When you say "this particular program," do you mean the Ph.D. in English in general, or the program at a specific university? If you're hearing the same things over and over again in a particular department, I'd say to take the comments very seriously -- unhappy grad students are a sign that the program has problems you probably don't want to deal with.
If you're talking about the profession in general, the job prospects are bleak everywhere (at least if you're looking for a tenure-track teaching position at the college level). However, everything else you've mentioned is going to vary from institution to institution. If you're confident that you want this degree regardless of whether it leads to a job or not, go for it -- just make sure you talk to as many people in your prospective department as possible and choose a program that emphasizes the things you want to study, and a university where the institutional climate feels right to you.
First, I'll plug a community you may find useful in this endeavor: applyingtograd. That being said, this community can probably provide some better feedback on some of the specifics of your question, due to the population makeup here
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Interesting. It sounds to me that other fields are more bleak. I have friends in American studies and Women studies having a more difficult time finding jobs than those in English.
However, the Political Science people don't seem to have a hard time.
I think this might be a trend across disciplines. The non-traditional fields are bringing new and popular perspectives, but the traditional PhDs are getting jobs. This is how it was put to me when I was looking at Anthropology as well as less traditional PhD programs (cultural studies and the like).
Yeah, I've had my own doubts about the uncategorical "English is so bad!" that I started hearing about a few years ago. Supposedly, my field is second to English in that regards, but again, I have my doubts. And someone told me yesterday that if you don't mind teaching at a small liberal arts college, it's really not that difficult after all.
But American studies also makes sense to me as one area where there may be difficulty; I get the impression that it's getting pretty populated pretty quick, but the jobs aren't yet established for it. Women's studies, too, is just such a small field (relatively speaking).
1. Bleak job market sounds somewhat true. Go to as high ranked a program as you can get into with funding and/or Don't be a "I refuse to teach ENG 101 at a community college the rest of my life!" snob.
2. Funding depends on the university. Funding in general is going by the wayside, but if you're at one of those schools with a zillion sections of ENG 101 then there's funding (ie, teaching it). 3. I don't get the question. There is no incompatibility with texts and cultural studies. 4. Why red-headed? Don't worry, "communications" will always be made fun of more than English. 5. Depends. I'm doing an M.A. and don't have to take any theory at all. My uni requires exactly one theory course for the PhD.
There are some film classes out there. At my uni though, for instance, I have NEVER had an English professor show a film.
I adore cultural studies. I'm always taking classes involving feminism, ethnic lit, etc. I find it annoying when people want to take none of that because I think it's part of being well-rounded. If anything I wish people took MORE of it as a way of "revaluing" the undervalued.
Academia is hard. The amount of work it takes to "make it" is phenomenal. that's why I'm stopping after my M.A. You have to way it more than anything, possibly more than having a balanced life.
I'm between the third and fourth years of a PhD program in English, and even though my emphasis is creative writing, I think I can offer some help regarding your concerns
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On the contrary, I would recommend not taking out loans even if you have to apply to 15 universities three years in a row to get a decent funding pacakge.
Loans will suck your freedom dry when you graduate. Suddenly you'll be chained to your loans. The only good reason I can think of to get them are health problems, or med school.
I understand why people wouldn't want to take loans, but even with funding I couldn't afford to live without them and still get my work done. The alternative to loans for me would be picking up two or three classes over at the community college, which would take up a huge amount of time (on top of the two or three classes I already teach per semester, my own work, and my work for a journal). Frankly, I'd rather not have to stress out over money now and have more time to devote to my work. I've got no debt besides my student loans, and I know I'm going to be paying them back for a long time, but I think of them as a good investment.
