Why Competing For Tenure Is Like Trying To Become a Drug Lord 168
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Scott Jaschik writes in Inside Higher Education that the academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders and with income distribution within gangs extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, while the rank-and-file street sellers earned even less than employees in legitimate low-skilled activities. According to Alexandre Afonso, academic systems rely at least to some extent on the existence of a supply of 'outsiders' ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail. 'What you have is an increasing number of brilliant PhD graduates arriving every year into the market hoping to secure a permanent position as a professor and enjoying freedom and high salaries, a bit like the rank-and-file drug dealer hoping to become a drug lord,' says Afonso. 'To achieve that, they are ready to forgo the income and security that they could have in other areas of employment by accepting insecure working conditions in the hope of securing jobs that are not expanding at the same rate.' The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on adjunct lecturers who rely on food stamps to make ends meet. Afonso adds that he is not trying to discourage everyone from pursuing Ph.D.s but that prospective graduate students need to go in with a full awareness of the job market."
Not a great analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not really sure this is an apt analogy. Yes, you forgo higher wages while in graduate school, but if you don't make drug lord^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H a tenure track position, you can head to industry and make a good wage. I don't think street dealers have this option. Yes, most of us want to go into academia, but having a fallback option with 50-100% higher salary doesn't seem so bad (speaking as a mathematician here--maybe humanities Ph.D.'s really are like drug dealers).
Another thing they downplay in the reward side of academia is the time flexibility. There are absolutely zero vacation days, but for the most part, outside of hours physically spent in the classroom (usually less than 10 a week, less than 40 weeks a year), you get to arrange your schedule. I've known professors who worked from home in the morning and the office in the afternoon, and one who showed up at 4:00 PM and stayed until 12 or 1 (I was always amused when he joined us for a beer "after" work on occasion). To a lot of us, this is a huge perk
About to complete my PhD (Score:5, Interesting)
I am facing the dilemma of whether to go (back) to the industry, where I was working before starting my PhD, or continue in academia as a researcher. On one had you have the job security and better salary offered in industry. On the other hand you have the thrill of scientific work and fewer (albeit not 0) corporate psychopaths.
I decided on Friday that I'll go for academia. My health is failing, I think I have 10 to 15 years if I'm lucky, and life is too precious to waste it on doing something I don't like all that much, just because of money.
Re:So, Like any Tournament Model (Score:2, Interesting)
Tenure is the worst idea ever. It is essentially saying that it doesn't matter you are unproductive and a waste of space, you did something really good in the past so you are now in the Club now.
Re:Of course, no mention of the staff (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it doesn't. Think about it: it really can't. While everybody talks science, they are really in the rat race. Whatever you, as non-rat-racer, tell them, is irrelevant because it misses the point by definition.
Let me try to explain with a car analogy. Suppose you are in a kart competition [wikipedia.org]. A long winded, gruesome affair spanning uncountable races over many continents. And suddenly, in the midst of it, one of the tire salesmen appears with a formula one car. It obviously makes no sense. Get it?
In sum, be thankful for not being in the rat race.
Disclosure: been there, done that.
Re:Avoid the PhD... (Score:5, Interesting)
Statistically that isn't true; engineering PhDs have virtually zero unemployment rates and high salaries in industries.
Granted, not high enough salaries to justify the time spent: you don't get a good monetary ROI on the PhD. But you can easily land a job at all sorts of places, ranging from Google to quant shops to Lockheed.
Re:So, Like any Tournament Model (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think I understand your point. How is anybody being denied "academic freedom?" Who is stopping these PhDs from studying whatever they want? Or by academic freedom do you mean "the freedom to make somebody else pay them for their studies?"
This isn't a dig, I really feel like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle because I just don't get the outrage, particularly with this statement: "The idea of academic freedom being available only to those who have already made their most significant contribution (and therefore get tenure which is supposed to provide academic freedom) is an idea that needs to be discussed. It is a problem." If I only have a small pool of money to pay tenured professors, why wouldn't I want to select the ones that have proven themselves?
Re:Avoid the PhD... (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a combination engineering (without PhDs) and science (with PhDs) environment. I'll admit the PhDs are bit high on the Oddness Scale. The engineers, however, have this enormous chip on their shoulder about the qualities of the PhDs. They widely deride the PhDs has not doing anything real or even capable of doing anything real. Some PhDs are like this. In general, though, the PhDs are working on higher level problems, so it isn't any mystery that the engineers find them difficult to relate to. I get the general impression that for engineers, good mathematics is born of a virgin and immediately applicable to their interests. That "other" mathematics is the stuff that's difficult to understand and probably invented by PhDs somewhere in a ivory tower dedicated to the ineffable. Getting engineers to back off their immediate problem and tell us any general lessons about their widgets is nearly impossible, and they take pride in snowing us with trivial detail that makes no difference in the general picture. When we do attempt to generalized, we are immediately hit with "it doesn't solve my immediate problem with all the details filled in." Yeah, well, that's because your problem was generalized into a class of problems and the math we gave you will work for the entire class; now quit bitching and particularize it to your widget.
