Ph.D.s in English – The job market may be even worse than people realize

As English professors and would-be English professors gather today in Vancouver for the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, a new paper argues that the job market for English Ph.D.s may be even worse than people realize.

MLA leaders make no claims that the job market is in good shape, and their recent survey found that the number of faculty jobs in English appears to be down 8.4 percent from a year ago. (The MLA reports that the picture isn’t much different for foreign language Ph.D.s, but the new paper is on English Ph.D.s.)

The new paper argues that English is a field where the perceived prestige of a Ph.D. program has a huge impact on where its new doctorates land. As a result, the good jobs that are out there are not in fact likely to be available to most new Ph.D.s and the searches to fill those positions are much less open to all than faculty members may like to think, the paper says.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Economist offers critique of job market for Ph.D.s in English @insidehighered.