The Academic 'Labor System'M
(Can you think of a more boring title for a blog post)
It's taken me over a week to work up even this lame response to this post by Conscientious Objector that responds to the things I was discussing below about grad school, etc. I've got a pile of papers to grade, the final draft of the JRRT Encyclopedia Table of Contents to complete (almost 1000 entry topics thus far), and a paper to give in Vermont in a week that still needs a lot of work. But it's rude to be silent so long, and I apologize to Objector and anyone else reading the exchange.
But although I see where Objector is coming from, I'm afraid I can't agree with the analysis given in the post. There are two problems being mixed: the "oversupply" of graduate students in comparison to the jobs they want, and the existence of the adjunct system. I think the first is not really a problem because I stand by my comparison to the arts, sports and entertainment: there is an oversupply because being a professor is a very desireable job. In that situation, more people will want to take a gamble on that job, despite the comparitively low pay (versus other jobs that require similar training) and difficult odds of success. I don't think academia is a Ponzi scheme any more than the entertainment business, and if you think adjuncting sucks and is dead-end, compare it to trooping from audition to audition with no guarantee of any positive result, even if you've ponied up your money to get your Equity card.
Objector says that graduate students overvalue their investment because they don't understand the market, but I'm not sure I can agree: I knew exactly how bad the market was when I decided to go to graduate school for my Ph.D. (I'd already gotten one M.A. and was working on my second), and in fact the year I got my job there were 127 applicants for my particular job, and only 25 medieval jobs in the job list. But getting a Ph.D. seemed worth the gamble because, like all the young, ambitious people hoping to get a foot in the door in entertainment, I was sure I could win, and because the actual process of going to grad school seemed better than other alternatives at that moment. I think most people make similar choices, and when you choose to take the gamble, you have to have back-up plans and be prepared to live with the results (if I wasn't a professor now, I'd be running a pet store somewhere, either just finally setting out on my own or getting ready to. Seriously. That was the plan and I moved forward on it while in grad school. But I digress.)
The other question is whether the adjunct system is exploitive or not. Since we don't have many adjuncts at Wheaton, and we don't have graduate students teaching classes, etc., I don't know this system first hand as much as most. But it seems to me there are different categories of 'exploitation,' and some are worse than others. The worst, in my opinion, is the hiring of multiple adjuncts so as to avoid having to pay full-time benefits. This seems morally wrong to me, and stupidly inefficient: if you need five classes taught, hire one person for five classes, not five different people. We have tried very hard (and at least this year, succeeded) at Wheaton to avoid this.
But we simply don't have the resources to create the five new tenure lines that we'd need, just in English, to cover all of the classes that get covered right now (our department is 11; there's no money for such a huge increase). We can only hire people full time if we have the guaranteed resources for a tenure line (i.e., the college accounting people can project a suitable revenue stream 30 years into the future. Rumor has it that the college had to raise $250,000 for each new tenure line it added during the recent period of growth, and that number is only so low because Wheaton relies much more heavily on annual funds versus endowment compared to other schools).
So we could do a few things: eliminate most lit. classes and all teach 4 (out of five classes) English 101's. That seems like an intellectual impoverishment for the students. We could cut the number of English 101's in half, using some kind of test to pick out 50% of the students, saying they don't need English 101. We could elminate English 101 and say that students need to learn that material in high school and tough luck if they don't. Or we can see if there are people around who want to teach English 101 for a wage that the college can afford.
At Wheaton the rule is that there is no such thing as a non-tenure-track, full-time teaching job. If you teach the full course load, you are making progress towards tenure. So theoretically we have no second-class citizens (i.e., no full-time, non-tenure track jobs), but instead a fair number of third-class citizens (adjuncts who couldn't even get full-time work and thus no health insurance, etc., even if they could piece together work from multiple institutions).
Our solution, imperfect as it was, was to lump together adjunct positions into 4 classes plus some tutoring or administrative responsibility. The adjuncts thus got full-time benefits (and now, multi-year contracts), but didn't go 'tenure track' because they were doing other things than teaching. They're not expected to do committee work, teach indep. studies, attend events (though they're of course welcome). We negotiated pay packages that were much better than the 3000 per class that adjuncts got (i.e., they don't get $12,000 for four classes).
Is this exploitation? I don't know. And I don't know if I'd feel exploited if I took such a job. But again, I don't think it's as bad as the situation in many other occupations. Adjuncts at Wheaton do have a foot in the door for tenure lines that open up, and at least four of our eleven in the department have started this way and have had tenure lines eventually open up (though they had to go through the whole search procedure, etc.)
Do big schools, and places where teaching is less important, exploit people more? Probably. But I don't know first-hand. Our Writing Associates are excellent, and they do a great job, but they don't put in nearly as many hours as I do (nor should they). Then again, I put in a lot more hours on campus than people at big universities (somehow I manage to publish just as much, or more, though, but that's another blog post). Their contracts are infinitely renewable (though not guaranteed beyond however many years are on there); if I'd not made my tenure, I'd have gotten the boot.
Does the 'adjunct system' enable the entire academic system? Definitely not. Most departments at Wheaton don't have any adjuncts and, as I pointed out above, if we had to elminate adjunct positions, the department could cope. Maybe things are different at places with graduate students and no emphasis on teaching, but I wonder if those places couldn't adjust if they had to.
This comes back to the supply/demand problem. More people want the things that come with a college job and environment than there are jobs for them. The 'adjunct system' allows them to have some of those things. Would I have made that trade-off? (of financial security, etc. for the college environment?) probably not, since I was interested in the pet trade. But I know people who've taken significant pay cuts (in IT, for example, and a friend who does landscaping) to work in the college environment, so there are other compensations even for underpaid, overworked adjuncts. I think the Wheaton model suggests ways to be more humane, to stop people from having to juggle three or four jobs, and to get a better working environment (and we got those things because we argued that it was better for the students). It would be great if there were more money in the system, but I've seen the budget: there isn't, and our students pay 30K per year. But again, I think the parallel is entertainment, or sports, or publishing: people want to get paid for doing what they love and so often accept very low pay. I just can't see it as a boot in the face.
