Comments on: Academic Calvinism

By: JES

JES — Tue, 04 May 2004 05:21:41 +0000

Agreed about not lumping the humanities together. Ditto other fields. In fact, what’s happening now is that people in lower-prestige fields are doing quite well. But that’s another story. To “do I sound bitter”: look, if you’re tenured, and you’ve got a decent job, there is an awful lot you can control. If you really are at a top 10 research university and can’t find a friend to have lunch with once a week or once a month to talk about ideas, it’s your problem, not the system’s. I’m sorry. Intellectual communities are made and sustained by hard work. I know, because everywhere I go I have to build one for myself. I know all about petty miserable colleagues who commit bizarre and cruel acts at unending faculty meetings. And everyone hates grading. But when I am in the classroom, when I am prepping class, when I am meeting with students, and when I am doing my own research and writing (and these four things still take up the bulk of my time), if I am not having fun, it is largely my own fault. I learned that is the only thing I can control in the business, and so I control it. As for grading and committee meetings and the shitty compensation, well, every job has its downside, and a professor’s salary is still enough to live on—outside a few major cities. So I’m on the tenure track and I can’t complain. Well, I can, but I shouldn’t. I should be fighting for the rights of my exploited colleagues in the adjunct and graduate student ranks, and I enjoy doing it. Over and out. —JES

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 02 May 2004 02:37:42 +0000

In the old days, someone might derive his whole (arrogant) identity from the fact that his great-grandfather had been awarded a large estate for winning a major battle. In the old days, it was also possible for someone else to acquire that estate by defeating the current tenant in a major battle. Perhaps academic departments could use a similar mechanism? William (the Adjunct, as he was then known) had the support of the Regents and Presidential approval. Having prepared his invasion force, he took over teaching duties unopposed on 28 September, and within a few days, raised grants at Hastings…

By: Steve "The Happy Academic" Krause

Steve "The Happy Academic" Krause — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:30:07 +0000

Four kind of harsh thoughts: * In enjoyed reading the IA blog quite a bit and I do wish her the best in her pursuit of a career beyond academia. But I always thought that her posts varied between spot-on analysis of the academic life and, well, whining. I used the phrase “pity party” one time, and while that was perhaps a bit strong, I don’t think it is entirely inaccurate. * When folks here and elsewhere say things like “nobody told me this would be hard,” well, I don’t believe them. I too heard the stories of coming retirements back in the 80s, but I also heard a lot of warnings about the difficulties of the academic life. Nowadays, the jist of the advice I give to students and anyone else that will listen is “don’t go, but if you’re going to go, be aware of the challenges if you choose a field like literature.” I know a lot of my colleagues give this same advice. I think what happens though is that the potential PhD students who get this sort of negative advice block it out because they have really made up their mind and/or they think “yeah, but those bad things won’t happen to me.” And then a few years down the road, when they can’t get a full-time teaching job in their field, they tend to only remember the folks who told them to go to school and they tend to forget the warnings. * We shouldn’t just lump “the humanities” together into one (supposedly) unemployable pile. It just isn’t that simple. For example, in English studies, it is very difficult to get a job as a literature specialist, particularly in American literature (well, at least in the US). On the other hand, folks who do what I do, composition and rhetoric studies, tend to find jobs. And for folks in English studies who do things like tech writing, things involving computers, and/or English education, it is currently a “sellers” market. * Cheer up, “do I sound bitter.” In my experience (though I must admit that I don’t teach at a fancy-shmancy school, I don’t have much of an academic pedigree, and I do actually teach quite a bit in my current tenured position), having a job in academia is a hell of a lot better than having a “real job.” So unless you’re independently wealthy, I would encourage you to appreciate what you have. Maybe you should take a summer to do some temp office work or take a job at a Starbucks; I suspect if you do, you’ll feel a lot less burned out about the academic job.

By: rubiana

rubiana — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:39:15 +0000

I wanted to note that I generally agree with the “oversupply” argument and to also mention that the “great 90s’ retirement wave” argument was around in 1984 when I began grad school. I also have to say that 1. I’m one of the lucky ones who found a TT job and 2. that I also explicitly looked for a teaching rather than a top-tier research job. I teach at a small liberal arts college and I relocated transcontinentally to do it. It was my choice, not one I’d ever tell anyone else to make. I tell most of my students that finding an academic job is almost impossible and fortunately most of them don’t plan on going on for Ph.D.s. Do I worry, fret and complain about my job? Of course, everyone does, everywhere. But I spent a lotta years doing other jobs and every now and again I reflect on my complaints of those times and I wouldn’t do anything other than what I’m doing. But I also know just how completely dependent on “luck” finding a job is.

