MLA 2008: A Buyer’s Market?

San Francisco — So Harvard’s not hiring this year, and it’s not alone. A lot of language-and-literature departments, though, are proceeding with searches — for now. How much do the job jitters extend to the employers’ side of the interviewing table? The Chronicle talked to professors on several search committees to find out.

Like everybody here, Ian Finseth, an assistant professor of English at the University of North Texas, has heard the stories about suspended searches and frozen positions. He heard a rumor that one department, fearing that a budget freeze was imminent, made job offers by Thanksgiving to try to beat the money clock.

Mr. Finseth is chair of a search committee interviewing candidates for a position in early American literature. Does he worry that the money for that job might dry up? “No concern at all,” he said. With a budget surplus, Texas has a healthier economy than most states do. There’s been no talk of hiring freezes, budget cuts, or salary rescissions.

North Texas’ English department hired three people last year and will hire four this time around. It wants to increase the proportion of tenure-track to non-tenure-track faculty members and lighten teaching loads, Mr. Finseth said. “We hope and expect to keep hiring at a steady clip.”

“At UNT we’re in a very good position,” Mr. Finseth said. “The morale at the school is high, and that’s something we try to convey to job candidates.” Even in a bad year, employers with secure jobs to offer have to compete for the top candidates — hence the plug for North Texas’ morale. Still, “in some sense, it’s always a buyer’s market,” Mr. Finseth said. “We will hire someone.”

Sarah S.G. Frantz, an assistant professor in the department of English and foreign languages at Fayetteville State University, in North Carolina, is involved in four searches: two in Spanish, two in rhetoric and composition. “The rhet-comp people get snapped up pretty quickly,” she said. That increases the pressure on her department to make pre-emptive offers if it can.

The rhetoric and composition gigs look safe for the time being, but Ms. Frantz worries that the state’s current budget shortfall puts the money for one of the other jobs at risk. She has seen it happen elsewhere. “Jobs are disappearing,” she said. “Jobs are just being decimated.”

Some institutions are hiring despite their state’s budget woes. Robert Felkel, a professor of Spanish at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo, is looking for a colonial-studies specialist. His department received 70 applications for the job and has narrowed it to 10 candidates. “They’re fantastic,” he said. “They’re really good.”

Michigan’s budget has been hard hit, but so far that hasn’t affected his department’s hiring plans, Mr. Felkel said. Spanish has done well at Western Michigan, and his optimism remains undimmed. “There will never be a year,” he said, “when we don’t request a search.”