Jacob Levy senses a disturbing trend in the job market force for political theorists, based on the APSA’s (in my opinion, decidedly rose-colored) statistics on political science hiring in recent years. I can’t say I’m very surprised by those findings. My sense from four years on the market is that new hiring, particularly outside the research universities, is trending in a very pragmatic direction, with more emphasis on applied and borderline vocational subfields such as policy and public administration (and, to a lesser extent, quantitative political analysis as applied to those fields) and rather less on the theoretical study of politics, normative or otherwise.

On the other hand, I’m not sure many R1s are planning to follow the lead(?) of my graduate alma mater and Florida State by completely eliminating the subfield… which means that the supply of theory PhDs will probably decline slower than collegiate demand for such jobs. Good news for penny-pinching chairs and deans, perhaps, but alas not-so-good news for good folks like Nick.

Update: Mr. Troester posts his thoughts on the matter.