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Anti-Academic Vitriol Redux
The other day Christian contributed a cogent mini-defense of academia as a response to a post in which I was being particularly snide about the academic life. As I noted, I agree with most of what (s)he? said, some of which includes:
Although no job is perfect, a career in academia has many unique benefits. What other job allows you the opportunity to work on the projects that interest you (and ONLY on the projects that interest you)? What other job allows you to change the projects you work on when your interests change? What other job allows you so much control over your own success and failure? What other job pays you to think and write about things that interest you? What other jobs allow you to determine your own deadlines? What other job pays you to create works of doubtful commercial value? What other job permits you so much flexibility in determining your work hours? What other job permits you so much flexibility in getting away to visit family and loved ones?
I suppose the point above that's most flawed in my experience is that academia allows you "so much control over your own success or failure." I mean, in theory, it seems that if you're smart, work hard, write well, publish, etc., you'll succeed. And it's true, these things will likely get you tenure, if that's success. Of course, along the way you'll have to kiss ass to varying degrees (depending on your department and its preferences and rituals), you may have to hide or tone down any political commitments you might have, and you may very well not be able to work on whatever you want, but be forced instead to struggle to make publishable a dissertation you might prefer never to see again. Also, if you are trying to get tenure at a major (public) university that relies heavily on graduate and temporary labor (as most now do), you'll also have to grin and bear your university's cavalier attitude toward the erosion of tenure and the abuse and exploitation of grads and adjuncts. What this means is you'll have to go to sleep every night knowing that you teach less than the grads and adjuncts in your department, yet get paid 3-10 times as much as they do. You'll also have to accept the fact that class sizes continue to grow and the quality of the education your institution provides its students continues to suffer because universities are now run like corporations and the bottom line is all that matters. In practical terms this means you'll have to accept that your department's purpose isn't actually to "teach" anymore at all, rather you'll be developing and executing an efficient "instructional delivery model." This will also make you an "instructional delivery vehicle," which should also make you feel just grand.
Of course, any sacrifices you have to make in order to get tenure will be worth it because once you have tenure you'll be free to do what you want, say what you want, make your own schedule, etc. Right? Well, yes, in theory. The current political climate means you'll still have to watch what you say and what groups you join or advocate for, but a certain amount of this would happen in any field. But here's the deal: By the time you get to that point, you're very likely to be so compromised and exhausted and indebted to the system that has granted you tenure, that you won't really care about much more than publishing a new book every couple of years and keeping your teaching and service-work loads light.[1]
In my experience, "tenured radical" is a misnomer, if not a blatant impossibility. If tenure provided all the freedom people always imagine, why don't we have a truly radical professoriate? Why aren't faculty in the U.S. the most outspoken and active citizens in our society? Why are faculty afraid to take controversial positions in the classroom and in public? Why don't faculty have any solidarity to use the power of their vaunted "freedom" to demand that education be properly funded in our country, rather than being sacrificed to corporate interests (often masquerading as "scientific" interests)?
Having said all that, let me say this: Academics are a truly vital—invaluable, even—part of our society. As a class, they have done the world incalculable good, and will continue to do so, even in their increasingly compromised and besieged state. How is it that I can sound so anti-academic one moment, yet praise academics the next? My answer is that, as Christian notes above, no profession is perfect. It just so happens that I've decided that—for me personally—academia's flaws outweigh its benefits. I'd simply rather do something else with my life. Maybe I'm dreaming to think that I can find some profession with better cost-benefit ratio for me [2], but I'm ready to find out. None of what I say here is really meant to discourage anyone from going into academia, or to disparage academia, per se. I'm just saying it's not for me.
Footnotes:
[1] See also the next post (above) about whether academia is really the "free" meritocracy it appears to be.
[2] Sorry about the crude economic metaphor, but I can't think of a better way to say this. My mind has been colonized by capital. Damn! The matrix has me, too!
