JENNIFER HARVIE
INTRODUCTION
When I graduated from McGill University with a BA in English (Drama and Theatre Studies) in 1990, commentary in the media predicted there would be a strong demand for new PhDs within the academic industry during the next decade. I believe the argument supporting this optimistic forecast went something like this: by the middle to the end of the 1990s, a large generation of academics who entered the industry in the 1950s and 1960s will be retiring; the resulting employment vacuum will not be filled by the baby boomers because relatively few of them have chosen to become academics (or so this analysis claimed); the vacuum will, therefore, happily consume all those who start PhDs now and who finish in time to graduate on this mid- to late-1990s threshold to professionally satisfying, intellectually rewarding academic careers. I hope I never believed that securing such fulfilling employment would be as easy as this analysis made it sound. But I was encouraged to pursue a PhD, even if I was cautious about assuming what I might do -- or even be able to do -- upon completion.
With the benefit of almost a decade's hindsight, it seems fair to say that while that optimistic forecast did identify some impending changes to the academic industry, it failed miserably to anticipate others which have drastically altered the late-1990s picture. Most importantly, it accounted neither for rapidly diminishing academic budgets nor for the changes to academic employment structures which have resulted partly from those diminishing budgets and partly from other influences, including changing conceptualizations of certain academic disciplines.
Yes, senior academics are retiring; but no, their jobs are rarely rolling over intact to graduating PhDs. More commonly, tenure-track hiring is being either frozen or deeply chilled and labour is being casualized. Academic employment, which used to be premised upon a model of tenure, at least provisionally, is increasingly adopting various models of casual labour, featuring fixed-term, part-time, sessional, and cross-departmental appointments. Diminishing departments are demanding increasingly multi-skilled, research productive new staff with extensive teaching experience. PhD graduates are being over-produced for a market where jobs are scarce, employment security is threatened, workers are over-worked, and the academic freedom of expression tenure was designed, at least partially, to protect is compromised. This is the situation in Theatre and Drama studies, but also in a host of other disciplines. It is the case in Canada but also at least in the UK, where I did my PhD and now work, and in the USA. Writing in an American context, Cary Nelson has warned, "With many college teachers looking more and more like migrant factory labor -- lacking health benefits, job security, retirement funds, and any influence over either their employment conditions or the goals of the institutions they work for -- the ideology of professionalism seems increasingly ludicrous" (119).1
Of course, things may not be all bad. The academic industry has responded realistically -- but also, in many cases, creatively and productively -- to reinvent itself and its work in challenging circumstances. Industrial innovation has sometimes facilitated, or at least supported, disciplinary innovation as, for instance, staff who have worked in a variety of institutions circulate and disseminate ideas for good practice, and staff appointed in more than one discipline introduce new and diverse knowledges across those disciplines. PhD graduates, too, have innovated and diversified, seeking and often creating employment both inside and outside of academe.
But things could be better, and the purpose of this forum is to explore and to begin to propose how Theatre and Drama PhD programmes in particular could better prepare their students to graduate professionally equipped to work in this changing and difficult market. The origins of this forum attest to the felt urgency of its topic. At the 1996 meetings of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research, both the Women's Caucus and the Professional Concerns Committee identified as one of their most pressing considerations the efficacy of graduate Theatre and Drama programmes. The Professional Concerns Committee organised a panel discussion for the 1997 ACTR conference in St. John's, Newfoundland, and versions of the position papers in this forum were originally presented as part of that panel.2
The panel, the forum, and debates on this topic from numerous other contexts raise a plethora of important observations and suggestions about current and future graduate Theatre and Drama training, but a central, frequently reiterated point stands out: graduate programmes must adapt and diversify their student instruction and support to meet the changing needs of students and to determine more effectively the changing needs of industry. Specifically, graduate Drama and Theatre programmes must:
Graduate students and graduate programmes must work proactively together not only to develop graduate students but also to develop and enhance our discipline as a whole, and to retrieve its professionalism from what, for Nelson amongst others, is approaching ludicrousness. They must also work together not only to meet the demands of a changing market, but, as far as possible, to set the terms of that change. It is, after all, both graduate students' and graduate programmes' shared objective to graduate professionals.
NOTES
1 Nelson's article was recommended preparatory reading
for the Professional Concerns Committee panel "Strategies for Survival,"
chaired by Ann Wilson, at the 1997 Association for Canadian Theatre Research
(ACTR) conference in St. John's, Newfoundland. I am grateful to Ann for
bringing this article to my attention. See also Jill Dolan's "Advocacy
and Activism" for an analysis of the situation specifically within Theatre
Studies in the US.
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2 As this brief history indicates, many people have
contributed to the ideas and work of this forum. They are: the ACTR Women's
Caucus chairs, Susan Bennett and Catherine Graham, and its members; the
ACTR Professional Concerns Committee chair, Denis Salter, and its members;
and the original participants on the "Graduating Professionals" panel:
Catherine Graham, Jennifer Harvie (chair), Erin Hurley, Denis Johnston,
Carrie Loffree, Katya Novikova, and Shelley Scott. My thanks to the panellists
in particular for the wealth of ideas they brought to the discussion of
our topic.
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WORKS CITED
Becker, Tony, Mary Henkel, and Maurice Kogan. Graduate Education in Britain. Higher Education Policy Series, No. 17. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1994.
Dolan, Jill. "Advocacy and Activism: Identity, Curriculum, and Theatre Studies in the Twenty-first Century." Theatre Topics 7.1 (1997): 1-10.
Nelson, Cary. "Lessons from the Job Wars: Late Capitalism Arrives on Campus." Social Text 44 (13.3, 1995): 119-134.