Word: hesford
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...could have been worse, Hesford says. "Actually, you'd be surprised. They had a very fully developed English department--courses like 'Victorian Prose Writers.' And it's not as dangerous as it might sound... But it's viewed with suspicion by the Israeli government as sort of a hotbed of Palestinian revolutionary thought." Hesford decided against Birzeit, he says, because he asked himself, "If you're over there, how do you get back?' Unless of course you want to spend your life in exile." He pauses, then adds, "But if nothing else came through...
...Hesford was lucky. A day after he declined the Birzeit offer, he got a call from Union College in Schenectady, offering him a oneyear position there. He accepted the job with relief although it means he'll probably have to begin the same frustrating search all over again next year. Nowadays, however, not all cases like Hesford's have even such a temporarily happy ending. Declining enrollments, a generally sluggish economy and shrinking university budgets are making it more and more difficult for graduate students--even Harvard graduate students--to find the kind of academic positions that were relatively plentiful...
...such jobs exist, they're certainly getting a lot harder to find, especially in the humanities, which have been hit hardest by the tight academic market. Hesford's case is far from unusual; many graduate students now spend several years applying unsuccessfully for jobs while they try to complete their dissertations. Take, for example, the case of Thomas Kaiser, a history graduate student who has applied in the last two years to 60 places-- "everywhere from major universities like Yale and Berkeley down to some rather small schools." What's discouraging, Kaiser says, is that "the prospects have become...
...initial problems in finding a job on his being a foreigner. Although Kim was one of the department's top-recommended students, Skocpol says, when the job market begins to tighten, Americans tend to hire Americans." Kim finally landed a last-minute appointment at Simmons, but he is, like Hesford, a victim of what McKinney calls the "the revolving door" syndrome. In a year, he will be on the market again, trying to gain a foothold on the academic ladder to tenure. Nevertheless, Kim has no desire to switch careers. "At this point, I've invested so much time...
Baxter and Kim share with Hesford a certain bitterness about the system--bitterness which emerges in serious personal questioning, in hurt pride, in a sense of the uselessness of daily routine. "When you're jobless," Hesford says, "the rigamarole you have to go through for your thesis after it's finished and the whole Commencement thing seem a little sour. You start thinking, 'What's the diploma worth...