The Graduate School Ponzi Scheme

[1Q84]

This statement is not accurate. Some are in the know, many others are not.

 

The OP successfully calls into question how much in the know many who think they are in the know actually are in the know. Many of the dissenting replies supply the answer.

 

That statement was a somewhat flip rhetorical gesture towards those who have consistently stated (ad nauseum) that the job market discussion has been repeated over and over, across multiple threads to the point of death, making it unworthy of further discussion.  I, as you will know from reading my posts, have been arguing that the OP's warnings and job search experiences are highly valuable to us who haven't begun our degrees yet. Or did you not read the whole thread?

Edited March 27, 2015 by 1Q84

[lifealive]

This statement is not accurate. Some are in the know, many others are not.

 

The OP successfully calls into question how much in the know many who think they are in the know actually are in the know. Many of the dissenting replies supply the answer.

 

Was this really supposed to invoke Rumsfeld's "known knowns" speech? Or is this just how you think?

 

In any case, it might not be a bad place to invoke Rummy's epistemological theory. Obviously, as conversation makes clear, the academic job market is something of an unknown known for most people who have not yet begun grad school. As much as people profess to know something about it, they really don't grasp the full extent of it, as ComeBackZinc has made clear.

 

The OP, however, is making it seem as though the job market was an unknown unknown to them, that they just had no idea, and I'm sorry, but that just doesn't wash. We all knew the job market was bad. We knew it was bad for a long time. I also started grad school before 2008, and I knew it was bad back then. And then, even if it wasn't THAT bad pre-Recession, it quickly became bad, and it became clear that it was going to stay bad. No one can tell me that they didn't know. Even if the OP's professors were spinning fictions about his/her prospects, there was every indication in the world that the job market was in the tank. This fact, for the OP at least, was a great unknown known: what Žižek calls the things we pretend not to know about because they prove uncomfortable or damaging to accept. The information was there. The OP just didn't think it applied to their situation.

 

I think the lesson to be learned here is this: don't bury your head in the sand. Don't pretend that your status as a grad student at an "elite" institution will protect you from the horrors of the job market. There is no such thing as "Ivy exceptionalism" anymore. Even people with elite degrees are being shut out. Going into a top program with the thought that it's going to be different for you is setting yourself up for the kind of "emotional devastation" that the OP is going through.

 

Same goes for the adjunct market. Don't bury your head in the sand. Don't believe that adjuncting will save you or make you more employable as a professor. It won't.

Edited March 27, 2015 by lifealive

[unræd]

That statement was a somewhat flip rhetorical gesture towards those who have consistently stated (ad nauseum) that the job market discussion has been repeated over and over, across multiple threads to the point of death, making it unworthy of further discussion.  I, as you will know from reading my posts, have been arguing that the OP's warnings and job search experiences are highly valuable to us who haven't begun our degrees yet. Or did you not read the whole thread?

 

I'm not going to speak for Sigaba, but I, for one, didn't read his comment as necessarily being directed at you. I could very much see it being directed at me, though, which I understand, considering I'm one of the current applicants who've been saying that yeah, no, they really do know how bad the market is. 

 

But I've also said (and in several different posts now in this thread) that while I do occasionally joke about the frequency of it, I appreciate more experienced members of the fora constantly bringing up the job market, and that it is definitely the case that no one can really know the emotional toll of that until going through it. And that's why I, at least, think this discussion is valuable, even if I'm curious about (and yes: admittedly troubled by) the language of "deception."

Edited March 27, 2015 by unræd

[__________________________]

And that's why I, at least, think this discussion is valuable, even if I'm curious about (and yes: admittedly troubled by) the language of "deception."

I mean, it sounds like by "deception" people are referring to polite and probably cultivated ignorance (I like lifealive's invocation of the idea of pretend, inconvenient ignorance) among the people who are the teachers and mentors of graduate students.  A deception in the lack of transparency and a culture that expects you to be too passionate about your discipline and grateful to be teaching to say anything out loud about your exploitation without further damaging your career.  I get that.  And I can totally imagine why it would alienating.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why people encourage students to take time off between their B.A. and advanced degrees: to get used to rejection and spend some time outside of the academic bubble.

 

I do hope I didn't come off as aggressively ignorant or crass in earlier posts (it was late at night and I've been grading high school papers and trying to keep up with an avalanche of pre-spring break grading all week, gah), though I do stand a lot of things I said, in agreement with both morristr and unraed about the sloppy comparison to laborers.  But I do appreciate the comments of more experienced members urging us to prepare early and at least try and wrap our heads around things to come.  

