The Graduate School Ponzi Scheme

[ComeBackZinc]

Back around page 3, but at the risk of having this thread subject to TheGradeCafe's overzealous "moderation" I will politely suggest this article as an example of the kind of thinking and activism we should be seeing from established faculty: http://chronicle.com/article/To-Protest-Colleagues-Lack-of/230057/

 

Resigning isn't necessarily the best answer, but her actions demonstrate real sacrifice and concern about her colleagues and her profession. It would be nice to see more of it--a lot more of it. Honestly, ComeBackZinc, I think we ultimately want to see many of the same things change for the better. And it's my hope that in the course of our careers the situation will improve, although I fear that I have very little reason for optimism. 

 

I know all about it, because she first announced it on the WPA listserv-- that's right, she was a WPA, the very type of faculty member that you have derided in this space again and again. And she received great support and advice from the other WPAs. So maybe you should reconsider whether WPAs are the devil.

 

And, yes, I want the same things. I just want you to understand that your tone is not always conducive to convincing the people who we both need to convince.

[VirtualMessage]

I know all about it, because she first announced it on the WPA listserv-- that's right, she was a WPA, the very type of faculty member that you have derided in this space again and again. And she received great support and advice from the other WPAs. So maybe you should reconsider whether WPAs are the devil.

 

And, yes, I want the same things. I just want you to understand that your tone is not always conducive to convincing the people who we both need to convince.

 

 

Thank you sir, may I have another? This is a web forum, and I have found it an exceptionally good place to vent my thoughts and feelings and despair in a profession that censures such candor. If only I were a little more masochistic, I might also enjoy the predictable upbraiding. I think we need to hear about the consequences of the academic labor situation on professional and personal lives, even if the tone isn't always pleasant or palatable. 

[ComeBackZinc]

I recognize the legitimacy of your anger and I appreciate your overall political project. I agree about the need for solidarity and taking concrete steps to reduce the demise of TT positions. I do think you have more friends than you realize, if you would care to look for them a little more fairly.

[lifealive]

Oh boy, this discussion again. 

 

 

 

 

VM, what do you mean when you say allowing adjuncting to continue is "cheating students out of the education they pay dearly to receive"? Do you think adjuncts can't teach as well as TT profs for some reason (structural or otherwise)?

 

Therein lies the problem. Adjuncts do their jobs well--or at least decently. So there's literally no incentive to pay them better. But the problems run even deeper: humanities education is viewed by society as a very "low stakes" endeavor. Several years back, a plane fell out of the sky near Buffalo because the pilots were poorly trained, overworked, and paid about the same amount as adjunct instructors. In fact, it was uncanny how similar the situation of beginning pilots was to that of adjunct instructors. The country was outraged, but little has actually been done since then to ensure that beginning pilots are actually paid fairly and treated like human beings.

 

If the population of the US is unwilling to advocate for decent wages for the people who put them 30,000 feet into the air, why would they give three shits about the people who teach those "useless" subjects like feminist literary criticism? We don't put people 30,000 feet in the air. We don't even teach classes about putting people 30,000 feet in the air. Of course our subjects are important to the survival of society, but it's difficult to make the case that we should get paid more because we ensure the existence of a more literate and egalitarian populace and stuff. I don't think anyone has ever died because of poor English instruction.

 

The thing is, no one is coming to save us. I've seen Virtual Message rail all over this thread at god knows what--tenured faculty who should be ashamed to work at institutions that employ adjuncts (almost all of them). I still don't know what Virtual Message wants other than to "raise awareness" and "have a dialogue" (which mainly consists of them shrilly berating the people who study RC and condemning everyone who doesn't immediately defer to their hyperbolic scorch-the-earth rhetoric). But unfortunately, adjunct exploitation is going to continue until one of two things happens: 1) people stop sending kids to schools that rely on adjuncts, and that's unlikely since a non-adjunct education now runs people $60k a year, or 2) educators make a clean break from adjuncting and move to sectors where they can make something at least remotely approaching a living wage.  

 

That's an unpopular thing to say, and a lot of people (okay, just Virtual Message) have accused me of "victim blaming." I am not blaming the victim; I lay the blame fair and square at the feet of the overpaid administrators and legislatures that have done their damnedest to snuff out the humanities in any way possible. But correctly apportioning blame doesn't change things. It doesn't change your basic material realities. It doesn't change the fact that you're making $20k a year to work 70-hour weeks with no health insurance, sick days, benefits, or opportunities to advance. And doesn't change the fact that literally no one in the world cares that you are making $20k a year to perform a valuable service--not your students, not their parents, and not the country at large. I also know that "move to another sector" is easier said than done, and that there's exploitation in another sectors as well. But no one here has offered a viable alternative. 

