Professionalization and Reform

[ExponentialDecay]

Thank you for bringing up that Atlantic article. I have a lot of pent-up rage about it that I've been dying to express ever since it came out 2 years ago (PS if you want to use statistics in your arguments, look for something more recent - it is both available and the trend is less biased by a serious economic downturn).

 

Its first argument is that humanities majors have about the same unemployment rate as everyone else. Dude, no shit. If you average across such a huge sample of roughly homogenous variables (which BA holders are, educationally and experience-wise), you're gonna get really close estimates because that's how the central limit theorem works (and hey, look, although I don't have estimates of statistical significance, it looks like the engineers, who earn a state-controlled certification, have a practically different estimate!). On the other hand, take a slice from, say, the PhD labor market: science PhDs are tens of percent less unemployed than humanities PhDs. Take a look at any OLS labor market study controlled by education and experience. Studies that look at the gender wage gap are an excellent illustration. As education and experience go up, these gaps practically disappear because tighter data on education and experience gives us tighter estimates, and because employment trends in better-deifned fields converge. 

 

Now let's talk about the quality of this data. Let's look at economics majors for a second. In America, the economics BA could stand for literally anything. An economics BA is just as likely to be a highly-educated data scientist as he is to be a kid who took a bunch of 100-level Business classes. The data in the Atlantic doesn't capture this difference. This difference is captured at higher levels of education and experience, when highly educated data scientists pursue data science PhDs and work for Google, and kids with 100-level Business classes man the phones for their dad's lumber business. Note also that the sample size for social sciences here is probably much larger than the humanities, and includes all sorts of incongruous disciplines, so I'm predicting some funny heteroskedasticity going on in there. If you have funny heteroskedasticity going on, these averages are poor estimates because they are inconsistent, that is the sample size has no bearing on how precisely they reflect true population parameters. 

 

Returning to the article, the ultimate point they make is that, yeah, these figures still suck but since English majors aren't exactly angling to become engineers, then it's all cool because their unemployment rate isn't 100%. Yeah, no shit. There's probably as good a distance between an English major and food stamps as between an engineer and the same. This is the wrong way of looking at the issue.

 

In lay terms, what we care about is opportunity. If you are a good economist or a good engineer, there is financial opportunity out there for you because you are a good economist or engineer. If you are a good English major, there is financial opportunity out there for you because of your other excellent personal qualities. The market for English majors can essentially be used as a proxy for the market for any college degree; it is not specialized. It does not behave in special ways. These differences are apparent if you look at it in the long-term or from the demand side. Which is why this article is also bullshit. It doesn't capture anything worth capturing.

 

Anyway, please tell me again how aerospace was in the shitter in the 90s because the Great Anti-Communist Space Race didn't exist anymore, or do I have to pay extra for the sass? Or, like, let's talk about what I'm actually talking about, which is the fact that, whereas English majors may do quite well on the market, they're not doing quite well in jobs that specifically look for English majors. I'm sorry, but today almost all parents and students arrive at college and ask, what jobs can I get with this major? Something like, as an English major with an A average from a T20 school you are potentially eligible to be in the running for a junior financial analyst position at a boutique hedge fund, is not a good answer. Saying that English majors can get jobs or that some English majors sometimes get excellent jobs is boring and stupid. It tells us nothing about the moments of English majors as a population. It doesn't counter the perception that the mathematical sciences (lol, STEM? Stop clowning.) offer more job security, better career prospects, and better exit opps than anything in the humanities or lab sciences. It further says nothing to talented young people who show up at college hoping to pursue valuable careers and end up working in HR. This is a multifaceted problem and I'm not blaming anything on the humanities or humanities majors, but throwing around your wonderfully old and opaque statistics is only exacerbating it.

Edited May 8, 2015 by ExponentialDecay

[ComeBackZinc]

As I said, the Atlantic article is just a quick hitter. Again: I've been studying this issue almost nonstop for two years, mostly with NCES and BLS data. If you think that their data is substandard.... that's interesting.

 

Its first argument is that humanities majors have about the same unemployment rate as everyone else. Dude, no shit.

 

In other words, you made an inflammatory and incorrect statement, got called out on it, and are now making a vastly different statement.

