CHE: Tenured, Trapped, and Miserable in the Humanities

[Wahoo Redux]

I think quality has already declined due to the push to send everyone to college in the first place. At my institution over the past ten years, the quality of the student attending has fallen. Not only are students less prepared, they also lack the drive necessary to succeed in college.  To them, it is just something else they "have" to do, rather than want to do. Yes, this is a reflection of the type of student who attends my institution, but we are far from being outliers in this.  Not everyone should go to college, and yet society sends the message that everyone should go to college. On top of that, when students cannot make the grade, we lower the standards, not because they cannot do the work, but because they refuse to do the work because school isn't about learning, it is about doing just enough to get by.  I think we can thank 'No Child Left Behind' for reducing learning to teaching to a test and externally-driven metrics instead of internally driven ones.

We are back in very familiar territory. 

You have totally described my current employer and my last employer to a "T."

I think, however, that these kids going to school because they "have to" (which is all but a handful of students in my open-enrollment slurrypit) get a lot out of it, even as I dumb-down the assignments and inflate the grades, even as I am so overwhelmed I cannot do my classes justice.

I hate to think what this place would be if we didn't have a university in town----not to mention the jobs of all stripes we are taking out of our impoverished community as we slowly fail as an institution. 

So I don't know what to tell you.

What I am suggesting is a conundrum which our society is doing a very bad job of negotiating.

[Caracal]

Personally, I am just bored with teaching. Students are great, but grading and paperwork and teaching the same darn topics over and over again has gotten stale.

I can't imagine doing any job for more than 5-10 years. There is the fun of the fresh challenge, the feeling once one has a routine, the sense that one is getting better and making improvements, and then... I dunno. Either need to create fresh challenges in the current job or look for something else.

It's like Groundhog Day.  Every Fall you come class and the students don't know a damn thing you taught last year.

Ha! That's one of my constant feelings I have to hold in check "I explained this all so clearly just last year! Why do you not retain it?"

Sure, I have that feeling too, but there's something nice about it sometimes. The students all seem the same at first but as the semester develops the differences start to emerge. Some of the students are always a surprise, the dynamics of classes develop in unexpected ways, and students start having different interests and responses based on the world they grew up in.

[mleok]

I do wonder what the point of everyone getting a college degree is, since all it achieves is to make a college degree a minimum qualification for a job that only required a high school diploma a decade ago, while dumbing down the requirements for high school and college. The same could have been achieved by increasing the duration of K-12 (to 14?).

The money spent on making community college accessible to everyone would have been better spent on quality, vocationally oriented programs, like the older style polytechnics, that taught a high level practical/vocational skill. Simply put, the current model of community colleges, which are the general education and first two years of a four year degree program is worse than useless to any student who doesn't go on to complete a four year degree.

In Singapore, for example, the polytechnics provided a 3 year program in a vocational/applied field, and was a substitute for the last two years of high school that was college preparatory. The polytechnic diploma provided useful, employable skills, and which could lead to entry to the last 2 years of an engineering college degree program for those students who excelled.

[mleok]

The rot started long before No Child Left Behind. The push to send everyone to college makes sense to an individual when one sees the college wage premium. But that's a result of signalling, not learning. Thus, those fewer in college would be better off if they didn't go to college -- provided there were lots of them. They could resort to a cheaper signal. High school maybe ?

I recall that when I was applying for college, I received a suitable for framing certificate that certified that I was admitted to Harvard, complete with my name hand calligrified onto it. It was apparently nicer than the diploma one eventually receives if one graduated from Harvard. Given that it's easier to graduate from Harvard than to be admitted to it, I guess that makes some sort of perverse sense, and it speaks to the signaling issue you raised. At the public research university I now teach at, I feel we should start issuing such certificates of admission, so that accepted students can then enroll at one of Master's level universities in the state university system, that offer a far more personalized educational experience.

[TreadingLife]

I think quality has already declined due to the push to send everyone to college in the first place. At my institution over the past ten years, the quality of the student attending has fallen. Not only are students less prepared, they also lack the drive necessary to succeed in college.  To them, it is just something else they "have" to do, rather than want to do. Yes, this is a reflection of the type of student who attends my institution, but we are far from being outliers in this.  Not everyone should go to college, and yet society sends the message that everyone should go to college. On top of that, when students cannot make the grade, we lower the standards, not because they cannot do the work, but because they refuse to do the work because school isn't about learning, it is about doing just enough to get by.  I think we can thank 'No Child Left Behind' for reducing learning to teaching to a test and externally-driven metrics instead of internally driven ones.

We are back in very familiar territory. 

You have totally described my current employer and my last employer to a "T."