 

I for one am hoping to do as many internships as I can over summers and do teaching in places outside of the bubble of supposedly eerily brilliant undergrads at my new institution.  My new university has a wonderful program that connects the Humanities division with local underprivileged public schools, getting students and professors to teach philosophy, writing, and literacy classes to both children and adults and I'm hoping to do some work for them this summer.  Given the economic climate, I'm super terrified at the idea of letting my resume going to waste, especially since most of my professional skill sets require me to get an advanced degree in order to take them anywhere further than I've taken them (I chose to get my Ph.D. rather than an MLIS or a MAT).  I'm not afraid to go back to school if I my situation is really that bad after getting my doctorate, but unfortunately the decline of the academic humanities is parallel, and connected with, the decline of public education and libraries.  

 

Someone (I think it was proflorax) said in some other thread at some point that this requires us all to be scholars as well as activists, and I think that seems especially relevant given the types of conversation going on in this thread.  I think lifealive has repeatedly implied this: that this rage should be directed at forces much larger than just Humanities departments.  Increasingly, we have a government and economic system that simply don't care about the arts and humanities in general.  The far right in this country has also, really, started attacking public education in really disturbing ways (see: Wisconsin, North Carolina).  Our generation of scholars needs to be hyperaware of that.  As teachers, we have the capability to educate younger people about what is going on and, even better yet, to make them give a shit about the kinds of things we devote our lives to, or at least devote some years of our lives to.  As scholars and students ourselves, we have the capacity to produce work that makes it worth giving a shit about and that also influences the way people think.  I dunno.  I kind of think that shit matters.  I also kind of think a lot of us will end up teaching and producing knowledge in some way regardless, even if it isn't in a comfortable or materially rewarding way.

[VirtualMessage]

Was this really supposed to invoke Rumsfeld's "known knowns" speech? Or is this just how you think?

 

In any case, it might not be a bad place to invoke Rummy's epistemological theory. Obviously, as conversation makes clear, the academic job market is something of an unknown known for most people who have not yet begun grad school. As much as people profess to know something about it, they really don't grasp the full extent of it, as ComeBackZinc has made clear.

 

The OP, however, is making it seem as though the job market was an unknown unknown to them, that they just had no idea, and I'm sorry, but that just doesn't wash. We all knew the job market was bad. We knew it was bad for a long time. I also started grad school before 2008, and I knew it was bad back then. And then, even if it wasn't THAT bad pre-Recession, it quickly became bad, and it became clear that it was going to stay bad. No one can tell me that they didn't know. Even if the OP's professors were spinning fictions about his/her prospects, there was every indication in the world that the job market was in the tank. This fact, for the OP at least, was a great unknown known: what Žižek calls the things we pretend not to know about because they prove uncomfortable or damaging to accept. The information was there. The OP just didn't think it applied to their situation.

 

I think the lesson to be learned here is this: don't bury your head in the sand. Don't pretend that your status as a grad student at an "elite" institution will protect you from the horrors of the job market. There is no such thing as "Ivy exceptionalism" anymore. Even people with elite degrees are being shut out. Going into a top program with the thought that it's going to be different for you is setting yourself up for the kind of "emotional devastation" that the OP is going through.

 

Same goes for the adjunct market. Don't bury your head in the sand. Don't believe that adjuncting will save you or make you more employable as a professor. It won't.

Are you for real? This is a parody, right? You'll forgive me if I dismiss your analysis of my ignorance and distress (of which you KNOW nothing), and see your antics as the ravings of someone who didn't get into an "elite" program--a point that you return to again and again. Also, I'd say the number of jobs dropping 50% after 2008 is a dramatic change it tide. But I guess reality doesn't serve your pedantry.

[kurayamino]

My statements about how many times this stuff has been discussed really should have been more along the lines of "how many times this stuff has been talked around and around." I get frustrated when there is no actual benefit and people are just providing anecdotal evidence about how hard things are. My point really was just that I think we all know it's hard and my snide comments were just out of frustration that no one, even those with the best intentions, have no advice except to abandon ship.

[fuzzylogician]

My statements about how many times this stuff has been discussed really should have been more along the lines of "how many times this stuff has been talked around and around." I get frustrated when there is no actual benefit and people are just providing anecdotal evidence about how hard things are. My point really was just that I think we all know it's hard and my snide comments were just out of frustration that no one, even those with the best intentions, have no advice except to abandon ship.

 

I mean, there is no better advice we could give. Still, it's important to have these conversations so you go into this with a clear understanding of the job market and what you can do to better your opportunities. Prepare yourself for a hard time on the job market, even though I think it's very hard to imagine what it'll be like until you're in it. Consider the possibility that you will fail to get a job or that after a few years of trying you'll decide it's not worth it, and plan for that eventuality -- think about alternative careers you might enjoy and try and gear your education also towards them, not solely towards being a university professor. Network, publish, work super hard, get very lucky. Easy. 

[kingsxrocks]

Easy?

