Would you become an academic if you could do it all over again?

[mahagonny]

Well Polly, at least you're not bitter.

Maybe without making a point of it, made a case against tenure and shared governance. I find often on these boards someone who wants more faculty governance in order to enact their favorite idea. Whereas I see them butting heads or tiptoeing around each other, without resolving much. Whether they have lots of governance or a little.

[mahagonny]

...Well, to be fair, they do a lot of outstanding things when they're not puttering around with meetings or having protracted disagreements.

[Kron3007]

In contrast, in my current job, I spend most of my time doing things that are genuinely interesting or necessary to get to do the interesting things.  Academia was the place where I didn't fit at all, despite being bookish, loving school as a student, and wanting to talk about ideas.  Instead, most days were the horrible lifestyle lampooned in Office Space and Fight Club in trying to meet arbitrary requirements clearly put in place by morons who were more concerned with keeping their jobs and the form of education than actually providing an educational community in which people were learning, discussing, and being modified by that learning and discussion.  I was busy all the time, but seldom was I doing something that was long-term important.  The least intellectual places I've been have been universities and that's not just Super Dinky.

I'm sorry, Polly, that this has been your experience. I taught at a place kind of like Super Dinky though somewhere warmer on a FT/NTT contract while I was finishing my PHD, and that was generally not a rewarding intellectual experience, though not full of administrative nonsense. My current place has way less bureaucratic BS than my work at the think tank. Not that it dosen't have it, but my experience with both government and the non-profit sector is that both have it worse than well-functioning academia.

How much well-functioning academia is there?  I interviewed at exactly one place where I'd seriously consider taking a faculty job if the department called tomorrow and offered it to me (8 years after I applied).  My current employer is the happy recipient of many people leaving tenured positions at R1s in relevant fields.  I'd much rather deal with "we've made the decision; here's your role" than spend a year discussing whether we need a decision in a participatory, shared governance model.

I'd go back to any of my professional non-academic jobs before I took a job with death-by-participation democracy that is the hallmark of academia again.  A bad manager can be managed; a bad shared premise on how the world should work is forever.

I agree that the endless round table discussions can be draining, but where I am that is a very small percentage of my time.  Most of the time, I act essentially as an independent researcher overseeing my lab, setting my own priorities, applying for funding (more than I would like) and doing what I want.  This is the beauty of a (good) academic appointment, there really is no boss telling me what to do for most things.  That being said, fro the years of reading this forum (including it's previous iteration), I do get the sense that my department and school is more functional than many, so I understand that your experiences may have been quite different.

[Wahoo Redux]

Well Polly, at least you're not bitter.

Maybe without making a point of it, made a case against tenure and shared governance. I find often on these boards someone who wants more faculty governance in order to enact their favorite idea. Whereas I see them butting heads or tiptoeing around each other, without resolving much. Whether they have lots of governance or a little.

Has no one worked for a corporation in which the head of the fish is rotten?  I have.

Shared governance has its problems, but so does a top-down hierarchy.

[polly_mer]

I'm not bitter about my academic experiences.

I am tear-my-hair-out-frustrated with the assertions that academia is always so much better than other forms of employment that people should do whatever they have to do to keep a toe in academia.

I am tear-my-hair-out-frustrated at the academic heads in the sand regarding about how many faculty jobs in academia are going away because certain types of institutions are closing or at least transforming into something very different from what they were even 30 years ago.

Having a local discussion about to what degree the liberal arts are dying versus overpushing STEM on people who aren't inclined misses the point at a small, undistinguished, and indistinguishable from regional peers that has experienced a significant enrollment decline as part of a reduction in the 18-22 population.

Having a local discussion regarding tweaking the general education requirements in an effort to be more rigorous while also preserving some specific full-time jobs misses the point when a significant fraction of the students are transfer students or others who took advantage of much cheaper ways to deal with their gen eds.

