Loss of Facultys

I'm about to do something that I usually despise when others do it. (Which happens a lot with road rage. Have you noticed that? Like, the level of hypocrisy inherent in road rage is just out of the park. When someone cuts us off, he is a selfish, irresponsible, dangerous prick who should die in vat of boiling oil and be fed to hippos. But, when we do it, oops!...we made a boo-boo. Sorry!)

So, a biology professor down in Alabama was denied tenure and flipped her shit and killed a few faculty members.

So, I'm about to "draw a lesson" from this horrible tragedy. I usually don't care for it when people do that, because some people are just fuckin crazy, and sometimes, bad shit happens, and that's that. But, hmm...you know...I think I'd rather just say that this event is spurring some thoughts...and I'm going to write them down.

Academia is a pretty dysfunctional system in a lot of ways. I think there are two broad categories of dysfunction. One is in the training of undergraduates and graduate professionals, and another is in the training of academicians and professional researchers.

I'll start with the latter. The biggest problem is that there are just too many programs pumping out too many ph.d.s and not enough jobs for them. I go to one of the top-ranked public policy schools in the country, and my political science department is solidly 2nd tier. If I work hard and squeeze out a decent dissertation and maybe a journal article, I'll have a decent shot at getting an academic job. I'm not talking about just a R1 job at a good school; I'm not even talking about just a tenure track job. I'm talking about A job, teaching at an institute of higher learning.

To me, this seems unreasonable, especially considering that my field has more job openings than a lot of others (history, english, philosophy, etc). Now, on the one hand, it's very true that I chose to do this, and that I probably shouldn't complain about something I chose to do. On the other hand, there is an information asymmetry problem here. It's very hard to know what exactly you're getting into until you're there. The places you are applying have an incentive to obscure their placement records and play down the difficulties of finding a job.

And once you're in, it's pretty hard to get out, at least psychologically. I'm 29 years old, and I have virtually no significant work experience. If I quit, how do I explain to a potential employer why I spent a large chunk of time (in my case, two years) out of the work force with nothing to show for it except being a quitter? (I have no intention of quitting...just using myself as an example). Not to mention that they don't pay you enough to save any money, so you can't really quit, cause you can't afford to, and you can't really look for a job while you're in school, cause you don't have time!

So, once you're in, they kind of have you by the balls, and they know it. So, they have an army of fairly desperate new ph.d.s out there, which of course, drives down the market price. Hence, the proliferation of adjunct positions, which basically pay by the class and give short-term commitments of a year or two. It's not much of a living for someone with 5-7 years of graduate training. And, of course, the tenured faculty (who also survived this system) think it's justified, because if you're just good enough, you'll make it!

Yeah..and I'm sure Lebron James thinks amateur sports are a great investment in time because you'll eventually make millions of dollars!

Just as universities often are complicit in young athletes' sacrificing academic rigor to chase a dream of professional sports, so are ph.d. programs happy to pray on the overachievers or dream-job chasers who apply every year. What academia really needs is some kind of hall of shame...some place where students can get a real sense that a lot of people simply don't make it. They don't make it to the NBA, or the CBA, or even get to play in Europe...they just can't make a living that way.

I mean, I'm being dramatic. People survive. Maybe they become administrators, or high school teachers, or something...but that's 5-8 years of their life that they sure as shit ain't gettin back. That's 5-8 years of opportunity costs in terms of real-job salaries and life enjoyment (i mean, hopefully they enjoy studying their subject, so it's not like they're in hell or anything).

So, if you're Indiana State, and you admit some poor schmuck to your philosophy ph.d. program (i'm just making this up, obviously; no clue if they actually have one of those programs) you are being unconscionable. You're gonna exploit this person for cheap labor for 5 years and then turn them out into the cold to face a virtually impossible job market.

Even if you manage to get a job, you still have to get tenure, which is hard. Now, I realize that most people don't get tenure in their jobs and are probably not too sympathetic to this problem. But, it's an incentive for young workers to put in unreasonable numbers of hours while older workers don't have an incentive to do anything! Now, I want tenure as much as anybody, but I still think it's unhealthy to put people under that kind of pressure.

Being a young academic is a very psychologically and physically unhealthy experience. There is is so much fucking uncertainty from month to month about where your money is going to come from, and therefore the pressure to perform is very high! If you suck, you don't get a job. If you're good, you get a guaranteed job for life. It's an either/or situation that is extremely taxing to endure.

So, kids...don't fucking get a ph.d. unless you absolutely, positively need one to get the only job you could conceivably see yourself doing.