[lifealive]

Are you for real? This is a parody, right? You'll forgive me if I dismiss your analysis of my ignorance and distress (of which you KNOW nothing), and see your antics as the ravings of someone who didn't get into an "elite" program--a point that you return to again and again. Also, I'd say the number of jobs dropping 50% after 2008 is a dramatic change it tide. But I guess reality doesn't serve your pedantry.

 

You've been nothing but condescending to people on this thread, though. Trying to stop people from taking the same opportunity that you had in order to protect them from feeling bad is pretty shitty. Telling people to get a different line of work--when you won't because you'd rather talk about how you've been victimized--is also shitty.

 

You're basically telling us that between 2008 and now you couldn't figure out that the job market was tanking and that you should possibly think of a Plan B. Or cultivate other possibilities for a career. Sorry. This train wreck was 20-30 years in the making, and we all saw it coming. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. It didn't work out for a lot of people. We've all invested something of ourselves in our research--I only know that I'm satisfied with having gotten to make a contribution at all, even if it didn't result in my having a tenure-track job.

 

But I have lost track of what exactly you're trying to accomplish on this message board.

[VirtualMessage]

You've been nothing but condescending to people on this thread, though. Trying to stop people from taking the same opportunity that you had in order to protect them from feeling bad is pretty shitty. Telling people to get a different line of work--when you won't because you'd rather talk about how you've been victimized--is also shitty.

 

You're basically telling us that between 2008 and now you couldn't figure out that the job market was tanking and that you should possibly think of a Plan B. Or cultivate other possibilities for a career. Sorry. This train wreck was 20-30 years in the making, and we all saw it coming. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. It didn't work out for a lot of people. We've all invested something of ourselves in our research--I only know that I'm satisfied with having gotten to make a contribution at all, even if it didn't result in my having a tenure-track job.

 

But I have lost track of what exactly you're trying to accomplish on this message board.

Thank you for your "contributions" and for putting me in my place. I see now how condescending it was to share my thoughts and feelings about graduate school on a web forum about graduate school. It was very disrespectful to call attention to the profession in this way and to put vale my experiences over the dreams of others. Some people are dream makers; I am a dream breaker. I have learned my lesson, and your insight into Zizek was very helpful. I will be quiet now and resume my abjection. Thanks again. I've gotten so much out of your seminar.

[Sigaba]

@VirtualMessage--

You have done this BB a great service by sharing your experiences. Some will pick up on what you are saying, regardless of what they think of your tone.

[rising_star]

Yes, kingxrocks, it is easy. Knowing what you can/should to prepare for alt-ac careers actually is the easy part. Actually doing those things and doing them well is the much harder part. Take summer internships for example. That is easy to say you'll pursue but, depending on where you are, opportunities may be limited or you may not be able to find a paid internship (possibly of concern depending on your funding situation), or your program may forbid outside work/employment even in the summer. In my grad program, there was pressure on PhD students to teach at least one summer course (so 4-6 weeks) because it benefited the department to have us do so, Consequently, you were left with less time to pursue your research, relax, visit friends, etc. If I'd wanted a summer internship in grad school, it could've only been 6ish weeks long because I was also working (teaching a summer course) to pay bills and put food in the bowl (screw tables, I didn't have a table to eat off of in grad school). That's why I say it's easy to know what to do and potentially much harder to actually implement it. Similarly, some advisors may drop you or otherwise pull away if they realize you want to be something other than TT faculty somewhere. Even where departments recognize the need for alt-ac training, there are faculty who do not see it that way and don't let their students do certain things that might facilitate that transition.

[chateaulafitte]

Some schools, like Notre Dame's Medieval Studies program, say on their website that "virtually all" of their graduates get jobs -- wtf does that even mean?  It would be nice if there were more transparency about what percentage of incoming students will have jobs, but it's also hard to predict.

 

You cannot predict how many incoming students will get jobs, but you can keep track of where your graduates get placed - and many departments don't do that. I'm glad to read some of you didn't have trouble finding out how your prospective programs were doing placement wise. My experience, both as a grad student and as a faculty member, has been entirely different. In some cases, I've seen faculty members lie about employment perspectives. I've heard a department chair say that we shouldn't paint a black picture, as the market is improving (this was in 2012; the market had not recovered from the 2008 crash. The number of jobs is still dwindling - in my field at least). So in my experience, there is deception, be it through outright lies or fudged numbers. 

 

Note how every time a "high profile" rant is published (Schuman, Iber), the authords are mocked by faculty, by other grad students. "None promised you a job", they say. Sure, none promised anyone a job. Yet most people were led to believe they'd be the exception and will get that job. If "anecdotal evidence" did not threaten the graduate school narrative, there wouldn't be such reactions. Those small stories are useful because they tell a story that is not reflected in the raw numbers (that are easily fudged or concealed).

