The On-Campus Marathon



You're going to need more than this to survive.

 Why is it that all on-campus interviews for tenure-track academic positions have to be complete nightmares? Most last a couple of days but let's say you're lucky and only have to be on campus for one day. It's still going to be a marathon. Survival of the fittest!

The entire experience could go down like this (assuming your flight isn't delayed or cancelled):
You fly in, presumably the night before the main event, and are immediately whisked off to dinner with multiple people. Sometimes they keep you out pretty late, depending on what time your flight landed and how long it took to get from the airport to the restaurant, and by the time you reach the hotel it's 10pm or later. You've got less than 8 hours before you need to wake up and wow everyone. So you make some calls to loved ones, unpack, lay out your interview outfit, go over your job talk, etc. and then finally pass out at 12am.

When the alarm goes off at 6am or earlier, you spring into action, get ready, and then anxiously look over your schedule for the day, which looks something like this:

7:30 AM Breakfast with grad students
8:30AM Interview with search committee
9:30AM Meeting with HR (where they tell you a bunch of crap--> all irrelevant unless you get the job)
10:30AM Meeting the Department Chair
12:00PM Lunch with Department Members (TBA)
1:00PM Meeting the Dean and/or Vice Provost
2:00 PM Campus Tour
3:00PM Job Talk
4:30PM Meet & Greet with Department
5:30PM Exit meeting with search committee
7:00PM Dinner

The interview day is guaranteed to last over 12 hours, but if you add the time spent going out to dinner at the end of the day, you're looking at a 15 hour day. That's 15 hours straight spent trying to be amazing, polite, witty and coherent; 15 hours where you're "on" non-stop, trying desperately to make a good impression on the 30-50 people you may come into contact with. Yikes! Not to mention time spent impressing during the dinner the night before or at the breakfast the next day or on the long trip to the airport.

The whole process amounts to an exhausting, painful whirlwind. And the worst thing is the waiting period once you've returned home and all the questions that run through your mind 24-7. How many days or weeks will go by before I hear something? Will I ever hear from them again? Did they like me? Was I the best candidate? Should I have answered that question in a different way? Why did I get the spinach salad at lunch?! I should have brought floss in my bag! Idiot!!

While you're waiting to hear back about the results of campus marathon #1, you're invited to interview at a different university. Oh joy! But this time they want you to interview for two days and give both a job talk and a teaching presentation. So you've got two back-to-back 12 hour days to look forward to and less than 10 days to throw together a new talk (because they asked for something entirely different than the first school) and a teaching presentation on a randomly assigned topic. You hope they won't notice that you're wearing the same interview outfit throughout the entire visit.

By the time you get back from visit #2, which was even more tiring than the first, you've got another email inviting you to a 3rd interview at faraway university and you've learned on the academic jobs wiki that the first school has already offered the position you coveted to someone else. Ouch! Bummer! Thus the marathons continue until, finally, there are no more invitations. You're spent and the job possibilities have dried up. Now you wait and hope and wait and wait and wait. The next thing you know it's spring, you're still unemployed, and you've gotten shit all done since January. You've spent the entire semester trying to find a tenure-track position only to come up broke, empty handed, behind in your research, and pissed off.

Welcome to the world of the academic job seeker!!

Guest Post: A Broken System

If I had time, I'd actually teach you something!

A guest post by *Kate Kohler

A student I mentor confided in me recently that one of her tenured professors this term (FYI: I am an adjunct) told a class that she would be “spot grading” their papers. She was simply “too busy” and had “too many students” to grade all her students’ work. (The professor is teaching 2 classes with a total of 79 students – I checked.)

My student was rightly dismayed and, despite the fact that she is an above-average and conscientious student, felt unmotivated to excel in the course if her work was not to be taken seriously, or even read. A series of scenarios went through my head: Perhaps the professor should outsource the papers to India to be graded?
(http://chronicle.com/article/Outsourced-Grading-With/64954/)
Perhaps the professor should assign less writing? (http://chronicle.com/article/Writing-Assignments-Are-Scarce/125984/?inl). Perhaps the university should hire me full-time with salary and benefits since I make the time to carefully evaluate the work I assign students as an important part of my job?(http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/20/study_documents_pay_gap_faced_by_adjuncts)

I quickly realized I was once again stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place: not only did I need to advise my student with politic discourse (god forbid an adjunct trash a tenured professor) but I had to explain to myself at least why the university system is so broken that a tenured professor, who not only is under less pressure to publish but gets time off from teaching to do her research and writing, can assign undergraduates course work with no firm promise of mentorship or evaluation.