Friday, February 27, 2004
Monday, February 16, 2004
Leaving (or being driven out of) Grad School
[N.B.: Post started last week; delayed due to sick toddler who is now well]
This post at Winston's Diary and a series of similar posts and discussions here and in the comments and a follow-up at Invisible Adjunct, and more discussion here at Critical Mass (and also follow Erin's links) has gotten me to thinking about why smart people I know dropped out of academia and why I was able to stick with it even though not, perhaps, as intellectually gifted as they were. This is also a relevant topic because my very best former student has just started getting excellent offers from Ph.D. programs and so is going to be following along the academic trail.
I think there are a number of problems with graduate school system that are getting conflated here, in particular the political problems (people with certain viewpoints or approaches driven out [n.b.: working on a post on the Duke flap], the labor problems (institutions accept a lot of graduate students to staff the freshman writing program, thus freeing up professors for other things; those graduate students then either receive Ph.D. as door prize and don't get jobs or are just strung along at low wages), and the market problems (there aren't as many tenure track jobs, in desireable locations, as there are people who want them).
But in my link-following (to In the Shadow of Mt Hollywood and then to Conscientious Objector, who has a slightly different p.o.v.) I've run across a fair number of people, in blogs and in comments, who seem to be very angry and bitter about graduate school, and I think that if more folks went in with the right knowledge and attitude, fewer people who have these terrible experiences.
I can't really add much to the discussion of the market itself. There's a supply and demand problem that won't be solved until the two come into balance. I doubt unionization would help, though I'm not opposed to it, but I think this is probably the triumph of hope over experience. The "Ponzi scheme" charge won't stick, I'm afraid, because there is a complete lack of coordination between institutions (and I've seen this first-hand). The 'wage' (which includes job security, benefits, pay) probably won't change much until there is either more demand or lower supply, and I have no solution to either of these problems that doesn't commit gross injustice upon one person or another. The theory that production of Ph.D.'s can somehow be limited by some kind of cartel is appalling, not because there aren't too many Ph.D.'s for the number of jobs, but because of the gross injustice that would be created by trying to implement such a system. Admissions to anything is already an unjust and inefficient process (how can you tell from an undergraduate transcript what someone is going to be in seven years?) and to put more weight on it, by limiting entrance to programs (which is what you'd have to do) is, to me, insane and pretty horrible (you want the only Ph.D.'s out there to come from the Ivies? Shudder. Your think the professoriate is screwed up now...).
But I can address graduate school burn out / drop out / misery out, which has claimed no small number of my friends. The biggest problem I've seen is that people go in with incorrect expectations. Not too high, not too idealistic, just incorrect. If I could tell all prospective graduate students three things, they would be:
A Ph.D., on its own, does not qualify you for anything and does not earn you a job. It is merely the lowest common denominator for the job you want. Analogy: the ability to sing on key will not get you a job at the Metropolitan Opera. You have to, while you are still a graduate student and immediately when you are done, do a whole suite of other things to get a job. These include publishing, networking, and showing that you have additional skills -- administration, computer skills, documented teaching ability, etc. Way too many expect that all the work that goes into a Ph.D. guarantees some result or entitles them to something. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Second, if you want a Ph.D. and a job afterwards, you must focus single-mindedly on doing what it takes. You are not allowed to say "but I don't have a life." (The correct reply to that complaint is: "oh, you want a life. I thought you wanted a Ph.D.") Most of the people I know who dropped grad school at or before the M.A. level thought that their life would be an extension of undergrad, but with more money, freedom and respect. Ha! Be prepared going in. There are many good things about grad school, and (in retrospect) I enjoyed my years, but they are nothing like even the most rigorous years of an undergraduate program. Not if you want a Ph.D. and a job.
Who is directing your dissertation is ten times more important than where you are getting your degree. I cannot emphasize this enough. I went to Loyola-Chicago for my Ph.D. A fairly lame school with a below-average English program (in my opinion, of course). But I had Allen Frantzen direct my dissertation and there simply is no one better, on earth, at preparing his students. There were six of us doing dissertations with Allen while I was there (yes, that's a huge load of graduate students in English). Five of us six have tenure-track jobs (or, in my case, tenure) or the equivalent, and the sixth has a full-time position at the institution she wants. That's 100% placement within 1 or two years of graduation. Unheard of. And it is all because Allen put in huge amounts of time preparing us for the job market: he helped us frame our topics so that they were what we wanted to study but also sounded good to hiring committees (the former is essential or you'll go crazy; the latter is essential or you won't get hired); he made gigantic personal efforts to network for us; he guided us through conferences, publishing, etc. If you don't know who you want to study with (common at the beginning level of grad school), you need to research and move after your M.A. And you need to talk with the person first, see if you are compatible and get a committment. You should expect to do something in return (assist on projects, help run conferences and, most importantly, take an interest in your director's work so that he can discuss it with you), but if the director is ethical, he won't use you for monkey work and you'll get a vital education that's outside of both classes and official reviews.
There are caveats and exceptions to all of the three dicta I've given above, and remember that I'm talking about how the system actually works, not how it should work if it were efficient, fair, honest, just, etc.
But if you want success in a Ph.D. program, you need to follow those three dicta, I think, and you must not treat it as an extension of undergraduate (though that's exactly why I went to graduate school at first). You don't do the minimum to get the A; you do a lot of extra work. You read around in the critical literature. You don't write the same paper for each class ("The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Beowulf" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Wuthering Heights" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Sometimes a Great Notion")
A number of the posts I've been reading recently mention graduate students who are frustrated because their profs want to teach, say, feminist theory while they want to do, say, cognitivist approaches to literature. If that's the case, you are in the wrong program, with the wrong professor and you need to move on rather than trying to do your dissertation there (yes, I know, that's not truly helpful advice, since one of the reasons you are at a certain school is that it is where your spouse lives, or where you got in, or where you want to live).
But a doctoral program isn't like an undergraduate program where you show up, sign up for classes, and can expect to get the degree you want if you do the work. You are signing up to work one-on-one with someone who really gets paid the same whether you graduate and get a job or not. If the person doesn't have professional ethics and if he or she isn't a good human being, then it's not worth studying there even if the program does have a "name."