 

On the other hand, take a slice from, say, the PhD labor market: science PhDs are tens of percent less unemployed than humanities PhDs.

 

You didn't say PhDs. You said majors. If you don't want to be criticized, speak with care.

 

There's probably as good a distance between an English major and food stamps as between an engineer and the same.

 

This is a quantitative claim that is easily rebutted, if you actually care to look at the BLS data instead of once again pulling stuff out of your butt.

 

whereas English majors may do quite well on the market, they're not doing quite well in jobs that specifically look for English majors

 

A significant majority of all college graduates get jobs in fields that are not related to their major, including in most STEM fields.

 

 Saying that English majors can get jobs or that some English majors sometimes get excellent jobs is boring and stupid

 

And yet it was exactly that claim that you initially showed up to complain about. 

 

throwing around your wonderfully old and opaque statistics is only exacerbating it.

 

Those stats aren't that old, and anyway, the employment prospects of humanities majors have improved in the last two years, not worsened, as they have for almost all sectors of the current economy, so newer stats would only hurt your argument more. And there's nothing opaque about those stats at all.

 

If you'd actually care to look, you'd see that in fact the worst outcomes are typically found for majors in Education, Psychology, and Business. But you don't actually care to look, because you've got a false impression you'd like to preserve.

[lifealive]

 

Anyway, please tell me again how aerospace was in the shitter in the 90s because the Great Anti-Communist Space Race didn't exist anymore, or do I have to pay extra for the sass? Or, like, let's talk about what I'm actually talking about, which is the fact that, whereas English majors may do quite well on the market, they're not doing quite well in jobs that specifically look for English majors. 

 

[greenmt]

Y'all see this very recent, concise report on higher ed humanities disciplines?  Why are the humanities suffering?  Given the funding comparisons in the charts on pp. 17-18, the better question might be, why is it still alive?  See also p. 13 for data about where humanities BAs end up working.  Note the vast differences in profession between those who go on to pursue advanced degrees and those who don't.   

 

As usual, I haven't been able to go through the entire humanitiesindicators.org site, but it looks like there's a bunch of useful info there in easily digestible (and therefore communicable) form.  This is a big part of what I've been looking for... ways to describe what's happening, and why it matters, that laypeople - whose tax dollars provide most of the funding for higher ed - can get behind.

[echo449]

What's interesting to me about page 17 and 18 is that it shows just how cheap the humanities are, in terms of their general cost to society.

Also, the pie charts on 18 are more than a little misleading because while an unfair amount of humanities funding appears to come form the university, the chart on 17 implies that whatever amounts are being given to humanities faculty (from whatever source) are dwarfed by the amounts science departments receive. In other words, while the bio department may only receive 5% of its funding from the university rather than 50%, that 5% is a much larger amount in terms of dollars than the amount granted to the humanities. I focus on this in particular because there's a way in which it makes it seem, visually, like the humanities are an unfair burden on the institution. 

[rococo_realism]

What's interesting to me about page 17 and 18 is that it shows just how cheap the humanities are, in terms of their general cost to society.

Also, the pie charts on 18 are more than a little misleading because while an unfair amount of humanities funding appears to come form the university, the chart on 17 implies that whatever amounts are being given to humanities faculty (from whatever source) are dwarfed by the amounts science departments receive. In other words, while the bio department may only receive 5% of its funding from the university rather than 50%, that 5% is a much larger amount in terms of dollars than the amount granted to the humanities. I focus on this in particular because there's a way in which it makes it seem, visually, like the humanities are an unfair burden on the institution. 

Do you mean that we don't cost the (American) federal government as much as STEM fields? Because I don't think that, when it comes to STEM, costs matter very much. There are many think pieces (I hate that therm) on why science should be the big national investment.

 

Basically, I think that society is more than willing to invest in the sciences.

[echo449]

We don't cost the university (or anyone) as much as stem was my point, but I think the graphic (it's on page 20, actually) visually flattens the relative pennies that it costs to run a philosophy department vs. a chemistry department, making the former appear to be a larger burden than the latter. 

