WITH US colleges and universities cutting back because of the recession, the job outlook for graduates of English literature and language programs across the country is bleaker than ever before, The New York Times has reported.
According to the Modern Language Association's (MLA) forecast of job listings, faculty positions will decline 37 percent, the biggest drop since the New York-based association began tracking job listings 35 years ago. This projection is based on a comparison of the number of jobs listed in October 2008 and October 2009.
“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 to 60 percent,” said Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA. “What I often hear from graduates is, ‘I had no clue it was this bad.' They need to go into it with their eyes wide open.”
While the MLA list does not cover every academic position available, it does track the overall faculty job market. The association expects about 900 English language and literature positions to be filled over the next year, and it projects about 750 foreign-language jobs. Typically, 1,000 to 2,000 positions are advertised each year in each category.
To make matters worse, the share of tenure-track jobs available has been shrinking. Such positions for assistant professors made up 53 percent of the English jobs advertised and 48.5 percent of those in foreign languages. From 1997 until recently, the MLA said, 55 to 65 percent of the advertised positions were tenure-track jobs.
For English professors, most of the advertised jobs are in rhetoric and composition (20.1 percent), British literature (17.9 percent), multiethnic literature (13.7 percent), creative writing (7 percent), and American literature (6.1. percent).
For those who specialize in 20th-century American literature, finding a job is especially tough. “A single listing gets flooded with 300 to 400 applicants, and grads are up against formidable odds,” said Alysia Garrison, a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Davis, who is also president of the Graduate Student Caucus at the language association.
For languages other than English, the jobs are concentrated in Spanish (35.5 percent), French (16 percent), Chinese (9.5 percent), German (4 percent), Arabic (3 percent) and Italian (2 percent).
