BY PATRICK FESSENBECKER

It is the time of year again when too many brilliant literature scholars find out that they will not be receiving a tenure-track job, and, as in Jacquelyn Ardam’s eloquent lamentation, that their possibilities for staying in the profession are over. The statistics on the situation are stark. Humanities doctorates are taking longer and longer to complete. The number of reliable jobs keeps decreasing while the number of new PhDs keeps increasing. Most of the jobs that are available are poorly compensated and contingent.

None of these observations are new or in any way controversial, which makes it all the more surprising that the field has not devoted more time and energy to thinking about the problem.What ideas there are for addressing the crisis range from the extremely collective to the deeply personal, from a strike of tenured faculty members to calls for enhanced mentorship. But I am often struck at how reluctant humanists are to confront the basic problem of supply and demand. The solution to the jobs crisis is not in fact complex, and requires only collective will to implement it. The constant increase in contingent faculty is possible because there is a large workforce willing to take such jobs, but that need not be the case. Collectively, we should reduce the number of new PhDs to reinforce the power of skilled labor in this profession. Such a tactic should work in conjunction with unionization, limiting credentialing alongside labor organization.

Humanities departments have for generations and especially since 2008 graduated more students than there are academic jobs for them to have. We are now reaping the consequences of that shortsighted and solipsistic approach, which led individual departments and universities to value the prestige of a PhD program and tenured faculty members’ access to graduate students over the health of the profession as a whole. The excruciating duration of the failure, which has by some measures been going on for fifty years, is an uncomfortable sign of the fecklessness of the leaders of the academic humanities. It is in significant part their refusal to confront issues of employability—because it would give in to the logic of neoliberalism, or concede to austerity, or whatever—that has made a tragedy of this particular commons. To echo Eric Hayot’s call, the sky is falling, and we cannot go on like this.

But rather than mourning the passing of literary studies, let me propose something better—at least for my own discipline of English. The majority of English literature PhD programs should be converted into terminal 4-6 year master’s degree programs. While continuing to fund students as if they were doctoral candidates, my proposal would instead offer an MA in English, an MFA in creative writing, a teaching credential, and (ideally) a trade skill offered in partnership with other departments or institutions.

• Graduate school in literary studies is now a ten-year process. This acknowledges that change. The PhD would become something closer to the project-based model of the European university.
• Dramatically cutting the number of PhD programs while increasing the number of master’s degrees cuts off the constant pouring of new graduates onto the job market while ensuring that it is still possible to get a PhD.
• The degrees could be ordered in any way a student chose, and a student could depart the program at any stage. In other words, each separate degree creates an off-ramp that allows graduate students to enter the workforce in a meaningful way if they choose, instead of only entering as a last resort after failing on the academic job market.
• At the same time, for those students fully committed to the PhD, each year in the master’s program offers them an additional year to apply to PhD programs, to ensure they can attend a program capable of placing its graduates in tenure-track jobs.
• Then, too, this model allows programs to maintain their current size, and thus for graduate students to continue to teach and be compensated for it.
• Incorporating a teaching credential into every graduate student’s education acknowledges the fact that many of these students will end up teaching high school regardless of their plans. The credential ensures they aren’t limited to the private school market.
• Incorporating an MFA. ensures their training in a variety of forms of writing and the teaching of creative writing. It opens up earlier the possibility of working in media or publishing.

In suggesting the incorporation of a trade skill–-perhaps the most unlikely suggestion—I speak somewhat surprisingly from experience. In 2005, while completing my master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, I also attended a one-year appliance repair program at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. It was, upon reflection, one of the more interesting years of my academic life. Every morning from 7:30 to noon, I would go downtown and learn about processes like the interaction of evaporators and condensers in a refrigerator; in the afternoons, I discussed queer theory; and at night I taught Descartes and John Searle to undergraduates. It was a fascinating mixture, and could have been more so if directed by a supervisor who understood better than I did the implications of what I was doing.

Obviously a trade diploma offers additional job prospects to graduate students. But such a program moreover offers an opportunity to invigorate interdisciplinary connections. Imagine that every PhD student in the medical humanities had a degree in nursing, or that everyone working on literature and finance had a degree in accounting, or that the digital humanists had certificates in information technology. We should not assume that our students have nothing to learn in such courses: studying alongside practitioners can help us grasp the insights that lie in skill, insights valuable even if the student goes on to earn a PhD. Conversely, should such MA students end up leaving the academy, imagine how a public understanding of the humanities might benefit from a worker who had studied literary theory in every trade organization.

A recent essay by Andrew Kay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Academe’s Extinction Event,” has portrayed the humanities as collectively dying, but it includes a stimulating call from Anna Kornbluh to build something out of the wreckage:

The threat of extinction — not just academic extinction but human extinction in worsening ecological conditions — is a vicious one that calls for wild imaginings, which is exactly what the humanities enable.

Conversation about the essay has concentrated on the representativeness or lack thereof of the author’s personal experience, but I want to respond to his and Anna’s challenge. We do not need to let the humanities burn because there’s no way for our graduates to find satisfying work. Let’s build something better.

Guest blogger Patrick Fessenbecker is an assistant professor in the Program for Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas at Bilkent University, and his book The Ideas in Stories is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.

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