There may be certain exceptions, programs, like Toronto in Medieval Lit, where the system works so well that nearly all the graduates get jobs. But those are hard to find, and harder to get into, and they tend to produce students who do one kind of thing superbly (source study, say, or medieval Latin), but, perhaps, lack some of the creativity needed to end up at a cool but quirky place or to do the kind of work that gets noticed outside of the immediate field.
You need to investigate whose students are all employed. I can say this because he's retiring and thus won't get a flood of applicants off of my stupid blog, but Tom Hill at Cornell is a great example. There are Tom Hill students everywhere (he's also my academic grandfather, my dissertation director's dissertation director's dissertation director -- Tom Hill => Jim Earl => Allen Frantzen => Me) in great jobs because he is not only a great teacher, but someone who makes a real effort--phone calls, talking to people at conferences, really strong letters--to take care of his students. Find an Allen Frantzen or a Tom Hill, and you are set.
And if you end up underemployed or in temporary jobs, you need to publish your way out of them if you want to leave. That of course destroys your life even more, and begs the question of where you get the time. But a very good friend from my Ph.D. program didn't get a tenure track job offer after his Ph.D. He went off for a one-year, non-renewable position at a big state school that had him teaching either 8 or 9 classes and helping to run a computer lab. But he worked like a fiend, published in JEGP (Journal of English and Germanic Philology) and the next year got the most coveted job in Anglo-Saxon that was open that year. One big article in JEGP or Speculum or their equivalents is probably worth more than a book contract (to get a job; book contract is probably necessary for tenure). A PMLA article will put you at the front of every queue.
So my conclusion: the struggle for a tenured job in academia is like the struggle to be a successful actor or actress or writer or athlete or any other career where the job is very appealing and there are a lot of people that want it. The odds are against you (there were 127 applicants for my job at Wheaton and only 25 jobs listed in Medieval Lit that year. You can do the math). Act accordingly, and decide if the effort you must put in is worth the possible result. You can make a lot more money in a lot of other careers. But you don't get to teach amazing and wonderful undergraduates. A tough trade-off.
[N.B.: Post started last week; delayed due to sick toddler who is now well]
This post at Winston's Diary and a series of similar posts and discussions here and in the comments and a follow-up at Invisible Adjunct, and more discussion here at Critical Mass (and also follow Erin's links) has gotten me to thinking about why smart people I know dropped out of academia and why I was able to stick with it even though not, perhaps, as intellectually gifted as they were. This is also a relevant topic because my very best former student has just started getting excellent offers from Ph.D. programs and so is going to be following along the academic trail.
I think there are a number of problems with graduate school system that are getting conflated here, in particular the political problems (people with certain viewpoints or approaches driven out [n.b.: working on a post on the Duke flap], the labor problems (institutions accept a lot of graduate students to staff the freshman writing program, thus freeing up professors for other things; those graduate students then either receive Ph.D. as door prize and don't get jobs or are just strung along at low wages), and the market problems (there aren't as many tenure track jobs, in desireable locations, as there are people who want them).
But in my link-following (to In the Shadow of Mt Hollywood and then to Conscientious Objector, who has a slightly different p.o.v.) I've run across a fair number of people, in blogs and in comments, who seem to be very angry and bitter about graduate school, and I think that if more folks went in with the right knowledge and attitude, fewer people who have these terrible experiences.
I can't really add much to the discussion of the market itself. There's a supply and demand problem that won't be solved until the two come into balance. I doubt unionization would help, though I'm not opposed to it, but I think this is probably the triumph of hope over experience. The "Ponzi scheme" charge won't stick, I'm afraid, because there is a complete lack of coordination between institutions (and I've seen this first-hand). The 'wage' (which includes job security, benefits, pay) probably won't change much until there is either more demand or lower supply, and I have no solution to either of these problems that doesn't commit gross injustice upon one person or another. The theory that production of Ph.D.'s can somehow be limited by some kind of cartel is appalling, not because there aren't too many Ph.D.'s for the number of jobs, but because of the gross injustice that would be created by trying to implement such a system. Admissions to anything is already an unjust and inefficient process (how can you tell from an undergraduate transcript what someone is going to be in seven years?) and to put more weight on it, by limiting entrance to programs (which is what you'd have to do) is, to me, insane and pretty horrible (you want the only Ph.D.'s out there to come from the Ivies? Shudder. Your think the professoriate is screwed up now...).
But I can address graduate school burn out / drop out / misery out, which has claimed no small number of my friends. The biggest problem I've seen is that people go in with incorrect expectations. Not too high, not too idealistic, just incorrect. If I could tell all prospective graduate students three things, they would be:
A Ph.D., on its own, does not qualify you for anything and does not earn you a job. It is merely the lowest common denominator for the job you want. Analogy: the ability to sing on key will not get you a job at the Metropolitan Opera. You have to, while you are still a graduate student and immediately when you are done, do a whole suite of other things to get a job. These include publishing, networking, and showing that you have additional skills -- administration, computer skills, documented teaching ability, etc. Way too many expect that all the work that goes into a Ph.D. guarantees some result or entitles them to something. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Second, if you want a Ph.D. and a job afterwards, you must focus single-mindedly on doing what it takes. You are not allowed to say "but I don't have a life." (The correct reply to that complaint is: "oh, you want a life. I thought you wanted a Ph.D.") Most of the people I know who dropped grad school at or before the M.A. level thought that their life would be an extension of undergrad, but with more money, freedom and respect. Ha! Be prepared going in. There are many good things about grad school, and (in retrospect) I enjoyed my years, but they are nothing like even the most rigorous years of an undergraduate program. Not if you want a Ph.D. and a job.
Who is directing your dissertation is ten times more important than where you are getting your degree. I cannot emphasize this enough. I went to Loyola-Chicago for my Ph.D. A fairly lame school with a below-average English program (in my opinion, of course). But I had Allen Frantzen direct my dissertation and there simply is no one better, on earth, at preparing his students. There were six of us doing dissertations with Allen while I was there (yes, that's a huge load of graduate students in English). Five of us six have tenure-track jobs (or, in my case, tenure) or the equivalent, and the sixth has a full-time position at the institution she wants. That's 100% placement within 1 or two years of graduation. Unheard of. And it is all because Allen put in huge amounts of time preparing us for the job market: he helped us frame our topics so that they were what we wanted to study but also sounded good to hiring committees (the former is essential or you'll go crazy; the latter is essential or you won't get hired); he made gigantic personal efforts to network for us; he guided us through conferences, publishing, etc. If you don't know who you want to study with (common at the beginning level of grad school), you need to research and move after your M.A. And you need to talk with the person first, see if you are compatible and get a committment. You should expect to do something in return (assist on projects, help run conferences and, most importantly, take an interest in your director's work so that he can discuss it with you), but if the director is ethical, he won't use you for monkey work and you'll get a vital education that's outside of both classes and official reviews.
