To Strive, To Seek, To Find

Unicorn Gate at the University of Aberdeen

By their junior year in college, students who are thinking about attending graduate school should start researching graduate programs online. Consider the following factors:

Location. Are you tied to a particular geographical location? Your choices will be pretty limited automatically. If you’re free to relocate, consider applying to schools in an area you’ve always dreamed of living.

Google. Start by Googling such search terms as “Masters English” or “English graduate program” or “graduate school English” to generate a great quantity of programs. You can learn a LOT through idle browsing.

Ranking. All graduate programs are not created equal. Your needs as someone pursuing secondary teaching accreditation are very different from someone who’s planning to become a research professor. Examine various programs’ application requirements: in general, programs which require the GRE are more selective. Selectivity matters mainly if you’re interested in getting a Ph.D. after your Master’s. Contact a librarian to help you find an issue of U.S. News and World Report which ranks university programs nationally. These breakdowns are very specific: for instance, USN&WR ranked the University of Minnesota 13th in GLBT studies in literature.

Faculty. So, you’re a great fan of women’s issues in the Victorian novel. Because you cited Susan Gubar in every single paper you ever wrote, you might actually like to go to Indiana University and study under her! In other words, you might select your graduate program because of the particular faculty or resources in your area of interest. The downfall of this strategy, of course, is that your favorite scholar is liable to retire or trade up to a more prestigious university.

Fundage. No two ways about it: you have to go to a program you can afford. Many people work slowly toward an advanced degree, keeping to a pace that fits their yearly budget and work schedule. More traditional graduate students hope to earn fellowships (free tuition plus a small stipend),  teaching assistantships (free tuition and a small stipend in return for teaching), or research assistantships and do not work outside of the University.

Chime in, readers! What are other factors to consider?

Gate at the University of Aberdeen

 

So what exactly IS graduate school?

Graduate school refers to programs of study leading to the conferral of degrees beyond the Bachelor’s (B.A. or B.S.) level. Students can earn Master’s Degrees (M.A. or M.S.) and then, perhaps, move on to the Doctorate (Ph.D.). Whereas high-school and undergraduate studies tend to be broad and comprehensive, graduate studies are highly specialized.

Why do people go to graduate school?

Students choose to attend graduate schools for a number of personal and/or professional reasons. Certain professions, such as elementary and high-school teaching, require a commitment to continuing education. Some graduate students think that an M.A. will make them more attractive to prospective employers or more qualified for promotion in their existing work. Many students are looking for the continued personal and intellectual development that comes with advanced study in a specific discipline. And many are  trying to find out if they want to pursue the Ph.D. and become professors.

The Benefits of the M.A.

Granted: the news about the lack of tenure-track professor positions in our last post is grim indeed. Before you completely write off graduate school, however, here’s another point to consider.

While a Ph.D. essentially trains you for a job as a scholar/researcher/teacher (that is — to be a professor), the M.A. often translates very well to work in editing, writing, coorporate content managing, advertising, public relations, publishing, and a host of other “real world” employment.

A possible strategy for someone who really wants to become a professor might be to go ahead and earn the M.A. After all, in almost all cases, you’d have to earn the M.A. before moving on the Ph.D. anyway. Working in the M.A. program, however, lets you test if you’d really like being a professor. The scholarly expectations are ramped up drastically in graduate school: you’ll discover if you stand out among your M.A. peers or not. And, likely, you’ll be a “graduate teaching assistant,”  grading piles of freshman composition essays, so you’ll discover whether you actually like teaching in a writing-heavy discipline or not.

In short, the M.A. lets you test the waters of academia. If you’re a superstar new teacher and LOVE the intense life of the mind in your graduate courses and in your master’s thesis, then you’ll probably want to go on for the Ph.D., anyway, and nobody will be able to dissuade you! But if you discover the life’s not for you, you can graduate with your M.A., your sanity, and some marketable skills. 

To learn more about why English Majors go on to graduate school, read this very long and thoughtful blog by Eastern Michigan University professor Steven Krause.

What are your suggestions for someone who is pursuing a graduate education in English with the intent of teaching at a college level? In short, if I want your job where do I start?

Poor, deluded soul. Let me explain a few things about the state of the discipline. Everyone knows by now how badly the recession is hurting funding for higher education. Intriguingly, however, the job market for English professors crashed forty years ago and has been crashing cyclically ever since.

In days of yore, most doctorates could find tenure-track positions at colleges and universities. Several factors emerging in the late twentieth century, however, have led to a job crunch in the Humanities disciplines. As higher education has been increasingly available to women, minorities, G.I.s, and working-class populations, it is only natural that a larger pool of candidates moves into graduate work, resulting in the production of more Ph.D.s. For instance, “in the 2002–03 academic year, 1,246 people earned PhDs in English” (Quarrocino).

While it would seem that more people flooding higher education would result in the need for more Ph.D.’s to teach the influx of students, the reality is somewhat the inverse. During this period, undergraduates were increasingly likely to be taught by a graduate teaching assistant than a professor. Graduate students are a LOT cheaper labor pool than professors.

So now we have a system (in English departments) which requires lots of graduate students to fuel its enormous need for cheap labor to teach the burgeoning freshman composition courses. But there’s not always a lot for these graduate students to do once they’ve taught their freshman courses and earned their degrees.