 

Perhaps in six or seven years, when you go on the market, you'll find some solace in them, because then, you won't be able to tell your colleagues about the unique despair that the job market brings, you family won't understand, and your professors won't listen. Remembering that other people have been through this might be of comfort then.

 

In closing, another "anecdote": http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/05/17/ph-d-poverty-guest-post-ii/#comment-972467

 

 

I think that the most devastating aspect of possessing a “useless” humanities PhD (mine is in French literature) is the feeling that you have chosen a path in life that does not allow you to provide for your family. This could mean aged or dependent adults, but when it means your own children, the feeling that you are a failure is most acute. To me, it makes no difference that my wife has a job – as a new assistant professor at a third-tier university – that is good enough for our family of four to scrape by. We have just moved for the third time in less than two years, as we chase her career prospects around, and although I have defended my thesis at an Ivy League school and have a publication in a top-level journal, I have failed to land a job offer at any of the six institutions where I’ve interviewed. I have spent the last two years working as an adjunct and private elementary school teacher because my wife’s post-doc didn’t pay enough to support our family. This has led me to a point where I live every day with the insanity of simultaneously envying and detesting the academics whose ranks it appears increasingly likely I will never be able to join, hoping my PhD will somehow one day not seem like the biggest mistake of my life and despairing that this will ever occur. I feel unqualified to give even the most basic advice about education and the working world to my children. I taught MCAT courses for years to students who asked me how I could be so crazy as to not go to medical school when I possessed all the prerequisites for entry; I believed that because I excelled in humanities research and writing just as clearly as I had in pre-medical training, I needn’t worry about the opportunity costs of choosing a humanities degree over a professional one. Every single friend and family member I’ve known who didn’t choose to pursue a graduate degree (I’m not counting professional degrees like law and medicine) is now comfortably well-off, many of them quite wealthy.

You feel ashamed to depend on your father, and I feel ashamed to depend financially on my wife. I will finally file for the diploma in a few weeks, and I’m marking the occasion by interviewing with a temp agency to see whether they might be able to provide me with some kind of low-level employment that could eventually become permanent. I write this in order to vent, obviously, but also to tell you that you are NOT alone in your frustration. Grad school has eaten our young selves, you see, and maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that we now find ourselves…in the toilet.

Edited March 28, 2015 by chateaulafitte

[kurayamino]

 

Note how every time a "high profile" rant is published (Schuman, Iber), the authords are mocked by faculty, by other grad students. "None promised you a job", they say. Sure, none promised anyone a job. Yet most people were led to believe they'd be the exception and will get that job. If "anecdotal evidence" did not threaten the graduate school narrative, there wouldn't be such reactions. Those small stories are useful because they tell a story that is not reflected in the raw numbers (that are easily fudged or concealed).

 

I understand that the focus in this forum is on academic jobs because that is the field that we all are attempting to get into, but perspective is so important. Recognizing that we are in a recession across the board, and that places like Forbes suggest that there will be another deep recession by the end of 2015 can help to put the lack of academic jobs in perspective. (http://fortune.com/2014/10/28/global-recession-us-europe-china/)

I see the adjunctification of academia as a by-product of capital needs and equate it with the hiring of cheap labor in any other industry to make ends meet. Is it fair? No, of course it's not. But it also isn't just you and your peers.

 

In addition, I found this article to be helpful. http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/why-you-should-go-to-graduate-school-in-the-humanities-59821It places realistic expectations on the job market by explaining how the market for academic jobs has always been terrible. From the article:

 

If graduate school in the humanities is a professional school—one whose success depends on its graduates entering and thriving in a single job over the long term—then it’s never been a very good one.

After all, the numbers haven’t changed much from the mid-20th century. The most recent study of humanities Ph.D. employment by the National Endowment for the Humanities concluded that just 60.9 percent were employed as professors. (The vast majority of them—77 percent—were tenured or on the tenure track.)

This is exactly the type of figure that people like to get worked up about: If only 60 percent of Ph.D.s are working as professors, the other 40 percent, well, aren’t. But just because two-fifths of humanities Ph.D.s aren’t employed as professors doesn’t mean that they’re not employed at all. Contrary to the myths of rampant joblessness, the same NEH study also found that only 1.8 percent of all humanities doctorates were unemployed in the sense of being involuntarily out of work, at a time when the national unemployment rate was about 5.6 percent.

 

and

 

 

But if you do complete a doctoral degree in the humanities, you will probably not end up 30 and unemployed. Far from it. Since the 1930s, Ph.D.s in the humanities have consistently pursued a mix of academic and non-academic career paths with unemployment rates that have always been significantly below the national average. All available evidence suggests that you will get a job and that you will enjoy a high degree of satisfaction with that job.

It just may not be the job you thought you wanted.