[rococo_realism]

^ I thought that's what you meant about the humanities seeming like the ugly, prodigal stepchild begging for more money (read:costly) when they're not. I was adding that I believe that the federal government and academic institutions don't mind footing the large bills for STEM fields, because they see them (said bills) as worthwhile expenditures.

[VirtualMessage]

We don't cost the university (or anyone) as much as stem was my point, but I think the graphic (it's on page 20, actually) visually flattens the relative pennies that it costs to run a philosophy department vs. a chemistry department, making the former appear to be a larger burden than the latter. 

 

For administrators at most colleges, it is all about the enrollment numbers. The relative cost of a humanities department to an engineering program is a much less important factor in the salvation of that department than the revenue generated by student enrollment in that program--FTEs. You also have to consider the full-time personnel costs of large, bloated Humanities departments such as English that are overstaffed because many of these programs have lost considerable undergraduate enrollment (from the administrator's perspective irrespective of continuing dependence on adjuncts). Humanities Departments are going to live or die by the FTE equation. I'm unsure how you convince an undergraduate and their parents that they should enroll in programs where many of their adjunct teachers are on food stamps. Until you address the labor problems afflicting humanities programs--until you address the working conditions--you cannot improve the learning conditions. And if the learning conditions are bad then why would students be drawn to the humanities? Of course, there is a good argument for the value of a humanities BA as indicated in the report. However, the PR-- or total lack thereof-- on the part of Universities and our own professional associations isn't helping to make the case. Unfortunately, all the problems are connected-- labor, dropping enrollment, divestment in the arts/humanities, cultural indifference toward our cultural heritage--and the network of problems has become so complex that one has a difficult time even clearly mapping it. 

Edited May 22, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[echo449]

99.9% of incoming college students do not know what an adjunct is, or that they are teaching classes. Many students are shocked to find that they are being taught by graduate students. This is to say that who is teaching what matters a lot less to parents than it should, for better or worse. In fact, I would argue that adjunctification has become so bad in part BECAUSE parents and visiting students care more about the shininess of the new gym than the working conditions of their teachers.  I actually think you cannot tie dropping enrollment to the adjunctification of the discipline--after all, many undergrad engineering courses are also taught by adjuncts or people with short term contracts.

 

One thing we don't mention much in this forum is that tenure track jobs PERIOD don't exist like they used to, or don't exist in commensurate numbers to the amount of PhDs being produced in any discipline. You can't blame this on the defunding of the humanities; this is a problem that is felt throughout the university. 

Edit: Actually, I'm going to revise down my claim. To some extent, you can blame the replacement of tenure lines in the humanities with adjuncts as something that hits us particularly hard. But it's not unique to us. Likewise, our job market seems much worse, not because there are more tenure track bio positions available, but because they have industry jobs that they can go to should they need to escape academe. We are in a position where we are more obviously harmed than our colleagues outside the humanities, but that doesn't mean we are alone in being cast out of the university. 

Edited May 22, 2015 by echo449

[circlewave]

It seems like part of the problem is the general commodification of education, which refashions students as consumers who expect to get 'something' for their money. If you're going against that attitude, persuading someone to pursue the liberal arts is a little more difficult, since it doesn't provide a clear cut path to a career or to a high paying job. In that light, a liberal arts degree can seem like a luxury item for people rich enough to not have to worry about servicing debt after graduation.

Edited May 22, 2015 by circlewave

[VirtualMessage]

99.9% of incoming college students do not know what an adjunct is, or that they are teaching classes. Many students are shocked to find that they are being taught by graduate students. This is to say that who is teaching what matters a lot less to parents than it should, for better or worse. In fact, I would argue that adjunctification has become so bad in part BECAUSE parents and visiting students care more about the shininess of the new gym than the working conditions of their teachers. But I actually think you cannot tie dropping enrollment to the adjunctification of the discipline--after all, many undergrad engineering courses are also taught by adjuncts or people with short term contracts.

 

One thing we don't mention much in this forum is that tenure track jobs PERIOD don't exist like they used to, or don't exist in commensurate numbers to the amount of PhDs being produced in any discipline. You can't blame this on the defunding of the humanities; this is a problem that is felt throughout the university. 

