What Else Might One Do With an English Ph.D.? Part 3

October 4, 2011, 1:34 pm

My final thoughts about alternative careers for English Ph.D.’s are obviously the most radical, and I’ve expressed them before in an article in The Chronicle about graduate admissions. I begin with a brief post from the Web site of the Department of English, University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point that neatly distills information readily available from a variety of MLA sources:

“The MLA (Modern Language Association) carefully tracks statistics pertaining to degree achievement, job offerings and job placement in U.S. English departments. You can access their reports online at www.mla.org.

According to the MLA’s “Midyear Report on the 2009-10 Job Information List,” about 1,000 people have earned a Ph.D. in English each year since 1995. Meanwhile, about 400 tenure-track jobs in English have been available each year (plus or minus 50 to 100). The discrepancy between these two numbers means that the market for tenure-track academic jobs in English is very competitive, and has been for some time. On the other hand, the vast majority of English Ph.D.’s find jobs of some kind. The MLA’s most recent survey of Ph.D. placement indicates that of those who earned a Ph.D. in 2004:

49.4 percent found tenure-track jobs
20.5 percent found full-time non-tenure-track teaching positions
8.7 percent found other types of academic jobs (i.e., administration)
6.7 percent found jobs outside higher education
6.1 percent found part-time non-tenure-track teaching positions
5.2 percent were awarded postgraduate fellowships to continue their research
3.3 percent were unemployed

While no one can reliably predict the future of the job market in this or any other field, shrinking budgets for education (especially in the public sector) suggest that this situation is not likely to improve right away. While there are things you can do to strengthen your prospects of landing a tenure-track job, there is nothing you can do to guarantee that outcome. Numerous brilliant, talented English Ph.D.’s fail to get hired into the kinds of positions for which they have qualified themselves. Also, because jobs are scarce, few Ph.D.s can pick and choose among locations, and must be flexible about where they will live.

Many aspects of graduate school are fun and rewarding in and for themselves, but others are not. Students sometimes become embittered when they feel they have sacrificed years of their lives for an uncertain outcome. It’s only fair that you get these facts now.”

Breaking down these numbers is certainly discouraging. The facts that jump out at me are that fewer than half of all Ph.D.’s find tenure-track jobs. This is simply an issue of supply and demand. If English departments across the country consistently produce more than twice the number of Ph.D.’s as there are tenure-track jobs, we should hardly be surprised at the 49.4-percent placement rate. That leaves more than 26 percent of Ph.D.’s in non-tenure-track teaching positions, a goal to which no one getting an English Ph.D. aspires. After investing an average of 9.5 years earning the terminal degree, English graduate students want careers (appointments culminating in tenure), not makeshift jobs. Thanks to the efforts of people such as Paula Chambers, and her organization TheVersaitlePh.D., the number of English Ph.D.s thriving in non-academic jobs may well increase, but for the past 15 years they have been quite dismal.

In my article, I floated the idea that we (that is we English departments) simply stop admitting Ph.D.’s until the supply and demand ratios even out. I’ve since come to my senses and would like to close by qualifying that recommendation with a few speculative questions.

Since the MLA is not a regulatory organization, individual departments, or in some cases state governments (it happened in Ohio) would have to make these radical decisions. So how likely is it that Harvard or Stanford would suspend Ph.D. admissions? By the same token, why would an aspiring university curtail its advancement up the academic food chain by doing the same? Indeed, the trend seems to be moving in the opposite direction. While most academics still refer to the Carnegie Commissions top rank as “Research I” universities, it’s worth noting that in 2000, the Commission itself changed that Category to “Doctoral/Research Universities—extensive,” only tightening the connection between a university’s prestige and the number of its Ph.D. programs.

A corollary question: Can an institution fairly represent itself as a research university if it temporarily suspends its English Ph.D. program? Finally, and most alarmingly, what if English departments voluntarily suspend their Ph.D. programs only to discover, perhaps several years from now, that their home universities won’t let them have those programs back? So I’m now willing to concede that there are no easy solutions. I will say, though, that the problem is not a crisis, but rather the norm in our profession. As such, we have to find some long-term way to deal with it.

