The number of faculty openings for junior professors in English declined sharply in 2002, and job prospects for new Ph.D.'s in the field could remain bleak in 2003, according to the Modern Language Association.
Entry-level job openings in English fell by 17 percent to 401 in 2002, down from 483 the previous year. The total number of academic jobs in English plummeted to 792, a drop of 19 percent.
Notably, 60 percent of the positions advertised in the association's Job Information List in 2001 were at public universities; this year, that figure is 53 percent. "That means that publics are disproportionately the source of the decline," says Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA, which holds its annual convention December 27-30 in New York City.
The same scenario played out in foreign-language departments. According to the MLA, the total number of job openings for Ph.D.'s in foreign languages sank 21 percent in 2002, with the proportion of entry-level tenure-track jobs dropping by 15.7 percent to 279, compared with 331 the year before.
"It looks like the sharpest decline since the recession of the early 1990s," Ms. Feal says.
The Market for English Scholars
A bit of good news, Ms. Feal says, is that the number of doctorates awarded in English fields fell to 977, down 8.7 percent from 1,070 in 2000-1. However, new doctoral recipients still greatly outnumber new entry-level job openings in English, she says.
In addition, there's a backlog of graduates from previous years still looking for tenure-track positions, Ms. Feal says. Findings from a recent MLA survey of Ph.D. placements show that only 42 percent of the people who earned English Ph.D.'s in 2000-1 obtained tenure-track jobs that year.
As a result, many professors say they are worried about their students' job prospects this year. "I'm pessimistic about their chances," says Daniel Cooper Alarcon, an associate professor of English at the University of Arizona. "You've got less than half of the Ph.D. grads finding tenure-track positions two years ago, and I don't think the situation has improved in the two years since."
Some English departments are countering the trend and doing a lot of hiring. Stephen Holder, chairman of the English department at Central Michigan University, says he plans to hire five people -- including specialists in African-American literature, children's literature, British modernism, English education, and creative writing. John Guillory, head of New York University's English department, says he's searching for three people -- a specialist in Renaissance literature, one in literature of the colonial Americas, and a scholar of late-20th-century literature.
The Universities of Colorado at Boulder, Maryland at College Park, Massachusetts at Amherst, and Nebraska at Lincoln all say they are hiring. So are Carnegie Mellon University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Even so, many professors fear that some of the advertised positions could be withdrawn as public universities continue to face budget cutbacks. Already, Michigan State University has suspended one of two advertised searches because of budget woes. Patrick O'Donnell, who heads the English department there, says he plans to proceed with a search for an assistant professor in African-American literature, but "we're looking at few or no searches next year."
The heads of the English departments at the University of Arizona, the University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri at Columbia say they are not hiring this year, and some of them worry that hiring at their institutions may be frozen again next year.
This year, most of the openings were in the traditionally large subfields of British literature, rhetoric and composition, multiethnic literature, and American literature, although the number of positions advertised in these subfields was lower than last year's in all but American literature.
Professors say they see a demand for generalists and candidates with creative-writing expertise who can teach a range of courses. Opportunities also seem more plentiful for jobs in African-American literature, says Jurgen Grandt, an instructor at the University of Georgia who is searching for a job in that field. He has already lined up six interviews at the MLA convention. However, students seeking jobs in 20th-century American literature or Victorian literature may have a harder time because those fields are glutted with Ph.D.'s, they say.
"I would not want to be a Victorian scholar these days," says Mr. Holder, of Central Michigan University.
Even when the market slumps, as it did last year, some Ph.D.'s will succeed in landing tenure-track jobs. Michael Moran, graduate coordinator at the University of Georgia, says 6 of his department's 15 Ph.D.'s on the market last year found tenure-track jobs. At the University of Florida, 5 of 8 Ph.D.'s got tenure-track jobs. Mr. O'Donnell of Michigan State says that 3 of 4 of his Ph.D.'s on the market last year landed tenure-track jobs.