Re:Tenure is destructive to higher education (Score:5, Interesting)
Blaming all these societal/academic issues on tenure is incorrect. The tenure system has its problems, but it also yields large advantages to academic work. Most importantly, it puts a few professors above the fray of very short-term, ignorant, simplistic-metrics-driven management decisions. There's a lot of important long-term progress to be made in fields of study that doesn't always fit into the "publish-or-perish" and "maximize each year's grant money" models; placing quality over quantity is a possibility protected by the tenure system.
Given that tenure positions are becoming rarer, with far more professorships being ephemeral and low-paid (especially for teaching positions), the tenure system can hardly be blamed for the educational outcomes from universities. If anything, if tenure was a problem, then things should have gotten much better over the past few years alongside the erosion of the tenure system.
Blaming any part of the external job market situation on tenure is downright ignorant. Graduates aren't working at McDonalds because of decisions made by some tenured professor; the job market is set by decisions from a super-wealthy oligarch class far from the ivory tower.
Re:Not a great analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
For many people, time flexibility de facto means working essentially around the clock.
It doesn't usually mean that in academia. You need to be present to teach your classes, hold office hours, and attend various meetings. For many people (particularly senior professors), this may add up to less than 10 hours/week where your schedule is actually set. If you have a research lab in the sciences or something, you need to negotiate times to deal with your grad students and lab assistants that are reasonable for everybody, but most senior faculty have a lot of power in choosing their own schedules.
Tenure-track faculty may feel like they need to "work around the clock" to ensure that they will receive tenure. After tenure, however, the expectations are more flexible.
Also, in many places this time flexibility is just an illusion. When there is a problem then it turns out that by constantly arriving late you weren't fulfilling your duties, no matter that you stayed until 2:00 AM.
Again, this isn't really relevant to academia. There is really no "arriving late," except arriving late for a class or meeting or something, which is obviously bad. But if you teach your classes at 4pm and arrive by that time, no one is usually going to care how you structure the rest of your day.
The main "duty" of most non-tenured professors is to produce research. If you do that best by working regular 9am-5pm hours or by only coming in in the middle of the night, nobody's going to care much. Aside from that, you need to attend occasional meetings and turn your grades in at the end of the semester. Once you have tenure, the obligation to produce continuous research is lessened a bit, and most of the schedule on which you "fulfill your duties" is really up to you.
It's not exactly an "easy" life, because you still have significant responsibilities to fulfill outside of the few meeting times each week that are set. But the schedule you choose to fulfill those other responsibilities is truly rather free.
Re:So, Like any Tournament Model (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, I can tell you (based on first-hand observation) that you'd be astonished how much bullying underperforming tenured professors can tolerate.
These types are not going to give up guaranteed employment. They simply grow a thicker skin. Furthermore, they learn how to strike back. For example, if the department chair tries to increase the teaching load of a non-performer, the inevitable result is horrible teaching reviews and angry students changing majors. The administration very quickly learns to just leave the non-performers alone and wait for them to retire.
The better alternative, of course, is to hire non-tenured faculty. Much easier to get rid of (if necessary), and in general more productive researchers and better teachers.
Re:Tenure is destructive to higher education (Score:5, Interesting)
You should read this article in the current Thought & Action magazine -- http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/TA2013Rosenthal_Schnee.pdf [nea.org]
Summary: For the first time in 40 years, the City University of New York (CUNY) has started up a new community college, dedicated to novel teaching techniques. As part of that, they've refused to hire or grant any tenured faculty at all, not implemented departments or department chairs, not given faculty a vote in committees or any faculty senate structure, etc. The article writer is a long-time professor of math at another CUNY school, who was so excited by the prospect of trying new teaching techniques that he jumped ship anyway, despite concerns from colleagues. End of the story is that administration took away all their initial promises and there was nothing the faculty could do about it (for example: promise of 40% concentration on math studies, and one-on-one contact time between students and faculty, replaced by peer tutoring). This formerly excited professor is one of several who have now left the new community college and gone back to their old jobs.
Who will care more about the integrity of the academic discipline: Faculty or administrators? The former are the people who have some direct personal contact with students, and have some likelihood of defending their interests as people. The latter are just PHB's looking to increase the bottom line. Shifting power from the former to the latter is one sign that we're not really serious or respectful towards real learning in this country.
Re:Of course, no mention of the staff (Score:0, Interesting)
If you're staff, you're not even a potential member of the club. It doesn't matter how much of an expert you in are in your field, if you're not faculty, your opinion doesn't matter.
Ship's engineer doesn't decide where the ship goes. NCO doesn't decide whether to invade a country or not. Manager doesn't decide whether to buy another company or not. Welder doesn't decide how many floors are in a skyscraper. Scotty wasn't captain of the Enterprise.
In every field, there is need for highly technical, highly competent people who are not the ultimate decision makers. Don't like it? Go after the job where the decisions get made -- you may be disappointed that you don't get to do all the stuff yourself then.