Questions for Current PhD Applicants

[thinkingandthinking]

32 minutes ago, knp said:

Nobody seems to think it's weird when idealistic young adults move to New York or LA to spend their 20s trying to make it in Hollywood or on Broadway, even though those industries are far more competitive even than academia. They could have spent those years establishing a career history in something more "sensible," but nobody seems to think it's weird that they'd give their dreams a chance. Film or theater is their Thing. So they go for it! Academia is my thing. Although I wouldn't make half the financial sacrifice my creative-industry friends do to pursue an artistic career, I've been able to get an institution to make a paid, long-term commitment to my training. With that support, why wouldn't I give it a try? You're right, OP, that this forum doesn't have a lot of people who are on the fence about graduate school, at least not who post. (The number of people who are unsure about graduate school but enrolled because of the possibility of a tenure-track job must surely have declined since the recession! One hopes.) But my outlook is perhaps shorter-term than yours was: I'm not going into this because I think a tenure-track position is worth trying out. I plan to try to get a TT job, but even if I end up on the losing side of the academic job market, academia, of which graduate school is part, was worth the attempt.

Yeah, I'm with you on the LA/NY analogy--though, tbh, when you find yourself actually headed that way, the advice you get from many (often not actually inside the industry, though, which I guess is the major difference) is about the same as it is here. I was one of those fresh-out-of-HS kids that deeply wanted to go to art school and pursue that path, but was convinced out of it by the "but it's not practical" crowd (aka my parents). Now I'm on a different path (one that I'm also deeply passionate about, though), but look back and regret that choice: I realize that although I would never have (probably) been able to be just a painter--in the same way that a TT job might be an illusive dream--there are jobs, many of them, adjacent that I could have pursued and made work with that background. I'm not going to let the same discourse that persuaded me out of an arts career persuade me out of this. I'm not going to make the same mistake I did before about whether or not to follow a passion. I'm not going to leave the chance to do one of the things I deeply care about for at least a few years behind, only to realize that there are things I would have been set up to do, even if not the ultimate dream, again. As I said before, where I work now, I know lots of people who have very recently graduated with humanities PhDs--aka, they, and everyone they've graduated with that didn't find academic employment, have found fine enough jobs. Maybe I'm wrong, or have a one-sided image (though it's not like these people are coming from a top-top-tier program, so I'm guessing it's somewhat representative) but I don't see it as a line between employed and out-right unemployed--just employed or not-academically-employed. Some of these colleagues are the excessively bitter ones, but, I'm also lucky that many of them are supportive of what I'm doing, many of them don't regret having taken that detour. Maybe, though, I just remain the overly idealistic artistic type that wouldn't particularly mind living sparsely to pursue a passion--and have realized that having slightly more to spend on living space/etc., but w/o work I'm dedicated to, is more depressing than the other side. (Not for everyone, of course, I realize--with kids, etc. depending on you for stable income or so on. But I'm happy to sacrifice, and in a place to do so without hurting anyone in doing so, so, certainly not a norm.) (Not to mention, my dad, who was the main force in the "do it, because it's practical" has recently been backpedaling hard on that: realizing that he spent so long chasing a "practical" career--some of it definitely important for family support, but also definitely not all of it--and missed out on doing anything particularly meaningful. I'm not going to follow that, and he doesn't want me to, anymore).

[klader]

I just want to say that I'm sad to see the OP bow out of this thread. I think discussion (not necessarily fights!) on this subject are very important and useful for people considering PhDs (like myself) to get the whole story. Some of it may be ugly (as we've read), but it's still real and adds perspective; it still deserves to be said. 

I've gained a lot of insight after reading the posts on this thread, so thank you for starting it, OP. I wish you well in all your future endeavors. 

[unræd]

I've been lurking and avoiding the conversation because I didn't have anything particularly interesting to say or different to add: like many of the posters that responded to the OP (and as I've said at length in the other thread), the specific language of deceit and intense affective response that gets attached to Dire Warnings from the Other Side isn't one that I think is particularly useful or accurate. That being said, though, there is also occasionally a certain note of blithe disregard ("I'll just get VAPs, and everything will be great!") here that does, frankly, ignore the realities of both the job market(s)--academic and otherwise--and the structure of PhD programs in the humanities.

Which is to say that I'm also sad to see the OP go, and really wish that they'd stuck around. There aren't a lot of late-career grad students on the fora, and those are voices that applicants--and current grad students, but we (hopefully) get that from the 5th-year-and-beyond students in our programs--need to hear from at least as much as they need to hear from those of us who went through the application process recently.

