First came the brazen academic job ads from CSU and Harvard; then came the announcement that Emory is drastically cutting undergraduate and graduate programs. Selfishly, on days like this, knowing that I’ve decided not to deal with the academic job market floods me with relief. I’m sending my best thoughts to all my friends and colleagues who are braving it. Meanwhile, SCI’s work on graduate education seems more timely than ever, and I’m glad to be a part of it.
Update: Because others have written on both of these issues more thoughtfully than I have, check out their posts if you want to know more.
On the job ads with expiry date:
- Lee Bessette, “Why Bother? Thoughts From an ‘Old’ PhD”
- Kelli Marshall, “Earning the PhD and a Sense of False Hope: My Experiences (So Far) in This Racket Called Academia”
- Timothy Burke, “Welcome to Academia! Now Get Out!”
- Daniel Paul O’Donnell, “On Being Lazy and Ignorant”
- This tweet from Miriam Posner also struck me as particularly apt. After all, if grad students know they can only be hired within 2-3 years of completion, humanities grad programs can expect to see time-to-degree get even longer than its current average of 9 years.
(Note that both ads have now been changed, as reported on 9/17 by Inside Higher Ed.)
On Emory:
- Tressie McMillan Cottom, “Emory University’s Program Cuts Get Ahead of the Curve”
- Emory’s official announcement
- Alan G. Pike has Storified tweets about Emory’s program cuts
- More on Emory, from Dan Berrett at the Chronicle
I’ll continue to add to this as others write on the topics, which they undoubtedly will.
As if all that weren’t enough, now this news from CUNY. Wow.