Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon
If you don't mind me asking, what do you think you're likely post degree career will be?
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Teaching English/creative writing and (hopefully) coaching at an independent day high school. Boarding school is too alien a concept for me, and goes against my philosophy that students should live with their immediate family until going to college, and I want more control over my curriculum than public high schools offer.
Tenure track jobs in academia are shrinking, and unless your PhD comes from an Ivy League school, or a select few highly ranked schools outside of that, you're likely to end up in the pits of adjunct hell, where, if you're lucky, you end up with a 4/4 teaching load of introductory courses (read: Freshman composition and maybe World Lit) for $24k and health insurance. If you're not, you can end up with something like a 5/5 teaching load for $20k and no access to benefits. You're also very limited geographically in terms of TT jobs, which I also hate.
Long-term what I see happening is that adjuncts will continue their growing grassroots efforts at mobilization and activism until conditions improve, but the harsh reality is that, particularly for humanities PhDs, you're part of an adjunct mill, which is why, in conversations I've had with people, more and more of them are quietly pushing their students to consider options outside academia.