The Dialogue

Question: Should academic departments promote alternative careers for Ph.D. candidates in fields with low job placement rates?

Yes, there aren't enough teaching jobs for Ph.D. candidates to go around.
Lynn Woodbury*

Graduate programs train too many Ph.D.s in many fields because graduate students are needed to teach lower division courses in their universities.

If graduate students knew more about alternative career possibilities and how to pursue them, they would be less likely to find themselves trapped in part-time work and would get a fairer return on the time and money they invested in graduate school.

For one thing, most Ph.D.-granting institutions still think the job I do, as a community college teacher, is an alternative career. This gives you an idea of how narrowly the possible career paths tend to be defined, at least in Ph.D.-granting English departments.

I didn't even consider applying for the job I now hold in a two-year college until I had been in the job market for several years. I was seeking information about alternative careers from a vocational counselor when I heard of a job opening at my current college.

Even then, I probably would not have applied had I not known people who could give me first-hand assurances that I would indeed like the job, the environment, and the people. It now seems crazy to me that I shut myself off from this possible source of work.

There have never been enough jobs for all the graduate students graduating each year in my field. According to the MLA, the annual rate of people in my field hired into full-time academic jobs hasn't topped 60 percent in the last 20 years, nor is this situation expected to change soon.

* Lynn Woodbury is an associate professor of English at Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois.

No, the vast majority of graduate students want to be college professors.
Laura Sullivan *

I offer myself as an example, with circumstances all too common in today's humanities programs: I chose to go to graduate school in a humanities field because I love teaching, writing, and research.

I find English and my other studies exciting fields that spur my thinking and inspire my teaching. I want a tenure-track job at an academic institution of higher education, one where I am given time and support both to teach and to undertake research.

I, and countless others like me, do not simply "love their academic fields and consider pursuing them at an advanced level an enriching experience," as University of Florida President John Lombardi would have it.

While I love what I do, I consider my time as a graduate student one of training and preparation for a tenure-track teaching career in my field. Why else would I have borrowed almost $90,000 at this point?

Instead of rallying around the cry of training us to do nonacademic jobs, perhaps Lombardi and his like could support efforts to raise graduate student teaching and research assistant stipends to a living wage and provide health care benefits. Also needed: more scholarship and fellowship money for humanities graduate students, more rational full-time to part-time faculty ratios in humanities programs, and new tenure lines to replace those lost in humanities programs across the country.

When these goals are achieved, then adding training for nonacademic careers might make more sense to me.

* Laura Sullivan is a doctoral student at the University of Florida, where she teaches writing, literature, film, and women's studies.

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