> Anyone who has spent 10 minutes in academia (in the last 25
> years) knows this. It's interesting though, that this was not the case (at
> least in literary studies) before the mid-seventies.
That's because that's when the job market for the branch of ideology-workers otherwise known as the professoriat fell apart. The lit jobs I'm applying for today routinely pull in 150-250 applications -- not just resumes, we're talking qualified personnel.
Speaking from personal experience, being an academic and unemployed is something I'd wish only on my worst enemy. Because you *know* you're being shafted, yet you have this lifelong commitment to a field which is all about pursuing knowledge, and that's a profoundly demoralizing contradiction.
-- DRR