Edited March 25, 2016 by unræd

[rising_star]

@unræd, honestly, I think the constant disrespect senior posters get when they speak from their experience is one of the reasons we have trouble getting them to stick around and continue posting. We created the entire "Officially Grads" section a few years ago in an effort to promote that but, it hasn't entirely worked for any number of reasons. Jumping down someone's throat, calling them names unnecessarily, and being clearly hostile isn't helping at all. I know that I've also been told that I'm wrong on here by those applying to graduate school when talking about things like the job market and its associated realities (see the previous drama thread about this from last year). As a result, I've basically stopped doing it, for better or worse. It's just not worth it to get attacked by random people on the internet when I'm trying to be helpful.

[displayname]

Thank you, klader, for bringing a bit of balance to this thread! There is no reason that someone casting light on these issues should be derided as comparable to an "assclown" or someone whose "bitter is showing."  Every professional scholarly organization in higher education that I've looked at is addressing the same problem - including the Modern Language Association, the AAR, and the AHA (not to mention the Atlantic, PBS, the New Yorker, Slate etc.)  Most of those organization are calling for diversified training, and for more information to be disseminated to new admits about the prospects of obtaining jobs in the academy.  Simply put: the official voice of those organizations does not seem a whole lot different from js17981's (at least from what I've read). Humanities departments at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia are calling into question why they're training PhD's and how they should change their programs. (Stanford convened a panel to redesign the PhD; Harvard held a conference on the aim of doctoral training, Columbia holds regular series on this).

Of course, it's fair to say that you don't need to explain your personal decision to get a PhD. It's also fair to say that you don't want or expect an academic job at the end of it. It's understandable that so many reacted to js17981's "you are making a huge mistake" comment. But, does her/his entire post warrant such hostile responses? Her (his?) first question is "Just genuinely curious to know why you would pursue a PhD knowing that you won't get a tenure track job." Top R1s have recently opened up offices to ask this exact question. I have yet to see a scholarly professional society that does not concede that PhDs in the U.S. are being trained largely for academic careers and suggest that departments take a different approach. In fact, at least one president of a humanities society has presented this issue  - departments training people for jobs that don't exist, only to turn around and offer precarious employment as adjuncts - as a moral crisis. 

It's worrisome that so many on this thread suspect that js17981 is writing out of "ulterior motives" and can't possibly be writing out of concern for her/his colleagues.  As I understand it, part of the value of studying the humanities is to understand and hopefully be more humane to one another. rising_star responded while I was writing this -- he's apparently more experienced in this type of hostile conversation, and has already learned not to speak up.

 

 

 

https://www.mla.org/Resources/Career/Career-Resources/Career-and-Job-Market-Information/Reports-from-MLA-Committee-on-Professional-Employment/Final-Report-from-the-Committee-on-Professional-Employment/Careers-outside-the-Academy

 

http://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2003/budget-cuts-and-history-jobs-many-problems-no-easy-solutions

[Dr. Old Bill]

7 hours ago, displayname said:

It's worrisome that so many on this thread suspect that js17981 is writing out of "ulterior motives" and can't possibly be writing out of concern for her/his colleagues.  As I understand it, part of the value of studying the humanities is to understand and hopefully be more humane to one another. rising_star responded while I was writing this -- he's apparently more experienced in this type of hostile conversation, and has already learned not to speak up.

 

You're not wrong. Not in the least. But in fairness, this board has recently had a few posters who were essentially "trolls" who brought up similar topics in an unproductive, confrontational manner. The OP clearly isn't doing that in fact, but an unknown person dipping a toe into the roiling whirlpools at that end of our little pond was bound to evoke some suspicion.

I also agree that this board needs some more experienced end-of-Ph.D. / post-Ph.D. voices.

[AbrasaxEos]

@rising_star told me to come on over from the Religion boards to say a bit from perspective of someone who just about finished a PhD and then decided to straight up quit.  Just about finished as in halfway through my dissertation.  I'm not going to chastise anyone here, or make vague admonishments about "you don't know what it's like" or "wait until you get where I am!"  because I don't think they are helpful.  I also don't think any of you would really listen to more of this, as you all seem to be well-knowledgeable about the grim, meathook realities of academia and everything that it involves, and don't need another white guy hanging around wagging fingers.

All that I would say is that it is ok to do something else.  You can quit your PhD at any point in the process.  Don't sit around being miserable, developing avoidance problems of various sorts while you make excuses based on the finest of all fallacies, that of the sunk cost.  It has already been said here, but you can be passionate about something and find it fulfilling and not have to do it as a job.

