It would interesting to have some numbers (ball-park) of the cost of this trip for those of you who have been on the job market at MLA who do not have full-time jobs and have had to pay for the entire trip out-of-pocket -- either for this year's convention or in other years.
I do have a full-time job, but not one that reimburses any conference travel, unfortunately. I'd say the MLA this year cost me about $700 altogether - registration, airfare, hotel (sharing a room w/2 others), and food.
Harrapsempire, I agree that a sliding scale on the registration fee might help - and they do have such a system in place for MLA membership, after all.
In fact, there is such a sliding scale already in place for MLA conference registration. Grad students & fauclty who are employed less than full-time paid $45 & $50 respectively until the month before when rates went up to $55 & $60. Regular member (w/in US) reg fees started at $145 and went up from there.
pink_, with all due respect, this is not a *real* sliding scale.
Regular members all pay the same for registration, regardless of their salary, which is weird considering there is a sliding scale for MLA membership, see
there.
I had forgotten about that lower rate for unemployed/part-time people - and the MLA does also have some travel assistance funds for those at the bottom end of the pay scale. (My postdoc previously and my VAP now both pay me a bit too much to qualify for that assistance, for which I guess actually I am grateful). So maybe what we're talking about here is a desire for a bit more nuance around the part of the scale in between "poverty level adjunct" and "tenure-track faculty with travel reimbursement."
I should say, too, though, that the registration fee is not really the killer - it's the airfare and hotel. (And I got off relatively cheaply this year because I happened to be flying in from a city that was fairly close to Seattle - I've spent more like $900-$1000 in years where I had to fly coast-to-coast, as lackademia suggests.) Those costs are more difficult for the MLA to mitigate, obviously, hence the value of exploring Skype options, etc.
For the record, I actually really like going to the MLA - for the panels, the chance to catch up with friends at other schools, the chance to hang out in a Real City for a few days, and the chance to almost knock over famous scholars as they're coming out of the book exhibit. It just eats into the budget a bit more than I'd like.
