The Numbers: How Bad Is It?

In The Cliff Walk--A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found, former Colgate University English Professor Don J. Snyder describes being fired after his third year of teaching because his department was already top-heavy with tenured professors. He goes on to describe the 23 rejections he received for the 23 teaching jobs he applied for. When he was rejected by a college in remote northern Michigan, an outpost he'd secretly fantasized being able to turn down for a better offer, he called the English department there to find out why his seven years of experience, three published books, and collection of prestigious grants didn't get him anywhere. The chairman told Snyder that the small college had never expected to receive applications from someone as qualified as he, but in fact had heard from candidates even more qualified, including former department heads and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, 300 applications in all.

Just how bad is it out there?

Stories like the one above are easier to come by than concrete numbers, since no one organization keeps track of job openings for Ph.D.'s across all academic fields. But here is what we've been able to find, from sifting through records kept by the National Research Council, stories in The Chronicle of Higher Education, job listings maintained by various professional organizations, and the Berkeley Graduate Division's own exit surveys. The years noted in each case are the most recent for data available.

• At the American Mathematical Society's 1997 meeting, 375 applicants interviewed with 62 employers; in 1996, 440 applicants met with 56 employers.

• At the 1997 meeting of the American Historical Association, 777 applicants competed for 220 positions, compared to the 1996 meeting, when 769 applicants vied for 178 openings. Advertisements for tenure-track positions published in the association's magazine, Perspectives, numbered 525 in fall 1996, up from 431 in the fall of 1995.

• The Modern Language Association listed 1,186 positions in English during the academic year 1996-97, a 10 percent increase over the year before. However, production of Ph.D.'s is increasing. The National Research Council reports 753 earned doctorates in English in 1995, compared with 525 in 1985. An additional 191 earned Ph.D.'s in comparative literature in 1995, compared with 133 in 1985.

The Berkeley Survey

Of the 768 Berkeley Ph.D. candidates who filed dissertations in 1995-96, 727 filled out exit surveys that asked, among other questions, about immediate employment plans. Of those 727, 486 said they had employment plans, 67 were in the process of negotiating for jobs, and 136 were looking for work but had no specific job prospects at the time they filled out the survey. (Twelve declined to answer the question, and 26 checked "other," which usually means taking time off or returning to school for another degree.)

The 486 with employment plans included 116 with tenure-track positions, 184 with postdocs, and 16 with research positions in an academic setting. Another 33 had nontenure-track academic positions, 50 were researchers in nonacademic settings, and 87 had other nonacademic jobs.

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