 

There's definitely blame to go around for faculty, but I'm not quite as sold on pillorying them as Virtual Message. I blame faculty most for the things that are within their control to change but that they do not, such as hiring practices. Hiring committees view applicants who have adjuncted as second-class citizens. They throw their CVs out. That's fucking wrong. There's also the whole "shelf life of your PhD" dynamic--google the Colorado State hiring debacle from two years ago. More importantly, faculty also continue to perpetuate a culture that designates research as good and teaching as bad. Teaching is looked upon as punishment, and it's typically less well-paid than getting a sabbatical. This attitude starts when you are first admitted to graduate school--those on fellowship are paid more while those on TA-ship are paid less (and, in my case, not offered full-year health insurance). That's something that faculty have the power to fix but do not. And rather than actually looking outside the box to hire people who are slightly older, or who have followed a "non-traditional" path, or who have taught at a community college while waiting out the job market, hiring committees instead constantly go for the "easy hire," reinscribing old boy networks and hierarchies. 

 

(An aside: When I was on the job market, I was actually told to minimize the amount of teaching I had done. I taught something like 600-700 undergrads as an IOR while completing my PhD in a five years and coming out with a well-placed publication. A record of achievement, right? But I was told that my having taught so much would be viewed as a "red flag," i.e. that I'd look like someone who was "low class" and couldn't win fellowships. I shit you not.)

 

While I admire the faculty member who resigned her position to protest the poor treatment of adjuncts, I can't help but also be puzzled by her actions. Is this what people like Virtual Message want? One less tenure line, one less full-time faculty member suckering in those poor unsuspecting graduate students to their doom? 

 

Buried in the article was a much more sensible perspective:

 

Among the instructors who lost jobs was Tsering Lama, who had been there two years. Ms. Lama said she had refused Yeshiva’s offer of a new part-time position because it would have offered less than half of the pay of her current position, with no benefits. "It would just be a lot more work for a lot less money," she said.

 

Bingo. 

Edited May 13, 2015 by lifealive

[bhr]

I wish, just once, that VM would be intellectually honest in these threads. I know I mentioned this in the other one, but she's putting forward a picture of the academy that just isn't true. First, the breakdown is not 75/25 Adjunct/TT, as she claims, it's 75/25 NTT/TT. That matters, as there are, as I've said before, quite a lot of NTT jobs that pay well and offer career and research support. Maybe the conversation we should be having isn't that all NTT jobs are life-sucking, soul-killing pits of despair, but, rather, on how people who want to teach still can while not having a PhD. The problem is that people like VM measure success purely on having a 2/2 TT line, but, in reality, that isn't the only successful outcome for a graduate student. The truth is, happily, that you can have a fine career in a lot of forms, and instead of maligning those positions, we should ask questions like how do we support the conversion of part time adjuncts to full time staff, how best to prepare graduates for applying for those jobs.

Maybe I come at this a little differently than most people on here. I spent more than a decade working outside of the academy, making anywhere from minimum wage to six figures, depending on the year. I understand that "elite" jobs are only a small part of the total picture.

 

I also know more than a few people who are quite happy in NTT lines. I can name a dozen schools, off the top of my head, that offer +$50k starting salaries for instructors, not including summer teaching money. That's competitive, by the way, with the starting salary for humanities TT lines at most state schools, including the University of Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin system, at least. Yes, those positions are teaching, rather than research focused, but they are still supported jobs in the academy.

The problem isn't just that there are too many people going to grad school, and it's not that WPAs are evil monsters sucking out the souls of English PhDs, but it's that the people coming out are prepared to take jobs and teach courses that simply don't exist anymore. The fact is (and studies consistently back this up), students aren't interested in English degrees anymore. The reason C/R and Tech Comm have grown while Lit/English programs have suffered isn't that they are more compliant with administrative demands, but that they are producing people who can teach the courses that are in demand.

What does that mean in relation to the "Ponzi Scheme"? Well, it means that VM is right. Programs do mislead and inadequately prepare their students for the realities of the job market. You simply can't, in good conscience, be producing a student who studies the themes of industrialization in Milton every year when there aren't jobs that will hire them. English PhDs need to make sure that their graduates are well-situated in comp theory and (the dreaded) best practices, have teaching experience in PW or FYW courses, and understand how to apply to the jobs that really exist. More students should be pushed into MAs and MFAs, since that is what many of the jobs are looking for. Students should be being prepared to teach online, hybrid and community college courses. Programs should be making sure that all students are graduating debt free (or close to it), since jobs are paying well enough to live, but not well enough to dig out of debt.

[lifealive]

I also know more than a few people who are quite happy in NTT lines. I can name a dozen schools, off the top of my head, that offer +$50k starting salaries for instructors, not including summer teaching money. That's competitive, by the way, with the starting salary for humanities TT lines at most state schools, including the University of Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin system, at least. Yes, those positions are teaching, rather than research focused, but they are still supported jobs in the academy.

 

And indeed, this is where faculty attitudes need to change the most. Although I'm glad that such jobs exist, as they provide a viable alternative to low-paid no-benefits adjuncting, I somewhat understand VM's reservations about them (at least as I think I understand those reservations)--that they also set up a tiered system within departments themselves as those who research (and make much more money on 2/2 loads) and those who do the bulk of the teaching. Lecturers are never really brought into the fold and never really valued as professors by the other "real professors" who were lucky enough to graduate in better times or go through more connected programs. 

