Here's my first linked article:http://chronicle.com/article/From-Graduate-School-to/131795/
I don't often get mad, but many of the comments in this article got my goat. The comments were so full of ad hominem attacks that I saw red. Perhaps it is due to my future employment circumstances that I became particularly bristly about the cavalier attitude of "you did this to yourself" and "why should we help out others" that made me want to spit like a llama.
The reality is that contingent labor is abusive. Rarely can contingent labor hold the same standards as tenured faculty; if too many students quit or fail, it's your fault, not theirs (the students or the administration). If you can't get enough students to continue taking your courses in the sequence, well, hello unemployment and food stamps.
I have nothing against other jobs, but that's like telling a painter not to paint or a builder not to build. Despite all the headaches and heartaches, I want to teach. These comments made me realize how few people understand what a roulette wheel/hellish game of lottery landing a tenure track job (in STEM or Humanities) really is.
One commenter asks why PhDs don't go and teach at public schools. Even with a PhD, in very few states will they let you near the K-12 set without a Masters in Teaching or Education. Or, schools won't hire you because it costs more to hire a PhD than it does to hire someone with a BA or BS.
The comments are infuriating and so hateful, but as my grandpappy used to say, "Don't step in the mud unless you want to roll with the pigs."
Oh, Maybelle, what breaks my heart most is this: "that's like telling a painter not to paint or a builder not to build." I do tell my undergrads that deciding to be a teacher is now like deciding to be an artist: if you can NOT do it, that's the best option.
ReplyDeleteWhat's disturbing to me is that the Crampicle isn't just an everyday audience... I expect ignorant comments from a certain populace (Yahoo! News, anyone?), but perhaps I need to lower my expectations of an "educated" audience.
ReplyDeleteHere's some advice: never read the comments on news, magazine, and other similar websites.
ReplyDeleteSeventy percent of the population (at a minimum) consists of ignoramuses and assholes, and this number increases to somewhere around 99 percent on internet media comment pages.
While you might assume that the Chronicle attracts a more enlightened readership, the fact is that these articles get linked and tweeted all over the place, and all sorts of people find them. There's no guarantee, just because a particular website is aimed at a particular audience, that it won't also attract the usual moronic detritus from the online world. There's no guarantee, for that matter, that someone in academia isn't part of the moronic detritus.
You can't let this shit get to you, or you'll go crazy. If you want a real lark, try reading YouTube comments sometime.
Would agree with you 99%, Def.
DeleteCan't speak for the Crampicle, but over at the NY Times, their comment blogs still function at a pretty high level. Sure, there is the occasional dittohead poking in, but I think the fact that established commenters call BS loudly and often keeps things to a low troll.
The part that bothered me was the professional associations saying "oh, no; we haven't heard about Ph.D.s in our field receiving public assistance." That suggests a pretty determined head-in-the-sand stance.
ReplyDeleteBeen there, got those, still have the ID card.
DeleteActually my professional association commissioned a survey about this very question. Sad though, that my data was deemed irrelevant because it fell outside of the date range (during grad school inclusive) they set.
I agree, Cassandra.
ReplyDeleteThe problem, of course, is that the people who run these organizations are also professors, often in top-tier schools, who don't want to lose the prestige and the cheap labor that comes with having a well-stocked Ph.D. program.
While some of these folks often talk about making full disclosure and telling the applicants how shitty the job market is, and even occasionally murmur about admitting fewer grad students, in the end they just keep accepting applicants, even in fields where jobs are incredibly scarce.
I'm glad to see the issue getting some comparatively mainstream airplay, even if the comments really can be depressing, as much for the sheer objectivist elitism and ignorance as the lunatic meanness in places. There was a piece published last fall on a similar theme, which received some of the same nonsense (though in fairness, a lot of solid support, too): http://chronicle.com/article/Bootstrapping-My-Way-Into-the/129640/
ReplyDeleteMy particular favorites were the self-righteous declarations against choosing a "useless" field that didn't make enough money and the attacks on the author for choosing to keep her child in spite of the financial hardship of the time.
I don't read the Crampicle with any regularity. Could someone enlighten me why a publication ostensibly intended for the higher education audience refers to the subject of the article, who earned a PhD in Medieval History, as "Ms."?
ReplyDeleteCHE refers to everyone as "Mr."/"Ms." Not sure why.
DeleteNeed to find mention of some M.D.s and determine if they are allowed the "Dr." title.
It's sort of a "we're all in this together" stance, to highlight our similarities rather than differences. Not every field has the PhD as a terminal degree, and the articles/ news reports include people from many facets of higher ed.
DeleteI do think they call MDs Dr., however, though I can't recall for sure.
A resident of the NY Times' home turf, in that particular publication there has been an PhD/MD battle for some time. However, the Times has recently capitulated, frequently granting PhD a "Dr." honorific.
DeleteSeems kinda sad that the Crampicle would engage in a false egalitarianism that diminishes doctorates in a profession in which they are overwhelmingly represented.
It isn't only mainsteam media-- there was a discussion on a few of the academic blogs a few years back that was just awful-- the vitriol and contempt spewed by a number of the influential tenured faculty toward adjuncts, grad students and job seekers was incredibly demoralizing and changed my entire perception of academics.
ReplyDeleteAlso? My cohort had people on food stamps in the mid-1990s. This is not recent news, sadly.
ReplyDeleteHell, in grad school I used the state winter heating emergency fund to help pay my heating bills in winter. BTW, I was paid the exact same amount to adjunct a class in 1986 as I was in 2010. (different schools, same class, same class size)
ReplyDeleteSee, I have suspected something very similar all along!
DeleteWhile in grad school, I was an adjunct at the same school my faculty mentor adjuncted at as a grad student about 10 years previously. I seriously think that we made the same amount of money, but she was under the impression I made a living wage (as she had)! Rents in that town had doubled in that time. Her "cushy" adjunct job wasn't even meeting my monthly expenses 10 years later!