If you are pursuing what you love, my hat's off to you. So far as I can tell, however, the academic job market for English Literature Ph.D.s has been bleak for a very long time. When I was an undergrad English major, I picked up a copy of a wildly optimistic prospectus called "The Ph.D. in English and American Literature: A Report to the Profession" when it came out in 1968. At that time, the whole of academe was still flush with the postwar influx of funding -- and though this was mostly earmarked for science and technology (in response to various "gaps" decried in Cold War ideology), the arts and humanities experienced a substantial coattail effect. Then the bottom fell out of the market for English professors in 1970, and stayed bad. I went to grad school in English, but there were basically two possible routes to any shot at an academic position, neither one too promising: (1) find a part of the field that hadn't been picked over and study that, even if it was nowhere near what you were interested in (a "Modern Lit" Ph.D., for
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Wow. Min0taur, the academic world is the poorer for not having you. Good capsule history and analysis; thanks. I am one of those "cultural studies" types, having started in that "shriveled" field of Classics *sniffs sadly* and my dual background in environmental science is what's going to help me find my "niche."
To the OP, I'd mention that without meaning to detract at all from English/Lit, which I also mourn the decline of, try looking at your prospective programs with an eye to what other fields they do overlap into. Ecocriticism, for instance (lit crit applied to environmental writing, or Nature in Literature), is a fairly solid newer area with a lot of relevance and research to be done.
Well, I've seen a similar strategy bear fruit. My wife took an MLS (as they were known in the '70s) as an "eating degree," and wound up with two master's degrees; the other was in ethnomusicology, a pretty arcane field at the time. Over the next 15 or so years, she developed her primary professional skills and track record as an archivist and librarian. Presently she works as the university archivist at a small, privately funded liberal-arts university, and teaches ethnomusicology-based elective courses (in the music and anthro departments) as adjunct faculty. No tenure track there, per se, but also no publish-or-perish. She publishes on what she is interested in that she feels might help the archival profession, when she wants to. Meanwhile she gets to teach in one of the fields she loves. The other field she loves (no surprise) is archive-and-library work. She loves both the books and their content. If you are drawn in similar directions, it could be worth following up on. I do think you'll have to thoroughly befriend computers --
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If you're talking about the profession in general, the job prospects are bleak everywhere (at least if you're looking for a tenure-track teaching position at the college level). However, everything else you've mentioned is going to vary from institution to institution. If you're confident that you want this degree regardless of whether it leads to a job or not, go for it -- just make sure you talk to as many people in your prospective department as possible and choose a program that emphasizes the things you want to study, and a university where the institutional climate feels right to you.
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However, the Political Science people don't seem to have a hard time.
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But American studies also makes sense to me as one area where there may be difficulty; I get the impression that it's getting pretty populated pretty quick, but the jobs aren't yet established for it. Women's studies, too, is just such a small field (relatively speaking).
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2. Funding depends on the university. Funding in general is going by the wayside, but if you're at one of those schools with a zillion sections of ENG 101 then there's funding (ie, teaching it). 3. I don't get the question. There is no incompatibility with texts and cultural studies. 4. Why red-headed? Don't worry, "communications" will always be made fun of more than English. 5. Depends. I'm doing an M.A. and don't have to take any theory at all. My uni requires exactly one theory course for the PhD.
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I adore cultural studies. I'm always taking classes involving feminism, ethnic lit, etc. I find it annoying when people want to take none of that because I think it's part of being well-rounded. If anything I wish people took MORE of it as a way of "revaluing" the undervalued.
Academia is hard. The amount of work it takes to "make it" is phenomenal. that's why I'm stopping after my M.A. You have to way it more than anything, possibly more than having a balanced life.
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Could you explain what you mean by this?
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Loans will suck your freedom dry when you graduate. Suddenly you'll be chained to your loans. The only good reason I can think of to get them are health problems, or med school.
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To the OP, I'd mention that without meaning to detract at all from English/Lit, which I also mourn the decline of, try looking at your prospective programs with an eye to what other fields they do overlap into. Ecocriticism, for instance (lit crit applied to environmental writing, or Nature in Literature), is a fairly solid newer area with a lot of relevance and research to be done.
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(The comment has been removed)
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