 

I'm also less rosy about these positions because they offer few opportunities for advancement. In other fields, you take that entry-level position in the hopes of someday working your way up. Not so with academia. I think that academia is one of the few career fields that actually punishes people for taking an entry-level job with the goal of working their way up. If you fail to get that TT job within two or three years of your PhD, you will never graduate from lecturer to assistant professor. And while not all NTT jobs are bad, many do have a kind of "ceiling"--a point at which you can't make any more money or enjoy different opportunities. You're pretty much "stuck" teaching the same classes while TT professors--who are paid twice as much--teach less and get to design upper-level classes while never having to "slum" down to the gen ed requirements. My department, for instance, pays lecturers only $30k a year to teach 3/3, while assistant professors start out around $50k or $60k with guaranteed multiple course releases and sabbaticals in the first four years. As a graduate student, I actually had to take on a huge lecture class that was supposed to be taught by a faculty member on the tenure track. The reason? The faculty member needed to be "protected" from the strains of that kind of teaching so he could get tenure. But no one cared to protect a grad student from the strains of that kind of teaching so that I could get my degree, finish in a timely manner, and actually succeed on the job market. The faculty member went on to get tenure despite not having taught all that much or having received above-average evaluations. I graduated and didn't get a job, despite having taught many more students than the faculty member.

 

That's the kind of attitude toward teaching and teachers that sucks and that needs to stop. By constantly denigrating teaching, the humanities continues to self-cannibalize. And by actually privileging people who have less experience--and by actually VALUING that lack of experience as evidence of their genius--we just fuck ourselves over. I'm guessing that VM has such a hate-on for NTT positions because he or she is at a department that won't touch teaching with a ten-foot pole and deliberately shreds the CVs of people who have been working as lecturers for the past three years. VM knows that he or she will not get a job if they hold a NTT position because people in that program view such positions as ruining them professionally. Only ACLS fellows need apply. 

 

tl;dr: I think that NTT jobs would definitely offer a viable alternative IF full-time faculty stopped viewing these people as second-class citizens who, by virtue of actually having WORKED for a living, aren't allowed to dream of moving up. 

[VirtualMessage]

And indeed, this is where faculty attitudes need to change the most. Although I'm glad that such jobs exist, as they provide a viable alternative to low-paid no-benefits adjuncting, I somewhat understand VM's reservations about them (at least as I think I understand those reservations)--that they also set up a tiered system within departments themselves as those who research (and make much more money on 2/2 loads) and those who do the bulk of the teaching. Lecturers are never really brought into the fold and never really valued as professors by the other "real professors" who were lucky enough to graduate in better times or go through more connected programs. 

 

I'm also less rosy about these positions because they offer few opportunities for advancement. In other fields, you take that entry-level position in the hopes of someday working your way up. Not so with academia. I think that academia is one of the few career fields that actually punishes people for taking an entry-level job with the goal of working their way up. If you fail to get that TT job within two or three years of your PhD, you will never graduate from lecturer to assistant professor. And while not all NTT jobs are bad, many do have a kind of "ceiling"--a point at which you can't make any more money or enjoy different opportunities. You're pretty much "stuck" teaching the same classes while TT professors--who are paid twice as much--teach less and get to design upper-level classes while never having to "slum" down to the gen ed requirements. My department, for instance, pays lecturers only $30k a year to teach 3/3, while assistant professors start out around $50k or $60k with guaranteed multiple course releases and sabbaticals in the first four years. As a graduate student, I actually had to take on a huge lecture class that was supposed to be taught by a faculty member on the tenure track. The reason? The faculty member needed to be "protected" from the strains of that kind of teaching so he could get tenure. But no one cared to protect a grad student from the strains of that kind of teaching so that I could get my degree, finish in a timely manner, and actually succeed on the job market. The faculty member went on to get tenure despite not having taught all that much or having received above-average evaluations. I graduated and didn't get a job, despite having taught many more students than the faculty member.

 

That's the kind of attitude toward teaching and teachers that sucks and that needs to stop. By constantly denigrating teaching, the humanities continues to self-cannibalize. And by actually privileging people who have less experience--and by actually VALUING that lack of experience as evidence of their genius--we just fuck ourselves over. I'm guessing that VM has such a hate-on for NTT positions because he or she is at a department that won't touch teaching with a ten-foot pole and deliberately shreds the CVs of people who have been working as lecturers for the past three years. VM knows that he or she will not get a job if they hold a NTT position because people in that program view such positions as ruining them professionally. Only ACLS fellows need apply. 

 

tl;dr: I think that NTT jobs would definitely offer a viable alternative IF full-time faculty stopped viewing these people as second-class citizens who, by virtue of actually having WORKED for a living, aren't allowed to dream of moving up. 

