In one of many consequences of the national economic downturn on higher education, the Modern Language Association (MLA) projects a significant drop in faculty opportunities in English and foreign languages and literature, according to a report released today.
In the steepest decline in more than three decades, the positions advertised in MLA’s Job Information List – an authoritative collection of faculty positions in languages and literature at the nation’s colleges and universities – are expected to plummet by 37 percent this academic year.
This comes after the job list had a 26-percent drop last year, the second biggest backslide since its launch in the 1975-76 academic year.
“It’s disheartening to see how steep this decline is,” MLA Executive Director Rosemary Feal said. If you take the decline in overall positions and couple that with the decline over many years of the tenure-track position, then you see the picture is indeed very bleak.”
The decrease, Feal said, can largely be attributed to the nation’s troubled economy. Feal said she expects to see the situation turn around once the economic recovery effort hits colleges and universities. However, it’s unclear to what extent the drop in postings is due to circumstances other than the economy, such as colleges and universities choosing to instead advertise on their own Web sites rather than paying for MLA’s service.
Since the job list’s inception 35 years ago, the number of faculty openings advertised annually by English and foreign language departments has fluctuated between 1,000 and 2,000 positions, according to the MLA report.
This academic year, an estimated 900 positions in English language and literatures are expected to be advertised, the report said. By contrast, there were 1,380 open positions listed last year and the 2007-08 year hit a record 1,826 jobs.
