“Useful and Useless”: A Manifesto for New Times in Graduate Studies in English

Abstract

READERS’ FORUM “Useful and Useless” : A Manifesto for New Times in Graduate Studies in English JILL DIDUR AND PETER R. BABIAK York University Beware of ends; but what would a university be without ends? Jacques Derrida, “The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils” (19) A s graduate students it is difficult for us to speak critically about the profession with the authority and leverage that comes with full member­ ship in the professoriate. This difficulty is compounded by the fact that, like all graduate students in Canada, we are today facing an unprecedented level of unemployment, while federal and provincial budgetary constraints are forcing universities to cut back services, raise tuitions, freeze wages, re­ strict new hirings, and replace many permanent positions with part-time or sessional appointments. The exigencies of fiscal restraint and institutional downsizing notwithstanding, something needs to be done to improve our fu­ ture prospects. We think that the process in which we engage as apprentice professors must be changed, reformed, that is, to reflect better our changing aspirations and to address the formidable economic shifts taking place in the world today. Our discussion attempts to resituate the content and structure of graduate education in English within these changes, looking at ways that graduate students’ intellectual and political goals can be pursued in such a way that simultaneously responds to and displaces current market pressures. In order to begin to negotiate both these points, we think that changes in the organization of graduate education, as well as the theory and practice of graduate training, are necessary. Jobs must become an elementary objective of graduate study in English. Though we do not pretend to speak authoritatively about the statistics, there seems to be a consensus that the possibilities of teaching English at the college and university level are in sharp decline. Two years ago, Pro­ fessor Michael Keefer compiled a demographic survey of the employment prospects in English studies in Canada. Correlating anticipated faculty re­ tirements and replacement rates with projected graduate school admissions English Studies in Canada, 22, 2, June 1996 levels for the rest of the decade, he drew this rather bleak conclusion: “If our graduate schools were to produce only 65 new Ph.D.s per year during the late 1990s, many of these people would be exposed for at least several years to the strain and indignity that any aspirant to a permanent position must feel when he or she is confined to sessional or part-time work” (24-25). In a review of the 1994 Canadian Association of Chairs of English conference that appeared the same year, Professor Shirley Neuman suggested that “by the early part of the century approximately 15% of current positions in the professoriate will have disappeared and only slightly over 50% of Canadian Ph.D. graduates will find full-time continuing appointments in Canadian col­ leges and universities” (22). Although there are remote signs that the job market is getting better — a new survey of the MLA’s Job Information List, for example, states that the recent five-year decline in the number of jobs posted is coming into “relative stability” (2) — the current level of budget cuts suggests that things may never get better, or at least not in the short term.1 Despite these bleak statistics, our sense is that many graduate stu­ dents believe they will find employment in academia but upon entering the job market learn that this is an unfounded expectation. The recent prolifer­ ation of articles and letters by graduate students on the issue of employment prospects attests to this occupational psychosis. In a scathing article that appeared in the ACCUTE Newsletter a couple of years ago, former Ph.D. student John Thurston admitted feeling “deceived and betrayed” by (among other things) the promise of a job at the end of his Ph.D. work and then feeling “naive” for succumbing to this promise in the first place (10). Helen M. Kim offers a similar complaint in a forum letter to a recent issue of PMLA. Commenting on the “wide gulf” between her assumptions about employment while in graduate school and the harsh reality of the job market...