 

Virtualmessage agrees with all of this. And what's even more perverse is that there simply aren't that many full-time NTT positions, and they are often cannibalized from within. For example, Wake Forest had three lectureships this year for lower-division literature courses. According to the jobs wiki, two of these went to visiting professors already in the department. The remaining one has been deferred until next year. What's more, if you look at these people they are accomplished scholars with excellent publication records. That's how bad the situation has become, and how undignified--that the University would consider it acceptable to keep moving people from one contingent position to the next. These are often scholars with the same credentials and publications as tenured, associate professors in the very same department! 

 

@bhr..I don't mean you any disrespect, but please avoid turning me into a caricature of elitism and snobbery. You really don't know anything about how bad the academic job market is until you go out and have to confront these realities after 6-10 years of graduate labor. I think most of the seasoned job seekers on this thread can agree on how grim the situation has become. As for my vehemence about R/C and whatever else, you can take it or leave it. As I've said, a lot of the condemnation is the result of my own bitter treatment, and I've been clear about that. I don't think forum posts need to obey the same protocols as Op-Ed pieces in the Times or the Chronicle, and I've been thanked by numerous people on here for my candor. If you think I'm an ass for expressing my anger then so be it. I hate the way adjuncts are exploited, I hate the doublespeak from administrators, and it fills me with sadness and despair to see our profession crumbling. And I am sorry to say it but it is crumbling. Nobody is immune to the consequences, even those teaching technical writing or whatever else. We are witnessing the complete stratification of higher education. The traditional, rigorous liberal arts education will be enjoyed by the privileged few, and the rest will continue to suffer the consequences of the miseducation outlined so meticulously by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in their two studies. If there's reason for hope that the situation will change for the better, I'm all ears. 

Edited May 13, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[lifealive]

 

 

We are witnessing the complete stratification of higher education. The traditional, rigorous liberal arts education will be enjoyed by the privileged few, and the rest will continue to suffer the consequences of the miseducation outlined so meticulously by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in their two studies. If there's reason for hope that the situation will change for the better, I'm all ears. 

 

I don't think anyone here disagrees with this. I too, along with everyone else, am sad that the rigorous liberal arts education that we received and that we were trained to impart is crumbling. However, I think that the problem is beyond all of us, and "us" also includes faculty and program administrators. Kids simply aren't going to college to major in English anymore. And yeah, maybe there are things that English departments and universities can do to change this fact, but the problem is so huge and systemic that it's almost too late to turn around now. It's like climate change--even if we change our ways, it's still goddamned inevitable. The humanities are suffering in part because tuition has skyrocketed while entry-level wages have stagnated, so people want to be able to turn their degree into cold hard cash upon graduation, and they don't think a humanities degree will do that for them. These problems run really deep--they're built into our economy and the fact that higher ed became a bubble that, unlike the housing market, never burst. 

 

College students are also under a lot of social pressure to choose the right major. There is such vitriol spewed at English and humanities majors that I don't think even I would major in English right now. When I was in college back in the early aughts people would occasionally laugh about the uselessness of the English major, but there wasn't the kind of absolute hatred and anti-intellectual "you don't deserve to even go to college because you're just taking up space" attitude that I see now. The only kids I know who are majoring in English are double majoring in something else--usually a STEM or business field. Universities are also admitting fewer students who declare an A&S major in favor of admitting more students in pre-professional fields. This is further killing English class enrollments.  

 

So as much as I want to say that bhr's recommendations seem cold and capitalistic, they're probably right, and they might be the only way English departments will survive this downturn. We really will just have to remake ourselves as technical writing teachers and digital media specialists and show the world why THAT in and of itself matters. It's not pretty for those of us who went into English because we value literature for its own sake ... but unfortunately it's what the market wants right now. And student tuition dollars are a very powerful force. We might recognize it as sad that only an elite few will get to study literature and creative writing for its own sake, but the rest of the world doesn't recognize it as sad because they didn't want to study English in the first place. Since I started teaching several years ago, I've come across more and more students who are outright hostile to gen ed English. And not just hostile in the "I hate having to take this required class" way, but in the "I think your department has no right to exist because you don't actually make anything or cure diseases" way. 

 

Unfortunately, the end result of all this practicality shit could be that English-as-professional-writing-instruction-departments are eventually eliminated and absorbed into other departments who want to teach more field-specific writing courses. It's actually already happening. 

Edited May 14, 2015 by lifealive

[bhr]

Here's the thing, I don't think we need to say "that's all for literature."  In fact, I think literature (and more importantly, literary criticism), linguistics, ect. still have a valuable place in the academy. I just think that, even if that's what you want to teach, it's worth asking "how can I make this work relevant and visible in professional, technical and academic writing?" 

Maybe that work is through web authorship and remix and asking students to create websites and tumblrs about their reading work. Maybe it takes the form of videos, or infographics, or presentations and the use of visual rhetoric. Maybe it's publishing a student literary magazine that's more than just a series of poems and short stories. There are a lot of things you can teach through traditional English education, but the comments I've seen, time and time again, is that English PhDs believe that that work is somehow beneath them, or inappropriate for them. Just like people who think that teaching FYC is somehow a lesser thing (even though it, potentially, has far more impact on a student). For a decade or more, as C/R (and, more importantly for me, Computers and Writing) has fought for recognition, the question has been how to make the work in those fields visible in traditional English programs. As administrative demands shift more money to lines in C/R and away from traditional English, isn't it worth asking the same questions about English?