I don't regret my time moving towards a PhD, it gave me some nice getting paid a rela time reading and writing and thinking about interesting problems, and taught me plenty.  I don't blame my advisors, or my program, nor did I feel exploited by them.  I made the choices that I did, including to go to graduate school in the first place, and I take my excessively idealistic self to task for those.  What I will say is that I think you should look at the PhD as leading to a job.  If you don't, how the hell will anyone take you seriously enough to actually give you one when the time comes to apply?  Don't make excuses about the inherent worth of your program, or your path of study.  It isn't inherently worthy of anything, it is shit until you take it and put it through the alembic to spin gold.  I think this is where I do look strongly at my five years in a graduate program and have some regrets.  I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself and others that I didn't care if I got a job when I was done, or that the study of religion (insert your field here) was just so interesting and diverting that studying it was reward enough.  Go read through my earlier posts and you'll see me doing it left and right. 

I don't know if this is convincing, it just want to be a voice that says you can just do a job that you generally enjoy.  I'm not passionate about what I now do during the week for work, I like it, I like my co-workers, I'm good at what I do, and I get paid a lot more money than I probably could have expected to make as an academic outside of a tenured prof at a top-tier institution.  I read Derrida, Butler, and every book I own on Late Antiquity during my ample free time, I go to SBL/AAR if I want to, and I guess I could probably even give a paper if I so desired (which i don't, because I also think these are mostly for people who need CV lines, and I have no need for such).  It isn't all about money, or about pure pragmatics, but I just think we ought to be sure we're not calling skubala Shinola.

You can flame me out of here or question my motives if you would like, and as has already been done.  Who knows, maybe I'm a PhD applying for jobs a full month or so after most of them have already been offered and I'm trying to thin the herds.  I suppose if you really don't believe me, I can send you a redacted copy of my withdrawal form or something.  Anyhow, I'm glad to talk more or PM, etc.  so please do reach out.

[greenmt]

I have a suggestion.  Let me preface it by saying that I don't come on here very often, but I've *been* coming on here for three years now, so I've seen three application seasons play out.  In general, it seems to me that people are very supportive and civil *until* this kind of discussion comes up.  I tend to think we (certainly graduate students and prospective graduate students, but I include faculty, and administrators, too) have more in common than we have differences.  If you think I'm wrong, or naive, feel free to ignore the rest of this.  My life experience, in and out of academia, has led me to this conclusion, and I'm not really interested in arguing the point.  I will say that my general hunch about this has been confirmed by sitting in meetings with faculty and administrators from time to time over the last year: from what I see, they're scared, too, for different but related reasons. 

In general, my sense is that this set of problems can only be solved if people all up and down the hierarchy start to work together: administrators, faculty, and graduate students.  The legislators in Annapolis (or your state capital), and certainly in DC, aren't really hearing our voices now, and they don't have any particular reason to worry about the plight of English Departments, unless we give them one.  My experience has been that more voices together get heard more easily than lots of individual voices in solitude.  I'm not talking about protest, which is useful, but typically as a last resort, if there's no other way to be heard.  We're already inside the tent, at least part way, and my hope is that we can have conversations.  I've found that busy administrators are more apt to listen if you come with a solution, and if you can convince them that they can be part of that solution, and especially if the solution makes their job easier, in the bargain.  

So my suggestion is: if folks here are going to MLA in Philly, in January, what about meeting, either in some sort of formal MLA sanctioned way, or off to the side, over coffee or drinks, to see whether we can identify some common solutions to our common set of problems?  I'm interested in thinking about cross-campus and cross-disciplinary solutions to as many as possible of the problems that have been identified here and elsewhere.  Can our programs do something different to help prepare us for the job market as it is?  Can we help them to enroll more undergrad English / language majors, so they can make the case to their higher-ups for hiring more faculty?  Should the programs, or MLA, have some kind of mentoring program, in which people who've gotten jobs informally work with late-stage PhD students, and late-stage grad students work with new students?  Can we help them to convince the Mellon Foundation or the NEH to support this with a big, fat grant?  These are off the top of my head.  I think better when I'm thinking alongside other people who care about the same things.  

If you're interested in thinking together about these things at MLA in January in Philadelphia, let me know.

[knp]

Unrelated to that very nice post, but one thing I've been wondering as a prospective PhD student is why people say you should go into your PhD planning to get an alt-ac job, with a TT job as your secondary/'nice if it happens" goal. (I saw one post on these fora about it yesterday, although I can't find it now, but it struck me especially because I'd seen a couple others before.) The thinking was that many people who professionalized for non-academic careers often did well on the academic job market, but that the reverse was rarely true. Do you all agree?

