What Career Opportunities Lie Beyond Graduate School?
A master’s degree in English can give you a strong advantage entering other professional programs or fields,
especially law school, library school, education, academic administration, non-profit organizations, technical writing
and editing. It will also give you an edge if you decide to pursue a PhD in English or another field. The M.A. can
also lead to a position as a community college instructor or a university adjunct, although these “non-tenure track”
jobs are typically part-time, lower-paying, with partial or no health benefits and less job security.
English PhD programs train students to be professors of literature or composition at four-year colleges and research
universities, though many English PhDs find jobs in other fields. Currently, the job market for tenure-track literature
professors is severely depressed (specialists in composition have an easier time securing employment). Over the past
20 years, funding for the humanities at public and private institutions has declined, causing universities to rely more
on “cheaper” adjunct faculty and graduate student labor to cut costs. As graduate programs increase enrollments to
meet labor needs, they exacerbate the shortage of full-time tenure track jobs. The oversupply of English PhDs makes
the academic job market extremely competitive—some might say brutal. In the last decade, fewer than 50% of
students who completed the PhD landed a tenure-track job within their first year (Steward “Placement”), and
currently only 60-65% of PhDs find a tenure-track job within 5 years of graduating (Feal).
These statistics are fairly grim. We offer them to give you a good sense of what you are getting into. Achieving the
PhD will not guarantee you a job. But if you feel strongly committed and called to academic life as an English
professor, you should forge ahead. Certainly, the market can change appreciably by the time you achieve the PhD.
And your chances of getting a job are higher in certain niche markets such as Christian colleges, since your
undergraduate education has prepared you to think about literature and learning in religious terms.
What Can I Expect in Graduate School?
The literature programs at different universities vary greatly in terms of structure and requirements. It is best to
explore the program online to get the best picture. But here is a list of things you can expect to see in most programs.
Coursework: Students usually take 2-3 seminars per term—sometimes fewer if they have a teaching
appointment or research assistantship, and sometimes more if they have a fellowship or scholarship.
Seminars usually meet once a week, and students typically read one or more books plus several critical
articles for each meeting. Classes are small, so active participation is expected. Most seminars require
a research paper (20-30pp) due at the end of the term, though a variety of projects, papers and exams
may be assigned. Most PhD programs require about 3-4 years of coursework total.
The Master’s: PhD programs typically require a thesis (a lengthy research paper) or an exam after one
or two years to mark the achievement of the master’s degree (M.A.), though some programs award the
master’s on the basis of coursework alone. Some graduate schools have a “terminal” masters degree,
which requires students to reapply to the PhD program.
Comprehensive Exams: After course work, PhD students typically spend a year or more studying for
an oral and/or written exam in a special field of their choosing. This exam (sometimes called “orals,”
“special field exams,” or “comprehensive exams”) provides the student with a depth of knowledge in a
susb-field of literature and prepares them for work on the dissertation.
The Dissertation: To achieve the PhD, students must complete a dissertation, an extended research
paper positing an original argument (often 250 pages or more) about a specific topic, author, or body
of literature. The research and writing of the dissertation may take several years, especially if students
are also teaching at the same time. A faculty member works closely with the student as an advisor (or
“dissertation director”), and the student presents the dissertation to a committee in an oral “defense.”
Teaching: Most graduate students teach lower-level undergraduate classes as part of their financial
support. These are commonly general education writing and introductory literature classes; sometimes
you design the course and choose the texts yourself, sometimes those decisions are dictated by the