Excessive recruitment to PhD programmes in English is causing a "major social disaster", says Annabel Patterson, a British professor in the English department at Yale University, in the United States. She raises her fears in the first pamphlet of a new series, Issues in English.
"What has struck a vicarious terror into my heart in the last few years is the determination of British institutions to increase the size of their PhD programmes," Professor Patterson writes.
She says it looks as if Britain is making the same mistake as the United States, producing too many candidates for the tenured jobs available.