The reasons why the system is broken are myriad. They involve change through time (also known as history), as well as current economic and cultural realities. As a doctor of philosophy in history I find I can appreciate the change through time ironies quite well. I earned my PhD in the wrong time and place. Born in 1971, a decade that saw the beginning of the end of the post-war boom, I earned my doctorate in 2009 amidst reports of the crises in the universities and economic woes world-wide. My hope to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps as a professor in terms of job placement, salary, and prestige had become an anachronism.

Here is how I see the problems and a solution. Higher education has historically been a privilege of certain groups – early on clergy who had the time and institutional support to live a life of scholarship followed by social elites who again, had the time and financial support to devote at least a few years to academic pursuits. (Keep in mind one definition of academic is: “hypothetical or theoretical and not expected to produce an immediate or practical result,” which works for both social elites and the scholary in that order). This set the
tone for higher education.

The opening of higher education to a broader community in the twentieth century had myriad benefits for society: first by allowing minority and working-class folk into the hallowed halls where many of them used the education they gained for both practical and scholarly purposes, allowing a necessary breath of fresh air in tired academic power-structures and trends. Second, the opening of the universities also allowed a wider population to gain the kind of “critical thinking” skills so lauded – rightly so – by the powers-that-be as beneficial to economics, politics, and society.

Critical thinking allows just what it promises – “careful evaluation and judgment” of past, present, and future choices by cultures and societies. Problems arose however – critical thinking requires time and money -- to support a growing population of students and professors. It also created an educational bubble that is now untenable. Higher education became focused on raising revenue and maintaining prestige (which equals money) rather than academics and critical thinking skills. In terms of teaching this often meant that faculty were put between that rock and a hard place I mentioned – focusing on their traditional role as scholars and sometimes mentors or acting as excellent teachers of a broader student population.

The truth is that in the opening of the universities a larger population of students came ill-prepared for self-direction in academic studies or simply lacked the motivation and skills necessary to succeed in academic pursuits. This is not a slam on minority groups or students in general. Everyone should have the opportunity for higher education but we, as a global community, need to decide what higher education should entail, how to prepare students for that education, and how we can provide it given the “publish or perish” culture of tenure-track positions in U.S. universities.

I could write a long-winded dissertation on the ins-and-outs of higher ed (in fact, I did) but I want to get back to my main concern here: if tenure-track professors don’t have time to teach (and part of teaching is evaluating student work and helping students reach new levels of scholarship), what can we do? As an adjunct who had planned on becoming tenure track but has since swallowed the bitter pill of reality and is now quite content with a part-time adjunct position (my husband works full-time with great benefits) at a branch of a well-known state school, I have given solutions a bit of the critical thinking I was taught to apply to problems.

Here are my two-cents: At present about 70% of teaching faculty in the United States is made up of adjuncts who work part-time, piece-meal, and most often with low pay and no benefit. This creates a culture of “fast-food work” in college teachers and courses, although many adjuncts are both excellent scholars and teachers. Adjuncts are typically either trained professionals in a specific field or hold a PhD in their teaching
subject. The other 30% of faculty are tenured – which today usually means they have published enough peer-reviewed scholarly work in their field to be considered senior scholars. Aside from the problems inherent in scholarly publishing (http://chronicle.com/article/We-Must-Stop-the-Avalanche-of/65890/) and(http://chronicle.com/article/Pricey-Cost-per-Page-Hurts/48257/), research is important in keeping academics active and relevant to each new generation as well as creating more -- and often more advanced – knowledge.

It is not a surprise that many professors who are working toward tenure or prefer a life of research don’t feel they have the time and energy it takes to be a great teacher. Teaching, however, is one of the most important goals of higher education. One of my favorite quotations by G. M. Trevelyan sums this up: "Since history has no properly scientific value, its only purpose is educative. And if historians neglect to educate the public, if they fail to interest it intelligently in the past, then all their historical learning is valueless except in so far as it educates themselves." You can fill in your discipline, but the message holds true: what good is advanced or new knowledge if it is not applied to and shared with society at large? That is the role of a good teacher – to know and understand the scholarship and be willing and able to share it with a broader audience – an audience who does not have the time or skill set to decipher disciplinary trends and jargon. A good teacher will also teach students to find the time and create the skill-set of life long critical thinking.

