Today is the last day of 2021. The major academic hiring window closes soon. Schools will conduct interviews early in the new year, followed by any campus visits.
Like my previous searches for a teaching post, this has been a frustrating process.
I’m venting because this is why I encourage students to really understand career paths and hiring processes. I was hoping for a return to teaching in 2022, but it is not a life-or-death matter. Thankfully, I realize “Dr. Wyatt” doesn’t have to mean “Professor Wyatt.”
Right now, it seems likely I that will continue consulting and teaching my two daughters at home. (I’m not convinced the pandemic has ended.) My academic job search is limited regionally for family considerations. We’re not relocating again.
Curiously, three different colleges sent rejections with the same canned paragraph: “In accordance with Southern Association of College and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) requirements: Master’s degree in English, Literature, Linguistics, or Creative Writing or Master’s degree with 18 graduate hours in these disciplines.”
In higher education, it’s not sufficient to have a degree in a broad discipline. Hiring committees want a narrow specialization, which disheartens me and frustrates many other aspiring scholar-educators.
It is the phrase “with 18 graduate hours in these disciplines” that seems to be causing problems during my job hunts. Thany e schools each use “Workday” as an online HR platform. My guess is that the online system doesn’t like my degrees for teaching writing, communications, or media studies.
Two of the search committees reached out and asked me to demonstrate that at least 18 units were closely related to the courses a new hire would teach. As it turns out, I do not have 18 hours of literature courses, 18 hours of creative writing courses, or 18 hours of any narrowly defined ”emphasis” within my degree programs.
I do have a lot of units in media production; technology and writing; and communication pedagogy. What I don’t have is six graduate-level courses in literature, six in creative writing, and so on. I know several people who focused narrowly and did take 18 units within a literary specialty or creative writing genre.
Being a generalist works against applicants on the academic market, though we should encourage generalization. Specialists don’t always see the interconnections among disciplines and topics within disciplines.
Wanting to teach, I spent a week trying to document my graduate coursework and respond to respond to “concerns” raised by hiring committees, . I located the course catalogs for the years I attended graduate school, and then extracted the pages with course descriptions. This was a slow and tedious process, but I was desperate to persuade one college I had the appropriate qualifications to teach in a writing program. In the end, they ruled I did not meet the requirements for the program.
To anyone outside academia, my credentials should easily exceed a writing program’s requirements:
- Publication history and research agenda: Published papers, a co-edited scholarly collection, and numerous conference appearances… plus a history of produced stage plays and nearly 200 freelance bylines.
- PhD in Rhetoric, Scientific and Technical Communication; University of Minnesota
- MFA in Film and Digital Technology; Chatham University, Pittsburgh
- MA in English Composition Theory and Rhetoric; California State University, Fresno
- BA in Print Journalism, BA in English Education; University of Southern California
Navigating the higher education job market resembles a Kafka short story. No matter what documentation you submit, it is never sufficient. There’s always something more you need to document, some other requirement to meet.
A doctorate does not limit your career path to teaching and research, even as that’s the path valued by graduate programs. We need more people with graduate degrees in public and private sector careers beyond education, especially at a time when many problems require expertise to solve them.
It’s a shame generalization isn’t celebrated in academia. However, I’m sure I have value and I’ll find a meaningful path.