To me, it seemed like weird advice for a lot of reasons, although I admit I have no idea about the issue yet. The main thing that strikes me is that preparing really well for some alt-ac position and preparing really well for a tenure-track job would seem to be mutually exclusive. There are limits to time and energy! Or is that advice for people with limited work experience/straight from undergrad, maybe? I have some professional experience, so I find the idea that I should re-professionalize for a different alt-ac career as my primary goal a little odd. What I want to do in my PhD is spend the next five to seven years preparing to the best of my ability to get a tenure-track job, and at some point if it looks like it isn't going to work out—whether before or after I enter the academic job market—to prepare to go back to some field that wouldn't require extensive preparation during my PhD, beyond what I have already or would get anyway. 

Edited March 27, 2016 by knp

[ProfLorax]

28 minutes ago, greenmt said:

So my suggestion is: if folks here are going to MLA in Philly, in January, what about meeting, either in some sort of formal MLA sanctioned way, or off to the side, over coffee or drinks, to see whether we can identify some common solutions to our common set of problems?  

This may be more radical than what you're envisioning, but these past few years, there's been the MLA Subcommittee. I think I'll be at MLA in Philly, and I'd be down to check out the subcommittee meetings. 

[ProfLorax]

8 minutes ago, knp said:

Unrelated to that very nice post, but one thing I've been wondering as a prospective PhD student is why people say you should go into your PhD planning to get an alt-ac job, with a TT job as your secondary/'nice if it happens" goal.

Huh. I've never seen this as a suggestion for English PhD's. I don't think this is a common way of approaching English PhD's, so I wouldn't worry too much. 

[knp]

@ProfLorax Oh, yeah, that'd do it. I was struggling to make it make sense for any humanities or social sciences discipline, because that's the perspective I was assuming, but the poster didn't have their field listed in their little sidebar thing. They must've been in sciences. That makes so much more sense!

[unræd]

54 minutes ago, knp said:

Unrelated to that very nice post, but one thing I've been wondering as a prospective PhD student is why people say you should go into your PhD planning to get an alt-ac job, with a TT job as your secondary/'nice if it happens" goal. (I saw one post on these fora about it yesterday, although I can't find it now, but it struck me especially because I'd seen a couple others before.) The thinking was that many people who professionalized for non-academic careers often did well on the academic job market, but that the reverse was rarely true. Do you all agree?

There've been posts to that effect on this thread in the History forum--perhaps it's what your thinking of? And yeah, no, I agree with your gut and with ProfLorax: that's not the case for English, at all (unless we're counting things like archival or DH experience as inherently alt-ac prep, which they're not). It's certainly not the case I know for the people I know who have been successful on the job market--in part because of this awesome bit of AbrasaxEos' post:

On March 26, 2016 at 6:03 PM, AbrasaxEos said:

What I will say is that I think you should look at the PhD as leading to a job.  If you don't, how the hell will anyone take you seriously enough to actually give you one when the time comes to apply?  Don't make excuses about the inherent worth of your program, or your path of study.  It isn't inherently worthy of anything, it is shit until you take it and put it through the alembic to spin gold.  I think this is where I do look strongly at my five years in a graduate program and have some regrets.  I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself and others that I didn't care if I got a job when I was done, or that the study of religion (insert your field here) was just so interesting and diverting that studying it was reward enough.

Graduate school in the humanities is a professional program, as much as law school, medical school, dental school, or HVAC school is. Almost all programs are designed to provide narrow job training in the specific skills and cultural norms of a specific profession, albeit a profession that doesn't exist anymore (or that at least doesn't exist in enough numbers to justify the number of people getting the training, etc etc etc). Can you treat it as though it weren't, and just take a few years to read some books and have some thoughts and get paid for the privilege? Yeah, sure, totally! But it's really not what programs are designed to do, especially when you move out of exams and start dissertating. It's one thing to say you don't care if you don't end up getting a job at the end of it and don't plan on going on the market; but if you want even that infinitesimal chance that you will get one, you have to act like you sure as shooting' do care, much earlier.

Edited March 27, 2016 by unræd
to fix AbrasaxEos's name and make clear that I printed out that part of their post and taped it to the wall above my desk

[displayname]

Hi all,

Thanks for these thoughtful responses. @greenmt I think your ideas are commendable, and if I were in a discipline involved with MLA, I'd definitely meet you there.

I was the one who posted about preparing for "alt-ac" jobs (although I would simply call them jobs) throughout your PhD. I say this for a number of reasons. First, in response to the OP and many other threads, many (most?) new PhDs asserted that they are not expecting or planning on getting a TT position. I believed them, and consider non-academic professional development a wise move in that scenario.

