For starters, Schuman's opening fable about Kafka's mouse is apt, though her reading of this fable is self-serving and misguided. As the fable goes,
'Alas, said the mouse, 'the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide that I ran along and was happy to see the walls appearing to my right and left, but these high walls converged so quickly that I'm already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run.'As Schuman relates the fable to her decision to pursue graduate school in literature and an academic career, the mouse (the naive graduate student) was cat food the entire time without knowing it. At this point Shuman drops the fable as a metaphor for career choice, only to pick it up again at the end, when she warns, 'you've only got to run the other way.' We get the impression that graduate school and an attempted career in academia is a mouse trap; but then, doesn't running the other way mean getting eaten in the end anyway?
'But you've only got to run the other way,' said the cat, and ate it.
My point here is that Schuman ignores a fundamental reality about working life in her attempt to paint academic careers in literature as especially awful: almost all employment is contingent, competitive, and often disheartening. We choose how to navigate this situation by degrees, and by figuring out for ourselves, when we make career choices, which tradeoffs we're most happy with, which things we must have and which we can let go of, which of our own tolerances and desires we should feed, and which we should ignore or suppress. That's reality.
In other words, if our career choice is always a false choice, there being no perfect or ideal career--to be trapped or to be eaten--then this doesn't underscore Schuman's point that academic literature careers are especially awful; it supports the very reason many people choose to pursue difficult or competitive careers despite how difficult and competitive they are: because it's still better and more rewarding than the alternatives.
So before we can even talk about the value of an academic career, we have to line up all career choices on the same starting line. This means not comparing an academic career with an unknown, unspecified, and idealized nonacademic career. It's trap or cat, not trap or luxury spa.
That being said, we also need to understand an important reality about academic jobs in English literature, the kinds of jobs that the vast majority of people reading and considering graduate school and a career in literature are considering. Articles in the 'just don't go' genre, like Schuman's, always foreground this alleged 'oversupply' in job candidates with PhDs in literature. We're told, therefore, that the job prospects are poor because there are 'too many' qualified PhD holders vying for too few jobs.
Half of this equation is correct: there are too few jobs. But literature scholars and the public at large really need to get this fact through our thick skulls: the apparent 'oversupply' of PhDs IS NOT A SUPPLY-SIDE PROBLEM. Let me explain this in terms of who needs teaching:
Many are quick to point out that English majors are on the decline, while business majors are on the rise. This is true, relative to the increasing population of enrolled college students. Putting aside the fact that when there's a glut of business majors in the future, people will respond by majoring in things other than business; and putting aside that English majors are among the most versatile and employable of all; when we talk about DEMAND for PhDs in English, we're talking about the raw numbers of students who need teaching in English classes.
In raw numbers, English departments remain (as they have for decades) the largest and most populous departments in virtually any university. Excluding the fact that basic literature and writing classes are always part of the distributive requirements for non-majors in English, the numbers of actual English majors have been relatively steady over the years. Among all bachelor's degrees conferred by field of study (nces.ed.gov), 63,914 English literature degrees were conferred in the 'heyday' of literature education in 1970-71, 50,000 in 1999-00, and steadily between 52-55,000 for every other year between 2000 and 2010. These numbers for English are far greater than for computer and information sciences, engineering technologies, mathematics, physics, philosophy, and consumer sciences, to name a few.
What this means, in short, is that the demand for teaching in English literature remains among the highest of all subjects. The reason the jobs are scarce for literature academics is not because there are too many PhDs, nor because advanced teaching in literature isn't very much in demand, but because universities have been steadily shaving tenure-track jobs in all disciplines in order to cut costs and make more money for nonessential spending. Classrooms of 50 or 100 students 'studying' literature are non-starters for learning the subject properly, but with larger classes, universities can pay for fewer faculty.
This is the problem that Schuman and others acknowledge; but the cause--demand-side manipulation of the market by university administrations, not suppply-side 'oversupply'--is crucial. It's crucial because telling the best people not to actively participate in and pursue the academic teaching and learning of literature means telling them effectively to assent to the total destruction not only of literature departments, but of the university itself.
This brings me to my final point. In the rapidly deteriorating university, tenure-track lines are indeed deteriorating as well. But, back to the cat and trap analogy, this doesn't make an academic career in literature worse than any other kind of career; it only brings it to a comparable level where job security is concerned. Don't get me wrong: I think tenure is essential and ought to be preserved and also expanded, frankly; but that's not going to happen if literature scholars just quit before we start. And while we're digging in and waiting for that tenure-track position someday, its' not as if the great abundance of full-time lectureships, postdoctoral fellowships, Visiting Assistant Professorships, etc. are doing worse by us than the average office job. Rather than comparing these to being a tenure-track faculty member in the 1970s, we should be comparing them to the alternatives. In what other job does one have such freedom from managers, such day-to-day control over one's schedule, such time and freedom to pursue the research that one (apparently) loves or finds important? And what makes anyone think that working for an accounting firm or a non-profit is any less precarious in terms of job security than working as a professor on a one- or two- or three-year contract?
My final point, then, is that when we compare contingent academic labor to what is effectively contingent labor in every other sector, we're making a more realistic comparison on which to base our career choices. Every industry needs to be self-serving, to promote its ideals as well as its goals, and to recruit the best possible people into its ranks. If the university can be saved, it will be saved not by medical research administrators pulling money hand over fist, or MBA schools, or university presidents and provosts; it will be saved by faculty in literature, math, history, chemistry, etc., who are savvy enough to make the case. 'Just don't go' is typical literature-academic self-defeatism. It smacks of the wrong kind of idealism--the insular idealism of snobbery and false comparisons--and says to the world 'we give up, because we're too good to get our hands dirty.'
