Author’s Note: I’ve re-posted this article for your reading pleasure while I’m on vacation.

The notion most of us have when thinking about the University (read that with a deep and important voice, please) is of a well-architectured limbo-land full of higher thought, in-depth learning, and forward motion steeped nicely in tradition. The University isn’t (or didn’t used to be) as susceptible to the rules of government and society; they’ve managed to create their own little spheres.

These days, when you really stop to ponder the reality of the University bubble, that place of higher thinking seems a lot more watered down in its autonomy. Money, politics and red tape have pulled the rest of the world into the fabric of the University, while the University is forced, more and more it seems, to rely on the non-University world in order to survive.

No less than eight members of my family, between 1932 and the present, have spent their careers at Universities. I’m not an idiot; I know that even in 1932 the University was already pretty susceptible to red tape and politics. But the University was still thought of, from without and within, as a place where academic freedom was considered sacred.

It appears, especially through the eyes of those on the inside, as though the last vestiges of higher learning and new thinking are being chipped away at an increasingly rapid rate, all in the name of popular research and big-name publishing. That all comes down to the ongoing faculty wrestling-match to figure out who will land the biggest chunk of grant money.

You can’t survive without money, and you can’t continue your research (or your job) without funding. Grant money is usually awarded to those trying to answer the newest, biggest, hottest question of the year. It’s difficult to land decent financial support for researching the esoteric topics.

When a dispute regarding academic freedom comes up, it’s usually about the rights of instructors to speak freely (within reason; there’s never any need to go overboard, for crying out loud) about politics and religion and all the Big Bads no one’s supposed to bring up in classroom discussions. Academic freedom is also supposed to include the rights of students and faculty to think, wonder, ask questions, and to perform research in order to find some answers. If money and funding are driving the machine, it seems obvious that the academic freedom to do research is being severely shaped by outside interests.

President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago gave a speech recently at Columbia University’s conference entitled “What is Academic Freedom For?” He spoke about academic freedom at institutions of higher learning, what that means and why it’s important to protect and maintain that tradition in the modern-day University.

The greatest contributions universities can make to society over the long run are the ideas and discoveries of faculty and students that emanate from the resulting intellectual ferment and the work of alumni across the scope of human activity―alumni whose capacity for invention has been dramatically enhanced through their education in this environment. Moreover, that universities are almost unique in making this type of contribution only highlights its importance to society.

If this is the purpose of universities, the purpose of academic freedom is precisely to preserve this openness of inquiry and freedom of thought. In other words, academic freedom is designed to protect and preserve for the long run the unique capacity of universities to contribute to society. More…

Further Reading:

Academic Freedom in the 21st Century College and University
Academic Freedom
AAUP: Academic Freedom
What is Academic Freedom For?
Pres. Zimmer’s Address Delivered at Columbia Univ.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

Graduate school, should it have escaped everyone’s notice, prepares no one for reality. One learns insanely vast oceans of information, but this just means that the M-Something or the PhD in question just knows a lot of stuff—more than most other breathing bodies about one particular slice of one weensy area of reality. Knowing that much information is awesome. But a job it does not acquire. I know, I am an unnecessarily logical bitch. I get that a lot.

So, here you are, all filled up with the knowledge and no way to turn the smartness into cash money. There’s always teaching, fighting for tenure, and someday becoming a beloved professor. But that rarely works out these days. I’ve heard you have to either off someone, sell your soul, or hand over your firstborn to get a professorship. I’m going to officially state that academia may not be the best option. Which is unfortunate, as by this point, your particular topic and the world of academics are the two bits of this life you grok fully and without any doubt as to your capabilities.

I’m thinking you may require assistance with the prying off of your fingers from your lab table/thesis/dissertation/research notes/library carrel/desk in the windowless basement “office.” The Oxford University Press will save you: they’ve just published Jerald M. Jellison’s book, Life After Grad School: Getting From A to B. Technically still under the very edge of academia’s umbrella, but much more saturated with real life and logic.

