Archie drops off an audioshizzle on why we are fucked.
Nothing earth-shattering here. I was just interested to actually hear it on the radio. I admit I hadn't heard of her or her book, but she hits the highlights reasonably well, I thought.
Enrollments are going up, tuition is going up, but faculty is getting less and less. Why? Part of it is competition. Too many PhDs. But she said something else that is important. Unfortunately, the interviewer just passed over it: There are now more administrators than faculty. It reminds me of that letter to the dean I wrote back in early November.
I was just going to listen to a few minutes but ended up listening to the whole thing. No new ground, but it's all there. The only thing I'd quibble with is her reference to UVa; what she said is not quite true (UVa is not really considering going private; my understanding is that they want a hybrid relationship with the state.)
This semester, I actually had a (grad) student ask about adjuncts and how committed they are and how well they prepare. D*mn! Well... the ones in my department are all pretty smart and do great jobs and most work full time jobs. So, that was an easy question to answer: they work hard as hell. Of course, I don't know what type of answer he thought I'd give him anyway!
[I suppose he asked me because, although I'm an adjunct, I have my own office (kinda sorta) and teach core classes plus some other part time stuff. Thus, I'm a semi-permanent adjunct who can be let go at-will.]
On administration: I get the feeling that this was something imported from corporate America, because the number of middle managers ballooned in the 1980s-1990s. As the number of tenured professors are whittled down, this boss class emerged to control the adjuncts, and we all know that left alone buracracy will swallow itself. Adminstration will probably kill many colleges when the bubble bursts.
"That" Professor at Northeastern: His name is Arthur R. Butz and he teaches Electrical Engineering, specifically control system theory and digital signal processing. He developed the Butz Algorithem for computer measurement of Hibert's space-filling curve in 1969. In 1976 he published a book entitled "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" which more-or-less began the great neo-Nazi crusade to deny the Holocaust, thus giving that annoying pisher Abe Foxman a job.
If you want to vote with your feet: For the third year grad students in the humanities there is a site with the unappealing name selloutyoursoul.com which makes the case that sticking around for the Ph.D is too much, so flee and get a job in something (though they are vague about that) Pretty much this is the blog child of Thomas Benton's "grad school - AVOID! AVOID!" articles in CHE.
That would be Northwestern Strelnikov, not Northeastern. The latter is not as good a school, but I think they can at least feel good that they don't employ Butz.
It is Butz's right to create works that are out of his specialty, it's just that he has gained absolutely nothing through Holocaust denial. He reminds me of William Shockley - both came up with inventions or innovations that improved technology and both willingly went down dead-end roads that were out of their fields.
(Postscript: It should be said that Butz did not create Holocaust denial, certain French and West German authors were the parents of that pseudohistorical genre, but he was the first to do it in English.)
I thought she did a good job of answering (and the interviewer of asking) the usual questions about the value of tenure, well-supported faculty, etc. But yes, we're all still fucked.
And yes, for all that Butz's attempts at (re)writing history are absolutely wrong, irresponsible, reprehensible, etc., etc., I'd say that his continued employment in another field is an example of the university working as it should. Another less extreme, but truly weird, example was a Harvard psychiatry professor, whose name I forget, who genuinely believed in alien abduction. Since some of his theories did intersect with his official field, that was actually a trickier case. It did, however, make a good example, in the early days of teaching students how to judge internet-based sources, of why one shouldn't believe everything one finds posted on a .edu site by a tenured professor. Students tend to invest authority in people with credentials and/or titles; part of my job is to nudge them in the direction of trusting the peer review process (which, of course, isn't perfect either) instead.
Has anybody read Wannabe U, which is popping up, at least for me, in the topmost advertising box on the right? Apparently it's about a university in Connecticut, but, from the reviews, the institution studied sounds very discouragingly like my own dear R2-hellbent-on-becoming-an-R1.
Another, complementary but more ominous banner ad, which I've seen several times lately (but not, I think, here; probably at the Chronicle or insidehighered ) advertises Ph.D.s in higher education administration, based on the prediction that 70% of college/university administrators will be retiring in the next 10-20 years. I suspect that prediction is about as accurate as the one that led to a foundation underwriting my Ph.D. on the basis of a predicted shortage of humanities faculty in the '90s, but, whether or not the prediction is correct, the idea that we're all going to be administered by Ph.D.s *in* administration makes me feel doubly doomed.
On that note, I'll be a good cog and go get my grades in.
I'm sorry, but unlike Arthur Butz, who firmly believes the Holocaust didn't happen, John Mack just studied the "alien abduction" phenomenon but was not convinced he knew what it was, but that it might fit into a human tradition of visions and vision quests. Budd Hopkins, on the other hand, working around the same time as Mack was a firm believer in the physical reality of the "aliens." I think people confuse the two.
@Strelnikov: I think I was thinking of Mack, and, indeed, at least from the Wikipedia entry, I probably wasn't entirely fair to him. On the other hand, since I didn't use his name, I probably didn't slander him too badly either (and hey, if my students had done a bit of research on my example, they would have realized that I'm not infallible either).
You didn't slander him, you just vaguely remembered him, and he's been dead for five years....I was mostly aiming my comment at Froederich, who seems to me to be this blog's Philip Klass (which is not meant as a slur.) Which probably makes me the poor man's John Keel.
Thanks for this, Archie.