Having even a national discussion on what should be that completely ignores what is and has been for a couple decades now including only 30% of the US adult population has a bachelor degree and the majority of those degrees are in fields other than the liberal arts, a significant fraction of people who earn bachelor degrees also earn graduate degrees, and a significant fraction of people who earn certificates or professional associate degrees do so after earning a bachelor degree.  Telling those of us middle-aged folks without a liberal arts education how extremely vital a liberal arts education is to the nation and to the individual is a personal insult as well as demonstrably false.

Participative democracy works great if the discussion is how to prioritize the handful of things we all agree are the problems and then are discussing the details of resource allocation and timing when the resources are adequate and time is not a huge issue.  Participative democracy is a disaster when the individuals involved refuse to get on the same page about what the problems that threaten the whole institution are, time is a pressing concern, and the resources are inadequate, especially if we don't start now on any one of the actions.

Rotting from the head-down means individuals should leave.  Believing so hard in shared governance that the significantly under-informed are getting discussion time while the ship is sinking faster means individuals should leave.

In both cases, that job is unlikely to continue to retirement and so individuals should use their best critical thinking skills to find somewhere else to be that will pay well enough and be a good enough day-to-day experience. 

One may wish to have a job that doesn't exist in sufficient numbers for everyone who wants one to get one.  In that case, satisfied-enough people who are doing that job aren't nearly as useful as those who have found satisfaction elsewhere and can help advise on how to prioritize personal needs to choose among the jobs that are available.  The poll won't capture all the people who aren't here because they left academia for something good and don't feel a need to continue to keep up with academic discussions.

[mahagonny]

I'm not bitter about my academic experiences.

There's nothing errant in being bitter about things that stink. You were obviously miserable hiring adjuncts for chump change, if that's what you were doing. If you weren't doing it, you were miserable watching it done. Although we disagree about who was at fault.

[Kron3007]

I'm not bitter about my academic experiences.

I am tear-my-hair-out-frustrated with the assertions that academia is always so much better than other forms of employment that people should do whatever they have to do to keep a toe in academia.

I am tear-my-hair-out-frustrated at the academic heads in the sand regarding about how many faculty jobs in academia are going away because certain types of institutions are closing or at least transforming into something very different from what they were even 30 years ago.

Having a local discussion about to what degree the liberal arts are dying versus overpushing STEM on people who aren't inclined misses the point at a small, undistinguished, and indistinguishable from regional peers that has experienced a significant enrollment decline as part of a reduction in the 18-22 population.

Having a local discussion regarding tweaking the general education requirements in an effort to be more rigorous while also preserving some specific full-time jobs misses the point when a significant fraction of the students are transfer students or others who took advantage of much cheaper ways to deal with their gen eds.

Having even a national discussion on what should be that completely ignores what is and has been for a couple decades now including only 30% of the US adult population has a bachelor degree and the majority of those degrees are in fields other than the liberal arts, a significant fraction of people who earn bachelor degrees also earn graduate degrees, and a significant fraction of people who earn certificates or professional associate degrees do so after earning a bachelor degree.  Telling those of us middle-aged folks without a liberal arts education how extremely vital a liberal arts education is to the nation and to the individual is a personal insult as well as demonstrably false.

Participative democracy works great if the discussion is how to prioritize the handful of things we all agree are the problems and then are discussing the details of resource allocation and timing when the resources are adequate and time is not a huge issue.  Participative democracy is a disaster when the individuals involved refuse to get on the same page about what the problems that threaten the whole institution are, time is a pressing concern, and the resources are inadequate, especially if we don't start now on any one of the actions.

Rotting from the head-down means individuals should leave.  Believing so hard in shared governance that the significantly under-informed are getting discussion time while the ship is sinking faster means individuals should leave.

In both cases, that job is unlikely to continue to retirement and so individuals should use their best critical thinking skills to find somewhere else to be that will pay well enough and be a good enough day-to-day experience. 

One may wish to have a job that doesn't exist in sufficient numbers for everyone who wants one to get one.  In that case, satisfied-enough people who are doing that job aren't nearly as useful as those who have found satisfaction elsewhere and can help advise on how to prioritize personal needs to choose among the jobs that are available.  The poll won't capture all the people who aren't here because they left academia for something good and don't feel a need to continue to keep up with academic discussions.