Here is my proposal. Keep 70/30 split, hire professor-teachers (aka most adjuncts) with a contract and benefits, and keep the 30% of researchers to push academic fields ahead. Renew these positions with professionals and scholars but allow them to choose which track they enter and, if necessary, to switch tracks. In order to keep both professor-teachers and professor- researchers in touch with each other as well as the communities they serve, university-wide scholarly conferences could be held on each campus or system in which teachers and researchers would meet to share knowledge and pedagogy. Researchers could potentially work with graduate students as well to train them in the rigors and details of research and publishing.

Of course this plan has kinks, and economic woes would slow its development for now. I think my campus is moving toward this solution, however, and suspect many other will as well as adjuncts demand their due, students demand teachers, and scholarly publishing opportunities continue to dwindle. As a recent piece argued, however, universities should offer both practical and academic resources and strive toward both as goals. (http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/saturday-night-live-floor-wax-and-the-life-of-the-mind/27745?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en)

*Kate Kohler (a pseudonym to protect the innocent and the adjunct) teaches history at a major state university branch campus. She loves teaching history that is useful, fun, and interesting to those who hated high school history classes.

We Will be OK

A friend of mine brought this great Salon thread to my attention today, "If I don't succeed in academe, I'll die!" and I wanted to pass it on to anyone who stumbles across this site.

http://www.salon.com/life/since_you_asked/index.html?story=/mwt/col/tenn/2011/01/23/academe

In a letter seeking advice from columnist Carry Tennis, a failed anthropology PhD seeking tenure-track employment has come to the following, heart-breaking realization: "I've given it everything, and I want it more than anything, but it looks like it will never happen." Ouch.

I can really relate to her predicament and self-imposed drama and feelings of inadequacy. We've all been there. This particular PhD and ex-academic is wallowing in despair, asking herself over and over again: Why, oh why, did I F--K up my life and waste more than 15 years pursuing something pointless? I should have just moved to L.A. and tried to become an actress, like I wanted to back in high school. Of course, her parents told her then that acting was an impossible industry to break into and that she would never be able to support herself. A PhD in anthropology, on the other hand, promised to lead to a rewarding and realistic career as a professor. NOT.

Intellectually she knows the race for tenure-track employment is over but she just can't let her dream die. Or, rather, she refuses to allow herself to move on and find joy in life. She refuses, on many levels, to accept the reality of her situation:

"The problem is that emotionally, I can't drop it. It's like having a painful sore in my mouth that I keep poking with my tongue -- all day, every day, I'm angry, bitter and heartbroken. I resent my husband so much for having what I can't get that I can barely stand to be in the same room with him, I'm so consumed with jealousy. The workload of a professor is far more brutal than many realize -- 60-hour workweeks are the norm, and actually you don't stop working over the summer, you just stop getting paid -- so my husband naturally has little time and energy left over for any housework, which naturally falls on my shoulders. And this ENRAGES me -- it's like I'm not just unable to get my dream job, I'm doomed to 1950s housewife drudgery while my husband does the important stuff. My resentment toward my husband is on the verge of causing me to leave -- and it's not his fault."

So what does the wise Cary Tennis have to say in response? In a nut shell:

"You are not one-dimensional. Of course you have academic talent as well as other talents. Of course you have a good mind and many skills. But where is your power? Where is your center of gravity? . . . You must be a free human being. That is your first priority. You do not have to be a professor. . . . You know what the situation is. You just have not yet marshaled enough concrete evidence, on a consistent basis, to counter these core beliefs that are ruining your life. I think you can do it. I think you can undertake to undo this set of beliefs, and that will free you to be a human being who can choose whether she wants to be an academic or wash pots and pans.


I assure you, nothing terrible will happen to you if you do not become an academic. To know this is literally to get your life back. . . . That is the most valuable thing of all, to know that we can be OK. That is priceless. That is my wish for you, that you will find a way out of this terrible, stifling belief that you must be an academic, that you will regain the freedom to dance and sing and fling elaborate gestures to the crowd."


I'd say this is pretty good advice; although it's a shame he didn't offer any perspective on the husband-housework dilemma.

The Private School Option

What you may be up against.

Interested in leaving the ivory tower and teaching at a private high school? Wondering if Ph.D.'s are desirable candidates for prep school teaching positions or if making the switch would make you happy? Concerned that prep school kids will be little rebellious punks? Look no further.

Check out my latest Inside Higher Ed column, "The Private High School Option":
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/on_the_fence/woolf_on_careers_in_private_schools

*I'd love to respond to your questions and comments, so please feel free to leave them either at IHE or here at the blog.