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vceross

It would be helpful to know what students liked and disliked about the digital texts
doctormillerlg

What did Cal State students think about traditional textbooks? From my experience, students are probably divided along similar lines. Physical textbooks are expensive and getting bulkier all the time. However, I think that the biggest complaints are that the texts were irrelevant to their learning. That is not a technology issue.
manitoga

In the same vain, it would be helpful to know what students liked, and what caused the neutral students to be neutral.
manitoga

If you’re lucky though, you can get physical textbooks at the Library Reserve desk, you can probably check a book out from a library if it’s circulating, or you can run a search on addall.com and see who sells it for less money. With eBooks, you’ve got a monopoly *and* you can’t sell your book back to the bookstore (or someone else) at the end of the semester.
chrisbeks

It’s clear that e-books are the future, but to me it looks like there is a long way to go. It should be relatively easy to find out why students dislike e-books, and do a follow-up to it as to WHY they disliked it, and what could make it so they would like the e-books.

I think price has a lot to do with it, as well as having a book that you can access both online as well as a download. Some eReader software already lets you do that (www.nookstudy.com for B&N) and I’ve been impressed by how easy it is to actually rent a digital text book. I’ve seen them for 35% of the print price, which is how it should be.
The software also allows for annotations, highlighting, bookmarking, and some of them let you share your notes with other students using the same text.

I’m curious to see the detailed report and find out what students liked and disliked about this. Let’s hope the publishers do the same…
rfish117

I am in the Cal State Extended Education program. I will tell you a few likes/dislikes:

Dislikes:

1) The pages have no numbers if you are able to print them.
2) Sometimes you are not allowed to print it.
3) Your eyes begin to hurt after too much staring at the screen.
4) There is no highlighting for easy review. (Yes there are Chrome apps to highlight HTML and create digital notes but it does not always work).
5) Sometimes the windows are faulty when opened.
6) Sometimes being able to write in the margins on a REAL textbook is useful. I know I do it.
7) It seems to be the consensus among students that material from the course is better retained from the physical book.

What I like:

1) Direct problem working from the book.
2) Answers.
3) Not having to carry a book, albeit I would if it cost the same amount.
4) Cheaper. Much Cheaper.
5) Access anywhere.

For all of you entrepreneurs out there: these books need to be compatible with Smartphones. Additionally, audio-formats would not be such a bad idea for practice on core concepts. They also need A LOT more videos. Videos and pictures are by far the most powerful medium of learning (even a lecture on each lesson- which would make the teacher work harder in class).

Also, keep in mind that these “surveys” probably do not yield correct results. Think about it, someone hands you a survey for a teacher. What do you put? Either really good reviews, a real review or a I don’t really have a clue review.

@ChrisBeks Yes, I believe the same- Ebooks are the future- it just needs to be done right. Give us an interactive learning space, make it fun. The education system needs to be revamped all in all. No wonder why the scores for K-12 keep dropping- examine even the space students work in (cramped, uncomfortable, teacher-centric environments). I believe it was Forbes or Fast Company that had an article on this- you should check it out. The nook is good- but they are now being Sued by Microsoft- so will it go on much longer? I think the next generation of learning might be tablet based- but it needs to be a bigger tablet- and one that won’t kill your vision.
rfish117

I wrote you a reply.
http://twitter.com/josh_edu Josh Jacobs

Frank–appreciate this series of posts. I’m an English PhD working since 2000 in academic administration jobs w/ no regrets. When I corresponded with the grad chair of my English Dept a few years ago about how we could help current PhD students see the possibility (and likely requirement) of applying the skills they acquire in PhD studies to non-teaching careers, he said that they had tried but that students just don’t get into a PhD program to do anything but become their professors. There was no interest. So I think that what UW-Stevens Point is doing is the right thing but probably not a powerful or early enough intervention to really change things on the front end i.e. people going into the PhD programs.
alexis_v

They could run for public office.
bbaylis

jacobs has expressed something in his comment (“students just don’t get into a PhD program to do anything but become their professors”) that I have believed for years. Waiting until students get into graduate school is too late to solve this problem. Students have foreclosed their career and academic identities on their undergraduate professors. They have borrowed their values from these instructors. The solution to a foreclosed identiy is helping students critically examine their values.But doing that goes against human nature which is to reproduce itself. It is also what we are best at doing.
vceross

“In my article, I floated the idea that we (that is we English
departments) simply stop admitting Ph.D.’s until the supply and demand
ratios even out. I’ve since come to my senses. . .”