Edit: Actually, I'm going to revise down my claim. To some extent, you can blame the replacement of tenure lines in the humanities with adjuncts as something that hits us particularly hard. But it's not unique to us. Likewise, our job market seems much worse, not because there are more tenure track bio positions available, but because they have industry jobs that they can go to should they need to escape academe. We are in a position where we are more obviously harmed than our colleagues outside the humanities, but that doesn't mean we are alone in being cast out of the university. 

 

The students aren't as uninformed as you might think. They might not be able to articulate the finer nuances of the problem, but they know what gainful employment looks like, and they know there's some kind of a problem when their teacher has no office. Moreover, their parents think that--even if it's not founded on a precise understanding--that the humanities equates with professional failure or at best a professional handicap. Like I said, all of these problems are connected. You're right that the adjunct problem is not isolated to the humanities, but it is where the problem predominates. Moreover, I'm willing to bet the average pay of a humanities vs. STEM adjunct is considerably less--in fact, I know it is. And, of course, opportunities for adjuncts who are licensed professionals,etc. exist far outside of the academy as opposed to the limited career possibilities for most humanities scholars, which is precisely why the University can take advantage of us. So, maybe I'd revise my claim: the students correctly intuit these problems in the humanities and they don't want to become the underemployed person who is teaching them, so they shy away from humanities disciplines. We cannot underestimate the consequences of a profession that relies on exploited workers to meet its budgetary needs, nor can we be surprised when the devaluing of our own profession leads others to the conclusion that the humanities aren't worth very much--certainly not $30k+ of student debt. Again, the career outcomes, etc. can help us make the argument for many different forms of value associated with the humanities BA, but we have an image problem founded on a labor problem that we need to address.

Edited May 22, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[empress-marmot]

but we have an image problem founded on a labor problem that we need to address.

 

The 'top jobs' nowadays (according to a quick websearch) are in technical fields: nursing, business, computers, engineering, etc. These have the advantage of teaching skills the market wants. Isn't the advantage of the humanities, though, to teach you how to be a better human? This requires a lot of abstract thought, lots of complicated, overreaching moral and ethical questions which range throughout the disciplines.

 

For an example here, I just asked a nurse whether she'd taken a major-specific class which encouraged her to think about anything besides nursing. She answered that she'd taken an ethics class, but it was about ethics in nursing. Is it too offensive for me to suggest that technical degrees just train a person to do a job? (I don't mean to denigrate here. I certainly hope the nurse who's saving my life doesn't stop to think about the metarepresentations of misanthropic marmots.) 

 

There's this vast working class being created to not think very much. That scares me when we talk about an image problem founded on a labor problem. The humanities fields aren't blameless in creating this mess, but if most of us are being trained to not ask questions, then there are probably questions which need to be asked. 

 

Now, "Go into the Liberal Arts and Sciences so that you can ask questions and have oil tycoons attempt to fire you for asking questions!" is probably not

 a convincing argument for incoming freshmen. Then again, I don't think LAS can change the image problem without changing the labor problem. That means going to those oil tycoons and asking why they won't hire us, an operation not unlike belling the cat. 

Edited May 24, 2015 by empress-marmot

[lifealive]

 

The 'top jobs' nowadays (according to a quick websearch) are in technical fields: nursing, business, computers, engineering, etc. These have the advantage of teaching skills the market wants. Isn't the advantage of the humanities, though, to teach you how to be a better human? This requires a lot of abstract thought, lots of complicated, overreaching moral and ethical questions which range throughout the disciplines.

 

For an example here, I just asked a nurse whether she'd taken a major-specific class which encouraged her to think about anything besides nursing. She answered that she'd taken an ethics class, but it was about ethics in nursing. Is it too offensive for me to suggest that technical degrees just train a person to do a job? (I don't mean to denigrate here. I certainly hope the nurse who's saving my life doesn't stop to think about the metarepresentations of misanthropic marmots.) 

 

There's this vast working class being created to not think very much. That scares me when we talk about an image problem founded on a labor problem. The humanities fields aren't blameless in creating this mess, but if most of us are being trained to not ask questions, then there are probably questions which need to be asked. 

