Pardon me if I don’t shed a tear over the prospect of less liberal indoctrination on college campuses.

Carl Straumsheim of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Report suggests hiring of political scientists has slowed

Preliminary numbers from the American Political Science Association suggests colleges and universities may this year hire fewer political scientists than they did last year, a result that challenges the expectation that academe is slowly recovering from the Great Recession.

Job openings in political science through January 2013 were at their lowest in almost two years. Public institutions in particular have hired fewer assistant professors and adjuncts, and have cut back on the number of openings in international relations. Although data not captured in the report suggest that hiring has picked up in the first months of 2013, the final count of job openings may not surpass that of last year.

“We do not know yet if this indicates a general decline or an adjustment for a spate of hires after the [economic] downturn,” the report reads.

Colleges and institutions have so far this academic year reported 452 openings for assistant professors to APSA’s e-Jobs program. The organization specifically tracks the postings “because these jobs are those for which graduate students and junior faculty compete,” so they serve as a makeshift indicator of the health of the job market.

At its peak during the 2006-2007 academic year, institutions reported 730 openings for assistant professors to e-Jobs, a number that plummeted to 445 three years later in the wake of the economic crash of 2008. The last two academic years have shown modest improvements — the number growing to 537, then 586 last year.