There are caveats and exceptions to all of the three dicta I've given above, and remember that I'm talking about how the system actually works, not how it should work if it were efficient, fair, honest, just, etc.
But if you want success in a Ph.D. program, you need to follow those three dicta, I think, and you must not treat it as an extension of undergraduate (though that's exactly why I went to graduate school at first). You don't do the minimum to get the A; you do a lot of extra work. You read around in the critical literature. You don't write the same paper for each class ("The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Beowulf" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Wuthering Heights" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Sometimes a Great Notion")
A number of the posts I've been reading recently mention graduate students who are frustrated because their profs want to teach, say, feminist theory while they want to do, say, cognitivist approaches to literature. If that's the case, you are in the wrong program, with the wrong professor and you need to move on rather than trying to do your dissertation there (yes, I know, that's not truly helpful advice, since one of the reasons you are at a certain school is that it is where your spouse lives, or where you got in, or where you want to live).
But a doctoral program isn't like an undergraduate program where you show up, sign up for classes, and can expect to get the degree you want if you do the work. You are signing up to work one-on-one with someone who really gets paid the same whether you graduate and get a job or not. If the person doesn't have professional ethics and if he or she isn't a good human being, then it's not worth studying there even if the program does have a "name."
There may be certain exceptions, programs, like Toronto in Medieval Lit, where the system works so well that nearly all the graduates get jobs. But those are hard to find, and harder to get into, and they tend to produce students who do one kind of thing superbly (source study, say, or medieval Latin), but, perhaps, lack some of the creativity needed to end up at a cool but quirky place or to do the kind of work that gets noticed outside of the immediate field.
You need to investigate whose students are all employed. I can say this because he's retiring and thus won't get a flood of applicants off of my stupid blog, but Tom Hill at Cornell is a great example. There are Tom Hill students everywhere (he's also my academic grandfather, my dissertation director's dissertation director's dissertation director -- Tom Hill => Jim Earl => Allen Frantzen => Me) in great jobs because he is not only a great teacher, but someone who makes a real effort--phone calls, talking to people at conferences, really strong letters--to take care of his students. Find an Allen Frantzen or a Tom Hill, and you are set.
And if you end up underemployed or in temporary jobs, you need to publish your way out of them if you want to leave. That of course destroys your life even more, and begs the question of where you get the time. But a very good friend from my Ph.D. program didn't get a tenure track job offer after his Ph.D. He went off for a one-year, non-renewable position at a big state school that had him teaching either 8 or 9 classes and helping to run a computer lab. But he worked like a fiend, published in JEGP (Journal of English and Germanic Philology) and the next year got the most coveted job in Anglo-Saxon that was open that year. One big article in JEGP or Speculum or their equivalents is probably worth more than a book contract (to get a job; book contract is probably necessary for tenure). A PMLA article will put you at the front of every queue.
So my conclusion: the struggle for a tenured job in academia is like the struggle to be a successful actor or actress or writer or athlete or any other career where the job is very appealing and there are a lot of people that want it. The odds are against you (there were 127 applicants for my job at Wheaton and only 25 jobs listed in Medieval Lit that year. You can do the math). Act accordingly, and decide if the effort you must put in is worth the possible result. You can make a lot more money in a lot of other careers. But you don't get to teach amazing and wonderful undergraduates. A tough trade-off.
Leaving (or being driven out of) Grad School
[N.B.: Post started last week; delayed due to sick toddler who is now well]
This post at Winston's Diary and a series of similar posts and discussions here and in the comments and a follow-up at Invisible Adjunct, and more discussion here at Critical Mass (and also follow Erin's links) has gotten me to thinking about why smart people I know dropped out of academia and why I was able to stick with it even though not, perhaps, as intellectually gifted as they were. This is also a relevant topic because my very best former student has just started getting excellent offers from Ph.D. programs and so is going to be following along the academic trail.
I think there are a number of problems with graduate school system that are getting conflated here, in particular the political problems (people with certain viewpoints or approaches driven out [n.b.: working on a post on the Duke flap], the labor problems (institutions accept a lot of graduate students to staff the freshman writing program, thus freeing up professors for other things; those graduate students then either receive Ph.D. as door prize and don't get jobs or are just strung along at low wages), and the market problems (there aren't as many tenure track jobs, in desireable locations, as there are people who want them).
But in my link-following (to In the Shadow of Mt Hollywood and then to Conscientious Objector, who has a slightly different p.o.v.) I've run across a fair number of people, in blogs and in comments, who seem to be very angry and bitter about graduate school, and I think that if more folks went in with the right knowledge and attitude, fewer people who have these terrible experiences.
I can't really add much to the discussion of the market itself. There's a supply and demand problem that won't be solved until the two come into balance. I doubt unionization would help, though I'm not opposed to it, but I think this is probably the triumph of hope over experience. The "Ponzi scheme" charge won't stick, I'm afraid, because there is a complete lack of coordination between institutions (and I've seen this first-hand). The 'wage' (which includes job security, benefits, pay) probably won't change much until there is either more demand or lower supply, and I have no solution to either of these problems that doesn't commit gross injustice upon one person or another. The theory that production of Ph.D.'s can somehow be limited by some kind of cartel is appalling, not because there aren't too many Ph.D.'s for the number of jobs, but because of the gross injustice that would be created by trying to implement such a system. Admissions to anything is already an unjust and inefficient process (how can you tell from an undergraduate transcript what someone is going to be in seven years?) and to put more weight on it, by limiting entrance to programs (which is what you'd have to do) is, to me, insane and pretty horrible (you want the only Ph.D.'s out there to come from the Ivies? Shudder. Your think the professoriate is screwed up now...).
