Posted on 12/18/2009 1:06:34 PM PST by BurbankKarl
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.
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.
The association expects about 900 English language and literature positions to be filled over the next year, a 35 percent decline from the previous year; it projects about 750 foreign-language jobs, a 39 percent drop from the year before. Typically, 1,000 to 2,000 positions have been advertised each year in each category
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Even the “Flashdance” chick was smart enough to learn welding as a fallback.
Oh the HUGH MANATEES!! *sobs*
Are people finally waking up to the fact that crap degrees mostly equal crap jobs? WOW!
Actully its like political science or philosophy,, why waste your time on that?
Perhaps the jobs outlook is better for Art History majors.
What will all of those cute coeds studing english do now?
The person with an engineering degree asks ‘How can that be built?’
The person with a business degree asks ‘How much will that cost?’
The person with the liberal arts degree asks ‘Would you like fries with that?’
Poli sci (and sociology) can be marketable depending on how they’re done. Departments that are serious about producing graduates who can get jobs outside of academia make sure the major requires some serious statistics (as in large-scale computerized data analysis), as well as economics, and these are definitely marketable skills, for government, consumer businesses, and campaign-related jobs. Some departments require this, other give credit toward the major for such coursework, but don’t require it, and some places are only interested in pushing leftist ideology courses.
Ahhhhh Graduate English majors, wanderers in the valley of the shadow of books.
Damn-I was all set to post it myself.....
; )
These degrees are like fine wine. They are really only for the people who have the money and time to afford it, and they have aesthetic value but little nutritional value.
Let’s call this a “correction”.
the free market at work.
No wonder all those #$%^ are libs.
they just hate free markets.
Maybe McDonald’s will open a couple more registers so I won’t have to wait so long.
These degrees exist because back in the day the only people who went to colleges were people who were from rich families who didn’t really need a job. The education was just supposed to make them more refined.
Nowadays people go to college for job preparation, and almost all the humanities are completely useless for that purpose. Kids should be told this before they decide on a major.
I get on average two to three offers to interview every week. I have had at least 30 firm job offers in the past six months at salaries in excess of $75000 a year and several in excess of $100K. I dont know a participle from a gerund but the checks just keep on coming.
Ahhhhh Graduate English majors, wanderers in the valley of the shadow of books.
I think it is more that our literature has steeply declined since politics and political correctness has taken over the literary world.
Heroism is out, victimism is in. that’s very very boring and makes for poorly-written crap passed off as literature.
Yep. They are out there demanding more money for education because after all, acedemia is the only place they can make it. Soft sissy jobs sitting around in their liberal echo chamber hating America and all she stands for.
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