Off the Fence: Reflections on Nine Years of Ambivalence

The first in an intermittent series of guest posts by Caitlin*

As the interview season gets underway and the ambivalent academic's thoughts slide again towards tenure-track dreams (knock 'em dead, Eliza!), I have accepted the offer to write a few guest posts as an academic who is now officially off the fence, gainfully employed outside of professordom, and decreasingly ambivalent about it.

I usually begin the tale of my aborted academic career at the end. I think most post-academics do, with the defensive assertion that we left by choice rather than by necessity. I've come to think, however, that this distinction is mostly--well, academic. Whether you left in the first year of your doctoral program or after gaining tenure, the decision to leave came down to the same calculus: you just didn't want it badly enough any more to make the sacrifices involved. What I have discovered as the months between me and my academic life turn into years is that I don't want it at all.

My c.v. will tell you that I have a doctorate in history in one of the more grossly oversubscribed subfields, and that my post-PhD career consisted of a VAP at an Ivy League college, a multi-year research fellowship, two chapters in edited volumes, some bad luck (and bad judgment) with journals, and a book under contract with one of the top ten presses in my field. Twenty-three conference interviews over four years, five on-campus interviews, one tenure-track job offer. The year I threw in the towel I had that t-t job offer (in a Right-to-Work state where my husband, a union organizer, was unlikely to ever find work) and yet another research fellowship 3,000 miles away. Both of which I turned down.

See? See? I had options! (Yes, yes, the lady protests too much).

What my c.v. will not tell you is that I was ambivalent about professordom every step of the way. I am sensitive to the charge that I am rewriting history here, and there is probably a little bit of this going on, but friends and family have confirmed the nine-year duration of my ambivalence.

I was (and still am) attracted to the mystique of university teaching and research. The prestige was appealing, also the idea of a job that combined some routine duties (teaching and advising) with some creative ones, and had travel opportunities more pleasant than a grueling salesman's schedule of four days a week on the road.

But there were major problems, too. I tend to couch my objections to the academy in terms of fit: round peg, square hole. For one thing, teaching never gave me a buzz--I admire education in theory, but in practice it just left me limp. For another, I couldn't stand academics en masse. I am very fond of many individual academics, but collectively they induce in me an extremely unpleasant combination of anxiety and boredom.

And perhaps most importantly, I had no burning research questions to sustain me. It took me a long time to face up to the fact that I simply don't think think very highly of most academic research in the humanities--mine or anyone else's. From its deliberately opaque style to the irrelevance of most of its topical concerns to a host of conventions as mannered as eighteenth-century protocol in the courts of Europe, most academic writing on history, art, literature, religion, and philosophy has run off the rails as far as I'm concerned. I know there are people who love this stuff. But it's not for me.

I also have objections to the academy that are less personal and more systemic. But most of this reads as sour grapes when it comes from me, so I tend not to dwell on it. There are others better placed to make these criticisms. In retrospect it seems obvious that prestige and lifestyle would be insufficient to sustain me through misgivings as deep as these. Yet somehow I persisted over nine years. Why? Answering this question has been a major part of my post-academic deprogramming.

Over my next posts, I will be writing first about the forces that kept me on the academic straight and narrow despite the mounting evidence that it was a terrible fit. I have a list of five as of right now, but I reserve the right to come up with others. Then I will post on my epiphany moment--actually, it was a series of epiphany moments--that helped me realize that the things I didn't like about the academic track outweighed the things I did like about it.

Navel-gazing? You betcha. I offer no general remarks--only reports from the front lines of the out-of-academia transition. I can only hope that my own mental turmoil--and the gradual cessation thereof--helps other tortured souls resolve inner conflicts, either through that shock of recognition you get when someone else articulates something that you've been feeling but haven't put words to, or that that almost equally illuminating moment when you realize that someone else's inner life is profoundly unlike yours. May self-knowledge rain down upon us.

*Postscript: Why I write under my own name (but only part of it):

I have been for some time participating in online and face-to-face communities of ambivalent and/or disaffected academics. I run a face-to-face group in my local area and comment in various blogs and fora. I am particularly fond of the Worst Professor Ever, Post-Academic, and VersatilePhd, as different as they are.

