Yesterday, my radio played as I cleaned my place. I had tuned into the all-news station. A reporter interviewed some analyst or another. He advised young people who have difficulty finding work, or who have just lost their jobs, to go back to school and earn an advanced degree.
I wish I'd caught this sage's name. Maybe if I hadn't screamed, "F@ck you!," I would have heard it.
Anyway, hearing this comment made me think of a fellow adjunct in one of the colleges in which I'm teaching. She is pursuing a PhD in English from a program that, frankly, isn't on the radars of most search committees. The main reason she attends that program, she said, is that they gave her money, while the program she wanted to attend--which would have given her a better (though still not good) chance of obtaining tenure-track employment--didn't offer her any.
Now, I could understand what she's doing if there were a guarantee, or something close to it, that her part-time work would turn into a full-time faculty position. However, she has no such assurance. However, to be fair, I must say that very few adjuncts are in such a position.
Were she young and naive, I could understand her pursuing a PhD in English. Or, perhaps, if she were independently wealthy, or had a partner or family who would support her in such an endeavor, I could see it. But, to my knowledge, nothing I've said in this paragraph (except, perhaps, for "naive") applies to her.
She does seem to enjoy teaching and what she's seen, so far, of the academic life. I wonder, though, whether she realizes how much that reality will change once she graduates and if she ends up unemployed, or doing the same work she's doing now. It almost goes without saying that she doesn't realize, or want to know, how real either of those possibilities are.
What makes her story sad, though, is that she is an occupational refugee, if you will. She worked as a journalist for a number of years and earned a Master's from the Columbia School of Journalism, which has long been considered one of the three or four best in that field. Even with such a credential, and her experience, she found herself out of work for nearly three years before starting on her present path.
A number of scambloggers have documented the ongoing collapse of the law profession, and how law schools are opening and established law schools are increasing their enrollments in spite of it. Something similar happened to journalism ten to fifteen years ago. I know: I was freelancing, and within months, I went from having more work than I could ever have done to having none at all.
I returned to teaching at the college level after that happened. After five years of working as an adjunct and a year in an administrative position, I landed a full-time, non-tenure-track job that was good for a maximum of two years. Well, I taught for those two years, and am back to what I was doing before.
Near the end of the semester, I asked the colleague of whom I have written whether we could sit down and talk about her future. She said she would, but so far hasn't contacted me about doing so. I really want to understand what is motivating her to go from a field that is dying to one in which the job market has been depressed for close to four decades, and shows no sign of improving.
My only guess is that she, too, was inculcated with the same blind, unquestioned faith in schooling that the man on the radio was touting yesterday morning. The thing is, he won't pay as much of a price for believing it--if indeed he actually does--as she could for her faith in it. And there are many more stories like hers, I'm sure.
You mention a "tenure-track job that was good for a maximum of two years." This isn't possible. "Tenure-track" and "maximum of two years" are mutually exclusive. A tenure-track appointment is not time-limited from the outset. That's pretty much what tenure-track means.
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly possible to exit a tenure-track position involuntarily after two years (say, because you failed an annual review), but I've never heard of a tenure-track position limited from the outset to two years regardless of performance. If such a thing really existed, I wouldn't call it tenure-track. As I said, the defining characteristic of tenure-track is that it must be possible to get tenure!
Perhaps you meant to say "definite-term appointment at an academic rank equivalent to a starting tenure-track appointment" or something along those lines.
The mainstream public gets violently angry with anyone suggesting schooling won't pay off. If you don't front your credentials beforehand, they will insult you and claim you are stupid and poor.
ReplyDeleteIf you front the credentials, they will then claim you are rubbing it in their faces or are just trying to keep them out.
There have been many articles recently on how useless schooling is written by some rich guys in Forbes, WSJ and other related publications. One guy is actually paying people not to go to school.
You bring these to people's attention and what do you think happens? Well I already wrote what happens.
The mainstream is retarded and you can't help them. It's a total waste of time. This is why democracy can not possibly work. We have a republic and in fact elections were set up in such a way as to prevent the idiotic general public from deciding anything (not that most were even allowed to vote initially). The representatives are supposed to rule because the people are too dumb to.
Well, I think it's clear this system fails because all you wind up with is an aristocracy/oligarchy but none of the benefits of having a leader that cares about the people's interests, and for the people to actually believe in that leader. Is there any wonder that for thousands of years the dominant form of government for every successful civilization was putting power primarily in one ruler?
Change the font color of your blog to something more readable.
ReplyDeleteDJ: Mea culpa. I meant to write "non-tenure track." I've corrected the post.
ReplyDeleteAnon 12:37: I would agree with you if we knew, with certainly, that whatever monarch/despot we ended up with was going to be a benevolent one. When that happens, the result may be as close to paradise as one can get. However, history is full of examples of absolute rulers who were crazy, stupid, evil or ruthless, or who simply got drunk on their power once they had it. Then again, I think I've just described every President we've had in my lifetime. (I'm really too young to remember JFK; I can just barely remember the day he was assasinated.)
Anon 4:16: I used the "default" color. What do you think would be more readable?
I think what's sad about the type of situation this post describes is that so many occupations have fundamentally changed or are in peril right now, anyone training for something new may be vulnerable to looking foolish and irrational.
ReplyDeleteI do think it's a mistake to assume that people make decisions of any kind (not just when and whether to go to grad school) "rationally." It's hard to resist the idea that other's decisions should make logical sense to us. But this isn't how people operate in the real world.
As someone above suggested, the concept of education holds a tremendous amount of symbolic power--you can tell how much by the way people react when you suggest they abstain. It's the level of cultural meaning that needs to be addressed if we are to reduce the number of folks who fall prey to scholastic snake oil.
Going back to school to get an "advanced degree", that is, in anything other than medicine, is just pursuit of a comfort zone. It is a way for people to put off for a few more years the reality that this economy, and their place in it, has changed forever.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is a failure to adjust to the fact that the post-World War Two/Baby Boomer phenomenon was an anomaly, built on a world that was temporary and no longer exists. This country enjoyed a post-war industrial boom which filled the vacuuum of a destroyed Europe, a decimated Japan, and pre-emergent China and India. Now, these countries have either recovered or come finally to the fore, and things have changed--and for good.
Anon 4:36: The funny thing is that for all that professors are criticized for being disloyal to this country, they (well, the history profs anyway) almost never teach what you say about the post WWII world. I think, deep down, even they believe that America is "supposed to be" Number One, and that everyone should go to college.
ReplyDeleteAnon 8:24: What you say about the way people see education is very insightful. And,I think, they see it that way because they confuse "school" and "credentialing" with "education." As I said in a previous post, I am not at all against education. In fact, I value it as much as anyone does. But schools are not the only way to get it, and credentialing isn't the only proof that someone has it.
8:24 here--Yes. I agree about school and credentialing not being the only way to get education. But it's certainly the conventional way--the way that has cultural resonance. I think part of the reason that people choose this traditional school route over the route of the autodidact is the status and recognition they imagine will result. It's fundamentally different to know that you are smart/well educated than to be told you are through some kind of institutionalized recognition (regardless of whether you actually are smart or well educated, as the recent graduation of some of my peers attests).
ReplyDeleteEducation/schooling/credentialing vs. learning is exactly what Ivan Illich's book "Deschooling Society" is about.
ReplyDeleteI love your new blog. Keep up the great work!
7:23 and 7:53: Thanks! I am ashamed to say I haven't read Illich's book. It's on my "to read" list now.
ReplyDelete