I feel that a lot of these issues have very little to do with faculty governance.  If you have a demographic change with declining enrollment and funding, you are in a bad situation with faculty governance or some sort of top down leadership.  I'm sure there are pros and cons to both, but most of the issues you mention seem to be external to this.  I am in a relatively stable public university without many of these issues, and faculty governance is perfectly functional even though some meetings can drag (this is why you need a good chair).

At the end, it seems that you are essentially making the benevolent dictator argument.  Democratic governance definitely has problems, both at the university or national level, but it also preserves something that most people value. 

[mahagonny]

At the end, it seems that you are essentially making the benevolent dictator argument.  Democratic governance definitely has problems, both at the university or national level, but it also preserves something that most people value.

Have you ever asked 'most people?' Including part-time faculty? I suspect not. Because we are not considered 'the people.'  Everyone is administration to us. 'Faculty governance' means being dictated to by people who identify themselves as benevolent, as does any other arrangement, with the sole exception of participating in an adjunct union which whomever the dictator is will try to stifle. As for our being insufficiently informed to participate in decision-making, that is also structurally intentional.

[Wahoo Redux]

Save your hair, Polly. Calm down.

I've said this to you before: We Knooooooooowww all that stuff.  No one is unaware of the real issues facing the academy.  Why you think people do not see these things has always been a mystery to me personally; I suspect you want us all to agree with you about the next steps to take, and that is not necessarily going to happen, and so you mistake attitudes that differ from yours for ignorance.  It's a very typical human defense mechanism to explain why other people have ideas that are different from ours.

I, like most of the people here, really appreciate the depth of your posts and the info you provide----these are all things we know but it is nice to have specifics. 

But I, like some of the people here, disagree with your general assertion that the next step is to start lopping off limbs from the academic corpus.  I simply refuse to believe that our society can't keep our educational system thriving even in the face of undeniable factors such as birth rate declines.  What we have today is not necessarily what we will have tomorrow, either what the university is or what we want it to do.  We can save ourselves given effort, organization, and enough time (so no "snapping fingers" to create tenure lines----we all need to be smarter than that).

But this...

Telling those of us middle-aged folks without a liberal arts education how extremely vital a liberal arts education is to the nation and to the individual is a personal insult as well as demonstrably false.

...is, um, a little odd...personal insult!?  Really!?  I think science rules the roost in this day and age...

I don't know if the lib are are "vital...to the nation" (kind of hyperbolic there, don'cha think?) but I do think they are good for the nation and the individual.

Maybe pulling one's hair does something to one's brain...

[ciao_yall]

Telling those of us middle-aged folks without a liberal arts education how extremely vital a liberal arts education is to the nation and to the individual is a personal insult as well as demonstrably false.

...is, um, a little odd...personal insult!?  Really!?  I think science rules the roost in this day and age...

I don't know if the lib are are "vital...to the nation" (kind of hyperbolic there, don'cha think?) but I do think they are good for the nation and the individual.

Maybe pulling one's hair does something to one's brain...

Well, imagine Facebook without graphic designers to make an interface people would be willing to look at every day. Amazon if nobody wrote books people wanted to buy. News without writers or YouTube without creative people providing material that drive eyeballs to watch an 8-second ad before getting down to business.

[Ruralguy]

I think  Polly was likely arguing against  heavy distribution requirements or laundry lists of required courses, both of which are just jobs bills for academics, and less focused on what students might really want or need.  I don't think that's anything close to saying we have no need for creative disciplines.
They could be connected, but not necessarily.

[mamselle]

Beethoven leading to Chopin leading to....what did I watch next?

I started sending a series of videos to my students to encourage them to look at good finger technique, then I got lost in the world of beautiful music.

Oh, I know.

Then I ran across "Smothered," the video on the Smothers' Brothers' show and its ups and downs (which I remember watching as a teen) and realizing how much was going on with the music and the issues they were raising that I didn't understand (or felt uncomfortable with) at the time.