Look, VM can dismiss my point of view again because I'm an MA, but I'm also not blind to the reality of the situation. We have a model built out of an era where only the children of privilege went to college, and have maintained it through the GI Bill and the post-Korean war enrollment boom (when many students were still not paying for college) and for another 60 years. Eventually the arms race in buildings and technology and amenities (among other things) priced college out of an affordable range for self-financed students, and now finally students are asking about return on their investment. That's a good thing. It means, as they understand that they are investing in themselves, that we get students who are more motivated, more engaged, ect. Maybe we need to consider other models and forms of assessment for hiring educators. If students are choosing not to go into Arts and Letters, is that their fault? The government's fault? or is it our (collective) fault for not creating meaningful value in the work we (collectively) are doing?

Want an example of how that can work? Look at how art programs have launched UX and Design majors. Or GIS work coming out of anthropology or human geography. We don't need to bemoan (and I'm not sure if you really are doing this) that your students are taking English as a double major or minor to support what they see as career major, but instead should figure out how to turn our work into something they see value in.

Edited May 14, 2015 by bhr

[lifealive]

 

Maybe that work is through web authorship and remix and asking students to create websites and tumblrs about their reading work. Maybe it takes the form of videos, or infographics, or presentations and the use of visual rhetoric. Maybe it's publishing a student literary magazine that's more than just a series of poems and short stories. There are a lot of things you can teach through traditional English education, but the comments I've seen, time and time again, is that English PhDs believe that that work is somehow beneath them, or inappropriate for them. Just like people who think that teaching FYC is somehow a lesser thing (even though it, potentially, has far more impact on a student). For a decade or more, as C/R (and, more importantly for me, Computers and Writing) has fought for recognition, the question has been how to make the work in those fields visible in traditional English programs. 

 

Speaking for myself--I definitely don't think that digital media or composition is "beneath me" or a form of punishment or anything. I've been teaching since the day I entered my graduate program, and most of it was in connection with rhet comp. But I also still honestly believe that there are benefits to what certain elements might call "old fashioned study." I think that students are well served, some of the time, by cultivating a relationship with a text without any new media around. I actually think that's one thing that an English class can provide--a way of reconnecting with physical textual artifacts in order to develop skills of close reading and deep focus. I know that sounds deeply old fashioned--and the kind of thing that people are now deriding as elitist--but I don't think the two approaches to teaching have to exist in opposition. And I don't think anyone here is saying that, but that's often the way it plays out. If you say to anyone these days--students, administrators, whomever--"I want to design a class where at least some of the time students aren't able to use computers, and it's just us sitting around in a circle with a book in front of us, talking about the text for a sustained hour" you'll seriously get branded as a neoluddite, or worse. And you certainly won't get any funding for that. 

 

So I support the technological initiatives, and I've benefited from them greatly. Digital stuff basically allowed me to write my dissertation without traveling to a hundred different archives or looking through the dreaded microfilm. But I'm also hesitant about the way we have come to fetishize technology as a way to make our teaching more hip and relevant and fundable. There's a lot gained, but there's also some stuff that gets lost, too. I noticed an immediate change when I started allowing students to have laptops and other technological implements in discussion-oriented classes. Not necessarily a loss, but maybe. Definitely a change. Moreover, I'm not sure that added technological initiatives have helped students so far see the market value or meaning in an English degree. I think that if they want to do GIS or design, they go into the program that does that. 

 

But I'm a book history person. So. 

[__________________________]

We are witnessing the complete stratification of higher education. The traditional, rigorous liberal arts education will be enjoyed by the privileged few, and the rest will continue to suffer the consequences of the miseducation outlined so meticulously by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa in their two studies. If there's reason for hope that the situation will change for the better, I'm all ears. 

This is a fear I think every day.  Speaking from my (limited) experience teaching English in a public high school, this begins much before the college level.  In the (non-honors) grade level I teach, I'm the only teacher who makes students read complete books rather than showing them the movie version, handing them a couple sheets of "key quotes" and telling them to read the fucking book if they have time (and only two are required).  The textbook we teach out of is essentially an ACT prep book.  If I give them two pages to read in class, they'll bitch and moan about what a demanding teacher I am and then not do it. I have over 100 students, none of whom, I think, have ever been in a learning environment that would teach them to appreciate literature, none of whom (even the gifted students) read books for pleasure or even know how to spell or use basic punctuation correctly.  

 

It's really the people who grow up able to attend rigorous private schools and fancy selective enrollment public schools (such as those in Chicago) who are getting an education that values literacy.  I fight a bunch of teenagers to keep off their stupid state-provided iPads every day so they can struggle through a No Fear Shakespeare book (an author who apparently isn't even read at all anymore in the school district I grew up attending).  Needless to say, I continually look forward to teaching adult students who actually want to be in my class, having a discussion about literature.  Needless to say, I'm not counting on it, and it's really sad to see how undervalued teaching is in a field whose center and primary source of continuation is teaching.