 

Now, "Go into the Liberal Arts and Sciences so that you can ask questions and have oil tycoons attempt to fire you for asking questions!" is probably not

 a convincing argument for incoming freshmen. Then again, I don't think LAS can change the image problem without changing the labor problem. That means going to those oil tycoons and asking why they won't hire us, an operation not unlike belling the cat. 

 

 

I actually wonder if part of the problem re: convincing people to major in the humanities has to do with the fact that the law market has been such a disaster for the past several years. 

 

When I was in college, I never worried about majoring in English because I always assumed I'd go to law school afterwards--and then consequently make a lot of money. The law market was more robust back then; and if you wanted to go to law school, you majored in English, history, philosophy, or political science. But these days, people are warned away from law school just as they're warned away from grad school in the humanities. Hopefully the law school market will rebound again and seem like a valid option for college students. 

 

Regarding the question of "pre-professional" majors: Ugh, I wish I could warn students away from hyper-specializing in college with some of the cautionary tales I've collected throughout the years. I know so many people who majored in something with the thought that it would provide a stable career, and they're completely miserable now. I know a guy who majored in health care systems and absolutely hated it, and now he works at Starbucks. (So much for down-on-their-luck English majors filling those Starbucks jobs.) I know a guy who majored in a STEM field but sells cars and tells me he would have rather majored in history. And the sanctified engineering major--I know far too many miserable engineers. A lot of people think that an engineering major is a golden ticket. Truth is, it does land you a big salary right out of the gate, but your earnings usually plateau. And the work itself can be very boring and unvaried. There is also the issue that technology is always shifting--if you're the kind of engineer who works on some piece of technology that grows obsolete, you may find yourself out of a job. 

 

And then there's business, the biggest waste-of-time major of all: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/education/edlife/edl-17business-t.html?_r=0

 

Additionally, and what I wish I could stress to students, the problem with majoring in one of these highly specialized fields is that there's not a lot of room for changing careers midstream. And there's not a lot of margin for error. The guy I know who majored in health care systems trained for a job he ended up hating. Had he double-majored or minored in a more conceptual field, he could possibly use his skills for something he finds more rewarding. Same with the nursing major empress-marmot mentioned. If nursing doesn't work out--or you get injured on the job and can no longer perform basic nursing duties--then what do you do, if all you've "trained for" is to become a nurse?

Edited May 25, 2015 by lifealive

[greenmt]

A med school dean (and students) make a good case for the value of the humanities (and the danger of too narrow/professional a focus), in this story about a med school program designed to recruit English majors.  

[__________________________]

A med school dean (and students) make a good case for the value of the humanities (and the danger of too narrow/professional a focus), in this story about a med school program designed to recruit English majors.  

Thank you for posting this!  I caught the last 30 seconds of this on the radio yesterday when I was driving home from work and wished I could have heard the whole thing.  

[fancypants09]

Hello all, I'm back! It's been very hectic since I submitted my acceptance, so I've been relatively quiet as of late. But today I had a conversation with a friend who is currently pursuing her PhD in the social sciences in the US, and had to share it with GC folks for discussion. 

 

My friend goes to a top program in her field and just obtained ABD status. She was talking about recent trends in the academic job market for her field as she is aiming to go on the market in 2017. Our conversation confirmed the trend that many GCers here have noted in other threads---that even the competition for post-doc positions are increasingly fierce because many applicants are applying to those and TT positions at the same time. I was not prepared for what she then told me next: In her field, top candidates who get offers for both a prestigious TT position and a post doc will accept the post doc and defer the TT position until after the completion of the post doc. The TT position is technically filled, but with no one to actually start handling the teaching load until said superstar finishes his/her post doc and joins the faculty there full time. 

 

I was absolutely furious when I heard this. How is this practice condoned in a profession where there is a scarcity in positions and an abundance of non-fungible talent? Deferring a TT position isn't like deferring school; that vacancy is gone the moment you accept the offer, and the school cannot "take in" someone else from the applicant pool to fill that spot. And it's absolutely sick because I could immediately sense that these deferrals would give universities the justification of hiring adjuncts to cover the teaching. 

