For someone who grew up in a province crippled by high unemployment, I really did not pay enough attention to the perils of the academic job market. In my senior year at Memorial University, the English department canceled a job in my area, and when I moved to the University of Western Ontario a young woman professor just past tenure addressed us all on our first day: "If you are white, if you are straight, if you are a man, you will not get a job."
I did, of course. I did not know what English professors made until I had my first contract, granted, but I did get a job. I was fortunate to have actually a choice of jobs. Moreover, most everyone in my cohort who stuck with it got a job, too. I will not defend government support of universities over the last decade -- social science and humanities research has really suffered -- but it is an indisputable fact that salaries in the professoriate have improved and there have been jobs.
All that is over.
From the deep cuts in Ontario to the anticipated funding freeze in the West, governments have little money for post-secondary education. This Spring, for the first time since I came to Lethbridge, we did not fill an advertised replacement position in our English department. If you look at University Affairs, you will notice a decline in advertisements, and I expect this Autumn to be grim. During even the good times, you could find at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association platoons of lean and hungry graduate students marching off to preliminary interviews in hopes they might graduate with a job -- or, at least, escape the sessional track. Next Christmas in Philadelphia, there will be desperation in the air.
Back in Canada, we have eleven months before we all come together again at the Congress in Montreal. By the time we meet, jobs are settled for September. There is less pressure. All we have to do is prepare a face to meet the graduate students who come to give papers. I have, for the last decade, given the same advice. Give good papers; meet influential people. If you love the life, keep studying until someone asks you to start paying for it yourself. My rationale has been, in a decent job market, that the profession has preliminary competitions that help determine future competitiveness. But, now, there are likely to be no jobs for scholarship and fellowship winners, award-winning teaching assistants, and those students who already know that they can publish.
I could hardly look them in the eye this year. What about next?
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