You remember that time ...?

... when candidates could simply provide a list of potential referees and contact details along with their CV/resume?We need to get back to that time. Because, once again, I find myself seriously lamenting the current trend of requiring initial applications to include recommendation letters up front. Students should lament this, also, as the quality of their references can only be undermined by a trend that makes it immensely onerous for faculty to supply substantive and tailored letters without a significant sacrifice of time. Letters that, in a substantial number of cases, will never be read because the application is triaged before it's deemed appropriate to do so.What's particularly perverse is that we, as faculty, still tend to hold some value in graduate school recommendation letters that have been tailored for the position and institution. This isn't a terribly consistent view to hold if we're allowing our admins to blanket bomb our colleagues for letters to the point that producing such letters, possibly as many as ten for a single student, renders it a real challenge to meet this ideal.What's worse is that on top of a faculty member having to submit an order of magnitude more recommendation letters than are ever likely to be read, we are also expected to sign up to a veritable multitude of third party websites* in order to fill out tedious and agonizingly superficial tick box forms.It's a scandal I tell you. A scandal!/ humbug* "Sorry, the password you have chosen is...
Source: Across the Bilayer - Category: Research Source Type: blogs