But I can address graduate school burn out / drop out / misery out, which has claimed no small number of my friends. The biggest problem I've seen is that people go in with incorrect expectations. Not too high, not too idealistic, just incorrect. If I could tell all prospective graduate students three things, they would be:
A Ph.D., on its own, does not qualify you for anything and does not earn you a job. It is merely the lowest common denominator for the job you want. Analogy: the ability to sing on key will not get you a job at the Metropolitan Opera. You have to, while you are still a graduate student and immediately when you are done, do a whole suite of other things to get a job. These include publishing, networking, and showing that you have additional skills -- administration, computer skills, documented teaching ability, etc. Way too many expect that all the work that goes into a Ph.D. guarantees some result or entitles them to something. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Second, if you want a Ph.D. and a job afterwards, you must focus single-mindedly on doing what it takes. You are not allowed to say "but I don't have a life." (The correct reply to that complaint is: "oh, you want a life. I thought you wanted a Ph.D.") Most of the people I know who dropped grad school at or before the M.A. level thought that their life would be an extension of undergrad, but with more money, freedom and respect. Ha! Be prepared going in. There are many good things about grad school, and (in retrospect) I enjoyed my years, but they are nothing like even the most rigorous years of an undergraduate program. Not if you want a Ph.D. and a job.
Who is directing your dissertation is ten times more important than where you are getting your degree. I cannot emphasize this enough. I went to Loyola-Chicago for my Ph.D. A fairly lame school with a below-average English program (in my opinion, of course). But I had Allen Frantzen direct my dissertation and there simply is no one better, on earth, at preparing his students. There were six of us doing dissertations with Allen while I was there (yes, that's a huge load of graduate students in English). Five of us six have tenure-track jobs (or, in my case, tenure) or the equivalent, and the sixth has a full-time position at the institution she wants. That's 100% placement within 1 or two years of graduation. Unheard of. And it is all because Allen put in huge amounts of time preparing us for the job market: he helped us frame our topics so that they were what we wanted to study but also sounded good to hiring committees (the former is essential or you'll go crazy; the latter is essential or you won't get hired); he made gigantic personal efforts to network for us; he guided us through conferences, publishing, etc. If you don't know who you want to study with (common at the beginning level of grad school), you need to research and move after your M.A. And you need to talk with the person first, see if you are compatible and get a committment. You should expect to do something in return (assist on projects, help run conferences and, most importantly, take an interest in your director's work so that he can discuss it with you), but if the director is ethical, he won't use you for monkey work and you'll get a vital education that's outside of both classes and official reviews.
There are caveats and exceptions to all of the three dicta I've given above, and remember that I'm talking about how the system actually works, not how it should work if it were efficient, fair, honest, just, etc.
But if you want success in a Ph.D. program, you need to follow those three dicta, I think, and you must not treat it as an extension of undergraduate (though that's exactly why I went to graduate school at first). You don't do the minimum to get the A; you do a lot of extra work. You read around in the critical literature. You don't write the same paper for each class ("The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Beowulf" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Wuthering Heights" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Sometimes a Great Notion")
A number of the posts I've been reading recently mention graduate students who are frustrated because their profs want to teach, say, feminist theory while they want to do, say, cognitivist approaches to literature. If that's the case, you are in the wrong program, with the wrong professor and you need to move on rather than trying to do your dissertation there (yes, I know, that's not truly helpful advice, since one of the reasons you are at a certain school is that it is where your spouse lives, or where you got in, or where you want to live).
But a doctoral program isn't like an undergraduate program where you show up, sign up for classes, and can expect to get the degree you want if you do the work. You are signing up to work one-on-one with someone who really gets paid the same whether you graduate and get a job or not. If the person doesn't have professional ethics and if he or she isn't a good human being, then it's not worth studying there even if the program does have a "name."
There may be certain exceptions, programs, like Toronto in Medieval Lit, where the system works so well that nearly all the graduates get jobs. But those are hard to find, and harder to get into, and they tend to produce students who do one kind of thing superbly (source study, say, or medieval Latin), but, perhaps, lack some of the creativity needed to end up at a cool but quirky place or to do the kind of work that gets noticed outside of the immediate field.
You need to investigate whose students are all employed. I can say this because he's retiring and thus won't get a flood of applicants off of my stupid blog, but Tom Hill at Cornell is a great example. There are Tom Hill students everywhere (he's also my academic grandfather, my dissertation director's dissertation director's dissertation director -- Tom Hill => Jim Earl => Allen Frantzen => Me) in great jobs because he is not only a great teacher, but someone who makes a real effort--phone calls, talking to people at conferences, really strong letters--to take care of his students. Find an Allen Frantzen or a Tom Hill, and you are set.
And if you end up underemployed or in temporary jobs, you need to publish your way out of them if you want to leave. That of course destroys your life even more, and begs the question of where you get the time. But a very good friend from my Ph.D. program didn't get a tenure track job offer after his Ph.D. He went off for a one-year, non-renewable position at a big state school that had him teaching either 8 or 9 classes and helping to run a computer lab. But he worked like a fiend, published in JEGP (Journal of English and Germanic Philology) and the next year got the most coveted job in Anglo-Saxon that was open that year. One big article in JEGP or Speculum or their equivalents is probably worth more than a book contract (to get a job; book contract is probably necessary for tenure). A PMLA article will put you at the front of every queue.
So my conclusion: the struggle for a tenured job in academia is like the struggle to be a successful actor or actress or writer or athlete or any other career where the job is very appealing and there are a lot of people that want it. The odds are against you (there were 127 applicants for my job at Wheaton and only 25 jobs listed in Medieval Lit that year. You can do the math). Act accordingly, and decide if the effort you must put in is worth the possible result. You can make a lot more money in a lot of other careers. But you don't get to teach amazing and wonderful undergraduates. A tough trade-off.
[N.B.: Post started last week; delayed due to sick toddler who is now well]
This post at Winston's Diary and a series of similar posts and discussions here and in the comments and a follow-up at Invisible Adjunct, and more discussion here at Critical Mass (and also follow Erin's links) has gotten me to thinking about why smart people I know dropped out of academia and why I was able to stick with it even though not, perhaps, as intellectually gifted as they were. This is also a relevant topic because my very best former student has just started getting excellent offers from Ph.D. programs and so is going to be following along the academic trail.
