[jmenn]

Disclaimer: I'm in an English PhD program.

Regarding the parent's comment about adjuncting, no one who goes into an English PhD program expects they'll get a tenure track job out of it, and if they do believe such a thing, they likely shouldn't be in the program in the first place. Professors and the Modern Language Association remind us of the awful working conditions we can expect. No one goes into this field thinking we've found the next big lucrative market to exploit. Most of us would be ecstatic if we landed an R1 gig, but except for those at the top universities, we realize it's highly unlikely.

Learning to write and communicate should be emphasized more in English programs, but I fear the turn to a strictly compositional program will detract from what English majors actually do: read and interpret really well. My limited understanding of Computer Science undergraduate courses suggests that you don't actually learn "to program," you learn to solve problems in algorithmic ways with code; the code itself is merely a means to an end.

As a side note (and I don't do much work in this particular subfield), the work being done with code in English departments seems to be breathing new life into the field. The work on automated genre detection, and, more generally, the move from 200-some canonical texts to 'large datasets,' is bringing us unexpected funding while encouraging students to learn enough code to squeak by at an entry-level job.