By: Charles Rostkowski

Charles Rostkowski — Thu, 29 Apr 2004 23:21:50 +0000

I am amazed that this graduate school scam is still going on. I went through the meat grinder in the early ‘70s and quit a PhD degree program in history at a second tier school in 1973. I believe only 3 of the 10 who started with me stayed on to get a degree and find jobs. Most of us saw at the time that we were slave labor and held low opinions of the graduate school faculty so we fnally gave up. I still have a copy of the letter I wrote to the prof who asked me why I was leaving ( it was sort of a exit interview). And the reason I gave then was “There simply will not be enough jobs!” Now 30 years later that grad students are finghting the same battles just astonishes me. How do graduate faculties do it? How do they attract students to programs where falure is almost certain. What got me (when I was 25) was how attractive the life of a prof looked. But once outside the academy I discovered life was much more challenging and, after a few years, my decision to leave was the best thing I ever did.

By: do I sound bitter?

do I sound bitter? — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 23:29:43 +0000

Thank you to Lindsay Beyerstein for your thoughtful and upbeat response. I think it is perfectly rational to pursue an academic position outside the humanities, although the job markets in sciences are dismal. But if teaching and writing are what you like (and I love them), then the legal academy is an excellent bet. Your starting pay will be much higher, and your chances of getting a job much better. Go to law school, clerk for a judge or two, and then apply for jobs. I think your father must be a saint. I look around at my colleagues, the ones in their 40’s and 50’s, and see a group of very disillusioned angry unhappy people—people who feel that life really hasn’t matched their expectations. They are so smart, have worked so hard, know so much, so why are they grinding along on their pitiful salaries, living like graduate students, and putting up with constant hazing by colleagues and administrators? Many of them cling to the anti-worldly pieties that got them into the profession in the first place, but those pieties sort of sound ridiculous since the profession is no less worldly than any other. Some of them just drink. Some go off the deep end altogether. I truly do not want to end up a bitter mean crazy drunk, so I try hard to focus on the things I love doing, like teaching which is, yes, a wonderful wonderful thing. Good luck.

By: Rana

Rana — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:25:51 +0000

I’ve bookmarked this post over at the new Invisible Adjunct channel: http://topicexchange.com/t/invisible_adjunct/

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 19:55:44 +0000

This is for “Do I Sound Bitter?” You make a lot of great points, but II think you’re overlooking some of the advantages of academic life. I went out and got a job in advertising. One year out, I make a better living today than I would as a tenured faculty member The road ahead is a smooth series of promotions. I’m told I’ll never have to worry about finding work again. (I’m not so naive as to believe all the puffery of my colleagues, who are, after all hired salesmen. But the gist is plausible.) This is an easy, amusing, stable career. So why am I desperate to get back into academia? Because I love my subject. I love teaching. I want to get paid to write and teach about things that interest me. I’m willing to make sacrifices in order to do it. The academic life is deeply meaningful to me. My day job is just fluff. (I’m NOT saying that all non-academic life is fluff, or that academia is globally better or more noble or whatever. That would be absurd!) I’m just saying that being a professor, for all its faults and disadvantages, is closer to my ideal of the good life than any other alternative. I know marking student essays is a drag, but at least you get to pick what they write about, and set the standards by which you grade them. Endless meetings with pissy colleagues? You’ll find those anywhere. In fact, most white collar jobs seem to consist entirely of attending these meetings. Attacks? You’ve got tenure, so at least your colleagues are scheming to get you fired, as they often to in the corporate world. I’m not naive about the daily grind of academic life. My dad is a professor who has worked 14 hours a day, 6 days a week for 25 years. He swears he wouldn’t quit if he won the lottery, and I believe him. Nobody would consider his life idyllic, but he’s probably the happiest person I know.