Then....mhhhhmmmmm....what did I watch after that? Another pianist, I think....Oh, several Duke Ellington pieces.

That was after several hours of doing financials, setting up a shell to transcribe 9 hours of minutes, and looking longingly at the two papers and two blogs I owe folks, but couldn't muster the number of focused brain cells necessary to do that work then.

I went to sleep feeling a bit more human, and as if I'd at least shared some of that with my students, and examined a corner of my life that needed clearing and sweeping a bit.

I don't see these things as antithetical or of competing values; they complement each other in my world.

M.

[Kron3007]

At the end, it seems that you are essentially making the benevolent dictator argument.  Democratic governance definitely has problems, both at the university or national level, but it also preserves something that most people value.

Have you ever asked 'most people?' Including part-time faculty? I suspect not. Because we are not considered 'the people.'  Everyone is administration to us. 'Faculty governance' means being dictated to by people who identify themselves as benevolent, as does any other arrangement, with the sole exception of participating in an adjunct union which whomever the dictator is will try to stifle. As for our being insufficiently informed to participate in decision-making, that is also structurally intentional.

Well, when I said most people I was referring to democratic governance in general, which I suspect most people living in democratic societies value.  Regarding universities and part time faculty, this is a result of external forces (budgets) and lack of faculty governance.  We fight hard to prevent the shift from full time faculty to a heavy reliance on adjuncts and so far have been successful.  We may have a course or two covered by adjuncts each semester in my department, but it is quite limited and they are well paid.  This is largely due to faculty governance and is specifically addressed in our Union contract.

I recognize this is not the case everywhere, but top down decision making by administrators will almost definitely lead to the erosion of full time jobs and the adjunctification of academia.  This is true in other sectors as well, where part time gigs have replaced long term careers.

[mahagonny]

...but top down decision making by administrators will almost definitely lead to the erosion of full time jobs and the adjunctification of academia.  This is true in other sectors as well, where part time gigs have replaced long term careers.

It's fun to speculate, isn't it? Whereas I have been better compensated when working in the non-tenure granting school, with a roughly equal balance between part time and full time positions in either.

Well, when I said most people I was referring to democratic governance in general, which I suspect most people living in democratic societies value.  Regarding universities and part time faculty, this is a result of external forces (budgets) and lack of faculty governance.  We fight hard to prevent the shift from full time faculty to a heavy reliance on adjuncts and so far have been successful.  We may have a course or two covered by adjuncts each semester in my department, but it is quite limited and they are well paid.  This is largely due to faculty governance and is specifically addressed in our Union contract.

When you report 'one or two' what you convey is that you don't know the number. What is their pay per hour, compared with yours?

'I recognize this is not the case everywhere,...'

Try to make the entire department tenure track, most places, and the resistance will be from administrators and the tenure track itself. They all know the same thing. It can't be paid for. Therefore, the tenure track is not really faculty governance at all. It's just a different group of people dictating.

[marshwiggle]

Telling those of us middle-aged folks without a liberal arts education how extremely vital a liberal arts education is to the nation and to the individual is a personal insult as well as demonstrably false.

...is, um, a little odd...personal insult!?  Really!?  I think science rules the roost in this day and age...

I don't know if the lib are are "vital...to the nation" (kind of hyperbolic there, don'cha think?) but I do think they are good for the nation and the individual.

Maybe pulling one's hair does something to one's brain...

The argument is not whether "the liberal arts" are a good thing; the question is how much formal study should be imposed on people. Society would benefit (and individuals as well) if everyone knew more about physics, statistics, biology, coding, and a bunch of other things. However, I can't recall hearing STEM people argue that everyone should be forced to take courses in any of those things at university. If you want to learn those things, you can read books, watch videos online, among other things.  On the other hand, there's a steady drone of how liberal arts courses are important for people to learn critical thinking, communication skills, etc. as though that is the only real way for people to learn those things.

That is the conceit that annoys a lot of STEM people. Students who are interested in a subject can learn it a lot of ways, and students that aren't interested will find it a waste of time and likely learn very little.