“We’re continuing to graduate outstanding Ph.D. students who would love to go on to an academic career, but the market is not very strong for them,” he says. “Should we just have them flipping burgers or should we have them here helping out on campus where we have actual needs?”
Eight of this year’s 21 fellows have received tenure-track positions at other universities, according to FAS Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser, who oversees the program. Seven others have been reappointed for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Nathanael Andrade—who specializes in ancient history—is one of the eight current college fellows who received a tenure-track position for next year. Andrade, who will work at West Virginia University in the fall, says that his time as a fellow this past year made him “a more marketable candidate from the perspective of search committees,” as he was able to design his own syllabi and teach his own courses—two experiences many graduate students never have before applying for jobs.
Tomoko L. Kitagawa, a college fellow in the field of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, adds that the experience of having created the two courses she taught this year puts her a step ahead of the other graduate students with whom she will eventually compete for tenure-track positions.
“It’s like departing from the graduate school mentality where everything is given,” she says. “Now I’m contributing something.”
But Kitagawa also notes that while being a college fellow was a “good experience,” the program was “just established a year ago, so not too many institutions recognize what I did.”
AN ANOMALY?
But not every graduate student is convinced that this year’s reported success exempts Harvard students from a national trend.
“Last year was pretty bad, from what I know,” says Steven P. Rozenski, a graduate student interested in medieval religious literature. “I’m glad I have a couple of years to go, though.”
According to William Pannapacker, a Harvard English graduate student in the 1990s and a contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, one year of success is not enough evidence to ignore the gravity of the “academic labor market.”
In fact, the full effect of the economic crisis on academia has yet to be seen: it could either rebound or the decline in traditional academic jobs may continue and never recover, he says.
He adds that he hopes his alma mater will prepare its graduate students for the opportunities that will exist in the future rather than continuing to fixate on “familiar positions” that will probably decline than in the coming decades.
“It seems clear that the old system in which the tenure-track position was the standard expectation will have to be replaced by a range of other options,” he says. “Even Harvard will have to face that reality.”
—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.