More recently, and even more disturbingly, the remaining tenure-track positions are being eroded by the tendency of many universities to hire contingent or part-time faculty. In many cases, these faculty members hold the Ph.D., but they are in non-tenure track positions, often performing part-time work with no health insurance, no benefits, at very low per-course wages, and with no security that their courses or programs will be there next semester.

This tendency to move away from tenure-track positions is disturbing for many reasons, but it’s evident. The Modern Language Association notes grimly: “Our analysis of the October lists suggests that, in any given year, from half to three-fifths of the total number of positions announced annually are tenure-track appointments at the rank of assistant professor” (“Report on the 2003-4 Job Information List”).

Or, to put it another way: “74.2% (448) [positions] were advertised at the level of tenure-track assistant professor,” Andrea Quarracino reports, citing the MLA “2004 Survey of Hiring Departments.” Yes, that’s right: 448 tenure-track positions at a time when 1,246 English Ph.D.’s came out into the market. So a lot of those English Ph.D.’s are not getting tenure-track jobs. And don’t forget the several hundred who didn’t get a job last year and so are competing with this year’s candidates….

Thomas H. Benton’s recent article in the Chronicle says it all: “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go.”

Well, if you love a life of poverty, suspense, high stakes and debts, tune in later in the week for nitty-gritty details and advice for proceeding along the path to the English doctorate. It’s nice work if you can get it! And if you get it, it’s more like a lottery than a meritocracy.

Works Cited

Benton, Thomas H. “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jan.30, 2009.

Quarracino, Andrea. “Annual Report on the Academic Job Market.” The Association of Writers and Writing Programs. From the October 2005 issue of AWP Job List. (copyright 2006). http://www.awpwriter.org/careers/andrea01.htm

“Report on the 2003-4 Job Information List.” Fall 2004 MLA Newsletter. http://www.ade.org/jil/JIL_rpt.2003-04.pdf

The long awaited Minnesota State Universities Job Fair is coming soon: mark your calendars for Friday, February 19.

Register now through February 10 and pay only $10 for registration.  Register February 11-18 and pay $15. On February 19, pay a late registration of $20.

The MNSU Job Fair is an exciting opportunity to meet prospective employers, network with industry recruiters, and maybe even interview  for actual employment. Registrants may upload their resumes to the Job Fair website, where attending employers can view them.

Go here  http://www.mnsujobfair.org/     to find out more about this Job Fair, including location, hours, parking, attending employers, a how-to video, and more.

Go to Metropolitan State’s own Career Center to register and find out about upcoming workshops to hone your resume-writing and interviewing skills: http://www.metrostate.edu/msweb/pathway/academic_success/counselcareer/career_services/

The first Wednesday of each month is devoted to testing the public alert sirens in Saint Paul….and writing in with all your burning questions about life at the university, advising issues, concerns about writing, fears about employment, or anything else vaguely related to literature / academia / graduate school / programs / writing / advice that you happened to be wondering about.

Dr. Durant will set her cat team of experts to work on uncovering the answers!

So what are you waiting for?? Post a question!

My Big Blue Behemoth, as it’s affectionately called, is a tenure dossier.  When professors are hired by universities, it takes a lot of time and resources to choose someone who’s a good fit for the department or program needs and goals, so there’s a long “getting to know how you work” period of five-seven years.

And then the university has to decide: are we keeping this professor or shall we send him or her back into the world to find a better fit?

If the professor wishes to stay at Metro, he or she must  demonstrate competency in five main areas of professor’s duties:  I. Teaching, II. Scholarship and/or Creative Accomplishments, III. Contributions to Student Growth (i.e., advising), IV. Continuing Study and Preparation, and V. Service.  So professors stick all the student evaluations and course syllabi  in the dossier, all their articles or chapters or conference presentations, all their evidence of helping students, and all their evidence of service on committees, unions, community, etc.

Tenure often comes under fire from the corporate world, but such criticisms are misdirected and fail to understand the unique nature of the academy. It’s not here to make money. For instance, if I’m lucky enough to be awarded tenure, I now have a lifetime’s investment in the university’s long-term health and excellence. If my job were a year to year contract , do you think I’d spend my summers planning new courses I’d wouldn’t be guaranteed to teach? Do you think I’d serve on endless committees and spend three years helping to design, say, the new Gender Studies Program? Tenured faculty are secure enough to undertake longitudinal studies of decades’ worth of data accumulation. That kind of research could never even be imagined if a professor was working from year to year. And in some ways, a faculty with a long memory and a lot at stake in the future of the institution can serve as a balance to administrative forces which tend to be more temporary than most faculty.

So, all in all, tenure generally translates into a loyal faculty who take vast pride in their achievements and who can securely speak out in the name of academic freedoms without fear of recriminations. Colleges and universities are under a lot of public pressure and scrutiny from various interest groups: it’s good to know that the intellectual free play of ideas is still protected in the halls of academia.

Now you know where I’ve been: I’ve been photocopying, punching holes, organizing, and writing my dossier to make my case for tenure. I hope I am awarded tenure: the Faculty meet and give their recommendation in February, the Dean and Provost in March, and the President in April.  That’s a lot of nails to chew through!!!!