[ComeBackZinc]

So let's just say, please, to everyone writing and reading here: don't be fooled. You will not be the exception. The odds of you getting a TT job at any institution are punishingly low. Massively qualified people have emerged from the highest ranked programs with books written and not gotten jobs. So understand all of this, going in. Understand that the question for the large majority is not whether they get that cush R1 gig but whether they will be one of the lucky few to grab on to an instructor position with a non-punishing teaching load and at least decent salary and a long-term contract.

 

And when you're done, if you're saying that you'll be one of the ones who can move on from academia without regret, make it your responsibility to not become the embittered academic we're talking about. Don't graduate and write that essay we've all read a thousand times. 

 

We have a responsibility too, though, those of us who are sounding the alarm: we should respect that it is possible to make this choice and to see it through and to emerge without regrets like these people are saying they won't. I in fact know more than a few people like this. So it is possible and in the end, everyone has the right to determine their own path in life.

[VirtualMessage]

You cannot predict how many incoming students will get jobs, but you can keep track of where your graduates get placed - and many departments don't do that. I'm glad to read some of you didn't have trouble finding out how your prospective programs were doing placement wise. My experience, both as a grad student and as a faculty member, has been entirely different. In some cases, I've seen faculty members lie about employment perspectives. I've heard a department chair say that we shouldn't paint a black picture, as the market is improving (this was in 2012; the market had not recovered from the 2008 crash. The number of jobs is still dwindling - in my field at least). So in my experience, there is deception, be it through outright lies or fudged numbers. 

 

Note how every time a "high profile" rant is published (Schuman, Iber), the authords are mocked by faculty, by other grad students. "None promised you a job", they say. Sure, none promised anyone a job. Yet most people were led to believe they'd be the exception and will get that job. If "anecdotal evidence" did not threaten the graduate school narrative, there wouldn't be such reactions. Those small stories are useful because they tell a story that is not reflected in the raw numbers (that are easily fudged or concealed).

 

Perhaps in six or seven years, when you go on the market, you'll find some solace in them, because then, you won't be able to tell your colleagues about the unique despair that the job market brings, you family won't understand, and your professors won't listen. Remembering that other people have been through this might be of comfort then.

 

In closing, another "anecdote": http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/05/17/ph-d-poverty-guest-post-ii/#comment-972467

 

I think this is exactly right, and what I have been struggling with: the poverty of the conversation about the problem. How can we talk about the personal consequences of this professional crisis (and I don't mean pundits on Slate)? Many people do not want to have an actual conversation about the significant lack of opportunity in our profession, the mass exploitation of labor, or really anything involving labor issues other than their own. Full-time faculty cocoon themselves and dwell on "their" problems, wants, and needs without addressing the larger professional crisis. Of course, their insulation has a fundamental flaw. The problems are all connected: the adjunct crisis, the significant drop in undergrad enrollments across the country, the lack of gainful employment for those entering the profession, and the fact that there seems to be no recovery in sight (this year's MLA job numbers in English fell back down to where they were right after the 2008 crash). I think full-time faculty at many institutions feel very threatened by these developments, especially the enrollment problem, and they have chosen to withdraw. Tenure is not a protection against termination based on financial insolvency, which could be defined as a department that no longer has enough majors to demand the current full-time staffing. It is rare to see such terminations, but what if the numbers fall even lower than they have? The undergrads aren't stupid and they've caught a whiff of the stink our profession is giving off: adjunct instruction for the same tuition $$, no job opportunities for the graduate degree, and no professors who want to address labor and why it might still be good for them to major in English in spite of the larger economy and its demands. 

 

We desperately need a language to discuss the personal despair that attends these realities. What you quoted from the French PhD is symptomatic of the impoverished conversation. He articulates his feelings well, but who will hear him and respond? There are many of us willing to listen, but how can we develop this into a conversation? I am obviously afraid to reveal my identity on this forum because it makes me vulnerable to the hostility that has surfaced here. I think many others feel the same. Talking in earnest about these problems has been coded as a kind of professional failure or flaw. I think it goes back to the Protestant ethic and the drive to trounce anyone who threatens that troubled narrative of prosperity. 

[_kita]

Honestly, the best thing anyone can do is to look at career options realistically. Look at career websites for your current job prospects. Careerbuilder, HigherEdJobs (if academia is your bent), Governmental Jobs, Onet, Occupational Outlook Handbook. All of these site give insight into your career prospects. Research your profession, and keep on top of the trends. Whether the jobs are there is an honest concern. 

 

As job hunters, flexibility is key. A person who is making a full time effort, sending out about 6-10 applications a day, may see call backs a month later. Maybe. So that's about 180-300 applications before you might have any luck. With applications being mostly online, offices are flooded with applicants before they ever get around to checking them out. So if your qualifications, personality, and luck fall into place, your application will be seen. If you're luckier, you'll be pulled into the short list and interviewed. Imagine going through the PhD application market, but with even more people vying for your slot.