I think there are a number of problems with graduate school system that are getting conflated here, in particular the political problems (people with certain viewpoints or approaches driven out [n.b.: working on a post on the Duke flap], the labor problems (institutions accept a lot of graduate students to staff the freshman writing program, thus freeing up professors for other things; those graduate students then either receive Ph.D. as door prize and don't get jobs or are just strung along at low wages), and the market problems (there aren't as many tenure track jobs, in desireable locations, as there are people who want them).
But in my link-following (to In the Shadow of Mt Hollywood and then to Conscientious Objector, who has a slightly different p.o.v.) I've run across a fair number of people, in blogs and in comments, who seem to be very angry and bitter about graduate school, and I think that if more folks went in with the right knowledge and attitude, fewer people who have these terrible experiences.
I can't really add much to the discussion of the market itself. There's a supply and demand problem that won't be solved until the two come into balance. I doubt unionization would help, though I'm not opposed to it, but I think this is probably the triumph of hope over experience. The "Ponzi scheme" charge won't stick, I'm afraid, because there is a complete lack of coordination between institutions (and I've seen this first-hand). The 'wage' (which includes job security, benefits, pay) probably won't change much until there is either more demand or lower supply, and I have no solution to either of these problems that doesn't commit gross injustice upon one person or another. The theory that production of Ph.D.'s can somehow be limited by some kind of cartel is appalling, not because there aren't too many Ph.D.'s for the number of jobs, but because of the gross injustice that would be created by trying to implement such a system. Admissions to anything is already an unjust and inefficient process (how can you tell from an undergraduate transcript what someone is going to be in seven years?) and to put more weight on it, by limiting entrance to programs (which is what you'd have to do) is, to me, insane and pretty horrible (you want the only Ph.D.'s out there to come from the Ivies? Shudder. Your think the professoriate is screwed up now...).
But I can address graduate school burn out / drop out / misery out, which has claimed no small number of my friends. The biggest problem I've seen is that people go in with incorrect expectations. Not too high, not too idealistic, just incorrect. If I could tell all prospective graduate students three things, they would be:
A Ph.D., on its own, does not qualify you for anything and does not earn you a job. It is merely the lowest common denominator for the job you want. Analogy: the ability to sing on key will not get you a job at the Metropolitan Opera. You have to, while you are still a graduate student and immediately when you are done, do a whole suite of other things to get a job. These include publishing, networking, and showing that you have additional skills -- administration, computer skills, documented teaching ability, etc. Way too many expect that all the work that goes into a Ph.D. guarantees some result or entitles them to something. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Second, if you want a Ph.D. and a job afterwards, you must focus single-mindedly on doing what it takes. You are not allowed to say "but I don't have a life." (The correct reply to that complaint is: "oh, you want a life. I thought you wanted a Ph.D.") Most of the people I know who dropped grad school at or before the M.A. level thought that their life would be an extension of undergrad, but with more money, freedom and respect. Ha! Be prepared going in. There are many good things about grad school, and (in retrospect) I enjoyed my years, but they are nothing like even the most rigorous years of an undergraduate program. Not if you want a Ph.D. and a job.
Who is directing your dissertation is ten times more important than where you are getting your degree. I cannot emphasize this enough. I went to Loyola-Chicago for my Ph.D. A fairly lame school with a below-average English program (in my opinion, of course). But I had Allen Frantzen direct my dissertation and there simply is no one better, on earth, at preparing his students. There were six of us doing dissertations with Allen while I was there (yes, that's a huge load of graduate students in English). Five of us six have tenure-track jobs (or, in my case, tenure) or the equivalent, and the sixth has a full-time position at the institution she wants. That's 100% placement within 1 or two years of graduation. Unheard of. And it is all because Allen put in huge amounts of time preparing us for the job market: he helped us frame our topics so that they were what we wanted to study but also sounded good to hiring committees (the former is essential or you'll go crazy; the latter is essential or you won't get hired); he made gigantic personal efforts to network for us; he guided us through conferences, publishing, etc. If you don't know who you want to study with (common at the beginning level of grad school), you need to research and move after your M.A. And you need to talk with the person first, see if you are compatible and get a committment. You should expect to do something in return (assist on projects, help run conferences and, most importantly, take an interest in your director's work so that he can discuss it with you), but if the director is ethical, he won't use you for monkey work and you'll get a vital education that's outside of both classes and official reviews.
There are caveats and exceptions to all of the three dicta I've given above, and remember that I'm talking about how the system actually works, not how it should work if it were efficient, fair, honest, just, etc.
But if you want success in a Ph.D. program, you need to follow those three dicta, I think, and you must not treat it as an extension of undergraduate (though that's exactly why I went to graduate school at first). You don't do the minimum to get the A; you do a lot of extra work. You read around in the critical literature. You don't write the same paper for each class ("The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Beowulf" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Wuthering Heights" "The Lacanian Mirror Stage in Sometimes a Great Notion")
A number of the posts I've been reading recently mention graduate students who are frustrated because their profs want to teach, say, feminist theory while they want to do, say, cognitivist approaches to literature. If that's the case, you are in the wrong program, with the wrong professor and you need to move on rather than trying to do your dissertation there (yes, I know, that's not truly helpful advice, since one of the reasons you are at a certain school is that it is where your spouse lives, or where you got in, or where you want to live).
But a doctoral program isn't like an undergraduate program where you show up, sign up for classes, and can expect to get the degree you want if you do the work. You are signing up to work one-on-one with someone who really gets paid the same whether you graduate and get a job or not. If the person doesn't have professional ethics and if he or she isn't a good human being, then it's not worth studying there even if the program does have a "name."
There may be certain exceptions, programs, like Toronto in Medieval Lit, where the system works so well that nearly all the graduates get jobs. But those are hard to find, and harder to get into, and they tend to produce students who do one kind of thing superbly (source study, say, or medieval Latin), but, perhaps, lack some of the creativity needed to end up at a cool but quirky place or to do the kind of work that gets noticed outside of the immediate field.