I do this under my own name. I do not use a pseudonym, because--for me, at least--the project of leaving the academy has been an effort to revive some long-atrophied skills in self-awareness. Nine years in the academy was nine years of stifling deep reservations about my fit there and the value I placed on the system itself. A stronger sense of *my* values and *my* wishes is my most precious achievement of the past eighteen months, and I use my name to associate those sentiments with ME, thank you very much! (No such thing as a unitary self, the theoretically-minded may sniff, and maybe you're right, but I can tell you that I am by now dead sure when I am doing something that is NOT a good fit).

That said, I would prefer that these self-absorbed ramblings not appear on Google searches of my name. It's just TMI for potential employers or landlords or whatever, so I tend to omit my surname and the proper names of institutions I am associated with. If you want to Google-stalk me, be my guest. It won't be that hard.

Good Luck to those with Preliminary Interviews

We could all use a dash of luck right about now.

Since the annual AHA and MLA hiring conventions will be held this coming week/weekend, I wanted to send out positive vibes to all the anxious job candidates out there. It's a truly brutal year to be on the academic job market; and if you're lucky enough to have any interviews at all this month, you should be congratulating yourself for getting this far.

NB: I've got a few upcoming interviews and keep having to remind myself that it's a miracle I made it this far. Not because I'm "unworthy" but just because the entire academic hiring process is a complete and total crap shoot. It's random and unfair. (And, yes, I really do believe this.)

I know having a preliminary interview, or two or three, is a far cry from an actual job offer but it's a necessary first step on the road to tenure-track academic employment, if that is what you are in fact seeking. So what last-minute steps, if any, should you be taking to prepare yourself for these convention interviews? Based on personal experience and wise advice from others, I've got a few tips to offer in no particular order:

1) Dress professionally and tone down the bling/body odor/perfume/piercings.

2) Know where you are going and make sure you get there on time.

3) Be confident and friendly. Smile!

4) Prepare to discuss your research.

4a) Know your dissertation and/or current research project in and out and have 1 and 5 minute spiels roughly memorized. Also know where your research is headed over the next 5 years or so.

4b) Know how you intend to go about revising your dissertation for publication. If you're like me and have already started revising, explain how you've gotten from point A to point B.

4c) Think about answers to commonly asked questions: What's important about this project? What contribution are you making to the field? How did you get interested in X subject? Who are the major players in your field and how is your work different? What's your next project?

5) Prepare to discuss your teaching.

5a) Look over the original job ad and make sure you know how you'd go about teaching the courses mentioned. Design syllabi if need be and pass them out during the interview. Think about why you'd assign certain books. What lessons or skills would you want students to take away from your courses?

5b) Come up with a dream course and be prepared to discuss it. Make sure it's realistic in the context of the department's current curriculum and not already offered by another professor.

5c) Scan departmental offerings and see what courses they've got on the books. What could you reasonably teach right now; what new courses could you bring to the table?

6) Bring a pad and paper so you can take notes throughout the interview.

7) On the same pad write down in advance several questions you have for the search committee. Make sure you have some questions ready!

8) End on a confident and collegial note and avoid talking smack about the university or the search committee to others at the AHA. You never know who could be listening.

9) Also, and this is just a pet peeve of mine, please don't immediately get on the academic jobs wiki and start saying what assholes the SC members were to you, etc. You'll just make yourself look like an A-hole.

10) Enjoy the painfully stressful process and try to be yourself. You may need a job desperately but you're also a professional, right? You know what to do.

Good luck everyone!

FYI: Tenured Radical also has some excellent advice to offer job candidates on their way to the AHA and she has WAY more experience under her belt. Listen to her!
http://tenured-radical.blogspot.com/2010/12/tell-us-about-your-dissertation-and.html

*Updates:

1) I found the following IHE article about the proper attire for an MLA interview a bit over the top; the author's advice is better suited for an on-campus interview, in my opinion:
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/01/03/nicholas_on_the_importance_of_the_interview_suit

2) The news about the "serious crisis" in the history job market this year comes as no suprise to me. (I did predict this back in August in my IHE column "A Bleak Market" but apparently the AHA is only just now catching on. Go figure.) Yes, we are in a free fall and things are looking very bad indeed. Even more reason to prep your heart out if you've got an AHA or phone interview lined up.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/03/history_job_openings_fall_economics_positions_recover

Why Academe is Exactly Like a "Love" Affair

Last year, around this time, I was pretty sure I wanted to be an academic. I'd applied for tons of tenure-track and visiting jobs and post-doctoral fellowships and was willing to move (almost) anywhere to "pursue the dream" indefinitely. My CV scorecard served as evidence of a career trajectory designed to fit snugly within the ivory tower. In fact, I'd already traveled around the world for over a year in order to pursue research and funding opportunities for my, uh hum, groundbreaking dissertation-cum-book manuscript, even selling my car to live the life of a vagabond academic and putting off making payments on my large student loan debt. Oh yes, I was a committed little thing.

