This post is prompted by a ritualistic annual event: the appearance of the autumn job information list for English Departments across America.
The initials would be cryptic to any but an insider—the JIL appears in the ADE bulletin online every mid-September. For the last 35 years, the document has been a grim reminder of how bad employment prospects are in English and American literature. For decades now, English departments across the country have cumulatively produced an average of 1,000 or so Ph.D.’s per year, even though the number of tenure-track jobs advertised each year has, for years, numbered fewer than 500. Let’s face it, for a long time now, getting, or even trying to get, a Ph.D. in English has just been a bad bet. Just ask Chronicle writer Thomas H. Benton, author of “Just Don’t Go,” and, as if that weren’t convincing enough, “Just Don’t Go, Part 2.”
For a long time now, the discipline of English has been characterized by the absence of a job market. The profession of English studies is not “in crisis,” as many continue to characterize it. “Crisis,” as I’ve argued before, is a dramaturgical term, suggesting an urgent problem for which there is a miraculous and immediate solution. Not true: Everyone from Ph.D. students to those who are about to retire should realize that the situation in which we find ourselves is not a “crisis”—it’s normal professional life.
So how do we address this non-crisis, this dismal state of normality? I’ll make a radical suggestion in my next post, but for now, I’d like to look at the psychological dimension of the problem. A great many new graduate students enter Ph.D. programs in English (and other disciplines) not realizing how unlikely it is that they will eventually land a tenure-track academic job. Many simply continue along a path that they hope will lead them there: They accept position after position as adjunct teachers. Why? It allows them to do work that’s familiar to them (teaching) and to stay connected to the academy. It can, however, nurture the usually false hope that they will eventually segue into tenure-track positions. That does happen—I know people who have realized that career path—but it’s a real longshot.
So the more common, and realistic, professional drama is this: What happens if I’m a Ph.D. student, realize how unlikely it is that I will get a tenure-track job (maybe realize that I don’t have the determination to complete my degree)? The answer, increasingly a part of conversations I have with other Directors of Graduate Studies and Directors of Graduate Admissions, is that we should put ourselves in a position to prepare our Ph.D. students for jobs outside academia. But I’m dismayed by the tone in which this conversation is often held. The question is raised, in one form or another: How can our Ph.D students opt for careers outside of academia and still “retain their dignity”? I wonder why, given the job numbers, the rhetoric of “dignity,” and thus its opposite number, “shame,” enter the conversation. I believe we need to find a different way of talking about what happens to our Ph.D.’s. More to come.
- A necessary P.S.: here was the first comment on my last blog post: “Sophomoric. I would invite the author to seek the counsel of competent measurement scientists instead of blowing phlogiston into straw men.” It’s disheartening to write for Innovations, when any imbecile can write an anonymous comment—no counterargument, no substance. I propose that The Chronicle require its subscribers to identify themselves and state their status and affiliation. If you’re a disillusioned failure, everyone who reads your comment should know that you’re a disillusioned failure. I’m not, of course, speaking for The Chronicle. I’m just amazed at the vast range of civility I’ve encountered.
