Essay about inability to find a tenure-track job in academe | Inside Higher Ed.
Please, give this a read if you want a great first-hand account about the ordeals of going on the academic job market. It is as eloquent as it is harrowing. The essay, written by Patrick Iber, hit especially close to home because his doctorate is in history. As someone pursuing a doctorate in the same discipline–but at a university with considerably less prestige than the University of Chicago–I constantly worry about my job chances once I reach candidacy. I am also certain I’m not the only doctoral student in my field who feels this way. Even if one is angling toward alt-ac or non-ac jobs, getting hired anywhere still seems tenuous, at best.
Iber sums up this fear incredibly well in this excerpt:
If the last few months of my life have featured more than their share of heartbreak, my employment experience is sadly common. Universities trade on our hopes, and on the fact that we have spent many years developing skills so specialized that few really want them, to offer increasingly insecure careers to young scholars. Although a fortunate few make smooth transitions onto the tenure track, many are lost in a phase of lecturing, adjuncting, or even unemployment. To those of us on the outside, the current academic employment system resembles a two-tier contract in which we are punished simply for having made the poor decision to graduate in the middle of a recession. Compensation for our labor is unprofessional, and we and our families are expected to bear this as a sign of commitment to disciplines and institutions that reserve the right never to commit to us.
A Very Long Apprenticeship 