'The Great Shame of Our Profession'
Here&#x27;s all you need to know about the greatest shame in Academia:<p>&gt;<i>According to the most recent MLA jobs report, there were only 361 assistant professor tenure-track job openings in all fields of English literature in 2014-15. The number of Ph.D. recipients in English that year was 1,183. Many rejected candidates return to the job market year after year and compound the surplus.</i><p>Now, this begs a much deeper, more heady discussion regarding priorities and values within the US Higher Education system. The question to consider is <i>Does this out-of-whack-ratio mean we have too many English graduates or not enough English jobs?</i> And - while you&#x27;d probably knee jerk to the former rather than the latter, I think I could make a compelling case to disagree.<p>It&#x27;s not that it&#x27;s wrong to pursue a lifetime in English or Music, it&#x27;s just very tough to realize that as a nation, the US has its priorities terribly fucked up and refuses to support even a decent standard of living and healthcare for those who would devote their lives to such pursuits. This should be in bold text on every student loan application in the Liberal Arts, and perhaps others as well. We don&#x27;t need room after room of high minded PhDs talking Milton, but we do need PhDs to be taxpayers, and there are plenty of immigrants year after year that if English was a priority, it would get funding and infrastructure to support both the Educators and Students. Which, as we can see, isn&#x27;t the case for now.