But despite all that sacrifice and geeky willingness to conform to academe's arbitrary demands at any cost, I only had one AHA interview lined up for Jan. 2010. Only one shot to secure a history position for which I was ideally suited. And nothing came of this preliminary interview. Academe spat on my love once again and left me broken hearted and pissed off.

Is my heart all cracked and shriveled now like the Grinch's?

(*Granted, I did have a phone interview before the AHA and in Feb/March two on-campus interviews, but those interviews were for positions that were not really in my field. Landing one of those jobs would have been quite a stretch; so I wasn't at all surprised when my on-campus interviews turned out to be more cursory visits than anything else. They needed to fill quotas, apparently, when they decided to bring me to campus.)

Point is: In the years immediately following grad school, I gave my long-term, twisted relationship with academe my all but, like so many other poor suckers who want to be scholars for a living, just kept getting burned. By summer 2010 I felt like it was time to take a short separation before choosing to either break up with academe for good of my own free will or make a more serious commitment, bad treatment and all.

But I have an anxious personality by nature; it takes me a long time to make a major life decision, like breaking up with someone or something to which I've grown accustomed and/or attached. I had to take things slow and see how I felt about the trial separation. (Pretty damn good actually. Never slept better.) The trial appeared to go well at first--until I realized that making a huge career transition during a recession was really, really difficult and just as stressful and soul crushing as trying to find an academic job. That realization sucked. So I opted to continue on the same tired path for now, all the while knowing I would most likely be leaving the ivory tower in 2011 or 2012. 

Hence this year I only applied for a handful of academic jobs and found myself resigned to rejection before I'd even sent the applications off. The love affair had grown stale over the past year and working on this blog, among other things, had enabled me to see that there were plenty of non-academic opportunities out there for someone with my skill set. I just wasn't that into it anymore.

But like any other unhealthy love affair, academe wasn't ready to let me go so easily. I ended up with multiple interview requests this year, despite only applying for 6 jobs and determining not to attend the AHA. It's the last gasp before the true death of this relationship, I suppose. (And now the anxiety nightmares are back.) So even though I have a 1 in 12 shot at four different academic positions this year, all in decent parts of the country, I'm convinced that nothing will come of it. It's not that I'm a total Debbie Downer, but I still believe that my path lies elsewhere. Probably. After all, it's way more fun being the one who does the rejecting. I'll keep you posted.

Is it just a Pyramid Scheme?

Just when we were all feeling really chipper and optimistic about our future employment prospects in 2011, the Economist decided to publish an article called, "The Disposable Academic: Why Doing a PhD is Often a Waste of Time" (Dec. 16, 2010). As we prepare to ring in the new year, either with or without interviews to look forward to next month or the month after, do we want to spare a few minutes in order to dwell, once again, on the disillusionment often accompanying a doctoral degree? Do we feel like rehashing familiar territory in the days leading up to Christmas?

I'm pretty busy, actually, but what the hell, I've always got time to kill when the words/phrases "disposable" and "waste of time" are uttered in the same breath as "PhD." If someone is going to sum up my worst fears so aptly, why not indulge? 

The PhD: another disposable item polluting the planet.

Here's a rather lengthy taste of the article, which I've quoted from in large chunks. Normally I wouldn't do such a thing, but I think this piece deserves wide circulation and discussion:

"In most countries a PhD is a basic requirement for a career in academia," says the Economist. "It is an introduction to the world of independent research--a kind of intellectual masterpiece, created by an apprentice in close collaboration with a supervisor. The requirements to complete one vary enormously between countries, universities and even subjects."

*Editor's Note: You've heard it before and now you're hearing it again. The PhD is just a basic requirement. It's nothing special. You may have spent 6-9+ agonizing years trying to finish the damn thing, you may have put yourself into debt and gained a ton of weight, but the doctoral degree is nothing to write home about.

"[But] one thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. . . . Some describe their work as “slave labour”. . . . Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. . . . The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes."


"But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. . . . Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships."

"Proponents of the PhD argue that it is worthwhile even if it does not lead to permanent academic employment. Not every student embarks on a PhD wanting a university career and many move successfully into private-sector jobs in, for instance, industrial research. That is true; but drop-out rates suggest that many students become dispirited. In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment."