You need to investigate whose students are all employed. I can say this because he's retiring and thus won't get a flood of applicants off of my stupid blog, but Tom Hill at Cornell is a great example. There are Tom Hill students everywhere (he's also my academic grandfather, my dissertation director's dissertation director's dissertation director -- Tom Hill => Jim Earl => Allen Frantzen => Me) in great jobs because he is not only a great teacher, but someone who makes a real effort--phone calls, talking to people at conferences, really strong letters--to take care of his students. Find an Allen Frantzen or a Tom Hill, and you are set.
And if you end up underemployed or in temporary jobs, you need to publish your way out of them if you want to leave. That of course destroys your life even more, and begs the question of where you get the time. But a very good friend from my Ph.D. program didn't get a tenure track job offer after his Ph.D. He went off for a one-year, non-renewable position at a big state school that had him teaching either 8 or 9 classes and helping to run a computer lab. But he worked like a fiend, published in JEGP (Journal of English and Germanic Philology) and the next year got the most coveted job in Anglo-Saxon that was open that year. One big article in JEGP or Speculum or their equivalents is probably worth more than a book contract (to get a job; book contract is probably necessary for tenure). A PMLA article will put you at the front of every queue.
So my conclusion: the struggle for a tenured job in academia is like the struggle to be a successful actor or actress or writer or athlete or any other career where the job is very appealing and there are a lot of people that want it. The odds are against you (there were 127 applicants for my job at Wheaton and only 25 jobs listed in Medieval Lit that year. You can do the math). Act accordingly, and decide if the effort you must put in is worth the possible result. You can make a lot more money in a lot of other careers. But you don't get to teach amazing and wonderful undergraduates. A tough trade-off.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Violating the Integrity of the A-Fragment
I'm on my two-course semester (here at Wheaton we alternately teach 3 and 2 courses), so life is supposed to be easier and, surprise, it actually is. Even though I have almost exactly the same number of students as I did last semester, the extra 3 hours free of class is a huge help thus far.
I'm teaching Anglo-Saxon and Chaucer (in Middle English), so it's language, language, language for a while. The Anglo-Saxon students still seem intimidated, which I'm hoping will be fixed soon, and the Chaucer students are already very into the text, arguing about the narrator, the characters, the interpretation of key passages... it's amazing and wonderful. I can't understand why anyone would pass up the opportunity to teach Chaucer. You have to spend a little time on the Middle English, but the rest of the course teaches itself. Explain a few things, set a bit of an agenda, and then step back and let the students dig into the text. There's so much great stuff in Chaucer, and he presents it in such a fun, stylish, clever way, that for me it never gets old.
By the way, I reject the idea (that was popular when I was in grad school) that the Canterbury Tales are boring and played out. That's all I teach for my Chaucer class, the whole CT (even Melibee, but not all the Parson) in Middle English. They do a little outside reading, and some do papers that compare CT material with some of the other poems, but they and I love the CT so much that it all just comes together. So much fun.
I do have one trick, which I'll share, though I'm supposed to hide my head in shame here: I break up the integrity of the A-Fragment (the horror!). Because the first tale after the General Prologue is the Knight's Tale, which is very long, difficult and confusing, I have them skip KnT. Why? Because when students are just learning Middle English, KnT is a horror: it takes so long at the speed they can read that either you spend three weeks on it, or you drive them crazy with so many hours of Middle English. So I skip right to the Miller's Tale and do the Knight at the end of the semester.
Does this work? Well, in my undergraduate class, taught by the great Peggy Knapp at Carnegie Mellon, we all hated the Knight's Tale despite the great battles, love interest, etc. I'm sure it wasn't due to the Tale itself, but to the steep learning curve of Middle English for novices. But when I teach KnT at the end of the semester, when they're all expert at ME, the students love it and consider it Chaucer's finest work and most beautiful tale (which it might be, though I love the Pardoner's Tale, in its setting, the most).
I've had a number of really good Chaucerians tell me that they are horrified that I break up the A-Fragment (More properly, Fragment I, Group A; the Canterbury Tales are organized in fragments; each fragment is made up of Tales that we know Chaucer intended to be in a certain order. So we know Chaucer intended General Prologue, Knight, Miller, Reeve, and Cook because there are internal links between the Tales. We can't be sure that Man of Law comes next, though most people agree. We know that Wife of Bath, Friar and Summoner go together, but we only infer that Clerk is supposed to come next). And I see where they're coming from: the Miller's Tale is a response to the Knight's Tale, where the Miller takes all the beautiful, chivalric romance that the Knight describes and says 'it's really all just about dirty, barnyard sex' (at least in many interpretations). If you don't read KnT, you don't have the references to Miller.
But my take is that students just don't understand KnT at that early stage of their Middle English reading. I'd rather they understood, even though they have to then retrospectively construct the Miller's 'quiting' of the Knight. But as far as I know, I'm the only person who does this, so maybe I'm playing too free and loose with Chaucer (after all, I'm not a real Chaucerian but an Anglo-Saxonist).
I'm on my two-course semester (here at Wheaton we alternately teach 3 and 2 courses), so life is supposed to be easier and, surprise, it actually is. Even though I have almost exactly the same number of students as I did last semester, the extra 3 hours free of class is a huge help thus far.
I'm teaching Anglo-Saxon and Chaucer (in Middle English), so it's language, language, language for a while. The Anglo-Saxon students still seem intimidated, which I'm hoping will be fixed soon, and the Chaucer students are already very into the text, arguing about the narrator, the characters, the interpretation of key passages... it's amazing and wonderful. I can't understand why anyone would pass up the opportunity to teach Chaucer. You have to spend a little time on the Middle English, but the rest of the course teaches itself. Explain a few things, set a bit of an agenda, and then step back and let the students dig into the text. There's so much great stuff in Chaucer, and he presents it in such a fun, stylish, clever way, that for me it never gets old.
By the way, I reject the idea (that was popular when I was in grad school) that the Canterbury Tales are boring and played out. That's all I teach for my Chaucer class, the whole CT (even Melibee, but not all the Parson) in Middle English. They do a little outside reading, and some do papers that compare CT material with some of the other poems, but they and I love the CT so much that it all just comes together. So much fun.
