10 - 15 years ago???
Twenty-seven years ago I sent applications to 200 colleges and universities,
anyone advertising a junior position in anything remotely resembling my
specializations in English lit.
The highlights of my cv were
B.A. (Hon.) U of T (1964) [B+ average - I partied a bit in those days]
M.A. U of T (1965) [straight A's]
4 years experience teaching as a full-time junior lecturer at Mount Allison
and UWO (1965-69)
Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship (1969 - 72)
Ph.D. course work U.S.C. [straight A's] & concurrently teaching assistant
(1969-71)
two papers published in reputable journals
not so much progress on my dissertation as I had hoped (1971-72)
Out of all those applications (some for sessional appointments paying little
more than my Canada Council Fellowship and teaching assistantship had
brought in) I received one nibble, being shortlisted and interviewed for an
assistant professorship at a very small Catholic women's college. A few
months after the interview the chairman wrote to tell me that there was no
longer a position; the budget had been downsized, and a new Dean of Students
(a nun) would teach halftime in the English Department. I left academia then
and never finished my dissertation.
A decade later I ran into a colleague from my Mount Allison days, teaching
at an Ontario university, not one of the front-ranking ones. He was a few
years older than I and had been farther along than I, working on his
doctoral dissertation back then in the late sixties. He told me that he had
been hired as an assistant professor in 1971 and believed that year was the
last time when there had been any hope of getting a permanent teaching
position on a university English department. My friend was still an
assistant professor. Undoubtedly if his career could have been timeshifted a
decade earlier he would have been an associate professor after 12 years.
Victor Milne
FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/
LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE
at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/
-----Original Message-----
From: Cordell, Arthur: DPP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: January 19, 1999 10:39 AM
Subject: academia, etc.
>Contingent labour for some in acedemia. From current edition of....
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> Innovation -- A NewsScan (R) Service
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>Innovation, written by John Gehl and Suzanne Douglas, reports on trends,
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>executive briefing on the future. Paid subscribers may access back issues
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>DOWN AND OUT IN ACADEMIA
>If you left college or university more than 10 or 15 years ago you might be
>surprised to know how marginalized the academic life has become for those
>engaged in such studies as English, foreign language, comparative
>literature, linguistics and classics. The Modern Language Association
(MLA)
>predicts that fewer than half of the graduates of Ph.D. programs finishing
>between 1996 and 2000 will be able to get a full-time, tenure-track job
>within a year of finishing their programs. Why are there not enough
>full-time jobs to go around? Because 47% of teaching loads in higher
>education are handled by part-time graduate students (paid $8,000 to
$15,000
>for half-time work) or part-time nontenured instructors (with part-time
>Ph.D.s often earning about a third of what graduate students get). The MLA
>is of two minds about this predicament. One faction says liberal arts
>Ph.D.s should forget academia and get a job in the real world (private
>investigator, Hallmark greeting card writer, investment banker, astrologer,
>speechwriter, book buyer, etc.) The other faction says: join a union.
>(Sarah Boxer, "Professors Or Proletarians? A Test For Downtrodden
>Academics," New York Times 16 Jan 99) http://www.nytimes.com
>
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