"In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%. Worse still, whereas in other subject areas students tend to jump ship in the early years, in the humanities they cling like limpets before eventually falling off. And these students started out as the academic cream of the nation. Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam. Even graduates who find work outside universities may not fare all that well. PhD courses are so specialised that university careers offices struggle to assist graduates looking for jobs, and supervisors tend to have little interest in students who are leaving academia."


*Editor's Note: What about pay, you ask? Surely a Ph.D. should increase one's earning potential over time? Well, not by much.

"Over all subjects, a PhD commands only a 3% premium over a master’s degree. . . .  The skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses."

*Editor's Note: OK, so the salary still sucks. But what about the love? What about the dream? Isn't it worth it to live the life of the mind 24-7? Hmm, maybe in movies? Maybe??

"Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world. They believe that knowledge spills from universities into society, making it more productive and healthier. That may well be true; but doing a PhD may still be a bad choice for an individual. The interests of academics and universities on the one hand and PhD students on the other are not well aligned."

"Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else. They might use their research skills to look harder at the lot of the disposable academic. Someone should write a thesis about that."

*Editor's Note: Someone should. But if they did, they'd be even more unemployable than the rest of us.

Irrespective, happy holidays from On the Fence!!

Is More Education the Answer?

What do most unemployed people, who can afford to, do during a recession, other than constantly looking for work and submitting applications? They go back to school. Universities throughout the country are facing record enrollment rates this year, and administrators everywhere are rubbing their hands together, watching gleefully as money moves out of the pockets of students and their parents and fills their universities' coffers. In many respects, the recession has offered a boost to large state universities.

Professors, of course, are less enthusiastic; they're seeing enrollment caps go way up, students spilling out into the hallways due to a lack of seats, and email inboxes full of requests from desperate students begging to add their class. (They swear they won't mind sitting on the floor.) Faculty workloads are increasing big time as a result, as are costs of living, while academic salaries remain frozen and hiring lines are cancelled. It's certainly not a win-win situation for everyone. I doubt you find many professors thrilled about the prospect of yet more students, many of whom barely have a grasp of the English language despite being native speakers, signing up for their large first-year lecture courses. (Oh, yay, now we have to teach 125 bored and apathetic students about medieval Europe instead of 75? Joy!)

But the rhetoric in the popular media suggests that going back to school, or furthering one's already extensive education with yet another B.A. or M.A. or even a Ph.D, is, as always, the best way to weather a recession. Is more education necessarily the answer? For those of us with advanced degrees but lacking in real-world experience, the idea of returning to school might seem absurd. What's the point? Employers want to hire people with experience, not an extensive knowledge of Chaucer.

But what about for the average 20 something? Is it worth it for them? What do you think? Would you advise someone to go back, or stay in, school until the recession is "over"? Have you considered returning to school despite the costs and time required?

Nice buildings sure make you feel like there's a point to it all!

Here is what the New York Times editorial team has to say about it:

Editorial: New York Times

Published: December 13, 2010

College, Jobs and Inequality

"Searching for solace in bleak unemployment numbers, policy makers and commentators often cite the relatively low joblessness among college graduates, which is currently 5.1 percent compared with 10 percent for high school graduates and an overall jobless rate of 9.8 percent. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, cited the data recently on “60 Minutes” to make the point that “educational differences” are a root cause of income inequality.

A college education is better than no college education and correlates with higher pay. But as a cure for unemployment or as a way to narrow the chasm between the rich and everyone else, “more college” is a too-easy answer. Over the past year, for example, the unemployment rate for college grads under age 25 has averaged 9.2 percent, up from 8.8 percent a year earlier and 5.8 percent in the first year of the recession that began in December 2007. That means recent grads have about the same level of unemployment as the general population. It also suggests that many employed recent grads may be doing work that doesn’t require a college degree.

Even more disturbing, there is no guarantee that unemployed or underemployed college grads will move into much better jobs as conditions improve. Early bouts of joblessness, or starting in a lower-level job with lower pay, can mean lower levels of career attainment and earnings over a lifetime.Graduates who have been out of work or underemployed in the downturn may also find themselves at a competitive disadvantage with freshly minted college graduates as the economy improves.

When it comes to income inequality, college-educated workers make more than noncollege-educated ones. But higher pay for college grads cannot explain the profound inequality in the United States. The latest installment of the groundbreaking work on income inequality by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that the richest 1 percent of American households — those making more than $370,000 a year — received 21 percent of total income in 2008. That was slightly below the highs of the bubble years but still among the highest percentages since the Roaring Twenties.

