12, no. 4 (May 1981): 5-8 To the Editor Search

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ON THE surface, our map of the professoriat for 1979–80 appears little changed from that of 1978–79. The rates at which new Ph.D.'s—our use of the term includes D.A.'s and D.M.L.'s but excludes Ed.D.'s—are placed in full-time and tenure-track postsecondary faculty positions have remained relatively stable. Only when we look at persons rather than percentages or when we compare placement percentages with doctorates granted does our initial impression of an unchanged topography give way to the realization that, though the contours are similar, the elevations are lower (or the depressions less severe?). In 1977–78, 58.3% of our new Ph.D.'s in language and literature found full-time faculty positions; in 1978–79, that percentage dropped to 55.5; in 1979–80, the figure was 55.9% (see Table 1). But we hasten to add that in 1977–78, 979 doctorates were granted; in 1978–79, 965; and in 1979–80, 927. Apparently the production of Ph.D.'s has indeed responded to the pressures of the academic job market, though the decline in production has not improved the survivors' employment prospects; it has only kept pace with the decrease in the number of new faculty positions.

The drop in the number of Ph.D.'s granted differs greatly among disciplines. Table 2 presents comparisons of production and placement rates for selected disciplines over the four years that the MLA has been conducting placement surveys. It is notable that Italian has one of the greatest rates of decline in production, though it accounts for only a small percentage of the degrees and has relatively good placement rates. Spanish-Portuguese has also awarded fewer degrees every year despite stable placement figures. Slavic, on the other hand, has experienced one of the smallest rates of decline, though placement rates in Slavic have consistently been the worst among the major languages.

In February 1980 the MLA Advisory Committee on the Job Market issued a statement on the poor prospects for academic employment. Based on placement figures for three years' Ph.D. classes and addressed to all departments granting degrees in language and literature, this statement evoked a variety of responses, ranging, as might be expected, from protestations that the statement was too mild —that academe is in worse shape than the committee indicated—to recriminations against the MLA for prophesying doom. While unemployment statistics for various age groups of Ph.D.'s in language and literature do not by themselves support the belief that only a fraction of successful academic job candidates can remain in the profession, there are some data to justify such a conclusion (and to validate anecdotal evidence).

In its profile of Ph.D.'s produced in the United States between January 1936 and June 1978, the National Research Council finds that among modern language and literature faculty in four-year colleges and universities 29.4% of those with 2 to 5 years' experience have non-tenure-track appointments. Of those with 6 to 10 years' experience—a group we might expect to be more heavily tenured —13.9% have non-tenure-track appointments. ¹ How long do such appointments last? Frank Atelsek and Irene Gomberg report that the average institution expects to fill non-tenure-track positions for a period of three years and then terminate the positions ( Tenure Practices at Four-Year Colleges and Universities , Higher Education Panel Reports, No. 48 [Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1980]). In 1978–79, 22.6% of untenured faculty in the humanities were in non-tenure-track positions (interpolated from information presented in Atelsek and Gomberg, p. 3, fig. 1). Of faculty in tenurable positions who were considered for tenure, 29% at private institutions and 13% at public ones were denied tenure; 18% at private four-year colleges and universities and 25% at public ones had tenure decisions deferred (Atelsek and Gomberg, p. 9, fig. 4).

Table 2 also serves as an index of institutional confidence in language and literature enrollments. By interpolating from Atelsek and Gomberg's data on tenure status, we find that 73.3% to 86.8% of all untenured faculty are on tenure-track lines (73.3% at public four-year colleges; 75% at public universities; 83.3% at private universities; and 86.8% at private four-year colleges). The last column in Table 2 presents comparable figures for classics, comparative literature, French, German, Italian, Slavic, and Spanish and Portuguese for each year of our survey. Since each figure in this column is below the comparable percentage for all disciplines, we may conclude that institutional administrators are less committed to language and literature than to other disciplines.

Our map of the professoriat is still incomplete. The fate of Ph.D.'s in the humanities—in and out of academe—offers further uncharted ground for exploration. The 1979 profile developed by the National Research Council provides some information, unavailable before, on the number of doctorates beyond their initial appointments who are unemployed and seeking new positions. ² We shall continue to acquire data on the professional status of our colleagues, to sift through pages of statistics, and to present our findings in the Bulletin .

The author is Assistant Director of Foreign Language Programs for the Modern Language Association.

¹ Calculated from tables of data supplied by the Office of Planning and Policy Assessment, National Endowment for the Humanities (letter received from Arnita Jones, 26 Sept. 1980). Among those with 6 to 10 years' experience, 33.7% were tenured; for 14.2% of this group, tenure status was unknown.

² Commission on Human Resources, National Research Council, Science, Engineering, and Humanities Doctorates in the United States: 1979 Profile (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1980), pp. 42, 52. More informative is Table 11 of the background information provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, because this table classifies those seeking employment by age group.

© 1981 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.

ADFL Bulletin 12, no. 4 (May 1981): 5-8

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