 

In my experience, I tend to find a position within 3-4 months of job hunting. But that's in a market with a lot of prospects and keeping my options very open. So, I'll start sending out information that far ahead of time. Sometimes I'm luckier and I get a call back the same month- which I just did for a summer camp teaching position. 

 

In short, do not take the word for the people telling you "the sky's the limit." Do your research and be realistic. 

[chateaulafitte]

The fact that there's a global recession is what makes me even more worried, because looking for a job when every field is tough (hence my remarks about "alt-ac" and "post-ac" not being very realistic options). Also, it's one thing to "reinvent yourself" as a financial analyst when you're say, 25 and out of an MA in English, and another to do so when you're 35 and fresh out of your PhD...

 

It places realistic expectations on the job market by explaining how the market for academic jobs has always been terrible.

 

But it's inaccurate. The market used to be bad, but it has never been as sustainably bad as it has since 2008.

 

See http://zugunglueck.blogspot.fr/2014/01/how-job-market-in-german-really-works_31.html

(it's about German, but it gives an idea of what has happened in the humanities at large)

 

 

We have JIL (Note: MLA Job Information List) data for 48 years. The last six years, from 2008 to the present, are six of the worst eight years ever, including the four very worst. While it’s true that 1970 and 1982 weren’t great, they were one-year downturns followed by recoveries. For as long as the national job market in German has existed, it has never seen a period of sustained decline in tenure-track jobs like we have seen since 2008, and it has never fallen this low. The last time there were fewer TT or tenured placements than the 16 and 21 of 2009 and 2010 (and 2012 and 2013 will be similarly low) is unknown. It lies farther back than 1957. No year from 1957 to 2008 was worse.

[greenmt]

The fact that there's a global recession is what makes me even more worried, because looking for a job when every field is tough (hence my remarks about "alt-ac" and "post-ac" not being very realistic options). Also, it's one thing to "reinvent yourself" as a financial analyst when you're say, 25 and out of an MA in English, and another to do so when you're 35 and fresh out of your PhD...

 

 

But it's inaccurate. The market used to be bad, but it has never been as sustainably bad as it has since 2008.

 

See http://zugunglueck.blogspot.fr/2014/01/how-job-market-in-german-really-works_31.html

(it's about German, but it gives an idea of what has happened in the humanities at large)

 

 

There have been times it's been as bad, and they seem to be followed by sharp increases in hiring.  On Figure 1 (page 7, using their numbering system) of the most recent MLA JIL report, 1990-91 to 1997-98 looks a lot like 2008-09 to 2013-14.  Looking at that chart, it's safe to say that it's difficult to predict what the job market will be like 5-10 years out, when one is applying to grad school.  (It may also be harder than we think to predict the tenure status of the jobs listed in the future.  On Figure 4 (page 9), you can see that, roughly speaking, the percentage of tenure-track jobs was greater when the number of jobs posted was over 1,200, and decreased after it dropped below 1,200.)

Will 2015-16 or 2016-17 be like 1998-89?  Maybe not, but maybe.  The recession has been a factor, but there were recessions before, and there will be again.  The main difference this time may be political: an entrenched Congress, with some who hold the purse strings willing to recklessly plain-old shut down things they don't like. The recession provided cover for diverting funding toward professional and trade school programs, and away from subjects they perceive, or they believe their constituents perceive, as frivolous.  For example, the Feds haven't funded the Jacob Javits Fellowship since 2011.  Most states are still funding higher education at pre-recession levels.  

The difference in this field (English Lit / Rhet-Comp) between bust and boom is less than 1,000 jobs per year, but it's tied to the overall higher-ed ecosystem that is controlled by state and federal funding. The people deciding whether to hire, and whether to offer the opportunity for tenure, are restricted by the funding available to them; tenure is a lifelong commitment, and times are uncertain. 

Wouldn't it be something if there could be an alliance of tenured faculty, adjuncts, and graduate students making the case in public for what we believe (I presume) are courses of study of value for everyone?  What's it for?  Why is it worth taxpayer money?  You can be sure that the chunk of the 55% the defense industry gets - and it's a big one - is the result of intentional and concerted case-making in Washington.

 

[ComeBackZinc]

Speaking as a resident job market pessimist, I will say that it's often claimed the the academic job market trails the overall economy by a couple of years, and the overall US economy has seen significant gains in employment in the past 18-24 months. So there may be structural reasons for optimism.

Edited March 28, 2015 by ComeBackZinc

[Clearmind7]

Unless you've undergone a tt job search, you have no idea how brutal and soul-crushing it is. Period. The senior members of this forum have made some really great arguments that I can only echo here; namely, you cannot possibly understand what it's like to work for five (or ten) years to achieve a goal, and then to find out that the attainment of that goal could leave you without any realistic possibility of gainful employment.

And I say this as someone who has a pretty fantastic tt position starting in the fall.

