If you are a Ph.D student in the humanities (I cannot speak
for other disciplines), you must have heard the “doom and gloom” speech about
the state of the job market in the profession. If you have not had your future
career dismantled when it has not yet started, perhaps you ought to ask your
advisor about what Ari Kelman has called “the ruined wastes of what used to be
known as the job market” (reference below). The bottom line is this: most of us
will not get R1 research jobs, and most of us will not get tenured: a fact,
which in no way means that I will not try my hardest to get an academic job.
This is simply the reality I am confronted with.
Considering the state of the market, it is natural to
understand how it got there (and blame certain people, though I am not sure
fingerpointing is a particularly useful exercise). Two blog posts by excellent
scholars have had interesting perspectives. The blog of
Historian on the Edge points to the conquest of the discipline by
non-specialists, as well as the contempt of the media and other pundits of our
profession, in that, scholars are not in any way remunerated for insights given
to third parties.
Perhaps not, but Ari Kelman responds quite shrewdly that “if one wants one’s
work to be made available to the public, one either has to do it oneself or
find someone else to serve as a mouthpiece.
Personally, I’m delighted when journalists or popular historians want to
talk about my work — though I do hope they’ll credit me with any insights they
glean from the conversation.”
From the few meetings we have had as a graduate community,
as well as conversations with peers at various institutions, it appears that the
humanities are faced with an important conundrum. First, as Ari Kelman
remarked, in the cited blog post, on “the glut of Ph.Ds” flooding the market.
This is a problem with which scholars involved at the graduate level are keenly
aware. “Plan B” (alternatives to academia) solutions seems to be a new area of
discussion amongst Directors of Graduate Studies.
So, if there are too many graduate students on the market,
what can be done (and here is the conundrum part)? Accepting less is
unfortunately a limited option. Graduate students are needed, not by the market
writ large, but by the academic institutions. Large lecture halls require one
professor, but two to three graduate students. The way things are at present, I
can teach up to three sections of thirty students. The aggregate number of
students is tremendous (grading papers takes forever), but what is most
frustrating for me is the large class size. I simply cannot give the attention
to the students that they need. So, how do you respond to the facts that a) there
are too many Ph.Ds on the market, and b) the universities will not
fundamentally be able to retain appropriate teaching quality while continuously
dropping enrollment of graduate students. That is, graduate students are needed
by the academia for a certain amount of time, but much less so by the market on
the other side of graduate school (the professorial market, and the
“real-world” market). By way of analogy, not everyone entering the military
becomes a ranked officer.
At a very fundamental level, I will agree with a friend,
also a Ph.D student from the less-than-sexy field of Medieval Studies (I like
it, but hey…): “Will I get disappointed if I don’t get a job? Sure. But if you
get in this field in order to get a job in that field, you are clearly in the
wrong field.” Underlying my friend’s comment is something I could not agree
with more: we are historians because we love history. Why I love history (aside
from delusions of ever being Indiana Jones), I am not entirely sure. I just do.
And this is why I am in graduate school: I want to be a professional in the
field that I love.
Amateurism in the field of history is a problem only for
professionals (myself included). Having first undergone the selection processes
at the undergraduate level to become one of the top of my class, having then
undergone the selection process for getting into graduate school,
(hypotheticals follow, based on the Historian on the Edge post) then
(hopefully) survived graduate school, and (hopefully) getting an academic job
to finally (hopefully) getting tenure SHOULD qualify me as a historian. Being
called a historian SHOULD then be a matter of pride. So when bozos on the
History Channel call themselves historians (that guy who wrote Holy Blood Holy
Grail), it is a problem for me. They are not, in fact, historians. I share the
Historian on the Edge’s frustration, as well as Kelman’s on that one. We are
trained, we have acquired a technique, a skill through our training. It is not
a skill that is natural, or inherent in human beings, though some people are
more prone to exhibiting it, just like mathematics for those kids that “just
got it” in High School. Think about Aristotle’s Poetics: there is a technique
to writing drama.
But as I am considering the grim prospects of my future, yet
taking tremendous pleasure in my present, I remembered Grafton’s point in Worlds Made by Words: academics have
never been particularly wealthy. This point is reiterated by a classicist, Alan
Cameron, in The Last Pagans of Rome.
The literary scholars of the late-fourth century were, in general, neither the
top aristocrats, nor were they known to be extraordinarily wealthy. Ausonius
was a wealthy landowner, but by no means on par with the Anicii or “Jerome’s
widows.” Likewise, Augustine was not a member of the high aristocracy of North Africa,
and coveted well-paid positions of tutoring (and even then one can argue
whether the intellectual pursuits were his primary goals). Then, are we harking
back to a golden age that really existed in the post-world-war II economic boom
(1950-1970), and again briefly from 1980 to 2000? Did that golden age even
exist?
The point that Kelman makes in the end (agreeing with the
Historian on the Edge) is that ““professional historians should become more
involved in the discussion about the crisis of history education — if, amidst
the push for ever more STEM education, we’re still having that discussion at
all” is well made. Perhaps this is our plan B: get involved in the communities.
I do think our training has value: synthesis of large bodies of text, cultural
sensitivity that is not principled, but ingrained by our postcolonial training,
number of language known, etc… It is now up to us to relate our training to
modern needs. No family member of mine currently works in academia, much less
in the humanities, so at dinner parties, I am often asked: “What does a historian
of Rome do?” When I explain, people are often amazed, sometimes indifferent.
But those people that are amazed, though they are unlikely to fund our
research, are intrigued by the difficulty of the training, the commitment of
the student, and the set of skills that is acquired (sorry for all the
passives, gnomic statements are terrible for that).
Remember, medieval scholars were not all Aquinas or Abelard:
I, a
wandering scholar lad,
Born for toil and sadness,
Oftentimes am driven by
Poverty to madness.
Literature
and knowledge I
Fain would still be earning,
Were it not that want of pelf
Makes me cease from learning.
These torn
clothes that cover me
Are too thin and rotten;
Oft I have to suffer cold,
By the warmth forgotten.
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Scarce I can
attend at church,
Sing God's praises duly;
Mass and vespers both I miss,
Though I love them truly.
Oh, thou
pride of N---------,
By thy worth I pray thee
Give the suppliant help in need,
Heaven will sure repay thee.
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Take a mind
unto thee now
Like unto St. Martin;
Clothe the pilgrim's nakedness
Wish him well at parting.
So may God translate your soul
Into peace eternal,
And the bliss of saints be yours
In His realm supernal.
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Also, please refrain from simple or targeted complaints. Only constructive criticism
please.
