Job Placement Record Archive

Cornell PhDs in English pursue a wide range of careers, within and outside academia.  In recent years, our graduates have gone on to careers in college teaching and research, academic administration, secondary education, library science, humanities and arts foundations, and university publishing, to name only the most common examples.  We have a designated faculty placement advisor, and we tailor our job placement mentorship to the needs of individual students.  We are particularly eager to foster our graduate students’ commitments to education, research, arts and humanities advocacy, public service, and social justice.

There has been a sharp decline in advertised faculty positions in literature departments since 2007-2008 (apps.mla.org/pdf/rpt_jil_1314web.pdf).  In light of these challenges, our department is distinguished by its commitment to transparency about the career outcomes of all of our graduates, as well as our expansive sense of the range of careers that our doctoral program equips graduate students to pursue.  The list below conveys the diverse paths pursued by our most recent graduates.  The majority of students who have reported their job outcomes to the department continue to pursue academic careers.  Between 2012 and 2017, approximately 85% of our graduates found initial employment in higher education, including tenure-track positions, postdoctoral fellowships, and visiting or temporary positions.  During that same period, approximately 60% of our 2012 graduates accepted tenure-track positions.  These statistics indicate that graduates from Cornell’s PhD program in English outperform the national average on the tenure-track academic job market.

For newer data visit the Job Placement Record page.