In other words, the English and foreign language departments of the nation's universities have been cranking out far more doctorate holders than the nation's college classrooms are capable of absorbing, and they've been doing so for a long time.
Feal explains that the MLA is doing what it can to address the issue: helping departments gather the numbers that inform the hard decisions about whether and where to downsize; helping job candidates with mock interviews and job information workshops; working with organizations like the Coalition on the Academic Workforce to advocate for part-timers, adjuncts and lecturers.
"But while on the one hand, I'm glad to enumerate all the ways we're helping, I also want to add the obvious: that we at the MLA don't control the job market," Feal says.
The problems of the current job market have roots that are long and deep and tangled up in questions of institutional purpose and identity. But the most important long-term trend in creating the current situation, Feal says, has been the decisive swing in hiring away from full-time, tenure-track faculty to part-time, adjunct, temporary faculty.
"When it comes to the teaching of undergraduates regardless of field, if you ask how many classes are taught by tenured professors, the number has been shrinking. And nothing will change until (the stakeholders) demand it. That is, state legislatures, universities in their internal allocations, and parents seeking a quality education for their children have to demand a change," Feal adds.
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