Josh Blackman (South Texas), Some Reflections On The Lateral Hiring Market (Updated):

Every year, professors move from lower-ranked institutions to higher-ranked institutions. But for the lateral market to sustain itself, schools have to continue to play the game: recruit laterals, hoping they improve the school’s standing before they move onto greener pastures.

One way to measure this market is to analyze the track record of a new school that built its faculty from scratch. …

[B]etween 2008 and 2026, at Irvine there were a total of about 50 lateral hires (including two deans). Between 2008 and 2026, seventeen of these fifty lateral hires later departed. … [O]ut of a total of fifty laterals hires, twenty-nine remained and seventeen departed. The departure rate of hired laterals is about 34%. …

In an ideal world, the number of lateral hires should far exceed the number of lateral departures. Schools that recruit scholars should be able to retain them. But the world is far from ideal. Professors who lateral to one school will often be recruited elsewhere. Indeed, I think it is a positive that a school recruits and develops scholars who go onto other institutions. More realistically, the number of lateral hires should roughly match the number of lateral departures to keep the faculty at parity: for every lateral that departs another lateral should be hired.

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