.edu bashing

[Vaska Andjelkovic]

>> Check out the job market for Humanities majors...
>
>This arguement won't generate a lot of sympathy.You made your choice,
>hopefully with a full understanding of your employment options.

As late as 1990, most English departments across North America were in a
rare mood of heightened optmimism and even guarded ebullience.  Incoming
doctoral students were jubillantly shown detailed demographic and economic
data which claimed that the mid-1990s would see an employment boom for
humanities Ph.D.s similar to that by now legendary hiring bonanza of the
1960s.  No one was able to predict, at the time, that the then incipient
recession would turn into an economic slump of proportions last seen in the
immediate pre WWII era; or that the continent-wide cuts in education budgets
would be as drastic as they have since proven to be.  The young people who
were then entering doctoral programs did so with considerable encouragement:
U of Chicago's Dept. of English, for example, which had been routinely
warning its doctoral program applicants of their dire employment prospects
during the early-to-mid-80s stopped doing so around the time I'm talking
about.  The suggestion that the younger scholars who, if *lucky*, are now
working in academic ghetto-jobs had made their own beds, etc. is simply
oblivious of the actual facts.  One of my colleagues who was fortunate
enough to snag a one-year sessional last year is currently working as a
bar-tender and, incidentally, making more than she did a year ago.
Neverthless, she'd prefer to be teaching.  

Vaska