KU Life
Section B THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
JULY 3,1996
Ph.D. doesn't always spell J.O.B.
Story by Jason Strait
Illustration by Ross Sit
Other disagree.
Karen Hellekson has struggled in the musty basement of Wescoe Hall for the last seven years, climbing out everyday to teach her classes and complete her Ph.D. research in English literature.
Now she's near the end of her studies, but instead of seeing a tenure-track job in her future, she sees a stack of about 70 rejection letters.
Those letters represent a system that doesn't produce the jobs it once did, teachers and graduate students say. The letters also represent seven years of work that hasn't gotten Hellekson where she wants to go.
It's a Ph.D. limbo that she's worked herself into during those years. Thousands of dollars in debt and seven years of wasted time, a story many Ph.D. candidates are all too familiar with.
Some simply are giving up dreams of a tenure-track job.
As Hellekson munches on a crispy bagel rescued from Wescoe Terrace's oven, she explains the saturated job market.
"I can't compete." she savs.
Maybe if she were from Yale, it might be a different story, she says.
But she's not
So she'll find something else. A job as an editor, or as a teacher at a private high school. Jobs she probably could have gotten without a Ph.D.
Would she do it again if she could go back to 1989,
the year she entered the program? Do it again for
personal edification? For the satisfaction of learning?
What have Ph.D. candidates been told about their chances for finding a job?
And although nobody expects graduate directors to be fortune tellers, they could at least present the facts to applicants.
The facts are that while the number of doctorates earned in the United States has increased every year since 1981, universities such as Kansas are increasingly unable to hire new faculty because of hiring freezes and budget recessions.
In the English department, the number of tenured professors has decreased from 29 in 1886 to 24 this year. Since 1986, spending on graduate teaching assistants in the English department at the University has increased 82 percent, while funding for professors has increased only 24 percent. The University employed 23 part-time English lecturers in 1996. In 1990, there were no lecturers budgeted for the department. And last year 33 percent of doctorates conferred in the humanities were still seeking employment after graduating — highest among all fields of study.
But even now, with so many Ph.D.s underemployed, graduate directors continue to keep those kinds of facts to themselves.
Angel Kwolek-Folland, director of graduate studies in the history department, said the department intentionally doesn't give applicants all the facts about the job market.
"We don't sit people down and tell them that the job market is good or bad," she said.
There is a balance, kwolek-Folland said, between accepting an appropriate number of people in an honest fashion and not squelching the hopes and dreams of those who are applying.
"Because they could be the ones who get the jobs," she said.
Robert Harrington, president of the KU chapter of American Association of University of Professors, said the job market in his field, psychology, was also bleak and that departments had an ethical obligation to tell applicants about their employment prospects.
"They ought to be told in an honest way what their chances are so they don't waste their time," he said. "For many, it is lost income and lost time. It's the fair thing to do."
Some departments, such as English and philosophy,
are telling the bad news to their applicants these days.
Laura Wexler, graduate teaching assistant in English, decided against entering the Ph.D. program because the English department is telling applicants that the future is bleak.
But that's too little, too late for Hellekson and her colleagues.
Christy Prall, graduate teaching assistant in English and Ph.D. candidate, said she, too, was not told of the bleak job market for English literature Ph.D.s. Instead, she was told four years ago that tenure-track jobs would increase.
According to people like Clay Shoenfeld, recent retiree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of seven books on higher education, faculty indeed are retiring at an increased rate.
"In roughly the next dozen years, more staff and faculty will retire at more institutions of higher education than in any other comparable period in the history of the country," Shoenfeld wrote in an article published in 1993. "The reason is simple — the unusually large cohort of personnel hired to staff the explosive growth of the higher education establishment in the 1955-65 period and beyond. These graying faculty and staff are now entering the zone of normal retirement age.
But instead of a new dawn of opportunity, Ph.D.s have experienced an employment eclipse. Faculty retired all right, but positions didn't open up. And ironically, the enemy filling tenure-track jobs is familiar to the very Ph.D. candidates who are searching for them. Fortunately, it's themselves
It was something many people in academe expected. Faculty were growing old, and retirements were on the horizon.
The English department has 47 tenure-track positions in its department and 62 GTAs. Sixty-two GTAs that, in a perfect world, could be 20 or 30 faculty members.
GTAs are filling up the classrooms and eliminating tenure-track iobs.
"Over time what you'll see is a pattern of courses at lower levels taught more by graduate students," predicted Michael Johnson, chairman of the English department.
Harrington agreed with Johnson.
"They're doing what we used to hire faculty to do," he said.
In fact, the freshman and sophomore years are dominated by graduate teaching assistant faces.
Graduate students are being hired to teach introductory classes like ENGL101, MATH101 and PSYC101.
