Grad students scramble as humanities jobs in academia dwindle

The Yale Daily News reports:

Dozens of humanities students in their final year at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will hand in their dissertations on March 15, completing their studies at Yale. But as the number of desirable jobs in academia dwindles, many of those students are scrambling to secure work before they leave Yale.

Students looking to enter academia typically search for faculty jobs with a preference for tenure-track positions, which offer the possibility of future job stability. But a variety of factors has made these positions more difficult to come by. In the humanities, the increasing number of Ph.D.’s produced by American universities combined with the decreasing number of tenure-track openings and the simultaneous increase in adjunct professorships has created a stifled job market.

“What we’re seeing is that students on graduation are not getting tenure-track jobs,” said Pamela Schirmeister ’80 GRD ’88 — now the senior associate dean and dean of strategic initiatives at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “They’re getting a one-year job here. They’re getting a postdoc. Postdocs in the humanities are becoming much more common, and it is taking them two, three, four years to land a tenure-track job – if at all.”

According to the Humanities Indicator Index, from 2009 to 2014, the proportion of humanities Ph.D’s who finished their degrees with a firm job commitment in academic or other sectors dropped by 19 percent. While STEM fields also saw a decline in new Ph.D.’s with firm job commitments, the percentage decrease ranged from only two to 12 percent for different STEM fields over the same time period.

According to David Kastan, a professor and job placement officer for the English Department, Yale and other universities have decreased the number of admits into the Graduate School in recent years, but universities are still awarding more humanities Ph.D.’s than in the past. According to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 2015, 5,891 humanities Ph.D.’s graduated in the United States – the largest recorded number since 1987. The number of new Ph.D.’s in the humanities has increased almost every year from 2007 to 2015.

For you rookies out there are..... There is a bubble in higher education . A case could be made that higher education isn't for everyone....