Historian calls on Obama and Congress to keep squeezed-out professors in mind
[Mr. Zimmerman teaches history at New York University.]
A few weeks ago, I received a sad e-mail from one of my graduate students. She had recently interviewed for a very competitive job at an elite liberal-arts college, and everything seemed to go well. Shortly thereafter, though, she found out that she didn't get the job.
Nobody else did, either. Faced with mounting costs and declining revenues, the college had simply canceled the position.
Welcome to the grim realities of the academic job market, which has been strangled by the economic downturn. As their retirement accounts dwindle, professors who were planning to quit are holding on for a few more years. With endowments shrinking, meanwhile, universities and colleges are loath to expand payrolls - especially in the humanities, which don't bring in big grants and other income.
In my own field, history, hiring has declined 15 percent since a year ago. The news is even worse in English language and literature (down 22 percent), and worse still in philosophy (down 40 percent).
Given the glut of candidates that already existed before the economy went sour, most young scholars in these areas simply won't get full-time academic work. They will teach occasional classes and do other odd jobs, waiting for a call that never comes.
That doesn't make any sense. These smart young people represent an enormous resource for our society, if we're smart enough to tap it. So, as President Obama crafts his economic recovery plan, he should include provisions for unemployed academics.
It's happened before. During the last great economic crisis, in the 1930s, America put thousands of graduate students and recently minted professors to work in a wide range of government jobs. And we are all the better for it.
Start with the National Park Service, which hired 500 historians to identify and design national historic sites. Most of these sites were military battlefields and cemeteries, which continue to draw thousands of visitors a year.
State historical societies expanded as well, enlisting historians to archive newspapers and manuscripts. The price tag was picked up by such New Deal agencies as the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
Meanwhile, the Works Progress Administration hired folklorists and historians to interview ex-slaves. Much of what we know about American slavery is owed to these "WPA narratives," which illuminated how African Americans worked, prayed and survived amid the deprivations of bondage.
The biggest New Deal public-works project in my field was the Historical Records Survey, which inventoried wills, deeds and other materials in thousands of American communities. If you have ever tried to research anything about your family or your hometown, you probably have used records that were collected by this project.
It's easy to imagine dozens of useful projects for today's crop of unemployed historians. They could teach in K-12 schools, where Obama has pledged to hire 100,000 new instructors. They could revise textbooks and other classroom materials, some of which remain woefully out of date. They could archive local records and put them on the Web, giving millions of Americans new access to their heritage.
Ditto for all the out-of-work scholars in English, philosophy and the arts. The New Deal's Federal Arts Project commissioned work by Jackson Pollock and other painters, who created more than 2,500 wall murals for schools and post offices. There's no reason we couldn't establish similar programs now.
When asked why the government should sponsor artists and writers, New Deal official Harry Hopkins responded, "Hell, they've got to eat like other people." Hopkins' quip reminds me of a sign that a job seeker carried at a recent conference of historians: "Will Teach 20th Century U.S. For Food."
But he probably won't - at least not at the university level. That's why we need to design other jobs to put his skills to good use.
After all, our society has already invested untold sums in educating young scholars. And "investment" is the mantra of the day. As Obama keeps reminding us, his goal is not simply to put people to work. It's to invest in a better future, by making improvements in infrastructure, renewable energy and, yes, education.
For our underemployed academics, the investment has already happened. The only question is whether we will save it or squander it.
A few weeks ago, I received a sad e-mail from one of my graduate students. She had recently interviewed for a very competitive job at an elite liberal-arts college, and everything seemed to go well. Shortly thereafter, though, she found out that she didn't get the job.
Nobody else did, either. Faced with mounting costs and declining revenues, the college had simply canceled the position.
Welcome to the grim realities of the academic job market, which has been strangled by the economic downturn. As their retirement accounts dwindle, professors who were planning to quit are holding on for a few more years. With endowments shrinking, meanwhile, universities and colleges are loath to expand payrolls - especially in the humanities, which don't bring in big grants and other income.
In my own field, history, hiring has declined 15 percent since a year ago. The news is even worse in English language and literature (down 22 percent), and worse still in philosophy (down 40 percent).
Given the glut of candidates that already existed before the economy went sour, most young scholars in these areas simply won't get full-time academic work. They will teach occasional classes and do other odd jobs, waiting for a call that never comes.
That doesn't make any sense. These smart young people represent an enormous resource for our society, if we're smart enough to tap it. So, as President Obama crafts his economic recovery plan, he should include provisions for unemployed academics.
It's happened before. During the last great economic crisis, in the 1930s, America put thousands of graduate students and recently minted professors to work in a wide range of government jobs. And we are all the better for it.
Start with the National Park Service, which hired 500 historians to identify and design national historic sites. Most of these sites were military battlefields and cemeteries, which continue to draw thousands of visitors a year.
State historical societies expanded as well, enlisting historians to archive newspapers and manuscripts. The price tag was picked up by such New Deal agencies as the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
Meanwhile, the Works Progress Administration hired folklorists and historians to interview ex-slaves. Much of what we know about American slavery is owed to these "WPA narratives," which illuminated how African Americans worked, prayed and survived amid the deprivations of bondage.
The biggest New Deal public-works project in my field was the Historical Records Survey, which inventoried wills, deeds and other materials in thousands of American communities. If you have ever tried to research anything about your family or your hometown, you probably have used records that were collected by this project.
It's easy to imagine dozens of useful projects for today's crop of unemployed historians. They could teach in K-12 schools, where Obama has pledged to hire 100,000 new instructors. They could revise textbooks and other classroom materials, some of which remain woefully out of date. They could archive local records and put them on the Web, giving millions of Americans new access to their heritage.
Ditto for all the out-of-work scholars in English, philosophy and the arts. The New Deal's Federal Arts Project commissioned work by Jackson Pollock and other painters, who created more than 2,500 wall murals for schools and post offices. There's no reason we couldn't establish similar programs now.
When asked why the government should sponsor artists and writers, New Deal official Harry Hopkins responded, "Hell, they've got to eat like other people." Hopkins' quip reminds me of a sign that a job seeker carried at a recent conference of historians: "Will Teach 20th Century U.S. For Food."
But he probably won't - at least not at the university level. That's why we need to design other jobs to put his skills to good use.
After all, our society has already invested untold sums in educating young scholars. And "investment" is the mantra of the day. As Obama keeps reminding us, his goal is not simply to put people to work. It's to invest in a better future, by making improvements in infrastructure, renewable energy and, yes, education.
For our underemployed academics, the investment has already happened. The only question is whether we will save it or squander it.