Introduction: Austerity and the Alt-Ac

Marilyn Rose's contribution helps to set the scene regarding the challenges and opportunities involved in developing professional skills training programs for our graduate students, programs that can promote a broad range of professional skills that will prepare students for possibilities "Beyond Academe." The vexed question here, then, is the relationship between the abilities of institutions to train graduate students for the job market (a job mar- ket that is a dubious metaphor, if not outright myth, as Marc Bousquet argued ten years ago) and the conditions-austerity-under which these institutions now operate. [...]Heather Latimer takes issue with the very concepts of time and futurity that underwrite the ideologies of austerity, arguing that the hope for a good job in the future allows many of us to accept undesirable employment conditions in the present (short-term con- tracts, no support for research, no job security or benefits). [...]Herb Wyile's linking of austerity to the broader context of neolib- eralism reminds us that the Thatcherite slogan "There is No Alternative" (tina) subvents much of university administrations' Janus-faced protec- tion of and gutting of traditional humanities programs.