Second, I am echoing the advice of the MLA, the AHA, and departments that have recently studied the issues of adjunctification, attrition, and employment difficulties among PhDs. Stanford created a task force on this issue with strong recommendations for PhDs to train for non-academic careers.  Harvard held a conference on this point. Individual faculty have called upon their colleagues to support their students' pursuit of non-academic work - here's one, and here's another for English PhDs. My guess is that these organizations and departments and faculty support this training because they do not consider it a detriment to the chances of securing TT employment or their scholarly fields.

Third, I'm not convinced that professionalization helps scholars produce quality academic work or (significantly) helps them secure TT jobs. The latter point is probably too difficult to make, but its informed by studies like this, and anecdotal knowledge on the importance of advisers or committee's relationship with those conducting a search, and the luck of writing the right dissertation at the right time in the right field. I also tend to think that the number of PhDs who get academic jobs will be determined by the number of jobs advertised in their field, not the number of articles or conferences each candidate produced. On the former point, I've heard a number of scholars -- including the chair of my top-ranked department- lament how many empty articles and conference presentations saturate scholarly fields. More publicly, at least one scholar has claimed that it narrows students' interests and scopes of inquiry (though I've heard this argument made elsewhere). If I understand correctly, Abrasax's argument, and unraed's, too is that getting a humanities phd is professional training for a TT position. That is not necessarily in line with the goal of cultivating the most original contributions to the community of scholars, present and future. These are distinct aims. While they might sometimes be commensurate, they aren't always. Perhaps I would ask: would [insert incredible scholar here] have achieved what they did when they did if they were preoccupied with professionalization during their first decade in the field (I'm thinking of Natalie Zemon Davis, but this will be field-specific)? 

Finally, I suggested that option because it's really rough to see so many friends struggling, and I think their struggle would have been lessened if they had cultivated outside interests, networks, or professional tracks.  I take it from previous posts that everyone knows that the numbers of academic jobs in their field, and they are fully prepared to weather it. What really troubled me about the academic job market was not my own run--(I'm not yet scheduled to go on). It was seeing so many really hardworking, accomplished, committed, and intelligent friends in cohorts above me go through a really hard time.

[unræd]

Yes, and I think preparing for non-academic jobs is all to the good. The disagreement wasn't with the idea that preparing oneself for non-academic employment isn't "a detriment to the chances of securing TT employment or their scholarly fields"; it was with the quite different claim that preparing for non-academic employment leads to better chances of securing TT employment. This is in fact why the MLA, Stanford, Harvard, et al. are arguing for a "restructuring" of the humanities PhD in favor of something more flexible: not because that preparation will better land their students TT jobs, but because there simply aren't TT jobs for all their students. Note, too, that much of the discourse surrounding the rethinking of the humanities PhD is just as focused on professionalization at the expense of doing good scholarship as programs focused on traditional preparation for the academy; it's simply neglecting careful research and thought in the service of professionalization for a different kind of of job.

I completely agree that professionalization for professionalization's own sake is an affirmatively bad thing, and that it is better to produce good work than more work. That is uncontroversial, and should be the advice given by any advisor, whether or not they are "the chair of your top-ranked department." We all know those people who publish too early in low-stakes journals, or who present too often at low-stakes conferences when they don't have anything to say, or an intervention to make, and everyone rolls their eyes when they see those CVs. That's not what I'm talking about. It is certainly the case that, as you say, the limiting reagent in the equation of who gets jobs is the vanishingly small number of jobs, period, not the number of articles each candidate produced. However: if you look at who does get the (again, infinitesimally few) jobs that there are, it is people with publications (or whatever proxy measure you'd like to insert here). There are many more--again: many, many more--candidates who are equally "professionalized" (blech; the word makes me feel dirty even as I'm the one saying we shouldn't ignore it), who have just as many articles published, who don't get jobs. I'm not saying it's meritocratic, and that the best people find work; that's bullhooey. But the ones without publications? Ouch.

I'm not saying that's a good thing; I think it should be clear I don't actually think it is. But to pretend that it's not the case, and to say that someone who has prepared more for non-academic work than for traditional academic work has an edge on finding a job on the academic job market ignores the realities of the tightness of that market--unless we're defining "edge" as "ability to get the hell out of the market sooner," which, while maybe a better idea, wasn't the original claim.