In the Freshman/Sophomore Experience, a report compiled by the Office of Academic Affairs last year, the committee criticized the lack of faculty in lower-level classes.
"First-year and second-year students need a greater exposure to full-time faculty, and faculty need more exposure to such students," the report said. "This could be accomplished in two ways: first, rethink teaching assignments so that more faculty teach first- and second-year students than at present and, secondly, use more faculty as first-year advisers."
But none of these things have happened, and the GTA influence is creeping up the course listing numbers and reducing the need for more faculty members.
In addition to teaching ENGL 102 Composition and Literature, GTA Prahl teaches ENGL 351 Fiction Writing I. And she's not the only GTA teaching high-level courses.
The University maintains that only 25 percent its courses are taught by graduate students. But those numbers don't tell the entire story.
Larger classes that have a faculty lecturer but graduate-led discussions are considered solely faculty-taught. But it is the GTAs who undergraduates know.
not the faculty mem-
Hellekson, like most graduate students, also advises many of her students.
GTAs are teachers, they are advisers, but they're not faculty.
Harrington said he could see why GTAs considered themselves employees. They're doing the work of a faculty member, but not receiving the credit. Harrington said the University is hiring more and more non-tenure track faculty. Departments are downsizing, and the University hiring freeze adds to the problem.
"Definitely the hiring freeze has affected how many people we can hire into tenure-track jobs," said David Shulenburger, vice-chancellor for academic affairs.
But even though universities are hiring fewer faculty, some are still clinging to the dream.
They're called "gypsy" or "freeway" faculty.
To make ends meet, they travel the highways of northeast Kansas teaching at small schools.
They teach at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Baker University in Baldwin City and small schools in the Kansas City area. But the hours on the highways all lead back to their part-time jobs at Kansas.
They're handling two or three positions at different schools, teaching about 18 hours, with the hopes that one of them will lead to a tenure-track job.
They're people like M.J. McClendon.
McClendon, who got her Ph.D. from Kansas, is a KU lecturer and an instructor at Avila College in Kansas City, Mo., and Baker University.
She makes about $9,000 a year at Kansas and about $2,000 a semester at the other two schools combined. Hartnical weekday.
Monday morning she leaves for Kansas City at 8 a.m. to teach at Avila from 9:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
She then drives from Kansas City to Topeka to teach a night class for Baker from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
She gets home about 11 p.m., grades papers, prepares for lecturing the next day at Kansas and sleeps for three or four hours. The next day, she does it all again.
See Ph.D.s on page 3B
MUSIC REVIEW
King's X offers spiritual lift; Magnapop is bleak and furious
Review by Andrew Dolton
King's X Ear Candy (Atlantic). In 1988, King's X released its first album.
Andrew Dalton
Out of the Silent Planet, and has since been regarded as long on critical acclaim but short on commercial success.
Lead vocalist/bassist Doug Pinnick and drummer Jerry Gaskill originally were in popular Christian rock group Petra. King's X does not like to consider itself a Christian
The band's songs are musically complex and have powerful, positive lyrics.
rock band, but merely a band whose members are Christians. The lack of success might be attributed to King's X's writing songs meant to deliver their message, not to sell records.
Ear Candy finds the group delivering spiritually-based themes through bass-laden hard rock. This release features a slight decrease in volume, which may allow the band's hooks to come across more clearly.
Past albums and past live shows were often played at ear-shattering decibel levels, which led to a mass of noise rather than distinct sounds.
The messages on Ear Candy range from the problems of modern families, Father and Picture, to the need for some sort of guidance, Sometime and (thinking and wondering) What I'm Gonna Do. Overall: 8 out of 10
Magnapop Rubbing Doesn't Help (Priority
Records). The bubble-gum pop sound of the album's first single, *Open the Door*, belies Magnapop's true style. The Atlanta-based quartet's second album consists mostly of songs with dark themes and darker lyrics. Lyrics such as "I could crucify you" and "nicely knife you" on the track Hold You Down exemplify the entire album's bleakness.
The upbeat Open the Door relays the frustration of realizing the inevitability of the death of friends and family.
On the whole, the new record is fast and furious. Juicy Fruit is nearly punk. The tracks are played with sincere intensity.
Lead vocalist Linda Hopper's enchanting vocals complement the heavy guitar licks and rhythm section. But Magnapop is most lacking in creativity. The songs sound similar and lack substance, but they are still entertaining.
Overall 7 out of 10.
The Postes Amazing Disgrace (DGC). Amazing Disgrace is occasionally quaint, but quite often
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sucks. When the band accepts the limits of its sound, as on Precious Moments, a catchy, pleasant music emerges. When the band tries to go beyond its limits, as on Fight It (If You Want), the weakness of the backing music becomes painfully obvious.
The result is an album that has a strained effect. I wouldn't buy it.
Overall: 3 out of 10.
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