There's No Business Like No Business

Hey, kids, let's put on a show! We'll call it "Gold Diggers of 2009," and it'll be all about trying to get people to give you money now that Cheeseville U. has announced that for 2009-2010 it will no longer fund grad students past their eighth year. Nope, not even tuition remission. Not that we're starting our ninth years, but in 2010-2011 Cheeseville U. will no longer fund grad students past their seventh year. Now we're getting into Slightly Scary Land, huh? You better hope there's no family emergency or serious illness in your near future. Or that you don't have to change your topic at the last minute because your committee members can't get their acts together for a year to approve your prospectus. Or that your archive doesn't burn down. Or that that foundation you were counting on to give you a grant didn't get sucked into the Bernie Madoff vortex.

Oh, wait, I've got it! Let's get the New York Times to write a blistering exposé about the academic job market. Impossible? Well, how about a quizzical piece about how jobs for humanities Ph.D.'s are drying up? Start it off with a guy who applied for two dozen (two dozen!) jobs (can you hear the sound of my hands wringing?) and try to keep from wondering why he only found two dozen institutions worthy of receiving his cover letters and teaching portfolios. Raise your hand if you know people who sent out more than forty within the past several years, way before the Times discovered this "downturn in jobs for Ph.D.'s in the humanities." It's true that lots of searches were cancelled this year because of hiring freezes and the AHA reported a 15 percent decline in the number of schools doing interviews at the annual conference. But what exactly is new here? Did the Times send Jimmy Olsen, Boy Reporter, to write this? Anyone who even applied to grad school within the past fifteen years knew this (and if you didn't, you should have your undergrad adviser assassinated). Academe is kind of like show business, except in show business you will probably land in New York at some point and take a turn as a clueless witness on Law and Order, the residuals from which will likely be higher than the royalties you'd get from publishing a book with an academic press. You will also come away with professional headshots instead of five hundred books that weigh a ton. Times, wake up.

This post was brought to you today by the letters C, R, A, and B.