∗ This article is the report of the Commission to Study the Job Market appointed by MLA President Maynard Mack in May 1970. The names of the members of the Commission are listed in the endnote on p. 1198.

¹ The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 Jan. 1970, in a lead article, “Many More Ph.D.'s, Fewer Faculty Openings Lead to a ‘Buyer's Market’ in Academe,” devotes much space to problems in English, but points out that History is in trouble, and even Physics! Six months later, 8 June 1970, The Chronicle describes the situation after all problems that were able to be had been settled: “Graduates Find It Takes ‘Hard Digging’ to Get Jobs; Many Ph.D.'s Accept Temporary University Posts.” The author, Malcolm G. Scully, points out that the Cooperative College Registry reported a 7.6% increase in number of persons still looking in May over the previous May. Also, 10% more of their job seekers were Ph.D.'s than ever before. One agency reports that business and industry made 40% fewer offers to Ph.D.'s than in the previous year.

² In English, for instance, the Survey indicates that we need a maximum of 1,155 Ph.D.‘s per year. According to Lawrence NcNamee's projections in “The English Dissertation in the United States, with Emphasis on the Last Five Years,” ADE Bulletin (Sept. 1969), pp. 65–70, this country will produce at least 2,000 Ph.D.‘s in 1975 if present trends continue.

³ U. S. Government Printing Office, 1969.

⁴ AAUP Bulletin, June 1970, pp. 174–239. See especially pp. 174–85.

⁵ Don Cameron Allen's study, The Ph.D. in English and American Literature (New York: Holt, 1968), probably either had an immediate effect or anticipated a trend which has served to hurry more Ph.D.'s into our midst. Bonnie Nelson reported in “Graduate Programs in English and American Literature: A 1969 Report,” ADE Bulletin, May 1969, pp. 42–56, that (p. 45) total elapsed time for the completion of the degree was becoming significantly shorter.

⁶ The often fallacious assumption in the foreign language field that native speakers can somehow teach their own language, together with the ready availability of well-educated native speakers, especially in urban centers, undoubtedly has helped reduce the demand for Ph.D.'s to fill teaching positions in junior colleges.

⁷ The National Study of English in the Junior College (New York: Modern Language Association, 1970), p. 3.

⁸ The Chronicle of Higher Education, 6 July 1970, reports the 230–280 figure as that given in a recent report of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.

⁹ Though we will return to this point later, it should be mentioned here that in the Carnegie Commission report cited above there is this statement, “… training of Ph.D.'s for community college teaching should be actively discouraged. The research-oriented Ph.D. is highly inappropriate for the community college teacher.”

¹⁰ Dr. Hillard R. Hoffman of the Pennsylvania State Education Department says, for instance, that in 1980 the state will be preparing 30,800 new teachers annually, compared to 18,000 at present. He feels that pupil enrollment will have dropped by then. The Pittsburgh Press, 6 Sept. 1970.

¹¹ Quoting a UPI report, The Pittsburgh Press (23 Aug. 1970) reports that HEW figures over a five-year period (1965–70) show a 36% decrease in the number of school bond issues voted by taxpayers across the nation.

¹² AA UP Bulletin, June 1970, p. 184.

¹³ The article on the T.A.'s strike at the University of Wisconsin early last spring reported that there were 1,900 assistants on campus at that time. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 March 1970.

¹⁴ The Chronicle, 13 Jan. 1969, quotes Thomas Wilcox' survey to this effect. Wilcox himself in the ADE Bulletin of January 1969, pp. 27–28, gives some chilling figures regarding the ratio of T.A.'s to full-time staff in some schools, and it is to this article that I am mainly indebted for the statistical material in this area.

¹⁵ That's my list. Here is Professor Gwin Kolb's: “(1) an accelerated movement of students away from private and into public institutions … (2) added strains on the budgets of both kinds of schools, with tax-supported institutions beseeching state legislatures, not always successfully, for larger shares of available revenue; (3) the death of a significant number of small liberal arts colleges, principally among the ranks of the church-related institutions; (4) the run for life of other private schools, both colleges and universities, into the sheltering arms of state educational systems … (6); frantic, and maybe fruitless, cries for enhanced assistance, by all classes of institutions, from the federal treasury, on which American warriors, spacemen, cities, blacks, and poor also have compelling claims for funds.” ADE Bulletin, Sept. 1969, p. 6.

¹⁶ The latest specific published salary figures were those approximate ones in my article in the Nov. 1969 ADE Bulletin. A larger group of institutions was sampled this year than last, and, though the results have not been published, they do bear out last year's prediction of about a 5% raise in beginning salaries. Thus new Ph.D.‘s with degrees assured by September and possessed of about one year of experience might expect a 9–10 month salary of around $10,500. A.B.D.‘s get less.

¹⁷ Yet all is by no means clear on this point. Questions to be answered include: Do junior and community colleges want even D.A.‘s if they are managing handily with M.A.‘s? Will Ph.D.-granting institutions willingly retool themselves for a different degree? Will the prestige of the D.A., as compared with the Ph.D., make the work worthwhile? A number of respectable academicians are for the D.A. See particularly Malcolm Scully's Chronicle article, “Doctor of Arts for Teaching Gains Support,” 16 March 1970, as well as Edmund Volpe's “A Proposal for a Doctor of Arts in Literature,” ADE Bulletin, May 1970, pp. 13–16. He speculates (p. 14) that a number of strong D.A. programs could effect a 60% drop in Ph.D. enrollment. A sample curriculum is offered in the same issue (pp. 24–28) by John Seaman. A realistic appraisal of the possibilities must include, however, the fact that the prestige question is extremely important. Acerbic statements by anonymous chairmen on this point can be found in Bonnie Nelson's article (n. 5), p. 48. A very balanced and realistic appraisal of the whole situation is Howard Fulweiler's urbane “The Intermediate Degree and the Future of the Ph.D.,” ADE Bulletin, Sept. 1968, pp. 6–13.

¹⁸ Special plaudits go to Harvard for its plans to reduce graduate enrollment 20% over five years, though one wonders if that's enough. But on the other hand, shouldn't programs of lesser quality be the ones to reduce?

¹⁹ I was driven to this proposal only after a good deal of reflection and circuitous searching in the course of writing this report; it thus never came before the Commission. Happily I find that a number of professional academic economists and other scholars are giving serious attention to at least one similar proposal. In his article in The Economics and Financing of Higher Education in the United States, p. 89, Roger E. Bolton cites the following: An Education Opportunity Bank, [Report of the] Panel on Education Innovation, Presidential Science Advisory Committee (Washington, 1967); William Vickrey, “A Proposal for Student Loans,” The Economics of Higher Education, ed. Selma Mushkin, Bulletin 1962, No. 5, 268–80; Milton Friedman, “The Role of the Government in Education,” Economics and the Public Interest, ed. Robert Solo (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 135–44; Karl Shell et al., “The Educational Opportunity Bank,” National Tax Journal (March 1968). See also the article by Jerrold R. Zacharias, “Educational Opportunity through Student Loans: An Approach to Higher Education Financing,” in The Economics and Financing of Higher Education in the United States, pp. 652–64.