Posted September 15, 2002 06:34 PM | life generally
Some thoughts in response:
On kissing ass: The people who make tenure decisions are human, and they are subject to the same biases that people in other professions are. If they are confronted with someone who is an utter shrew or incorrigible creep, this will most likely color their judgment to some extent. After all, tenure is an enormous investment. Tenure is a lifetime contract! It’s not as though people just get to hire their buddies, however. Tenure decisions require letters from individuals who work at other institutions, and tenure decisions are made not just by the individual’s area of specialty at the university, but a much larger group. These decisions have to be ratified at all levels of the university, and not all levels are just ceremonial. Of course, you could argue that this just means that there are more asses for you to kiss. The bottom line is that when you hire someone for an academic position, and when you decide to extend that lifetime contract, you are not just hiring a vita—you’re hiring colleague. You want someone who will be an agreeable mentor to graduate students, someone who volunteer to review your papers, someone who is helpful on committees, someone who offers intelligent comments in seminars. These things are often difficult to quantify. But more broadly, judging the quality of a body of work by an individual is hard to do. It’s subjective, and bias really can creep in. But, you’ll either be very happy or very unhappy to know that a much more common threat to the validity of tenure decision is using the “counting rule” to judging publications (whereby 10 mediocre publications are judged superior to 5 really swell ones), rather than letting their biases influence the overall quality and contribution of the body of work.
On being flogged until the dissertation is published: No one cares if you publish your dissertation. Of course, it is in your best interests to publish something you already put so much work into, but if you do not want to look at it again, there will be no propping of eyelids. Academia is like almost all other careers and hobbies: your chances of success will be higher if you see projects through to completion (here: publication). Academia is unique in that you are free to abandon projects midstream if they don’t seem promising or interesting anymore. Can you drop a client when you get bored defending their case or don’t want to think about it anymore? Can you abandon a case because it doesn’t hold your interest?
On the abuse of undergraduate students, students, and adjunct faculty: Universities and colleges vary widely in the extent to which they rely on graduate students and adjuncts to teach. Although the correlation is far from perfect, larger more research-oriented institutions are more likely to rely on graduate student teaching than smaller, more teaching-oriented institutions (duh…). I attended 4 years of college at a reasonably large institution (~13,000 students), and tenure-track professors taught every class I took.
Universities have to make compromises. The students demand a large number and variety of courses. The university’s prestige depends on the professional success and visibility of its faculty. Professors are human, and teaching more classes is associated with lower publication productivity. Most universities try to meet the demands of students by offering a variety of classes. They compromise by requiring more research and less teaching of their faculty, or they compromise by requiring more teaching and less research of their faculty. Perhaps all universities should be like small liberal arts colleges where professors have very heavy teaching loads and little time publish. More likely, though, there are benefits and disadvantages to each approach.
It should be noted that many students love their graduate student and adjunct professors. They tend to be highly motivated to do the job well, and this motivation, coupled with the fact that they typically teach introductory courses, compensates for their relative inexperience. And, these types of arrangements benefit graduate students as well. Because departmental and governmental funding for graduate education is very limited, graduate students rely heavily on teaching stipends to fund their graduate school career. I was extremely happy to have such funding, and would have most likely quit had I not had it. An additional benefit is that, when your freshly pinned faculty members teach, they might have a little experience under the belt. This is good for both faculty and students.
On the inequity between the salaries of faculty, adjunct professors, and graduate students: I doubt that you would be happier with your job prospects were graduate students and adjunct faculty, who would have far fewer credentials than you, earned your same salary (which would of course be much lower as a result).
On the indistinguishability between corporations and academic institutions: You might be very surprised by this, but universities (especially state ones) have very little money. Every department would like to hire more faculty (and every year, they beg their deans to do so). Universities are not getting rich off of students or other sources of funding; they are scraping to get by. The fact that they can’t hire enough professors so that all classes are handled by professors and so that all professors have enough time to be highly successful in shaping the discipline is not the result university fat cats getting rich.
On the meek, weak, and feckless form of the timorous protest class (i.e., professors): Most individuals in any profession are not radicals (or it wouldn’t be radical would it?). There is nothing about academic freedom that makes all people want to express outrageous views, just like there is nothing about free speech that makes all people want to tear down the government. I haven’t met many academics who secretly harbor wild anti-American, anti-status quo, or anti-THEMANTM beliefs, but hide them because they fear (before or after tenure) negative repercussions from their employers. (In fact, some of them are republicans!) I’m not sure that any group of any individuals SHOULD hold my beliefs or express my beliefs more than they currently do. However, professors arguing for politically incorrect ideas (http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/FACULTY/BussD/bussD.html), unpopular ideas (http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushton.html), or even their own irrelevance (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/08/27/BU99160.DTL) are not difficult to find. And let us not forget that everyone’s favorite lefty radical is himself a university professor (http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html).
(Please excuse the horrible addresses--couldn't get the links to work.)
Posted by: christian at September 20, 2002 12:04 AM