Jellison’s book is simple; it reads like a To Do list with only the necessary explanations to go along with each item. This is not at all what I expected from a Univ. of California professor. He’s done well in academia as well as in the business world, so perhaps that combination has helped to simplify his writing. Whatever the reason, it’s comfortingly logical in its this-is-possible forward momentumness. Rarely do academics leave their world with emotional grace; they’ve invested too much to walk away easily. Jellison has broken down the horrific task of leaving one life and beginning another into absorbable and complete-able bites.

From the publisher:

There are 2.5 million graduate students across the U.S. in programs designed for a career in academics, and it is rarely acknowledged that less than five percent will realize their dream of becoming a professor. And as tenure track job openings disappear, this percentage will only shrink. The truth is that many of these students aren’t getting the support and instruction from their grad schools on pursuing a career outside academia, nor do many realize that they have the knowledge and skills that could make them a very attractive candidate for a job with a corporation, government agency, or nonprofit.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

For Prospective Undergrads:

Rejected by a school that you know, in your heart of hearts, you’re destined to attend? Allen Grove has superb advice on appealing a rejection letter. Does the school ever take heed of appeals? If so, what are the criteria they require in order to consider reversing your current rejected status? What does a sample appeal letter look like? Mr. Grove has you covered.

For Grad Student Hopefuls:

If you’ve asked one too many departments to spend their time and energy on smoothing your entry into their graduate program and are now faced with one too many acceptance letters, Female Science Professor has advice for gracefully declining. And apologizing, thanking those who helped you, etc.

Academia can be a dark and hopeless place should you ever find yourself without allies. Take my advice: Don’t screw over anyone who has ever been kind to you. You’ll only end up screwing your future self over several times over. Be a person, not an inhuman ass#@$%.

Be aware enough to realize how small academia really is: there are not enough spots for everyone. This means anyone who helps you to move up and forward in your academic education/career is potentially assisting someone who may become their direct competition someday. Do not take for granted their willingness to put themselves on the line for you.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image)

The notion most of us have when thinking about the University (read that with a deep and important voice, please) is of a well-architectured limbo-land full of higher thought, in-depth learning, and forward motion steeped nicely in tradition. The University isn’t (or didn’t used to be) as susceptible to the rules of government and society; they’ve managed to create their own little spheres.

These days, when you really stop to ponder the reality of the University bubble, that place of higher thinking seems a lot more watered down in its autonomy. Money, politics and red tape have pulled the rest of the world into the fabric of the University, while the University is forced, more and more it seems, to rely on the non-University world in order to survive.

No less than eight members of my family, between 1932 and the present, have spent their careers at Universities. I’m not an idiot; I know that even in 1932 the University was already pretty susceptible to red tape and politics. But the University was still thought of, from without and within, as a place where academic freedom was considered sacred.

It appears, especially through the eyes of those on the inside, as though the last vestiges of higher learning and new thinking are being chipped away at an increasingly rapid rate, all in the name of popular research and big-name publishing. That all comes down to the ongoing faculty wrestling-match to figure out who will land the biggest chunk of grant money.

You can’t survive without money, and you can’t continue your research (or your job) without funding. Grant money is usually awarded to those trying to answer the newest, biggest, hottest question of the year. It’s difficult to land decent financial support for researching the esoteric topics.

When a dispute regarding academic freedom comes up, it’s usually about the rights of instructors to speak freely (within reason; there’s never any need to go overboard, for crying out loud) about politics and religion and all the Big Bads no one’s supposed to bring up in classroom discussions. Academic freedom is also supposed to include the rights of students and faculty to think, wonder, ask questions, and to perform research in order to find some answers. If money and funding are driving the machine, it seems obvious that the academic freedom to do research is being severely shaped by outside interests.

President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago gave a speech recently at Columbia University’s conference entitled “What is Academic Freedom For?” He spoke about academic freedom at institutions of higher learning, what that means and why it’s important to protect and maintain that tradition in the modern-day University.

The greatest contributions universities can make to society over the long run are the ideas and discoveries of faculty and students that emanate from the resulting intellectual ferment and the work of alumni across the scope of human activity―alumni whose capacity for invention has been dramatically enhanced through their education in this environment. Moreover, that universities are almost unique in making this type of contribution only highlights its importance to society.

