The anonymous community college dean proposes no longer requesting recommendation letters in job searches.

All of his points in opposition to letters strike me as valid, but nonetheless I remain unconvinced. Information, no matter the quality, seems mighty scarce in the academic employment process, and at the very least the identities of the letter writers in question might say something about the candidate, even if the letters themselves are rather content-free; even the diligence (or lack thereof) of recommenders in providing letters might be a signal to search committees.

What possible value could a search committee for a non-tenure-track teaching position find in a sample of my research? I’ll concede that recommendations are valuable (if something of a chore to orchestrate), but I simply fail to see how a writing sample could be of any use whatsoever.