 

I was also deeply saddened and troubled by the fact that my friend didn't see the adjunct issue at all, simply because she doesn't see herself as someone who would even have to consider the possibility of adjuncting. She thought my concern arose from the fact that the candidate who deferred was somehow cheating the school that gave her the TT position out of obligations tied to that position and said that the deferral contracts generally entail the work that the candidate does during the post doc to be counted as if s/he had done them at the TT institution so that the institution would be able to claim credit for the research. 

 

Again, how is this outrageous "winner takes all" practice allowed? Why does the system tolerate the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another? And mind you, I worked in corporate for the last four years so I've seen and experienced my share of rigged systems and hyper-competition, but this is a new type of greed to me...

 

Sorry this was more of a personal rant than anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks GCers!

[VirtualMessage]

Hello all, I'm back! It's been very hectic since I submitted my acceptance, so I've been relatively quiet as of late. But today I had a conversation with a friend who is currently pursuing her PhD in the social sciences in the US, and had to share it with GC folks for discussion. 

 

My friend goes to a top program in her field and just obtained ABD status. She was talking about recent trends in the academic job market for her field as she is aiming to go on the market in 2017. Our conversation confirmed the trend that many GCers here have noted in other threads---that even the competition for post-doc positions are increasingly fierce because many applicants are applying to those and TT positions at the same time. I was not prepared for what she then told me next: In her field, top candidates who get offers for both a prestigious TT position and a post doc will accept the post doc and defer the TT position until after the completion of the post doc. The TT position is technically filled, but with no one to actually start handling the teaching load until said superstar finishes his/her post doc and joins the faculty there full time. 

 

I was absolutely furious when I heard this. How is this practice condoned in a profession where there is a scarcity in positions and an abundance of non-fungible talent? Deferring a TT position isn't like deferring school; that vacancy is gone the moment you accept the offer, and the school cannot "take in" someone else from the applicant pool to fill that spot. And it's absolutely sick because I could immediately sense that these deferrals would give universities the justification of hiring adjuncts to cover the teaching. 

 

I was also deeply saddened and troubled by the fact that my friend didn't see the adjunct issue at all, simply because she doesn't see herself as someone who would even have to consider the possibility of adjuncting. She thought my concern arose from the fact that the candidate who deferred was somehow cheating the school that gave her the TT position out of obligations tied to that position and said that the deferral contracts generally entail the work that the candidate does during the post doc to be counted as if s/he had done them at the TT institution so that the institution would be able to claim credit for the research. 

 

Again, how is this outrageous "winner takes all" practice allowed? Why does the system tolerate the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another? And mind you, I worked in corporate for the last four years so I've seen and experienced my share of rigged systems and hyper-competition, but this is a new type of greed to me...

 

Sorry this was more of a personal rant than anything else, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks GCers!

 

I am sorry to say it, but what you've discovered is only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the problem you outline, we have many, many TT hires going to people who are moving laterally from one institution to another, we have the inside hires, and we have "assistant professor" searches routinely going to very advanced assistants, if not outright associates. Furthermore, I've seen postdocs awarded to faculty members who are already in TT appointments several years out of graduate school. Once you consider the number of junior positions going to people with multiple postdocs, other TT jobs, etc., an already desperate job market reveals itself to be virtually impossible. 

 

Your friend is numb to the labor realities of our profession because it is in the interest of elite programs to cultivate a state/mentality of exception for their faculty and graduates. These people often want to have their cake and eat it too: they're good liberals or Marxists who are doing their best to think about the disadvantaged at the same time as they exploit their adjunct colleagues and discriminate against them to perpetuate the rhetoric of divine academic providence--a providence divorced from merit but obsessed with prestige. However, even for many graduates of elite programs, the situation has become increasingly grim. You'd think this would motivate substantial reform, but it doesn't. Instead, "alt-ac" is touted as some kind of viable alternative or solution.  Once you see these realities, it becomes difficult to take seriously anything established faculty say, especially when it's laced with the moral indignation and superiority so commonly found in Humanities departments. The conclusion that I draw is that the people making these hiring decisions do not think about what they are doing in the context of a larger profession and their responsibilities to it. Their hiring calculus is much more narrow, idiosyncratic, personal, territorial. But, of course, look forward to reading their forthcoming volume, The Marginalized Other and the Ideology of Late Capitalism.

