by Jon Lackman | 17 November 2009 | Career
Michael Bérubé wrote recently of the job market in modern languages; job-seeking art historians may find considerable ground for commiseration:
It’s that time of year again, only worse.
The academic job search process is under way, and in the modern languages, things look quite dismal. Yes, I know, things have looked quite dismal for some time now, but this is extra extra dismal, because the effects of the Great Collapse of 2008 are only hitting this part of the academic machinery now. Colleges and universities have already taken—and administered—hits elsewhere, via salary cuts and/or freezes, furloughs, elimination of travel and research budgets, etc….
In more recent years, the number of positions advertised in English has hovered around 1600-1700. This year, one of my students told me that she’d heard the number would be something like 250. “WTF,” I calmly replied. “Where did that number come from?” It came from a wiki of some kind, which is apparently what These Kids Today use when they’re not twittering on the FaceSpace … But it’s quite possible that the number will wind up being below 1,000 … No word yet on how many of those perhaps-fewer-than-one-thousand jobs will be tenure-track.
OK, so that’s the backdrop to what I came to say—a backdrop of anxiety and despair …
I am stunned by what some departments want their job candidates to submit … in an abysmal year these things seem especially obnoxious, particularly when they are expensive … enormous packages of materials up front: not just the usual application letter/ cv/ dossier (sent under separate cover), but writing samples as well. This doesn’t sound like a major human rights issue, no, but when you stop to consider that these jobs would routinely have 500-1000 applicants, each of whom was sending out 30-page writing samples, you realize that’s an enormous amount of waste paper and a gratuitous expense for the job candidates …
This year, I’m hearing of universities that want job candidates to send transcripts. Yes, transcripts. Transcripts of graduate school grades, and even, in some cases, transcripts of undergraduate grades. I’m tempted to reply LOLcats style, APPLIKASHUN PROCESS: UR DOIN IT WRONG …
A west coast art history department that shall not be named asked for undergraduate transcripts. I was aghast but sent them anyway because I would like to be considered for the job. But what does a hiring committee hope to find out by requesting an undergraduate transcript?