Edited March 27, 2016 by unræd

[displayname]

Hi Unraed,

On the whole, I agree with you, with some qualifications.  (I'd also quickly note that I added the descriptor "the chair of my top-ranked department" only because much of the dialogue I've read on gradcafe concerns rank, and much of the discussion on jobs has been dismissed as the murmurs of unsuccessful, marginal students. I don't put much stock in these rankings as indicators of quality, but they do indicate influence.)  I wrote my post in response to an admit, who claimed that she was advised to prepare for alternative careers, and reassured that those "with cool skills often performed better on the TT market" (or something similar). In my own limited experience, this point seems accurate. Those that have desirable language skills, solid programming skills, or managerial experience do often perform well on both markets. I guess I would say this: I am as convinced that a scholar in the humanities will help themselves get a TT job as much by knowing how to administer a budget or fund-raise or program as they will having another conference paper or publication. The budget/fund-raising/programming skills will help them in any market, the latter, only their TT market. Is that fair?

As to your second point: "that much of the discourse surrounding the rethinking of the humanities PhD is just as focused on professionalization at the expense of doing good scholarship as programs focused on traditional preparation for the academy; it's simply neglecting careful research and thought in the service of professionalization for a different kind of of job." I agree that the discourse is, indeed, geared towards employment and not towards scholarship. But I'm not sure about the results. I did find Jan Goldstein's essay on this point convincing.  I suppose that I'd need to see more students focused on their work for its own sake vs. those professionalizing for the academy from day one before I could judge. My sense is this: if you're treating your scholarship as your passion rather than a career path, it's possible you'd take more risks and be more creative. But, you may be right that someone treating their dissertation as a labor of love while taking night-classes in programming produces subpar scholarship. I'm just not sure.

On the publications issue -- I take it we're not in the same field, but your argument may hold in yours better than mine. The recent placements in my department that got R1 positions did not have publications beyond book reviews.  I've met a number of assistant professors without publications. But again, this is field-specific.

 

 

[unræd]

I'm sorry to have snakily done the quote-the-rank-dropping thing; I was about to remove that, having thought better of it, when I saw you'd already replied. The reason it rankled is precisely because, as you say, the conversation about jobs gets tied up in really disgusting ways with conversations about prestige, and so--and possibly also as a result of the fact that I'm hyperaware of being one of the few students at my program who didn't come from an elite undergraduate background, and as a result of wanting to be equally hyperaware not to be a turd and go on about my own program's ostensible (and utterly meaningless) top ranking in English--I tend to get knee-jerky whenever someone uses that sort of language. But my knee-jerk reaction needn't have made me a jerk, so I'm sorry.

As someone who does do traditional work by day and take programming classes by night (I am deeply implicated in all that I criticize), I certainly hope I'm not producing subpar scholarship! My unease with the discourse surrounding the restructuring of the humanities PhD doesn't have to do with individual student agents producing subpar work as much as it does the fear that more traditionally literary modes of knowing and researching are devalued as more ostensibly "objective" methodologies are brought to bear on formerly humanistic objects--this idea you sometimes get from DH administrative people (and I say this as a--deeply conflicted, yes, but still--DH person) that the humanities finally matter because they can be quantified, that they shall only be valuable to the extent to which they become like the sciences, that all our readings shall be distant and not close. There's a way in which I am thus deeply ambivalent--in the etymological sense--about the preparation of students for careers in industry (or Industry): the part of me that thinks the traditional system of graduate education is, if not actively predatory, certainly unsustainable wars with the part that wants to fight the neoliberal university's idea of the importance of the utility and instrumental value of knowledge.

ETA: Which is not really an answer so much as a ramble, but it's late and I think we agree for the most part.

Edited March 27, 2016 by unræd

[displayname]

@unraed:  We do agree. For what it's worth, I wouldn't advise taking the Digital Humanities route as an attempt to professionalize. Of course, people should follow their intellectual interests -- so if it's in DH, then by all means!  I actually meant to argue for the opposite approach to the TT jobs shortage. I wonder how much the humanities and individual scholars have to gain from disentangling their scholarship from a tight job market (academic or non-academic). So, why not maintain and celebrate the "traditionally literary modes of knowing and researching," as the object of the PhD and, in off-hours, cultivate another professional interest? Then scholarship doesn't have to be a means to wrack up CV lines, and nor does the individual scholar need to single-mindely pursue an often impossible career, with potential injury to their labors-of-love.  In any case, thanks for the chat, and good night!

[greenmt]

14 hours ago, ProfLorax said:

This may be more radical than what you're envisioning, but these past few years, there's been the MLA Subcommittee. I think I'll be at MLA in Philly, and I'd be down to check out the subcommittee meetings. 

Me, too.  Thanks for the link, ProfLorax.  

The following is not directed to you, particularly, but more generally to the group here.   From what I can see, the subcommittee is more about theory than practice.  Which is fine, of course.  But I wonder whether theorizing the job market is not another way of avoiding looking at the bigger picture.  