A month ago, I had applied to thirty academic jobs, forty or fifty non-academic jobs, and I was starting to think that I was going to be a SAHM for the rest of my life. Some facts--My program (social science field, closely related to English) has been #1 or #2 for the past seven years, I have a good publication record, tons of conference presentations, great teaching experience, plenty of relevant real-world, relevant job experience, and I've worked outside academia (by choice, I wanted to keep my resume current) each summer of grad school. However, of the 40-50 non-ac apps, I got two phone calls. If I had gotten one of those jobs, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. I would have missed out on the tt-job, of course, but by February, I was desperate. Even though I had much more luck on the academic market--lots of phone interviews, several campus interviews, the endless rejections started to crush my spirits. I ended up getting lucky--that's it. Pure and simple luck.

I say that because my cohort members all have similar stats to mine, and some of them are rock stars. Of around 20 of us on the job market (in different sub-disciplines), 2 of us have jobs for next year. No one else has had any luck landing a tt job, or any job, for that matter. These are brilliant people who work incredibly hard. If I didn't see it happen with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that the market is truly THIS bad--inside and outside of academia. And people generally think that there are many more employment opportunities in my field than there are in English.

I like academia. I really like teaching. But if I had to do this all over again, I would have stayed far away from grad school. I honestly believe that the Ph.D. was a major hindrance in my non-academic job search. I had applied to similar positions before grad school, on the strength of my work record alone, and I had MUCH more interest from the types of organizations that others have referred to--nonprofits, museums, industry, publishing. No one wanted to hire my Ph.D. self, probably because I have spent that last five years preparing for a career in academia, despite my best efforts to diversify my CV.

I used to frequent the forums five years back, when I was applying to programs. I actually came on today to see if there were any pearls of wisdom I could pass on to my brother-in-law, who is thinking about applying to English Ph.Ds next year. His thoughts echo many of these posts--I'm aware of the realities, I plan on keeping my options open, etc. I will send this thread to him in the hope that he might listen to other voices--both similar to and different from mine.

[greenmt]

It's helpful to know what people are going through this spring, on the job hunt, and I appreciate how forthcoming you've all been.  I've been unemployed during a recession, and it's terrifying.  Congratulations are due to the people who've gotten jobs during a dismal job market, and good wishes to those who are still looking.

 

I still say it's a mistake to extrapolate from what is going on now.  No one can predict what the job market will be like 5 to 10 years from now.  There are real indications that it will improve, maybe significantly, including Bureau of Labor Statistics projections (I've posted about them elsewhere on this board) that, for English Lit, hiring will outpace average hiring for all fields through 2022.  The BLS projections could be wrong, but they have the virtue of impartiality.  Since hiring has lurched upward and downward in recent decades, and another wave of aging faculty, having put off retirement during the crash years, may begin to retire now that their TIAA-CREF accounts are improving, there is every possibility that hiring will improve.

 

Everyone here has been warned.  If they sign on the dotted line for the fall, it doesn't mean they're naive.  They might regret it later, but it's not a given and - I speak from experience - not doing it when you're young can come with its own set of regrets.  

[rising_star]

My fear is that, even if the BLS projections are accurate, that won't translate into more tenure-track or even tenure-track-like (full-time lecturer gigs with promotion to senior lecturer after 5-7 years) jobs being available. The trend, even before the 2008 recession, has been for institutions to replace retiring TT faculty with adjuncts or full-time lecturers employed on a year to year basis. They say they do this because it gives them flexibility. If you think back, you may realize/recall that there were predictions of a booming job market that would happen in the 90s/early 2000s due to a wave of retirements. The retirements happened but the TT jobs weren't being advertised at the same rate. It doesn't matter whether or not the BLS is right if institutions decide that TT or even full-time teaching positions are no longer needed or desirable from their perspective.

[lifealive]

Personally, I don't regret having gotten my PhD. I think I would have regretted more NOT getting a PhD. And that's really what you have to weigh here. Would your life really be better without your PhD? Would you honestly have made more headway during the last seven or eight years without one? Because I honestly believe that if I had decided to not get my PhD, I'd always have wondered "what if?" And even if things had flourished in my professional life, I'm sure I would have always secretly regretted not getting my doctorate. But that's just my personality. I'm the sort of person who just has to know.

 

Okay, what the hell, I guess I'll share my sob story in the interest of full disclosure. I went to an average program (ranked somewhere between #25 to #39). I have a ton of teaching experience, presented at all the national conferences, publications (one major). Because I went to such a lackluster program, I never really expected much for myself in terms of landing a sought-after TT job. I knew it was possible--other people at my program certainly did so, but I never really thought that things like that would happen for me. Moreover, most of the jobs that people landed were in the hinterlands--rural North Dakota, for instance, with 4/4 teaching loads. The *best* graduates landed those jobs. I was always on the fence as to whether I would take a position like that or try to do something else.