 

In short, education (in the U.S., at least) in general is elitist as hell all the way down and seems to be becoming increasingly so with every passing year.  If you have the Common Core used in your local public school district or a Scott Walker type character in your state's government, there are people actively seeking to turn your local universities into technical schools and k-12 districts into schools that foster a simulacrum of computer and technical literacy over linguistic and literary literacy.  "Professionalization" for "alt-ac" jobs is cool and all, but it's not what a lot of us are really looking for.  

 

It's been mentioned before (I can't recall by whom), but it's true that a lot of these problems have their roots in things outside of academia proper.  I think we simply don't live in a country that values our field anymore.  

[circlewave]

It's been mentioned before (I can't recall by whom), but it's true that a lot of these problems have their roots in things outside of academia proper.  I think we simply don't live in a country that values our field anymore.  

 

I think people have a perception of the humanities as the nonsense "SJW" strawman that's going to fill their kids' heads with radical "cultural Marxism," or they think it's like "Dead Poets' Society." They're alarmed or dismissive of the former, and kind of pat-on-the-head patronizing towards the latter. It seems like they value study of literature, but they have no sense of what that actually entails. Generally, I think they would agree that actual literacy and a knowledge of the Western Canon is a good thing, and people still value 'well-roundedness,' but they don't hesitate to assert that STEM is God. To be honest, if their kid's BA is costing them $50,000/year for 4 years, I don't know if I blame them...

Edited May 14, 2015 by circlewave

[SilasWegg]

Some gas for the flames...

 

http://www.artandeducation.net/school_watch/entire-usc-mfa-1st-year-class-is-dropping-out/

[random_grad]

This is a most fascinating read on this forum. I read it all (which in hindsight was probably a waste of time). Two questions that arose from this thread are imo of some value: what should we do as a group? and what should every grad student do as an individual? These have been answered in a not very convincing way. To the first question, a union of adjuncts appears the most realistic, although, as has been pointed out, that would not change that much and certainly not fast enough, as anyone ever witnessing union bargains can tell. To the other question, diversification of CV is a good point but at the same time a bit vague and potentially harmful. A third question that keeps coming up is what was the purpose of VM's initial post. Was it to get validation? To vent or to troll? To start a discussion or to warn us newbies? I can tell you what it did to me, for all it's worth, a newly admitted student, who had been warned at first and encouraged later by the same set of professors.

The thread did not bring me any closer to understanding how bad the job market is. As has been pointed out by many who already are on the job market, there is no way of understanding what it's like until you're there. Now at least I know that. OK, see you in 6 years.

The thread made me worried for a day about the fact that the university where I will be studying forbids outside work - therefore no diversification of the CV for me! (Needless to say, as an international student, the only option would have been to go back to Canada every summer, which is highly impractical for many reasons).

The thread helped me realize that what I'm feeling in my current job is alienation, and fueled my desire to succeed as a scholar.

Currently, I work a crappy office job where nobody cares. I could sit back and read books. The problem is: I always care about what I do. I tried hard, but the boss did not bother to listen to my rationalization proposal; management is exceedingly incompetent and hypocritical; clients are angry for a good reason; and colleagues are plain stupid (the other day at lunch they discussed pizza toppings for the entire hour). Now I count the days to the end of my contract! This job (and other office jobs before) reminds me every day how much I don't care about money and care about not wasting my life on meaningless tasks. Because when I do something, I invest myself in it. When in return I only get hypocrisy and lack of care, it's alienating. This job in particular pays well, is not hard, and even offers significant prospects for advancements. In 6 years I could have become manager or whatever. By all standards it's not a bad job. But it is a nightmare for me. I can't work with people who upon hearing what I did my MA in tell me sarcastically "a very useful subject!". Therefore, PhD is my only hope in getting a job I like. I will be devastated if I don't. But at least I would have tried and done something interesting with my life. Then, I will be creative enough to find some other career path and eventually settle for something not too bad. But for now I will put all my efforts toward succeeding in this career path. Not diversifying the CV, not being a defeatist: having a positive attitude. I hope to beat the odds, I hope to be the one who gets a postdoc and does not ever have to adjunct after the PhD. I will do all in my power to make this happen. This thread made me (re)realize the acuteness of this desire, and how competitive humanities are.
 

Edited May 18, 2015 by random_grad

[circlewave]

Therefore, PhD is my only hope in getting a job I like.

 

 

This seems like a really dangerous attitude to take into grad school.

[TakeruK]

Therefore, PhD is my only hope in getting a job I like.

 

This seems like a really dangerous attitude to take into grad school.

 

To me, this should be a requirement in order to make grad school a good decision. The one thing that makes grad school a good idea is because you need that PhD for the jobs you want to have.