So what will the future hold? "I'm no Nostradamus," says Martin Comargo, head of the English department at Missouri-Columbia. "We're all just holding our breath."
The Market for Foreign-Language Scholars
Professors say this year's job market in the foreign languages looks worse than last year's.
Geraldine Nichols, head of the department of Romance languages at the University of Florida, calls the hiring situation "dreadful" and "horrendous." Not only is her department not hiring, she has three empty lines in Spanish and could be facing more in French when three faculty members retire next summer.
Still, some professors in the field remain cautiously optimistic.
"Things still look OK," says Malcolm Compitello, head of the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Arizona. "What will be important to see is what percentage of the advertised jobs get filled and how many get withdrawn, given what appears to be a pretty gloomy economic climate around the country. I expected to see more of an indication of that climate in the job list when it first came out, and it didn't appear, so we may be able to get through this without the kind of difficult situation we experienced in the mid-1970s."
Many foreign-language departments are hiring -- including the French and Italian department at Indiana University at Bloomington (two positions), the Spanish and Portuguese department at Colorado's Boulder campus (two positions), the department of Romance languages at the University of Pennsylvania (three positions), and the department of Germanic and Slavic languages at Pennsylvania State University at University Park (one position). However, many of the openings are replacement positions, with few departments actually growing.
Applied linguistics is the hottest subfield across the spectrum of foreign languages, with more jobs than candidates in some cases, say experts in the field. In Spanish, Latin American literature has the most jobs, but also the most candidates, they say. In French, Francophone studies is taking off, and good candidates in that subfield are hard to find. Film specialists are sought after in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Japanese.
Spanish has the highest undergraduate enrollment of any foreign language and thus continues to have more job openings than all the other foreign languages combined (French is a distant second).
"Spanish has busted the mold of the foreign-language department," says Carlos Alonso, head of the department of Romance languages at Penn. "There are so many positions open in Spanish that it seems to dwarf the other languages."
Nearly half of the position listings in the foreign-language edition of the MLA's Job Information List are for jobs in Spanish. Its share has dropped, however, to 42 percent this year, down from 48 percent in 2001.
It's no surprise that, in Spanish, "if you're good, you can write your own ticket," says Ms. Nichols, who is also president of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages.
Just ask Juan Pablo Dabove. He had 30 interviews and 12 invitations for campus visits last year. Mr. Dabove, who got his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2001, says he visited four institutions and received four offers before accepting a job as an assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder (he withdrew from the other searches).
While Mr. Dabove's experience is exceptional, it's common for doctoral graduates in Spanish to have multiple interviews, says Emilio Bejel, chairman of the department of Spanish and Portuguese at the Boulder campus.
Not so in other languages, where it's more customary for graduates to spend two or three years looking for a tenure-track job. Findings from a recent MLA survey of Ph.D. placement show that only 33 percent of the graduates in French and Italian, and 28 percent of the graduates in German, got tenure-track jobs in 2000-1. In Spanish, that figure is 61 percent.
One bright spot is in Italian, where student enrollment is surging, Ms. Nichols of Florida says. "We can't keep up with our Italian enrollments here," she says. "In fact, Italian across the country is booming. It's the chic language right now."
Andrea Ciccarelli, chairman of French and Italian at Indiana's Bloomington campus, says he has seen a similar trend. Enrollment in Italian at his university has doubled in the last five years, he says. However, "it's unclear whether it's growing in terms of tenure-track jobs," Mr. Ciccarelli is quick to add. "Many of the positions in Italian are temporary positions," he says.
Meanwhile in French, German, and Russian -- where job openings are holding steady -- no news is good news.
Unfortunately for job seekers, "the way the economy goes is the way the job market goes," the MLA's Ms. Feal says, and "until the economy improves or we find ways to encourage legislators to put more funding toward higher education," things are going to be tough.