 

I went on the job market my first year as I finished my dissertation, and it was pretty disappointing. I didn't get any interviews. I didn't even get any requests for more materials. Then, suddenly, something came together for me, and it was a huge surprise. I interviewed for and landed a postdoc. A major national dream postdoc with a fancy name and no teaching responsibilities. I'd applied for it on a whim, thinking I didn't have a chance in hell. Anyway, when that happened, I began to actually think, hey, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can actually go on to become a professor. My advisor told me that the postdoc was a golden ticket that would put me squarely at the top of the list for a great TT job, and that there was no way I couldn't have like seven interviews at MLA. Everyone actually told me this--other postdocs and people who had recently landed TT jobs.

 

I didn't have one interview at MLA. I had two phone interviews and no campus visits. I think my advisor was more distressed than I was. I was just like, of course this is happening. I do honestly think it's time to pull up stakes and move on. My advisor--and a few other people--have told me to do the job market again, and that this was just an extraordinarily bad year, and that there's no way someone "with my talent" could not someday get a job. But every year is worse than the last, and I'm guessing that next year will continue on with the downward trend.

 

The university system really doesn't want us. They're dismantling English departments as we speak. And unfortunately, I don't think that any kind of organizing or advocating will turn that around. The demand just isn't there right now for English professors. English enrollments are falling because people don't want their kids to major in English, and no one sees the usefulness of a liberal arts degree anymore. Other people here have advocated "talking about" or "raising awareness" about these problems, but we've been talking about them for a while. Unfortunately, we live in a very cruel world where capitalism has been allowed to carry the day. People here have accused me of being a neo-liberal; really, I'm a realist. It doesn't matter whether or not you believe that free markets are right; free markets, tragically enough, have been allowed to take their course. The basic fact of the matter is that there is no demand for what we do because no one perceives the English degree as having value. And yes, this is all a confidence/perception problem, but it's a perception problem that runs deep. We can't force people to think that English departments are necessary and English degrees are important. That might not happen ever; if it does, it'll happen because something external to us changes in the market. That's just the way it goes anymore. We used to regulate our markets, but we don't anymore. Our society used to set aside taxes to support English and liberal arts, regardless of market value, because it believed that a well-rounded education was a right. It just doesn't do that anymore.

 

Despite all that, I can't say I regret getting my PhD. I also don't think it's my place to tell anyone what to do with their lives. Getting a PhD certainly wasn't a terrible thing for me, even though my job searches were completely unsuccessful. I learned more than I ever imagined I would, and I published (a lifelong dream), and I wrote a dissertation that other people think is really good. But really, I don't think that anyone here has the right to tell anyone that getting a PhD in English will shatter their lives and destroy their dreams. That's making a huge assumption about how other people handle setbacks or how they value their education. Some people here might be coming from a much different perspective. Some people here might have spent the aughties pulling sand out of their ass in Afghanistan, so getting a PhD and launching an unsuccessful job search might seem pretty minor in comparison.

 

Personally, I'm trying to look at my failure on the job market as something of an opportunity. As I detach from the idea of being a professor, I've started to think about doing the things and taking the big risks that I'd always thought about but didn't have time for. I've also sought out career counseling. I'm trying to meet with ex-PhDs who can give me some advice for how to market myself for other careers. In a weird way, it's also kind of freeing. I've been thinking of all the things I DON'T have to do anymore--because there are always things about our jobs we're not wild about. I think, "Oh God, I don't have to live in North Dakota if I don't want to." At the end of my academic job search, I realized I was applying for jobs that I never in the world thought I'd ever apply for--5/5 load in the middle of hot nowhere like six hours from a medium-sized city and all for the pleasure of $29,000 a year--and I realized that this was the definition of insanity. The problem with this entire profession is that we have all indeed become slaves to this kind of market, thinking of ourselves as not having any choice in the matter, and as a result, our expectations are completely off-kilter. This leads universities to take advantage of us in terrible ways. To break this cycle, we really do just have to walk away from it.

 

Did the job market shatter my world? Kind of. It has been extremely disappointing. You do invest yourself in a vision of living an academic life. Worse things have happened to me, though. In the long run, not getting my dream job is a set-back but not a tragedy. The post-doc was what got my hopes up, not really the PhD in general. I am irritated about my program, though--it has a terrible placement record but still manages to recruit 15-18 new PhD students a year. I think it should really come with a warning label.

[TenaciousBushLeaper]

Something to maybe think about here, it seems the country (USA) as a whole is leaning more towards 2 year colleges and, "technical skill" jobs. If more students out of high school decide this to be their path then 4 year institutions will suffer and will begin to adapt. Part of that adaptation may be not having nearly as many or maybe at some point any TT positions. 

Disclaimer: this is purely speculation on my part.