For me, that's this: universities are businesses, and the intellectual work we do is supported by some combination of undergraduate tuition, taxes, and donated dollars. I like doing that work, presumably you all like doing that work, and we'd all like to see things change so that more people can do that work with job security and a decent salary.  Someone has to pay for that.  It won't happen if the people responsible for distributing tuition, taxes, and donations see humanities enrollments going down and the (well-funded) other side is arguing, as they have, with increasing success, for at least 20 years, that the problem is ivory-tower deconstructionists who can't or won't even speak plain English, and can't teach undergraduates to write a cover letter and resume. Acknowledging that, and figuring out what practical steps to take in response, does not inherently imply submission to the dominant neoliberal narrative - no more, in any event, than signing on as an employee or quasi-employee of the university does.  

If we think what we're doing matters, outside our narrow subfields, isn't it a good thing to be able to articulate that in plain language, even to an audience that doesn't particularly think they believe in what we're doing?  For example, my advisor told me a story the other day about a bunch of faculty going to Annapolis a few years ago, when funding for the nascent LGBT studies program was threatened for the usual reasons, and testifying in front of the legislature about why the program should matter to them and their constituents.  The funding reappeared.  The same outcome might not happen everywhere, or all the time, but one reason the right has won more often than not during my lifetime is that they show up and talk about why what they believe matters to other people, in language other people can understand.  (If your response is, "Yes, but they lie," I'm with you, and I say showing up gives you the chance to point out the lies.)  

I actually think there are hopeful indicators: for example, in a recent faculty meeting, the chair said that undergraduate majors in English on my campus are diversifying, and at a faster rate than the college overall.  This is good in itself, of course.  It is also a useful bit of information to include in a proposal to XYZ Foundation or a presentation to the state legislature.  We do no one, least of all these undergraduates, a favor by refusing to quantify this information for bean-counters, if that's what it takes to get the funding to support them.

Anyway, for what it's worth, my experience both over the last year and earlier, in my MA program, has been that faculty, especially those moving toward tenure or who've recently gotten tenure, tend to be refreshingly practical about balancing the how-to-get-a-job part with the how-to-maintain-scholarly-integrity part.  Overall, the faculty at my institution seem a bit baffled by the challenges they face, but I see them attempting to take practical steps (like speaking with English departments at other public research Us about their responses to threatened budget cuts), which at least means they're trying to look the problems in the face.

Edited March 27, 2016 by greenmt

[xolo]

I think universities are businesses in the sense of not-for-profit businesses where public funding is managed. Unfortunately, for decades public funding has decreased, hence the double digit or greater tuition increases and the student debt crisis. Also, in the humanities there are about one-half the TT jobs as compared to 30 years ago. Enough of my sweeping generalizations, I think it's a great concept to meet and discuss this predicament, but unless the public and legislators are on-board, you might as well cloister in a room and theorize. And just to be more pessimistic, institutions in general, certainly including academia, have been in decline for decades. 

And I agree this is a great community until this kind of thread comes along. Some people don't like being called an ass-clown making shit posts. Really, really disappointing.

[greenmt]

I'm going to shut up in a minute, partly because I have two papers to write, but my hope is that humanities departments will start to be able to simply own up to their place in the economy of the university, and that universities will be able to own up to their place in the larger economy.  On my campus, the proportion of English faculty who serve as Deans and other high level administrators is higher than the proportion of English faculty in relation to faculty overall.  (For example, both the Dean of Graduate Studies and the Dean of Undergraduate Studies came from English.)  That to me is one answer to the Provost, President, and the Trustees and legislators they see themselves reporting to, when the question arises, "Why do you need to keep this faculty line tenure-track?"  And universities, especially big, public research universities, need to do a better job of talking about what they bring, as businesses, to their communities.  I don't mean that it's their only value to the communities. But they employ lots of people, and many of those jobs pay better than comparable jobs in the surrounding community.  They bring people to the area, some of whom stay and do stuff that also supports the economy.  Tenure is another way of saying to a faculty member, "It's a safe bet for you to buy a house here," and that builds stability in communities.  Universities have institutional imperatives to diversify, and that makes neighborhoods more diverse.  There's stuff to do on campus, and so people come from near and far, and spend money.  These things aren't the reason for the university, but they're a beneficial result of the everyday work of a functioning university.  When legislatures slash budgets, or cut tenure, there are practical implications for the communities they represent, and they and their constituencies have a right to know about that.  When I see stories like this, one of my responses is, "Madison is fucked."  Since Wisconsin seems to be a test case for radical-right initiatives, in recent years, it's reasonable to expect that the outcomes there will help determine the shape of battles that will be fought in center-right state legislatures over the next few years.  We should probably be prepared....  

