Deresiewicz on leaving academia

William Deresiewicz explains why he left academia. He begins:

If I care so much about college — about students, about teaching, about the humanities, about the transformative potential of the undergraduate experience — then why did I leave? Why, in 2008, after 10 years on the faculty at Yale, did I say goodbye not only to that institution but to the profession as a whole? A lot of people have asked me that question; a lot more have assumed they know the answer. Did I quit in disgust at the corruption of the academic enterprise? Could I no longer bear to participate in the perpetuation of the class system? If I didn’t get tenure at Yale, did I regard it as beneath my dignity to work at a less prestigious institution? No, no, and no.

Here’s why I left: I didn’t have a choice. I not only failed to get tenure at Yale — which was completely expected — I failed to land another job anywhere else. Let me explain how it works.

A cautionary tale about the academic humanities, from graduate study to the tenure track. Pairs well with William Pannapacker’s “So You Want to Go to Grad School?,” “Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go,” and “Just Don’t Go, Part 2.”

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If I were to choose just one OCA post that captures my sense of what’s wrong with English studies, it’d be this one: Hoagies, pizzas, and English studies.

[Deresiewicz’s essay is free for a limited time from Quillette. I suspect that this will be the first and last time I link to anything from Quillette. Pannapacker’s essays are behind the Chronicle of Higher Education firewall, but available (I think) with a free, limited-number-of-articles subscription.]