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This is about humanities PhDs, written by a lit PhD. The English PhDs have long been the most vocal of this line of criticism, where the problem has been most e

This is about humanities PhDs, written by a lit PhD. The English PhDs have long been the most vocal of this line of criticism, where the problem has been most extreme. English and humanities BAs are eminently hireable, as the author points out, but the academy has decided to so relentlessly overproduce professors as to make it untenable as a profession. 75%+ of humanities courses are taught by adjuncts and graduate students—and the graduate students are just adjuncts-in-training. The MLA recently had a big symposium about this, which concluded that there was basically nothing wrong, they should continue to train professors (and benefit from their underpaid teaching), and make more of a show to go on about jobs outside traditional academia (in museums? libraries? It's unclear). While the norms of the academy is that anyone who isn't a professor is a failure. Source: I dodged this bullet.

rconti 11y ago
Yeah, my sister just recently got tenure at a regional state school, and was able to parlay it into a tenured position at a large state school in the midwest where her husband also works. It's brutal out there. It was brutal even for them. They didn't go to top-10 Ph.D programs. They went to top-2 Ph.D programs. If you're not getting a Ph.D from one of the 3 absolute best-regarded programs, the odds are just insane.
mistersquid 11y ago
I received my doctorate in English Language and Literature in 2002 and landed a tenure-track job. The university was an R2 (according to the Carnegie-Mellon Research classification) [0]; I graduated from an R1. Most my colleagues graduated from R1s. I was very unhappy in my Midwestern University town and left my academic post (having declined to pursue tenure) to return to my native state. Faculty at such highly-ranked research institutions use graduate students because such high-achieving graduate students 1. Are a pleasure to teach, able to understand the highly complex and intricate theories about literature and culture we faculty research. 2. Are able (and thrilled to teach the low-level classes (e.g. Composition) which we would rather not teach. The lie many faculty tell themselves is that such students are apprentices to the profession. That lie has been called out for the last 20 years and is, slowly, being accepted by younger faculty at such institutions. The problem is that tenure, as the article mentions, is dying with the faculty when they retire and these tenure lines are being replaced with graduate students and adjunct faculty. Tenure will not completely go away. It will simply be restricted to the R1s and R2s. Every other institution can expect their ranks of faculty to be poorly compensated and to have no job security. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_...
- api 11y ago
  Universities are taking measures to trim faculty pay and job security, and meanwhile tuition is increasing at a rate much faster than inflation and has been for a long time. It's disgusting.
deleted 11y ago
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giaour 11y ago
I left as an ABD in French lit and now work as a software engineer. I recently found out that my former department put me on a list of "recent placements" as an example of an alternative career open to French lit scholars because OF COURSE it's reasonable to expect humanities PhDs to be able to pass a whiteboard interview when they can't land a professorship.

rconti 11y ago

Yeah, my sister just recently got tenure at a regional state school, and was able to parlay it into a tenured position at a large state school in the midwest where her husband also works. It's brutal out there. It was brutal even for them. They didn't go to top-10 Ph.D programs. They went to top-2 Ph.D programs. If you're not getting a Ph.D from one of the 3 absolute best-regarded programs, the odds are just insane.

mistersquid 11y ago

I received my doctorate in English Language and Literature in 2002 and landed a tenure-track job. The university was an R2 (according to the Carnegie-Mellon Research classification) [0]; I graduated from an R1. Most my colleagues graduated from R1s. I was very unhappy in my Midwestern University town and left my academic post (having declined to pursue tenure) to return to my native state. Faculty at such highly-ranked research institutions use graduate students because such high-achieving graduate students 1. Are a pleasure to teach, able to understand the highly complex and intricate theories about literature and culture we faculty research. 2. Are able (and thrilled to teach the low-level classes (e.g. Composition) which we would rather not teach. The lie many faculty tell themselves is that such students are apprentices to the profession. That lie has been called out for the last 20 years and is, slowly, being accepted by younger faculty at such institutions. The problem is that tenure, as the article mentions, is dying with the faculty when they retire and these tenure lines are being replaced with graduate students and adjunct faculty. Tenure will not completely go away. It will simply be restricted to the R1s and R2s. Every other institution can expect their ranks of faculty to be poorly compensated and to have no job security. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_...

api 11y ago
Universities are taking measures to trim faculty pay and job security, and meanwhile tuition is increasing at a rate much faster than inflation and has been for a long time. It's disgusting.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

giaour 11y ago

I left as an ABD in French lit and now work as a software engineer. I recently found out that my former department put me on a list of "recent placements" as an example of an alternative career open to French lit scholars because OF COURSE it's reasonable to expect humanities PhDs to be able to pass a whiteboard interview when they can't land a professorship.