<p>The only thing that makes this different is that they are explicit about the requirement. A lot of search committees do this tacitly - without advertising it. Generally speaking in academia (even the job-sparse humanities), if you adjunct for more than about 3 years, your chances of getting a tenure-track job go down by a lot. Number one, you probably aren’t publishing the way you need to if you are cobbling together enough classes to live on while adjunct teaching. Number 2, adjuncts aren’t really integrated into the department the way tenure-track or even non-tt full time professors are. And number 3, you’ve proven that you are willing to teach all the crappy classes no one else wants to teach for low pay and no benefits…so why would anyone want to give you decent pay and benefits when you’ll do the same thing for less?</p>
<p>Humanities folks - and really, any students interested in a PhD - should already be considering the prospect with caution. Academia is a hard market even in the sciences, especially the life sciences.</p>