The top 10 percent — those making more than $110,000 — received 48 percent of total income, leaving 52 percent for the bottom 90 percent. Where are college-educated workers? Their median pay has basically stagnated for the past 10 years, at roughly $72,000 a year for men and $52,000 a year for women.

A big reason for the huge gains at the top is the outsize pay of executives, bankers and traders. Lower on the income ladder, workers have not fared well, in part because health care has consumed an ever-larger share of compensation and bargaining power has diminished with the decline in labor unions.

College is still the path to higher-paying professions. But without a concerted effort to develop new industries, the weakened economy will be hard pressed to create enough better-paid positions to absorb all graduates.

And to combat inequality, the drive for more college and more jobs must coincide with efforts to preserve and improve the policies, programs and institutions that have fostered shared prosperity and broad opportunity — Social Security, Medicare, public schools, progressive taxation, unions, affirmative action, regulation of financial markets and enforcement of labor laws.

College is not a cure-all, but it will certainly take the best and brightest minds to confront those challenges."

*Any thoughts or comments?

Why Being on the Academic Job Market Sucks: Part III

Honey, it's for you . . .

December is here, snowflakes are falling, and pretty much everyone I know who has applied for academic jobs is anxiously awaiting news, whether good or bad, from search committees. We're checking our email, making sure the phone is plugged in, scanning the Wiki, watching the letterbox for rejection letters, and asking our friends and colleagues if they've heard anything at all. Many of us are also simultaneously buried under piles of student papers and exams this week and next, struggling to finish the semester before collapsing. We could all use a long nap followed by a stiff drink and a gingerbread cookie right about now. And maybe even some mindless TV as well. Why not? Haven't we earned a bit of R&R?

Rum, gin, whatever, just pour me some.

While we may imbibe more than our fair share of alcoholic beverages in the coming weeks, those of us looking for work will also be on pins and needles day and night, waiting for job-related news until the 11th hour. Why academics are destined to spend the entire holiday season checking their email/phone messages every hour and refreshing the Wiki is beyond me. Couldn't we just do the whole thing starting in January? Does the (mostly) bad job-market news always have to hit us in mid-December, putting a serious damper on our Christmas/New Year cheer? Is there anyone else who is simply fed up with feeling depressed about dwindling ivory tower job prospects every December? (Note to self: This is one of the main reasons I want to look for work outside the academy. No more miserable Decembers!!)

My partner and I, for example, started off the weekend feeling pretty good about life in general, until we learned--via the Wiki--that several of the universities to which we have submitted applications, and even additional materials, have already scheduled preliminary interviews. Bummer. Such news is to be expected, of course, in this highly competitive world, but it still sucks to start off your week with disappointment. I prefer good news.

But it's important to note that not every Wiki-based disappointment/rejection is entirely valid, either, because I know search committees sometimes stagger their invites to job applicants. So one can't, or shouldn't, immediately assume that the party is over because of a presumed Wikijection. It's unwise to presume anything. However, most of the time, if other candidates are receiving contact from the search committee(s) and you are not, that is a bad sign. Very bad.

I do actually have one preliminary academic interview scheduled for next month, so yay for me. It's not at my 1st or 2nd choice university but given that I only applied for a handful of jobs, I am really fortunate to have received any interview requests at all. I'm still hoping I'll have 1 or 2 more schools contact me this month, but I have no expectations. Besides, like every other academic job applicant in the world, I've gotten excited about a possible job and then ultimately been burned by a search committee whose members seemed pleasant and professional but never contacted me again after the initial, or on-campus, interview. Nonetheless, that's the painfully uncertain life of a job searcher in any field. You show them what you have to offer and hope it's to their liking.

I wish I could offer some words of encouragement to my fellow job seekers but I don't really have any false positivity to offer at the moment. "Keep on keepin' on," perhaps, or "just wait and see, 2011 will be YOUR year!," or if that fails utterly, then "better luck next year" (or the year after, or never). I am sure, though, that some, if not most, of us will end up landing academic or non-academic jobs in 2011. We need to work; we need the money. In these times of uncertainty, remaining flexible and open minded is the best option. I'm personally giving the academic job market another go this year because I want to see what happens. I'm already open to looking for work elsewhere. That doesn't mean, however, that my ego appreciates rejection and disappointment any more than it did last year (or the year before that).