By: Zizka

Zizka — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 16:17:19 +0000

I was a regular at IA. Basically, reading IA led me to forget about the PhD. I’m somewhat of an anomaly in having published in refereed journals without one. My guess is that IA would not improved her hiring chances with publications unless one publication created a tremendous buzz. I’ve actually thought of ghost-writing stuff for ambitious career-track people who want to get some numbers on the board. The fine points of the reasons for the attitudes of the tenured (or some of them) toward the non-tenured are unimportant. The haves normally feel contempt for the have-nots, and any ideal whatsoever will do to justify the contempt. In the old days, someone might derive his whole (arrogant) identity from the fact that his great-grandfather had been awarded a large estate for winning a major battle. The restructuring of academia via adjunctification has various causes / motives including oversupply. One issue I don’t see raised enough is that this amounts to a serious weakening of the University’s committment to fostering scholarship, as opposed to just teaching. When right-wingers talk about the arrogance and complacency of the university elite, I routinely defend the university, but I understand what the right-wingers are saying. Because of tenure, the university (more than any other institution in our society except, I suppose, The Supreme Court) is dominated by invulnerable and unchallengable statusses. And pushing the argument to the limit, I’d say that there are plenty of Scalias in the system. My other somewhat-related pet idea was that professionalization, restriction of access, and the dictatorship of hiring committees ahve led to a methodological narrowing to orthodoxy of many areas of interest to me, above all philosophy.

By: Marco

Marco — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 09:34:35 +0000

Dude, you sound twice as bitter as I do!

By: Do I sound bitter?

Do I sound bitter? — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 06:39:54 +0000

I am a tenured professor in a large humanities department at a top ten University. I went into the profession because my parents were academics and because I did very well in my undergraduate classes, so my professors strongly encouraged me and gave me some palaver about how mediated the working world was anyway. So I went to grad school, did well, got a great job, got tenure. I am now 36. I am completely burned out, exhausted, fried—in a deep almost soul-shattering way. I worked like hell to get tenure, but the life I now lead involves a whole lot of grading student papers; fending off attacks from my bitter and shitty tenured colleagues, all of whom act like big babies because no one can fire them; endless meetings about mind-numbing administrative matters; and very little actual intellectual exchange with the aforementioned shitty baby colleagues or with anyone else for that matter because we’re all too damned busy and burned-out. Oh, and have I mentioned that my salary is about what it would have been if I had become a low-level financial analyst right out of college? Also because there is no market per se I can’t just go get another job, so my salary will go up incredibly slowly if at all. So if any of you reading this are thinking of going to graduate school in the humanities, stop. Lash yourself to the mast. Do anything else—law, business, publishing, daytrading, retail. Get a job. The life you think you want to lead in the academy doesn’t exist.

By: Do I sound bitter?

Do I sound bitter? — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 06:39:26 +0000

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 03:42:02 +0000

We had the “there’s going to be a wave of retirements” speech too in 1989. And I think it was sincerely meant—it was based on a common body of information and projection that most grad professors had seen. Little did they know that what was coming when people retired is that positions would either not be filled at all, or would be filled with adjuncts. Matt, yes, I think for many search committees, there is a big difference between someone on a 1 or 3-year contract to teach a regular load who has a presence in a department and an adjunct. And there’s a social difference, too—contract professors are often treated where they work as peers, as “real people”; adjuncts are not.

By: Bill Tozier

Bill Tozier — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 01:45:57 +0000

On oversupply: When I was starting graduate school the last time (back in the early 1990s), there was an explicit Silver Platter argument offered up by the Dean/President who welcomed us to Penn. We were the generation of students destined to replace the fading tenured demographic, the dead wood leaving by one route or another. Instead, we were the dead wood. Or something. The attrition rate in my cohort in the Biology Department was… hmmm, counting me and a couple of transfer students who came in late, about 85%. Of the few that I kept up with who graduated, one is tenure-track and two have disappeared. My response, in hindsight: Thank god they kicked me out. Of course, I write this on the eve of returning to grad school. But this time… well, let’s say that the negotiated terms are turning out to be different for somebody like me. As a friend told me recently, hearing my evangelical threats about Changing Things: I’m signing up to try to revolutionize the meat-grinder from the inside…. Some of us never learn…. (“I ran into a door. It’s nothing.”) Ahem. On Lindsay’s naivete: I often tell young grad students of my acquaintance: Always visualize starting grad students as inner-city kids practicing to be basketball stars. That’s almost exactly the correct picture socially, statistically and economically….

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 01:22:53 +0000

I believe and hope (for selfish reasons) that there’s a big difference here between adjunct positions and non-tenure track positions—as a visitor I have an office, access to letterhead, etc., and hope that my applications don’t get automatically circular-filed. (I also get benefits and a salary that is enough to support myself and my cat.) Any people with hiring committee experience willing to talk about any differences here?