 

Do not go to grad school because you love the material, or that you want to be a professor, or because you want to learn more and study the topic. Do not go to grad school because you are passionate about the topic. Do not go to grad school because you don't know what to do next. All of these reasons are "nice" things to have but none of them should be enough to convince anyone to go to grad school. They should also not be the main reason to go. 

 

I think of grad school as vocational training for a very particular skillset. If your career goals do not require this skillset, then don't do grad school.

[circlewave]

The one thing that makes grad school a good idea is because you need that PhD for the jobs you want to have.

 

Oh, you're correct about that. I was focused more on the "only hope" part. If you go in thinking that there's nothing else you could ever enjoy doing, and the stakes are a happy/unhappy life, it seems like an unhealthy burden to place on yourself which will make things that much more stressful during difficult times.

[random_grad]

Oh, you're correct about that. I was focused more on the "only hope" part. If you go in thinking that there's nothing else you could ever enjoy doing, and the stakes are a happy/unhappy life, it seems like an unhealthy burden to place on yourself which will make things that much more stressful during difficult times.

 

as I mentioned in my comment above, I do not exclude the possibility that if academia doesn't work out, I'd be able to take a left turn and find some other meaningful employment. it might even turn out to be of more interest to me than some academic jobs. there's always a plan B.

[lifealive]

 

 

Do not go to grad school because you love the material, or that you want to be a professor, or because you want to learn more and study the topic. Do not go to grad school because you are passionate about the topic. Do not go to grad school because you don't know what to do next. All of these reasons are "nice" things to have but none of them should be enough to convince anyone to go to grad school. They should also not be the main reason to go. 

 

I think of grad school as vocational training for a very particular skillset. If your career goals do not require this skillset, then don't do grad school.

 

If people followed this advice, then literally no one would ever go to graduate school in the humanities. Was that what you were trying to say? (I'm honestly confused.) Because no one needs a PhD in the humanities to do any other job besides teach college.

 

In any case, I don't think it's really up to anyone to have the final word on the "good reasons" vs. "bad reasons" for going to grad school. These are life choices that people make for their own private reasons. It's probably not smart to go to grad school, say, because your girlfriend is going to grad school. But who knows. People grow and change and sometimes get lucky. And these decisions aren't set in stone. If you go to grad school and don't like it, you do something else. If you graduate and can't find a job, oh well--you played a hand. You'll find something else. 

Edited May 19, 2015 by lifealive

[TakeruK]

If people followed this advice, then literally no one would ever go to graduate school in the humanities. Was that what you were trying to say? (I'm honestly confused.) Because no one needs a PhD in the humanities to do any other job besides teach college.

 

No, I was trying to say that you should only do a PhD in any field if you need that PhD to reach the career goals you've set for yourself--whether these career goals are academic or not. Surely you need a PhD in the humanities in order to become a professor, and a PhD can improve your chances of getting a primarily teaching position right? I'm assuming this because to teach science at community college, the stated requirement is a Masters, but often you won't be competitive without a PhD, so this counts as "needing" a PhD to reach your goals. Also, for many other non-academic career paths, wouldn't having a PhD be a useful qualification?

 

In my "Do not go" paragraph, I did say "Do not go because you want to a professor", but I should have written "Do not go if you think a PhD will only pay off if you become a professor". But other than that, I did not intend it to sound like "Only get a PhD if it's required for your non-academic career goals" -- I was including academic career goals in my "main reason" to go.

 

I do agree with you that my "reasons to go" are not meant to be prescriptive for everyone. I was mostly writing it as a response to circlewave's post, but it does reflect my actual opinion about why people should / shouldn't go to grad school. I'm not trying to say that I know exactly why people should and shouldn't go. I'm just presenting my opinion, without any justification, so it's up to any reader to decide if they want to listen to (and how much weight to assign) to what I say!

[delimitude]

English studies PhD work only seems like a Ponzi scheme to the (admittedly) majority that do not get jobs. Where you get your PhD matters. What you study matters. Where you publish matters. This goes for other terminal degree fields, too (MFA, M.D., J.D, etc.). If you treat graduate studies as a job, as an intensive and competitive program designed to weed out the least capable, then you'll be fine. I feel as though this is understood. The OP reads to me as another iteration of anger and resentment over not getting a job. Yeah, the economic structure of the academy right now is utterly flawed (admitting far more grad students than there are full-time or TT jobs because they are cheap labor; then employing the majority of most of those grad students as exploited adjuncts because they are cheap and available labor), but this should not be news, and you cannot change the reality of that institutional problematic simply by complaining about the reality of that institutional problematic, especially when it seems to come from such a place of personal misfortune. English graduate studies is not a place to extend curiosity and fascination with (or passion for) English (unless you can afford it, and are willing to pay for it as such); it's a competitive enterprise. Of course it should or could be otherwise. But it's not. Practically, ask yourself this: based on your research speciality, where you intend to go to graduate school, and how willing and able you are to publish while in graduate school, what kind of academic job do you expect to get? Stats on placement for English PhDs abound, if you need help figuring this. 

Edited May 20, 2015 by delimitude

[xolo]

... The one thing that makes grad school a good idea is because you need that PhD for the jobs you want to have.

