Other PhD

[Soc]

How likely is someone with a PhD in a related field (e.g. public policy, public health, social work) to get a tenure-track position in sociology?

[depends]

As with all things, it depends. It depends on:
-The quality of the applicant (e.g., pubs, grants, etc.). More pubs/grants = better chance

-The quality of the school. Higher quality = lower chance

-The type of attributes looked for in the position (e.g., teaching intro to sociology vs. crime/deviance courses). The more 'cross-discipline' based the position requirements are, the better the chance. That said, I would say an open specialty search would make it harder, since you'll be competing with way more Soc PhDs than if it was in a specific cross-discipline (e.g., public health).

-The type of degree the candidate has. I would guess that a public policy PhD would find it harder to get into a Soc program than an Anthropology PhD or Crim/CJ PhD, but this again depends on what the Soc program is looking for, and also how your CV can 'spin' being related to Soc (rather than Poly Sci or Public Admin).

FWIW, I'm not a Soc PhD myself, but I was hired this year (ABD) by a Soc PhD program. However, the program was specifically looking for someone with a background in my 'type' of PhD, so it wasn't a stretch in terms of my 'fit' for the position.

[anon]

There are many students in my (soc) department who are joint students with Social Work. Even as joint soc/social work PhDs, I can't think of a single one that has gotten a TT position in a sociology department--they've all gone to social work (academic) positions. This is how it's worked for the soc/business joint students I've known--they get positions in B schools and not soc departments. I think the joint soc/public policy students have a better track record of placing into soc departments. It's not exactly the same as being from a completely other discipline, but my guess is, given how hard it is for these joint students, it's likely to be even harder for a complete "outsider."

[socguest]

my advisor has a public health phd from a well-ranked soc & pub health school whose faculty regularly publish in demography and JHSB, as was my advisor's dissertation research. and my department was looking for population health people at the time, so it was a good fit.

[offmarket]

I have a degree in crime, and landed a job in a soc. department - who was looking for a "crim" hire.

My graduate school - there were faculty in crim, soc, law, philosophy, history, political science and psychology and other related fields. I think if your research aligns with the position you have a shot. However, not being soc, your chances are probably low for an open position.

[laughthroughit]

In my opinion, this totally depends on the position and the specific interdisciplinary goals of a dept. Many ads specifically say "PhD in Sociology required." My dept does not hire non-soc PhDs because those people were not trained in the foundations of Sociology. Even though my dept has direct ties to a public affairs program, we require a PhD in soc because it means that the candidate has been trained to engage with public affairs from a sociological perspective and can likely relate to our soc undergrads and graduate students in theoretical and methodological ways that make sense for sociology. I'm not saying this is true of all dept/schools, I'm just giving you an example of how this works in my own dept and the arguments for it. The candidate should be a sociologist first, anything else second - not the other way around.

If a dept is open to hiring people with non-soc PhDs, the ad will usually say that - something like "PhD in Sociology or related field." Like others have said, there are certain areas that overlap with soc that might be more open to non-soc PhDs - crim, public health, public policy, education, anthropology. If a dept is looking for an ethnographer, they might be totally open to an anthropologist - especially if it's a split soc/anth dept. If they're looking for someone to teach criminology, they might be open to someone who is primarily a criminologist and not a sociologist (i.e., criminologist first, sociologist second). If they want someone who does work on gender, they might be open to someone who has a degree in women's and gender studies from a social scientific perspective. That said, in the current market (unless you're doing crim), I'd venture a guess that it'd be pretty hard to get a TT job in soc without a soc PhD given that so many people DO have soc PhDs and are also doing cross- or interdisciplinary work.

Three jobs I can think of from this round (aside from the crim ones cuz I didn't look at any of those) that sort of illustrate how the ad is open to non-soc PhDs:
St. John Fisher College (soc w/ pref. to those who can teach in human services)
UMass Dartmouth (joint women's studies/soc - tenure in soc)
West Virginia State (soc/philosophy)

(edited for spelling - oops!)

[taketwo]

I was recently on a sociology hiring committee dealing with two hundred+ apps. The first thing the committee did was purge all the non-soc PhDs to make the pile slightly more manageable. Not saying that's standard practice, though. Hope that helps.

[ditto]

I've heard a number of other folks say the same thing about their department searches.

[socguest]

my department also interviewed a public health phd for a population health posting this year. ultimately they offered it to a soc phd, but i saw on the hires page that the public health candidate got a job at a top 10 soc program.

[socguest]

but again, the job listing was specifically population/health oriented, so the public health candidate's research and background fit nicely.