[rising_star]

My friend goes to a top program in her field and just obtained ABD status. She was talking about recent trends in the academic job market for her field as she is aiming to go on the market in 2017. Our conversation confirmed the trend that many GCers here have noted in other threads---that even the competition for post-doc positions are increasingly fierce because many applicants are applying to those and TT positions at the same time. I was not prepared for what she then told me next: In her field, top candidates who get offers for both a prestigious TT position and a post doc will accept the post doc and defer the TT position until after the completion of the post doc. The TT position is technically filled, but with no one to actually start handling the teaching load until said superstar finishes his/her post doc and joins the faculty there full time. 

...

 

 

Again, how is this outrageous "winner takes all" practice allowed? Why does the system tolerate the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another? And mind you, I worked in corporate for the last four years so I've seen and experienced my share of rigged systems and hyper-competition, but this is a new type of greed to me...

 

I'm not sure I understand why you are so outraged by this. If the candidate is the best person for the TT position, then why wouldn't an employer be willing to wait a year or two for them to finish a postdoc? If they're investing in someone's career, they're working on a time scale of 7-30 years, making the next 1-2 years far less important in the grand scheme of things. I'm surprised that your friend made it to ABD without knowing this since it's a well-known practice (do you ever read the CHE forums? If not, you should!). Departments want the best candidate for the job. Yes, there may be many qualified people but, that doesn't mean all of them fit exactly what the department needs at that time. 

[lifealive]

The academic market is generally like the economy at large: there will always be that top 1% that is immune to all recessions. https://chroniclevitae.com/news/929-academia-s-1-percent

 

I actually know someone like the person you're describing--postdoc at an Ivy League school, job lined up afterwards at one of the top 15 universities in the country. That job is sitting empty right now. If it's any comfort, though, it doesn't require much teaching anyway, so I doubt that any adjuncts have been hired to take on the onerous 1-1 course load.

 

 

 

I'm not sure I understand why you are so outraged by this. If the candidate is the best person for the TT position, then why wouldn't an employer be willing to wait a year or two for them to finish a postdoc? If they're investing in someone's career, they're working on a time scale of 7-30 years, making the next 1-2 years far less important in the grand scheme of things.  

 

 

Quite simply: it's an outrage because the person being touted as the "best person for the TT job" is one who has most likely accrued advantages throughout the years and is now sailing by on those privileges. The people sought out for these kinds of positions are generally the ones who came from the right schools, did the least amount of teaching, and were protected from the realities of academic labor at every turn. They were given a lot of time to do their research; therefore, their research is good. Also, it is looked at as good because they were given these advantages. Academia loves this kind of circular logic: the best person for the job is the best person for the job because we have decided that they were the best person for the job. Same stuff that we see here every year: "the best applicants get into the best grad schools because they simply are the best applicants because graduate programs are self-sorting." No one ever stops to examine what this kind of thing implies--that it is the very opposite mentality of the Marxist social justice rhetoric that many faculty profess to believe in.

 

The Chronicle Vitae article I linked above explains it better than I ever could, anyway.

 

Fascinatingly, the person I referenced above has been hailed as the future of our discipline even though they have never published an article. But the scholarship that is coming is amazing, I can guarantee that. Because we've already decided that it's amazing. 

Edited May 29, 2015 by lifealive

[rising_star]

lifealive, I'm not arguing that academia doesn't have a circular logic or an insular culture that privileges some over others. (Incidentally, I know of several people that have done the postdoc while delaying the start of their TT job and none of them are what you might consider to be superstars from Ivy Leagues. Of course, it also depends on the kind of institution you're trying to get a TT position at. It's very hard to get one at a SLAC if you have zero teaching experience, for example.) My question is why this is coming as a surprise to someone that is ABD and presumably has had several years to learn about academic culture. It seems like fancypants09 and their friend are taking issue with some getting more than others at the hiring stage when in fact this has already begun years before hiring occurs, as you said lifealive. Given that, it's really no surprise that it occurs in hiring since it also occurs for dissertation research fellowships (those people who get SSRC + NSF funding, for example, while others have to take out student loans to pay for their fieldwork expenses), with general graduate school funding (people that get NSF GRFP and make thousands more than their peers without having to take on any TA or RA work), and in the graduate school admission process. Because it's so pervasive, I'm surprised by the outrage that it happens in hiring and not in all these other places (see the Ph.D. pay gap conversation for people arguing that inequities in the grad school system are okay).

