ABSTRACT
The beginning of academic careers has been the focus of many studies, most of them in the developed world (Deneef and Goodwin 2007; Welch 2007a; Ziman 1994; Becher and Trowler 2001). Introduction into the academic labour market is a standardised process, from the search for available positions to interviews at national conferences (Wilbur 2007; Shetty 2007). The search for posts is, itself, a standardised process in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, in which the Chronicle of Higher Education, https://www.Jobs.ac.uk" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Jobs.ac.uk , and the Times Higher Education (formerly Times Higher Education Supplement) are, in practice, almost obligatory passage point (Wilbur 2007: 123). An academic career is the logical continuation of the completion of the PhD. The beginning is not easy, but a pattern can be distinguished:
The first year or two of a position is intellectually, psychologically, and physically exhausting. Life may be lonely, too. The graduate student's social life may be very different from the life of a single assistant professor in a department where everyone else is over thirty and has two kids and a house. But everything gets easier. In the second or third year you will have a good chance of moving up. Your doctoral research should be published or in press; you should have a new direction to your research independent of that of your old adviser; and, most important perhaps, you should have a realistic view of academic life and your own evaluation of the relative importance of teaching and research (Wilbur 2007: 134).