I think, however, that these kids going to school because they "have to" (which is all but a handful of students in my open-enrollment slurrypit) get a lot out of it, even as I dumb-down the assignments and inflate the grades, even as I am so overwhelmed I cannot do my classes justice.

I hate to think what this place would be if we didn't have a university in town----not to mention the jobs of all stripes we are taking out of our impoverished community as we slowly fail as an institution. 

So I don't know what to tell you.

What I am suggesting is a conundrum which our society is doing a very bad job of negotiating.

I agree that there are clearly some first generation, low income students who really do get a lot out of college even if the admission and learning standards have been lowered. Further, they probably would have never been admitted under stricter, more elitist standards that reward parental income rather than individual potential.  For them, there are real personal and professional gains from going to college that can substantially change the generational wealth in their families.

However, for every woefully prepared but mostly earnestly hard working low income/first gen student admitted with a low grade profile, we seem to admit another 5-10 low achieving middle or high income students who don't want to be in college and who don't care about wasting their parents money on tuition. For them, a lowered academic bar rewards mediocrity. Unfortunately, we are not good at sorting out the students who really want to be in college, and as a result, taxpayers subsidize this mediocrity, which perversely lowers the signal value of a college degree for everyone, but especially the low income/first gen students trying to gain an edge.

[Hibush]

However, for every woefully prepared but mostly earnestly hard working low income/first gen student admitted with a low grade profile, we seem to admit another 5-10 low achieving middle or high income students who don't want to be in college and who don't care about wasting their parents money on tuition. For them, a lowered academic bar rewards mediocrity. Unfortunately, we are not good at sorting out the students who really want to be in college, and as a result, taxpayers subsidize this mediocrity, which perversely lowers the signal value of a college degree for everyone, but especially the low income/first gen students trying to gain an edge.

This business model can make sense financially, but you put your finger on the pedagogical challenge that results.

Someone must have figured out an approach that allows you to provide an excellent education for the learners while also keeping happy the students who are paying the bills. (Can one get an EdD with a thesis on this topic?)

This may not be sorting so much as the "individual attention" smaller schools provide. Can one make the historic "gentleman's C" a point of pride among the modern-day gentlemen who are enjoying their college experience without being overly burdened by studying?

[marshwiggle]

I think, however, that these kids going to school because they "have to" (which is all but a handful of students in my open-enrollment slurrypit) get a lot out of it, even as I dumb-down the assignments and inflate the grades, even as I am so overwhelmed I cannot do my classes justice.

It's really good to hear how the prepared, engaged students benefit from the presence of their  "have to be there" classmates.

Higher ed is a government conspiracy to make people smarter.  How dare they.

I'm not a psychologist, but my understanding is that education may make someone more informed, but "smart" (i.e. general mental ability) is mainly about genetics, pre-natal health and early nutrition.

[lightning]

It's Pannapacker. He writes these articles because he's a  humble-braggart. When he wrote his first "I quit" article a few months ago, he said he's outta here. Then in the subsequent article, he's just taking a leave of absence. So in addition to humble-bragging, he's also just a bunch of hot air, because he's too cowardly to just quit.

I avoid his articles but did read the "I quit" one for unknown reasons.  So, he did NOT quit, just LOA?   Thanks for sharing the sequel which cancels the original.

I wouldn't call him cowardly if leaving brings financial problems, the quit piece sounded legit and I wondered about his decision.  As I recall, he's at an age where quitting higher ed may not be advisable in terms of finding something else with same pay, conditions, and benefits.

You're right. "Cowardly" is the wrong word. That's a choice word that I reserve only for the lowest of the low, of which Pannapacker is not. I think I've only used the word once before, in the fora.

However,

if Pannapacker wants to stand on the principles that he espouses and credibility for himself, for what was to be understood as the bold move to leave a tenured position in academe, he should just quit. Instead he kept a LOA safety net for himself (understandably so), which means he's showing off his privilege. He's the worst kind of braggart.

Allow me to summarize all of his Thomas Benton/William Pannapacker articles from back in the day through his most recent nauseating article:

"It's really, really tough to get my job as a tenure-track professor in the Humanities, but I was good enough to get one. You probably are not, so just don't go. And, now, I'm going to flaunt my success to you poor saps by rejecting the profession that you never got. But, I'm only going to reject it for a year, so I can tease you and gloat about the hundreds of hopefuls that would want my job."
--what Thomas Benton/William Pannapacker is really saying, over and over again.

[Hibush]

Thanks lightning for your close reading of the original text, and the concise summary.

[Mobius]

Many of the miserable ones in academia also have other struggles they seem to be addressing. They are also usually bad about how they spend their time. Most academics don't work 50 hours a week (wasting time on fora and social media isn't work). The miserable tend to be horribly inefficient regarding prep and grading, and don't know how to interact with students without conflict.