I haven't checked out the recently released MLA job list, but I hear from those who have checked that it looks pretty bad so far this year. The recent news about the economy probably won't make things any easier, as you can read about in this article. In a nutshell: professors who can still work might consider putting off retirement as long as they can--bad news for newly-minted PhDs who continue to wait for the long-anticipated (the promise is almost mythical, it seems) future rush of retiring baby-boomer academics.
Just today, I received my semi-annual report from TIAA-Cref, and it shows another net loss, but I don't worry too much about these things yet. I don't know...maybe I should. This morning at the copy machine, I talked with a colleague who is much closer to retirement age than I am. He was worried, he explained, about his money, also tied up in TIAA-Cref--and maybe with very good reason.
"You're very young, of course," he said to me. "By the time you retire, things might have recovered."
"Or there will be nothing left," I jokingly replied.
"Maybe," he said quite seriously. Yikes.
But at least I have a steady job now. After three years on the market, I can't be more grateful. By the way, we are hiring for two positions in our department at Shepherd, if you know anyone who is interested. (One position is in poetry and poetics, the other in 18th-century British literature.)
No comments:
Post a Comment