[Guest]

On 3/22/2016 at 6:07 PM, bhr said:

 

Maybe the question the OP should ask isn't why do we want to be like him, but what are we doing to avoid being the sort of sad, underemployed person who trolls people excited about the opportunity to go on.

 

I think that's a gross misrepresentation of the OP and the sort of victim-blaming that I wish we could avoid in these discussions. Your post here says a lot more about you than it does the OP. 

Having said that, I've personally kept my own job market adventures away from this particular forum because I really, sincerely don't want to rain on anyone's parade. (You can read about them in them in the "Jobs" forum.) I genuinely enjoyed my time as a grad student, even though I am planning to move on after this season and try getting a job in a different field. I don't think I regret getting my PhD, but it's really a pointless exercise to engage in such speculation anyway. I'm a different person now than I was 7 years ago.

Likewise, I think it's dumb to discourage people from pursuing the only thing in the world that might give their lives meaning. That has nothing to do with "who's had a harder life before getting a PhD" or "who's actually financially BETTER OFF while getting a PhD because they have no other options." (Truth be told: most of us fall into this category. Most of us graduated into a post-Recession economy. Or we got laid off during the Recession and went to grad school for some semblance of structure, hope, and normality.) Please. There is no need to play oppression olympics with all of this, or to assume that the OP's post is coming from a place of entitlement and that he or she doesn't know what *real* suffering looks like. The economy is terrible; it's terrible that we're having a discussion about who's poorer here, or what path you can take to be slightly less oppressed than the person making $8 an hour while raising three children. It's all bad. No one should be an exploited, underpaid adjunct. No one should be an exploited TA. No one should be an exploited fast-food worker. Adjuncts have the same right to complain as the underemployed people barely scraping by. Poverty is poverty.

FWIW, I have got my PhD in literature but with certificates that qualify me to teach rhet/comp and a variety of other writing-based classes. It's still a jungle out there, even for RC. 

[echo449]

I mean, as one of the people who were slightly insulted by OP's characterization of grad school as a huge mistake, all I can say is that, like I intimated in my original response, for many of us going to grad school is not a step down but a step up. This isn't universally true, and maybe it isn't even true in the majority of cases, but it is true in my case, for my specific circumstances (& I'm attending a public university for my PhD). I'm not saying OP was wrong about the market, or that wages are "good enough." I was reacting more to the tendency to paint getting a PhD as a mistake in financial terms as incorrect. Having said this, I do think people need to think harder about stipends and what is or is not livable, and when I talk to friends of mine that are applying, I do stress to them that this is perhaps one of the most important things to think about when choosing between programs.

Cuz OP is right that the market is awful, prospective students should be given more advice from professors (and perhaps this board) as to how to ensure that the 5-7 years they spend in a program won't be an undue burden. 

Edited March 31, 2016 by echo449

[lindsey372]

I always think it's really odd when people say they regret a learning experience. How or why would ever regret gaining knowledge? Especially if the time you spent gaining that knowledge was paid for? All of us here are doing this because we love learning. It's the knowledge, not the job prospects OBVIOUSLY. I always liken it to the priesthood - you do it because you can't not do it. OP either never had that passion or they lost it along the way. They are no less unemployable (outside of the academy) than they were right out of undergrad. Go teach high school, there are plenty of awesome kids waiting for you to share your passion and knowledge with. I know because I am teaching them right now and all districts NEED teachers. After I'm done with my PhD I will happily teach them again.

[unræd]

Except that it's just that sort of language that internalizes and, frankly authorizes, a lot of real world, piss-poor academic labor practices. No, academia should not be a labor of love in which one resigns oneself to a potentially economically precarious position in return for experiencing a vague Life of the Mind  that doesn't need recompense because it is supposedly its own reward. I'm usually one of the first ones here to look askance at people saying that the cruel realities of the job market are in any real sense oppressive (I'll totally buy exploitative, though), but I think it's equally misguided to say that those realities don't matter. It's a job, and the minute we treat it less like a job that deserves (like all labor!) fair compensation and instead imagine it as special and set apart, as some quasi-monastic pursuit of ill-defined capital-K "Knowledge" that imagines financial hardship as somehow constitutive of the scholarly project, is the minute people think they don't need to pay their students/adjuncts/faculty well because, hey, what the hell do they do all day but sit around and talk about poetry and doesn't everyone know there's no money in the humanities and isn't that what they signed up for, anyway?

I also don't know how productive it is to try to discern the OP's passion or lack thereof at this remove. OP's been through this, OP's done this, and OP's not sure they'd do it again. Saying that that must mean that oh, well, OP just didn't want it hard enough, or doesn't now, seems uncharitable.