If this is the purpose of universities, the purpose of academic freedom is precisely to preserve this openness of inquiry and freedom of thought. In other words, academic freedom is designed to protect and preserve for the long run the unique capacity of universities to contribute to society. More…

Further Reading:

Academic Freedom in the 21st Century College and University
Academic Freedom
AAUP: Academic Freedom
What is Academic Freedom For?
Pres. Zimmer’s Address Delivered at Columbia Univ.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source*)

This is a ponderable piece on the current financial situation colleges and universities have found themselves in. Who benefits from the money coming into a school? Hint: It’s probably not the faculty or the students.

Here’s an excerpt:

An interesting point to consider comes from the U.S. Department of Education, which surveyed nearly 3,000 colleges and reported, “Colleges have added managers and support personnel at a steady, vigorous clip over the past 20 years, new research shows, far outpacing the growth in student enrollment and instructors.”



Not only are the numbers of administrative personnel growing rapidly, the salaries and benefits they command are taking a large amount out of the universities’ revenues. The same cannot be said of faculty members. As an example, at Eastern Michigan University, our faculty salaries and benefits are less than 25% of the total expenses. The school has experienced a decline in instruction expenses in recent years, meaning that the core academic operations – teaching and research – are now a smaller piece of the pie. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Do smarty-pants professor types feel they need a bigger challenge? Was defending their dissertation not enough? All of those years of undergraduate and graduate work, living somewhere near the poverty line, working and striving for those extra letters after their names? Why do obviously intelligent humans do this to themselves? Because they want to spend their working days in a place of higher learning, with ivy-covered walls and trees that change color in the fall, with a tenured position, teaching hundreds of fresh, shiny little faces, each one eager to learn all that the prof has to teach.

These days, actually landing a tenured position at a college or a university is right up there with the Holy Trinity of Nearly Impossible Occurrences: winning the lottery; playing in the NBA; and being struck by lightning. And do you know what makes landing a sweet teaching gig even harder? Being married to another PhD-havin’ brainiac who would also love to land a tenured position. What are the chances both halves of a PhD couple will actually end up making a living in academia?

The Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University has noticed that women don’t move as quickly or as easily through the gauntlet as their male counterparts do. A major part of this can be attributed to gender issues. But there seems to be another glitch in the Tenured Woman system: a high number of female academics are partnered with other academics, sometimes in their field. Here are the problems that situation can bring about, according to the Clayman Institute:

“Both married and domestic partners in dual-career relationships suffer decreased job mobility and the benefits in terms of opportunities, experience, salary, and working conditions that mobility can bring. This is especially true for women in the sciences, who are more often partnered with other academics. While only 7% of the members of the American Physical Society are women, for example, an astonishing 44% of them are married to other physicists. An additional 25% are married to some other type of scientist. A remarkable 80% of women mathematicians and 33% of women chemists are married to men in their own fields. Such partnerships are at cost to their mobility and advancement given the rarity of dual offers.”

Starting in November 2006 the folks at Stanford’s Clayman Institute began conducting a nationwide survey of 30,000 faculty. The point? A very good one:

“The Institute’s ‘Dual-Career Academic Couples’ study will culminate in policy recommendations aimed at helping universities recruit and retain greater numbers of women in leading faculty and administrative positions. Restructuring university practices will help transform the way universities do business and grow academic cultures where women, too, can flourish.”

I love it when research institutes use their powers for good, not evil. I found some interesting bits about dual-career issues, women in academia, gender issues, and what some folks are doing to try to increase the female population in the upper echelons of academia, especially in the math and science fields.

These three links add up to the motherlode of links on dual academic career couples and women in science. You could spend weeks trying to find the info these lists have.

Further Reading:

Stanford List
Women in Biology List
Dual Science Career Couples List

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I so wanted to have something intelligent to say about this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times that points out with blunt eloquence just how over the highest levels of higher education are, but all I could manage were utterances like, “Damn…that’s fu**ed up.” One is hard-pressed to add any worthwhile bits to a succinctly harsh statement such as this:

Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

See? Ruthlessly to the point. And, sadly, it’s true, which means that as much as I’d love to rail against it, all would be in vain (much like spending exorbitant amounts of time and money earning a PhD).

