MA in English Lit

juillet
Sun, 08 Sep 2013 19:27:26 +0000

Even community college teaching is becoming very competitive with an MA. As academic positions dry up, PhD holders who couldn’t get tenure-track positions at four-year institutions are getting academic positions at community colleges. They mostly hold the new tenure-track positions at two-year colleges; most tenured MA-holders come from an earlier era. Sometimes you can get adjunct work, but you get paid per class and no benefits, not even an office in most places. It’s not a good way to make a living alone; it’s more made for people with other full-time jobs.

Private an independent schools are definitely a possibility. I’ve talked to several humanities PhD holders (mostly English and history) and they say that the bright, driven students at their prestigious private schools aren’t that much different from freshman and sophomore students in college anyway. At a private school you will also likely have more autonomy than you would have in a public school, and may even get to teach more of your interests. Public schools typically focus on the basics (American literature, British literature) whereas in private school you may get to teach classes like “The Stories of Literature” or “Creative Nonfiction” or “Writing the Universe of Discourse” (all classes taken from the course list at Philips Academy at Andover). A quick perusal of the faculty at some of the nation’s top private schools shows that even there, the vast majority of teachers have an MA in English (and I even saw St. Andrews pop up).