The first paragraph would be improved by the economic reality that dare not speak its name: adjunct. Most people who pursue the PhD in English will fail to join the one profession which actually needs English PhDs (training future English PhDs) and instead, if they want to continue putting to use the last 7+ years of their life dedicated to mastering the reification of privilege and construction of the other as demonstrated by 18th century American advertising, end up as later-day itinerant minstrels. The career has little to recommend it by the standards of Harvard undergrads: poor material conditions ($3,000 for teaching a course, typically no benefits), little impact, no stability, and (perhaps most cutting of all) the social slight of being a second class citizen in academia and constantly forced, in ways large and small, to acknowledge that fact.

English PhDs should come with a disclaimer: "90% of you will be unemployable. Your professor who says that you are special and such a good writer that you deserve to give this a go is lying to you. You are not a particularly good writer. You have just internalized the art of flattering English PhDs, which is unfortunate, because they expect to get that done for free and have more than enough takers. Many people who are as talented as you are unemployed or underemployed, and their only opportunity to appreciate Foucault and Kafka is when they're applying for welfare benefits."

English undergrad is almost worse. Even by the standards of the humanities, which chiefly exist to certify that certain students managed to be mostly literate by senior year of high school, it tries to beat any love of the language out of you. By twist of fate and changing departmental policy, my sister (3 years my junior and a genuinely talented writer) and I ended up in the same "freshman" composition class. I phoned it in and got As and A+s, she slaved away on every essay and squeaked out a B-. She hadn't learned the bemused sneer yet. ("The author believes that the poor would better themselves through honest labor. One imagines an elf in Santa's workshop, quite appropriate since the benevolent employer is a myth but the unwavering sweatshop labor in the service of fulfilling the bourgeoises' consumerist desires is very real." <-- "OMG so nails it!!") After you've mastered the pseudointellectual bemused sneer, English class is your oyster. My sister refused to be cynical, grappled with the texts and worked out some genuinely beautiful prose, and barely passed. She figured it out in later years, graduated, and is currently deeply in debt after receiving a master's in an unrelated field after finding out, unsurprisingly, that a major in English makes you virtually unemployable. (One of many deep cuts along the way: she ended up working for our alma mater in a position which was, frankly, secretarial work, and was told, when she attempted to move into a permanent position, that secretaries at our alma mater should have graduate degrees because it would reflect poorly on the institution if they had just graduated in English.)