If you’re out to get the big letters after your name for your own personal thrills and feelings of satisfaction, knock yourself out. I’m pro-education; it’s really not possible to learn too much. However, if you’re out to get the biggest degree they’ve got so as to guarantee yourself a tenured professorship, please consider walking away from your library carrel for an afternoon and taking in some fresh air, common sense and reality. Good luck out there, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image credit: alain pilon

Scoring some funding or getting a smidgen of a paycheck in academe is hard enough in a stable economy, but it becomes a turnip-squeezing situation when the economy hits the skids. Female Science Professor has two posts up that explain some of the problems academics are facing, and which crises warrant the most panic.

Budget Axe and Bad Economics 101 are both worth reading. They have informative, entertainment, and misery-loves-company value.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

I want to be all cranky and yammer on about how it serves a plagiarizing professor right to lose his job, etc., but I’m mostly just sad. James Twitchell was a tenured professor at the University of Florida until last month, when he opted for early retirement in lieu of a five-year, unpaid suspension. He plagiarized the work of some fairly well-known writers, which calls into question (for me, at least) his survival skills.

I’m a black-and-white girl when it comes to rule following, and, according to everyone—especially academia—plagiarizing is bad and you’re not supposed to do it. If you ARE going to use other people’s writing and claim it as your own, then for pete’s sake, at least be smart enough to steal some unknown’s stuff and try to avoid the spotlight yourself. Which, I realize, goes totally against the entire point of publishing or perishing; being well-known and widely read is pretty much what the publishing professor-types are going for. And that brings us back to the original rule: Plagiarizing Is Bad, Don’t Do It. Sheesh.

I’m sad for Twitchell that his heretofore great career is going down in flames. I can’t imagine it was worth it in the end. And for the record, I’m not naïve enough to think of academe as some floaty, rose-colored land where colleagues support each other and backs are never stabbed and data is never tweaked in the name of grant-eligibility. Lawyers and boxers are at least honest about being hell-bent on taking their opponent down; professors who’ve gone a bit too far round the bend competing for tenure, research monies and article publication are a tad more underhanded about colleague annihilation.

Further Reading:

UF Professor Twitchell Admits He Plagiarized in Several of His Books

Student vs. Faculty Plagiarism

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The bad news is this story about tenured faculty positions being slowly made extinct. Not a shocking bit of info as it’s been going on for quite some time, but distressing nonetheless. Colleges and universities have been steadily decreasing their tenured-professor numbers for the past few decades, all in the name of budget cuts, saving money, and lots of other super important reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the pursuit of knowledge.

Back in the day, if you were teaching at a college or a university it was pretty much a given that you were a professor and that at some point in your career you would walk through the golden gates of tenure and into the light of academic freedom. Now, sadly, landing a full-time, long-term teaching position at a college or a university is difficult enough; actually achieving tenured faculty status is an incredibly big deal. Full professors are like the rock stars of academia.

If one were to be all Pollyanna-ish and find the silver lining, one might point out that having a higher population of non-tenured professors on campus would mean less publish-or-perish stress and politics, which would leave more time and energy to focus on the students. It would also mean less research, less article writing, and less freedom to say, think and teach whatever a tenured professor might want. Focusing on the students is great; less deep thinking and fewer new questions raised and answered isn’t.

To make everything black-and-white and to oversimplify to a ridiculous extent, institutions of higher learning are here for two reasons: the education of the students, and for the pursuit of lots of new, in-depth knowledge. Spending an entire career pondering, questioning and answering one piece of the universe is how mankind figures s**t out.

A university is the environment where that questioning, researching and thinking can occur. If faculty are increasingly hired only as part-time instructors or are given two-year contracts, and are only lecturing and not writing or conducting some form of research, then colleges and universities will exist only for teaching and turning a profit. No more higher thought. No more academic freedom.

Further Reading:

The Evolving (Eroding?) Faculty Job
‘The Academics’ Handbook’
‘The Last Professors’

Posted by Alexa Harrington