NY Times: At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker

[marmar]

At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker

By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: December 17, 2009


With colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduate students in language and literature is bleaker than ever before.

Economy Doesn’t Slow Demand for Early Entry to College (December 18, 2009) According to the Modern Language Association’s forecast of job listings, released Thursday, faculty positions will decline 37 percent, the biggest drop since the group began tracking its job listings 35 years ago.

The projection, based on a comparison between the number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009, follows a 26 percent drop the previous year.

“Students thinking of going to graduate school in English should understand that right now their chance of landing a job that provides them a livable wage is 50-60 percent,” said Rosemary Feal, executive director of the M.L.A., the world’s largest association of scholars and professors of language and literature. “What I often hear from grad students is, ‘I had no clue it was this bad.’ They need to go into it with their eyes wide open.”

While the association does not having listings for every academic position available, its list does track the overall faculty job market. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/education/18professor.html?_r=1&hpw

[Romulox]

1. All you "learn for the sake of learning!" people need to think long and hard about this..

Working class people can't afford to go into lifelong debt for a grad degree in the humanities, even if we would enjoy "learning for the sake of learning" in a perfect world.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. +1

Sure, you can do and learn whatever you want. Just don't expect someone to pay for it.

[msedano]

2. looking for work in all the wrong places

a humanities degree, an advanced one more so, prepares people for effective productivity in the information economy, work related to sales and distribution: thinking, writing, speaking, listening.

with the US economy no longer a primary producer of goods, our forte has become service and moving information, "the knowledge industry". material purchased overseas for import into our markets requires folks skilled at purchasing and inventory control, shipping, warehousing, writing marketing copy like catalogs and webpages, training, and, ultimately, finding customers, either regional distributors, jobbers, or end-users. sales. sadly, being "in sales" leaves a bad taste in some mouths. get over it.

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