The Job Market in Literary Studies Is Never Getting Better
And op-eds defending the humanities won’t help
Many PhD students enter humanities programs thinking: yes, the job market is terrible. But I’m different. I’ll write so much—and my research will be so good—that hiring committees will be forced to acknowledge my merit by offering me a tenure-track position.
When I first entered my PhD, I thought this way—I’ll admit it. But I was wrong. The academic job market in literary studies is bad now and will only ever get worse. Those who are graduating within the next two years—or who are currently in a postdoc—have a sliver of a chance of getting a tenure-track job. But by 2026 (my graduation date, assuming that everything goes well!), it will be basically impossible for new PhDs in English to secure full-time employment in academia.
This is not just because our society does not value the humanities. This is not (entirely) the fault of conservatives or neoliberals who despise any form of education that doesn’t focus on what the Greeks called the “servile arts.” No op-ed or change in public opinion can fix this. Because the problem is simply that there aren’t enough students.
College administrators have been forecasting something called the “enrollment cliff” for some time now. In a nutshell: during the 2008 economic crisis, U.S. birthrates fell. And they’ve been falling ever since: in 2008, around 4.2 million children were born; in 2015, that number was down to 3.97 million; and by 2022, that number was down to 3.6 million. There is no good reason to think that this trend will stop.
In 2026, children born in 2008 will be 18 years old. Because there will be fewer overall 18-year-olds, the number of students applying to college will be lower than in 2025. The number of 18-year-olds, and therefore students, will continue to fall every year after that. Overall college enrollment, then, will likely continue to drop every year until at least the year 2040. Assuming that population trends stay consistent, enrollment will continue to drop, year after year, ad infinitum, until it reaches some kind of floor.
All of this is widely known. And it’s pretty clear what these trends will do to the job market for new humanities PhDs. They will destroy it.
Here’s how. In the face of declining enrollments, smaller universities and colleges will continue to close, stop hiring in the humanities, or cut humanities programs entirely, as SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Fredonia have, for example. As tuition dollars dry up and administrators demand a cheaper and more flexible workforce, colleges will continue to hire more inexpensive, disposable adjuncts.
Enrollment at larger, more prestigious flagship universities will probably grow as students who would have attended small regional universities go to flagships instead. But while this means that big universities may be hiring for new positions in the humanities, it also means that a vast workforce of former tenured and tenure-track professors will be on the job market again, competing with new PhDs for a dwindling number of assistant professorships, lectureships, and even adjunct teaching positions. It’s going to be bleak. And it’s going to be bleak every year until 2040, and likely long afterward, too.
Declining enrollment isn’t the only thing hurting the job market for humanities PhDs. Humanities enrollment, even relative to overall enrollment numbers, is declining; humanities research is considered worthless; the rising cost of college attendance depresses enrollment in non-vocational programs.
It is distantly possible that the U.S. could suddenly welcome millions of migrants with college-aged children who can afford to go to college. Or the federal government could suddenly dump trillions of dollars into higher education, creating jobs everywhere. Or the millions of young people who do not think that college is a worthwhile endeavor could suddenly have a change of heart.
But let’s be real. None of this will happen, no matter how many impassioned defenses of the humanities are published in the Chronicle of Higher Education by well-meaning tenured professors. There are not enough asses in seats, and it’s as simple as that. I am not going to get a full-time job in academia. And if you are in a PhD program in English, neither will you. And even if you somehow do, your job will not be secure. You will be threatened by budget cuts all of your days.
This isn’t to say that a PhD isn’t worth doing. I make more money now, as a graduate student with a second job, than I have ever made before in my life. I find my work (even the composition teaching) to be interesting and rewarding. I enjoy getting to know my students. And, of course, my research is engrossing and rewarding, and I am excited to finish a dissertation that I will be proud of. I am not making the case that nobody should get a humanities PhD. They just shouldn’t expect a full-time, living-wage job in academia afterward. That form of academia—literature PhD, then comfortable, stable job—is a relic of the twentieth century that, after coughing and sputtering for a few decades, will ultimately die.
This is all completely true, unfortunately. There’s no solution but we are going to have to find ways to maintain some semblance of a culture notwithstanding. No clue what this will look like. What’s your area of research?
An interesting article. I've never considered the decline of humanities from a population standpoint. As an English major (and having once considered going to graduate school), I've thought a lot about why the humanities is in free-fall. Regardless of the many reasons, the fact is that nothing can be done to stop it. But why should there be? While it's true that we now live in a more superficial culture, that the majority of people are too addicted to scrolling (and much more) to engage deeply, or at all, with literature, it doesn't mean literature will die. It just means the literary landscape changing. In fact, I think its movement out of academia might even open it more to the public (I admit, this is quite an ambitious hope, at least in the short-run). A humanities degree is overpriced. That's just a fact. You can get everything you get out of four years studying literature at a university in a year and a half of evenings at the library. That doesn't mean reading and writing are useless; it just means the job market has changed (and I think, in fact, that engaging in literature for an end--as in, to get a degree, to get a job, to make money, etc.--undermines its purpose).