Coming to one’s senses apparently means continuing to trick gullible young people into signing up for 9 years of fruitless study so that, like colonial administrators, English departments can sustain the life to which they’ve grown accustomed. Of course, the market will ultimately take care of that which English departments themselves refuse to address. A shame all round.
jeangoodwin

“Can an institution fairly represent itself as a research university if it … suspends its English Ph.D. program?” Of course it can.

The PhD programs are different, and of different quality; there is nothing that all of them add to the “research university.” OK, there is one thing–a +1 in the Carnegie calculations. But the university can get that by adding a new program in nanoinfomatics or marina management or whatever.

But instead of a temporary shutdown, wouldn’t it be better to shut down permanently about half of all programs, those of low quality or permanently below critical mass in faculty or student numbers? Some “prestigious schools” would lose programs, and some “non prestigious” would keep them.

If underemployment of their graduates could result in increased teaching loads and/or teaching freshman comp, faculty minds would quickly focus on cultivating student success, including re-defining what success is. Why not be proud of training outstanding lit/composition teachers for a region’s community colleges, for example?
dank48

They could take off their self-imposed blinkers and notice that it’s a big world out there. Education is good for quite a few things in addition to passing on education to someone else in a classroom, and there’s more to life than writing articles and books nobody really reads. (Sturgeon’s Principle applies to academic writing, as it does to all writing.)

Wake up. Get a life.
beulah

I had hoped that you would actually say what else one might do with an English PhD, rather than simply reminding us, once again, that there are not very many tenure-track positions available.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RSRD4KFLLVQHEM4QYHLLFBQR6M chaz

TheVersaitlePh.D

Versatile

Does anyone edit this publication?
copesan

Its only fruitless if you think that the only course of action for someone with a PhD is a tenure track position.
markbauerlein

Question, Frank: Would the 49% rate drop if we looked at PhDs from 2007-2010? Things have gotten worse since 2004, no?
http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com Richard Grayson

Good suggestion! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona%27s_6th_congressional_district#2010
renellin

Actually, I don’t see that as a terrible bunch of statistics. Just about 70% got full time teaching jobs in their fields! There may be plenty of reasons why some of the grads did not seek full time employment teaching English. There are so many possibilities out there, I think that is a pretty good percentage. At a glance it looks like 85% were employed full time. Why are you complaining?
renellin

I have also noticed that a lot of teachers (I am somewhat of a permanent college student)–not a majority–seem to be vicariously living out their lives in their students. They can’t help but try and often succeed to indoctrinate the students into their point of view, even if it is not course-related. Many teachers confuse indoctrination with encouraging students to think. All of my children are college-educated, with one still in law school, and it just hurts to hear what some of their teachers tell them. Are they just being provocative? No. The relationship between a student and a teacher they really respect, even if due to false pretenses, can be a powerful force in shaping their future.
sdorley

This doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Keep the PhD programs but cut admissions so that you have a smaller number of candidates. When the market opens up–if ever it will given that so many schools find financial benefit in moving from tenure-track to contract faculty–you can increase the number of entrants. This is no different that what we are all doing today with our own personal budgets–cutting back until things get better.

The problem is that we may be moving beyond the days of “guaranteed employment” with its concurrent benefit package. And at a risk of getting political–the government desire to make health care affordable would help professors who are working but not getting benefits. When, as a doctoral student, I taught one class at a local community college to make a bit more money, I became friends with a “lifer”–an adjunct faculty who had not found a permanent job. She was teaching at 3 different schools just to make enough money and to be able to have insurance.