ReplyDeleteEnrollments are going up, tuition is going up, but faculty is getting less and less. Why? Part of it is competition. Too many PhDs. But she said something else that is important. Unfortunately, the interviewer just passed over it: There are now more administrators than faculty. It reminds me of that letter to the dean I wrote back in early November.
Thanks, Oh Angry One.
ReplyDeleteI was just going to listen to a few minutes but ended up listening to the whole thing. No new ground, but it's all there. The only thing I'd quibble with is her reference to UVa; what she said is not quite true (UVa is not really considering going private; my understanding is that they want a hybrid relationship with the state.)
This semester, I actually had a (grad) student ask about adjuncts and how committed they are and how well they prepare. D*mn! Well... the ones in my department are all pretty smart and do great jobs and most work full time jobs. So, that was an easy question to answer: they work hard as hell. Of course, I don't know what type of answer he thought I'd give him anyway!
[I suppose he asked me because, although I'm an adjunct, I have my own office (kinda sorta) and teach core classes plus some other part time stuff. Thus, I'm a semi-permanent adjunct who can be let go at-will.]
I see it's time to start seriously working on that novel. . . .
ReplyDeleteOn administration:
ReplyDeleteI get the feeling that this was something imported from corporate America, because the number of middle managers ballooned in the 1980s-1990s. As the number of tenured professors are whittled down, this boss class emerged to control the adjuncts, and we all know that left alone buracracy will swallow itself. Adminstration will probably kill many colleges when the bubble bursts.
"That" Professor at Northeastern:
His name is Arthur R. Butz and he teaches Electrical Engineering, specifically control system theory and digital signal processing. He developed the Butz Algorithem for computer measurement of Hibert's space-filling curve in 1969. In 1976 he published a book entitled "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" which more-or-less began the great neo-Nazi crusade to deny the Holocaust, thus giving that annoying pisher Abe Foxman a job.
If you want to vote with your feet:
For the third year grad students in the humanities there is a site with the unappealing name selloutyoursoul.com which makes the case that sticking around for the Ph.D is too much, so flee and get a job in something (though they are vague about that) Pretty much this is the blog child of Thomas Benton's "grad school - AVOID! AVOID!" articles in CHE.
That would be Northwestern Strelnikov, not Northeastern. The latter is not as good a school, but I think they can at least feel good that they don't employ Butz.
ReplyDeleteIt is Butz's right to create works that are out of his specialty, it's just that he has gained absolutely nothing through Holocaust denial. He reminds me of William Shockley - both came up with inventions or innovations that improved technology and both willingly went down dead-end roads that were out of their fields.
ReplyDelete(Postscript: It should be said that Butz did not create Holocaust denial, certain French and West German authors were the parents of that pseudohistorical genre, but he was the first to do it in English.)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI thought she did a good job of answering (and the interviewer of asking) the usual questions about the value of tenure, well-supported faculty, etc. But yes, we're all still fucked.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, for all that Butz's attempts at (re)writing history are absolutely wrong, irresponsible, reprehensible, etc., etc., I'd say that his continued employment in another field is an example of the university working as it should. Another less extreme, but truly weird, example was a Harvard psychiatry professor, whose name I forget, who genuinely believed in alien abduction. Since some of his theories did intersect with his official field, that was actually a trickier case. It did, however, make a good example, in the early days of teaching students how to judge internet-based sources, of why one shouldn't believe everything one finds posted on a .edu site by a tenured professor. Students tend to invest authority in people with credentials and/or titles; part of my job is to nudge them in the direction of trusting the peer review process (which, of course, isn't perfect either) instead.
Has anybody read Wannabe U, which is popping up, at least for me, in the topmost advertising box on the right? Apparently it's about a university in Connecticut, but, from the reviews, the institution studied sounds very discouragingly like my own dear R2-hellbent-on-becoming-an-R1.
Another, complementary but more ominous banner ad, which I've seen several times lately (but not, I think, here; probably at the Chronicle or insidehighered ) advertises Ph.D.s in higher education administration, based on the prediction that 70% of college/university administrators will be retiring in the next 10-20 years. I suspect that prediction is about as accurate as the one that led to a foundation underwriting my Ph.D. on the basis of a predicted shortage of humanities faculty in the '90s, but, whether or not the prediction is correct, the idea that we're all going to be administered by Ph.D.s *in* administration makes me feel doubly doomed.
On that note, I'll be a good cog and go get my grades in.
@Contingent Cassandra:
ReplyDelete> Harvard psychiatry professor, whose name I forget, who genuinely believed in alien abduction.
That would be John Mack. I always thought Harvard let him get away with what he did because of that previous unpleasantness with Timothy Leary.
I'm sorry, but unlike Arthur Butz, who firmly believes the Holocaust didn't happen, John Mack just studied the "alien abduction" phenomenon but was not convinced he knew what it was, but that it might fit into a human tradition of visions and vision quests. Budd Hopkins, on the other hand, working around the same time as Mack was a firm believer in the physical reality of the "aliens." I think people confuse the two.
ReplyDelete@Strelnikov: I think I was thinking of Mack, and, indeed, at least from the Wikipedia entry, I probably wasn't entirely fair to him. On the other hand, since I didn't use his name, I probably didn't slander him too badly either (and hey, if my students had done a bit of research on my example, they would have realized that I'm not infallible either).
ReplyDeleteYou didn't slander him, you just vaguely remembered him, and he's been dead for five years....I was mostly aiming my comment at Froederich, who seems to me to be this blog's Philip Klass (which is not meant as a slur.) Which probably makes me the poor man's John Keel.
ReplyDelete