[lifealive]

My question is why this is coming as a surprise to someone that is ABD and presumably has had several years to learn about academic culture. It seems like fancypants09 and their friend are taking issue with some getting more than others at the hiring stage when in fact this has already begun years before hiring occurs, as you said lifealive.

 

Why does it matter, rising_star? Does fancypants09's naivete excuse the larger abuses of the academia labor market? 

 

In other words: what's your purpose here? 

[rising_star]

As I said before, lifealive, I'm trying to understand what about this outrages fancypants09, why they are furious, and why this particular incident has led them to the conclusion that within academia "the definition of "success" as one academic trampling on the career prospects of another" (fancypants09, above). 

 

Also, lifealive, not sure why you're jumping all over me when I basically said the same thing that VirtualMessage did. If one wants to argue that the entire system is unfair and needs to be changed, fine. But that's what you did, not what fancypants09 did. 

[lifealive]

I didn't "jump all over" you, rising_star. I merely questioned why you were niggling over a rather minor point when the larger issue is that academic hiring practices replicate institutional privilege. I personally don't agree that taking a job is trampling over the prospects of another or cheating someone--it's more like cashing in on systems of privilege--but that's not really the bigger issue, is it. 

 

Changing the subject--i.e. emphasizing a poster's naivete and outrage over common hiring practices--is derailing, as far as I'm concerned. If you don't have anything constructive to contribute, then don't butt in at all. And now, rising_star, yes, I am jumping all over you. In case you were wondering. 

Edited May 29, 2015 by lifealive

[fancypants09]

I'm going to try to keep this short because I need to head off to a meeting in about thirty minutes. Needless to say, more to follow later. 

 

rising_star, I've never considered myself naive with respect to the very real inequities involved in employment, be it academic or otherwise. I don't want to belabor the details regarding my own non-traditional path to going back to academia and to a doctoral program, but I think they bear repeating to address this charge of being naive about the realities of the market. I graduated from law school in 2009, right in the middle of the implosion at Wall Street caused by subprime mortgages. I was corporate counsel for one of the Global 500 companies for years. As I mentioned before, I've seen and experienced brutal competition to get and keep jobs. Having worked on major matters for my previous employer, I've also seen and experienced how the actions/decisions of a major multinational affects not only their bottom line, but the bottom line for hundreds of thousands of its employees worldwide, and the health of economies in which the multinational had significant presence. So yes, I'm familiar with extreme inequities and hyper-competition of job markets. 

 

What outrages me about the practice I described? Let me try to explain by way of example in the real world. Allowing a "superstar" in the field to accept a post doc and defer a TT position, is the equivalent of allowing a "superstar" banker to accept an internship at JP Morgan and defer employment at Goldman Sachs. It's just not done in the industry, even where there is fungibility of skills. The only other place I've seen somewhat similar practices is in the legal field where if an entry-level attorney for a firm got an offer to clerk for a judge, s/he would defer employment to go to the clerkship first. BUT in this instance the general practice of the firm is much like that of a school with a candidate who accepts but defers; the firm hires another associate to start in the place of the attorney who deferred. There is no such equivalent rule in the academic setting. And to me, if you are not outraged by this practice, you're much like my friend in thinking that (1) you will be that superstar to benefit from the rigged rules and/or (2) the adjunct situation will not apply to you. I'm not going to repeat the debates RE: adjuncting, but I am totally in agreement with the idea that the growing number of adjunct positions, and the growing inequities between adjuncts and TT academics, is unhealthy for all in academia. 

 

And VirtualMessage, I actually am aware of most of the other practices you described, but am not upset by them because they're the rules of the job jungle everywhere. 

 

Apologies for the disjointed message but hopefully more soon afterwards!