At this point I would consider, for six figures, a job in language program — almost — because I have so much experience of the language program wars, I might as well. I could do better than the average, narrow SLA person, I am sure.
Everyone wants to get the language program taken care of and have done with it. If we have to touch it at all, we all want to do what we did as TAs and think no further. That puts 10 different models at war with one another, war without end. The language requirement makes students and faculty alike miserable, all swirling around with our notebooks, none knowing what we are doing or why, really.
You have to actually think about what you are doing. If things seemed fine to you in your graduate program, that was probably because the students there were strong enough to handle whatever. It does not mean that the language program where you went to graduate school was good. There, too, it was relegated to the lower orders, who stewed.
This is therefore one of the myriad ways and areas in which it thus falls to non-elite schools like mine to innovate and lead.
#OccupyHE.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 