It's a tough year for job seekers in academia.  So was 2008.  People said last year that the job market would improve by the time the Modern Language Association released its listings of open positions in English and Foreign Language departments worldwide, which happened to be this past Tuesday, the 15th of September.

Even though 20% of job listings were canceled by the end of the 2008 hiring season, at the start of it all, in my personal field of study, there were over 200 jobs at the ring of the starting bell last September.  This year?  Less than eighty on that first day.  Three days later, about a dozen or so were added.  Still under a hundred.  And that means the math for this year is very bad, because even the greatest mathematician realizes that 80% of 200 jobs is still greater than 100% of 90 jobs, which is approximately where the figure now stands.

Of course, this is just in my particular discipline, but I think we can use it as a sort of synechdoche for what's going on in the profession as a whole-- let one part stand for the many, many job seekers in the Humanities who are watching their entire graduate careers come to naught, who are completely panicked about what they'll do about their debt when they are forced to graduate and cannot find a job, who will (after said graduation) be without health insurance, and who (because they've been in school, and working ever so hard, but not for a business) will not be eligible for unemployment once they leave the nest of the university.

To wit: The would-be professor who cannot profess, who is trained in today's technologies and has just spent 5-10 years honing their teaching skills, who is sharp and savvy and aware of the needs of today's youth--these are the people this economy is turning away.  And when I say "economy," I actually mean American Academia as a whole, whose policy lately has been to stop hiring, cut salaries and pensions, and in general maintain an intellectual status quo by holding innovation and revitalization at arm's length. 

And meanwhile, tuition for the average student increases, while, thanks to American Academia, the quality of their education is on a downhill slip-n-slide towards mediocrity--at best.

As a job seeker and last-year graduate student, these things frighten me beyond reason.  Actually no... the terror is completely reasonable. 

Join me here as I give you a travelogue of what it's like to be a Humanities Doctoral Candidate (or ABD, All But Dissertation) who is On The Market in the worst economy since Hoover was president.

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