We need to stop having adjuncts (or graduate teaching assistants– argument for keeping doctoral programs full) and admit that no one wants to pay for that many tenured positions any more. But reasonable contracts based on a decent pay scale and a 3 year renewable term might get some of our faculty back in the classroom.
11185283

I spent 9 years earning the terminal degree in English, with the intention of becoming an English professor. Probably the hardest lesson I learned – and it was not taught by my (otherwise wonderful) graduate faculty mentors – is that a career can mean more than “appointments culminating in tenure.” For more than half the new PhDs in English in a given year, it has to.
vpostrel

You should also tell undergraduate majors considering graduate school that they should assume they will not get a job when they finish their Ph.D. program. If they’re OK with going to grad school for pure intellectual consumption, fine. Otherwise, they should try something else. They should also understand that even if they do go to graduate school and are among the lucky ones to find tenure track positions, those positions will most likely be at schools significantly below the quality of the ones where they themselves trained–that’s just how the math works out. If graduate programs aren’t willing to discipline themselves, at the very least undergraduates could get better advice from their professors.
theseus

It’s the first thing I tell them. And the second is that if they must do this, at least they need to get decent funding, or they really, really shouldn’t go. But most of them are romantics who reckon that it will be different for them so what can one do?
minnesotan

Perhaps you should amend that advice to “run for a public office you have a chance in hell of winning.”

Not to down the third party candidates — they have my undying support. It’s just that losing nobly in an election and losing nobly at the tenure-track lottery aren’t functionally any different. Either way, you followed your heart, had it trampled on, and now have to deal with the government’s threats to send you to debtor’s prison if you don’t pay them back for the privilege of training for ten years to flounder in a market with no jobs.
realtyannie

Well, copesan, we are talking here about English degrees. Probably a PhD in Physics or another hard science would open up some pretty cool doors. As noted by Mr. Jacobs, the only reason people get English PhDs is to become English professors. Whatever alternative careers might interest them are probably accessible with a humble BA.

By the way, PhD programs should not be stopped. We do need new English professors. Just not so many.
realtyannie

You could get their email address and forward them every single article like this in the Chronicle. And every article about declining tenure. And every article about universities declaring financial exigency. And every article about the loss of state funding. Ad infinitum. There is enough bad news in the Chronicle to sink into a few of those brilliant young minds!
procra

So the only alternatives are (a) shut down all graduate english programs or (b) carry on as we always have? I would like to see tenured faculty of Professor Donogue’s stature start a serious conversation about what college students need to be taught and how can people trained in the study of English lit. best deliver it to them, given the economic climate we’ve got. Exploiting grad students as cheap labor (which is what the current system does) is not the best answer to that question.
bernardjsmith

But I wonder whether the academe doesn’t produce more PhDs than it can employ simply because of the model it now uses whereby TAs are used rather than tenured faculty to do most of the heavy lifting… if you need a certain number of TAs and if to be a TA you need to be in a PhD program then you need to create a supply of PhDs that is greater than the demand for them.
theseus

The one I talked to yesterday said that he’d READ articles like this, but was still keen!
sand6432

My radical suggestion–as a former ABD (though in Philosophy, not English) who has had a wonderful 45-year career in scholarly publishing–would be not to reduce the number of graduate students admitted but to offer two different tracks: one would be aimed at the traditional Ph.D. for those who plan to become professors; the other would be developed to enhance skills of people who think that a nonacademic career would be more rewarding for them. The main difference between the two tracks is that the latter would not involve the preparation of a dissertation, an exercise that is valuable for those heading into an academic career but is mostly a waste of time for thise going into a nonacademic career. Aside from the dissertation, the rest of graduate education can be more or less the same on the two tracks, though the nonacademic track could be broadened by exposing students to some skills–say, statistics–that could come in handy in nonacademic work but wouldn;t be needed for a specialist career teaching English. As I can attest from my own two years spent in top graduate schools, at Columbia and Princeton, graduation education can be a rewarding experience that can pay off dividends in a nonacademic career. developing this two-track system would enable higher education to avoid the harm of overproducing Ph.D.s for the academy while maintaining sufficient numbers to sustain a graduate program financially and providing an educational alternative for people interested in careers outside the academy.—Sandy Thatcher
http://www.facebook.com/DrDanielMARTIN Daniel Martin

Excellent perspective of on the power of one. When we link research with technology (and accreditation needs) it seems we can do a great deal to impact the culture of a university. Here is a pilot program at our university that invited students to participate in tracking campus climate survey variables in real-time using GIS tools (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4bLnG8zTas). Students loved it, and given time could be used to have a significant impact on culture by making salient those things that happen all around us that we usually take for granted (pro-social behavior that maps well with the campus climate variables).