 

Do not go to grad school because you love the material, or that you want to be a professor, or because you want to learn more and study the topic. Do not go to grad school because you are passionate about the topic. Do not go to grad school because you don't know what to do next. All of these reasons are "nice" things to have but none of them should be enough to convince anyone to go to grad school. They should also not be the main reason to go. 

 

I think of grad school as vocational training for a very particular skillset. If your career goals do not require this skillset, then don't do grad school.

 

I'm not sure how all these ideas can be separated into a neat list of "do nots" and "onlys" because those kinds of absolute terms are pretty hard to defend or even to make sense of. I don't even try to declare what others should do, that doesn't even make sense to me. I have a great love for the broad subject and am driven to write about it. According to the above my motivation is invalid, but they don't know me. I could cite many counter-examples of successful individuals that violate these rules.

[VirtualMessage]

English studies PhD work only seems like a Ponzi scheme to the (admittedly) majority that do not get jobs. Where you get your PhD matters. What you study matters. Where you publish matters. This goes for other terminal degree fields, too (MFA, M.D., J.D, etc.). If you treat graduate studies as a job, as an intensive and competitive program designed to weed out the least capable, then you'll be fine. I feel as though this is understood. The OP reads to me as another iteration of anger and resentment over not getting a job. Yeah, the economic structure of the academy right now is utterly flawed (admitting far more grad students than there are full-time or TT jobs because they are cheap labor; then employing the majority of most of those grad students as exploited adjuncts because they are cheap and available labor), but this should not be news, and you cannot change the reality of that institutional problematic simply by complaining about the reality of that institutional problematic, especially when it seems to come from such a place of personal misfortune. English graduate studies is not a place to extend curiosity and fascination with (or passion for) English (unless you can afford it, and are willing to pay for it as such); it's a competitive enterprise. Of course it should or could be otherwise. But it's not. Practically, ask yourself this: based on your research speciality, where you intend to go to graduate school, and how willing and able you are to publish while in graduate school, what kind of academic job do you expect to get? Stats on placement for English PhDs abound, if you need help figuring this. 

 

Let's focus on this: "Yeah, the economic structure of the academy right now is utterly flawed (admitting far more grad students than there are full-time or TT jobs because they are cheap labor; then employing the majority of most of those grad students as exploited adjuncts because they are cheap and available labor)"

 

That's what I've been calling a Ponzi scheme; if you have a better word for it, please go ahead and offer it, but that might require you to employ some logic. It's unclear to me how you move from acknowledging a systemic problem with the mass exploitation of labor to making this a matter of "personal misfortune." The nice feature of the Ponzi scheme analogy is that it recognizes the many suffering at the bottom as well as the few at the top who benefit from their exploited labor. Your comments remind me of Madoff's jailhouse interview when he criticizes his victims for being greedy; I'd think you would rather admire him for his competitive enterprising. When are members of this profession (especially the younger ones on here who seem to think divine providence will save them) going to stop making excuses for an inequitable and nasty way of doing business that is deceptively naturalized as a meritocracy? 

[ComeBackZinc]

I am once again unclear, VirtualMessage, about what you want people on this board, or in the academy, to actually do. And once again, it seems clear to me that you are less interested in having some sort of constructive change than you are in getting people here to embrace a certain kind of affective or emotional attitude towards the academy. Suppose we all did: so what? If we all started beating our breast and emoting the way that you do, what would materially change?

 

If you want to be useful, you have to learn to separate your own bitterness and anger over how you were exploited from the material and economic realities of the exploitation that I, and many others, have agreed exists. And yet every time you come around here -- every single time -- you inevitably focus on the least material, most emotional, most affective, most personal aspect of this debate. Every time. And you never, ever listen to any criticism or feedback that people level at you. So why do you persist? Is this therapy for you? Is that it?

[VirtualMessage]

I am once again unclear, VirtualMessage, about what you want people on this board, or in the academy, to actually do. And once again, it seems clear to me that you are less interested in having some sort of constructive change than you are in getting people here to embrace a certain kind of affective or emotional attitude towards the academy. Suppose we all did: so what? If we all started beating our breast and emoting the way that you do, what would materially change?

 

If you want to be useful, you have to learn to separate your own bitterness and anger over how you were exploited from the material and economic realities of the exploitation that I, and many others, have agreed exists. And yet every time you come around here -- every single time -- you inevitably focus on the least material, most emotional, most affective, most personal aspect of this debate. Every time. And you never, ever listen to any criticism or feedback that people level at you. So why do you persist? Is this therapy for you? Is that it?

 

I thought we already made it clear that you properly diagnosed me as a hysterical woman. If you would actually read what I wrote rather than keep palpating me, you might answer some of your own questions. I don't know what model of emotionless political change you most admire, but your recriminations always conjure the image of a bubble pipe with a wad of blowhard stuck in it. And for some reason, in this image, you're wearing a crisp lab coat with the slightest mess of mustard on the lapel. Oh my! Oh me! Put me back in my restraints; I think I'm having another attack!