work you've already done into articles.
As to what constitutes a weird request and whether it is worth asking, it's hard to know what's crazy and so it may well be worth asking about anything that's on your mind. The key is more the tone and style than the specifics of the substance. Also, instead of asking something too narrowly (e.g., "free tuition for my spouse at the institution"), I'd explain to the person I'm negotiating with what my concern is (e.g., "my spouse would like to complete a degree in x and I would like to know whether any assistance is available for that either through getting the degree at this school or another way").
Salary is worth trying to negotiate a bit, because all subsequent raises will be in percentage terms and so there is an accumulated effect over time. That said, at this stage of an academic's career, most important is time. So negotiate on what will give you more time to do your research, e.g., course reduction, RA help, TA help, leave time, small number of new teaching preps.