I do have one trick, which I'll share, though I'm supposed to hide my head in shame here: I break up the integrity of the A-Fragment (the horror!). Because the first tale after the General Prologue is the Knight's Tale, which is very long, difficult and confusing, I have them skip KnT. Why? Because when students are just learning Middle English, KnT is a horror: it takes so long at the speed they can read that either you spend three weeks on it, or you drive them crazy with so many hours of Middle English. So I skip right to the Miller's Tale and do the Knight at the end of the semester.
Does this work? Well, in my undergraduate class, taught by the great Peggy Knapp at Carnegie Mellon, we all hated the Knight's Tale despite the great battles, love interest, etc. I'm sure it wasn't due to the Tale itself, but to the steep learning curve of Middle English for novices. But when I teach KnT at the end of the semester, when they're all expert at ME, the students love it and consider it Chaucer's finest work and most beautiful tale (which it might be, though I love the Pardoner's Tale, in its setting, the most).
I've had a number of really good Chaucerians tell me that they are horrified that I break up the A-Fragment (More properly, Fragment I, Group A; the Canterbury Tales are organized in fragments; each fragment is made up of Tales that we know Chaucer intended to be in a certain order. So we know Chaucer intended General Prologue, Knight, Miller, Reeve, and Cook because there are internal links between the Tales. We can't be sure that Man of Law comes next, though most people agree. We know that Wife of Bath, Friar and Summoner go together, but we only infer that Clerk is supposed to come next). And I see where they're coming from: the Miller's Tale is a response to the Knight's Tale, where the Miller takes all the beautiful, chivalric romance that the Knight describes and says 'it's really all just about dirty, barnyard sex' (at least in many interpretations). If you don't read KnT, you don't have the references to Miller.
But my take is that students just don't understand KnT at that early stage of their Middle English reading. I'd rather they understood, even though they have to then retrospectively construct the Miller's 'quiting' of the Knight. But as far as I know, I'm the only person who does this, so maybe I'm playing too free and loose with Chaucer (after all, I'm not a real Chaucerian but an Anglo-Saxonist).
Monday, February 02, 2004
Advocacy in the Classroom and Tenure
K C Johnson's comments on a potential tenure scandal discussed in this Erin O'Connor's post made me want to discuss "academic freedom" a little bit. I've read the materials posted by Francisco Gil-White, an assistant prof. of psychology who does additional advocacy work on purported U. S. war crimes in Yugoslavia as well as being an advocate against anti-semitism. Gil-White seems likely to have his tenure denied and, as best one can tell from the materials posted, this denial is due to his using class time for discussion of his political work.
I can't have a real position on the merits of the specific case, since I don't have all the info, but it's worth discussing what should and shouldn't be in the classroom.
First, this would never be an issue if the professor were in History, or Political Science, or probably even English (though if he were a medievalist and were using class time on the 20th century, people might wonder). But since I don't have an insider's knowledge of "BioCultural Psychology," I can't opine on what belongs in the discipline or in the specific courses.
But the discussion of politics during undergraduate class time isn't as simple as either of the major camps seem to think. One camp, the "it doesn't belong there if it's not the subject of the course" seems on the surface quite reasonable. 'Teach Psychology (or Bio, or 18th century novels) and shut up about Iraq already' would be the understandable reflex of many in the blogosphere. But that approach, if taken to its logical conclusion, means that one manipulates or dissembles in front of one's students. I have a good friend who does this: he's proud that at the end of a course, the students have no idea what his actual political leanings are. He plays Devil's Advocate for either side, he attempts to keep a poker face, etc.
I'm sympathetic to this approach (and it's basically what I do), but I wonder if letting students believe something that's not true (i.e., that I don't have an opinion on issue X) is an honest thing to do. Is that, at its heart, good, honest pedagogy?
On the other hand, while I respect the political passion that some teachers carry into the classroom, I wonder if it is the best use of the students' time and, more importantly, if it isn't an abuse of the teacher's authority. No matter how you try to disguise it, you as the professor have the power in the classroom situation, and passionate politics can come close to forced indoctrination or, just as bad, coerced play-acting by the students, which is the reflex of the problem of play-acting by the professor.
It also should be the case that there is certain content-material that needs to be covered in any course. If the politics gets in the way of students understanding this material, no matter how important or passionately held the politics may be, then the students are not getting everything they need from the class. Of course there's a balance to be struck between simply learning material and learning how to think about it, but that balance needs to be discussed and interrogated: by students, mentors, departments and administrators as well as professors.
But in the end, and I'm afraid that this won't be a popular sentiment in the blogosphere, I think that we need to give professors near-dictatorial power in the classroom and trust them to do the right thing, even though some will fail that test. Not because professors are necessarily any more virtuous than anyone else (far from it), but because no one has devised a good and fair system of checks and balances, and the alternative--controlling professors via administrators who don't know the subject matter, or within-institution ad hoc peer review--is possibly a cure worse than the disease. That's the problem with trying to deal with these kinds of problems via tenure review. Better to have a good mentoring program that nips them in the bud (although it seems like such an approach was tried). The good news, if there is such, is that most professors I know are immensely influenced by student evaluations and peer comments not so much because they're scared of not getting tenure, but because they genuinely want to improve.
But this begs the question of what happens when you get someone who abuses his or her power in the classroom, and for that I don't have an answer, except to say that if I honestly believed someone was doing that, I would vote against his or her tenure regardless of scholarship or evaluations.
K C Johnson's comments on a potential tenure scandal discussed in this Erin O'Connor's post made me want to discuss "academic freedom" a little bit. I've read the materials posted by Francisco Gil-White, an assistant prof. of psychology who does additional advocacy work on purported U. S. war crimes in Yugoslavia as well as being an advocate against anti-semitism. Gil-White seems likely to have his tenure denied and, as best one can tell from the materials posted, this denial is due to his using class time for discussion of his political work.
I can't have a real position on the merits of the specific case, since I don't have all the info, but it's worth discussing what should and shouldn't be in the classroom.
First, this would never be an issue if the professor were in History, or Political Science, or probably even English (though if he were a medievalist and were using class time on the 20th century, people might wonder). But since I don't have an insider's knowledge of "BioCultural Psychology," I can't opine on what belongs in the discipline or in the specific courses.
But the discussion of politics during undergraduate class time isn't as simple as either of the major camps seem to think. One camp, the "it doesn't belong there if it's not the subject of the course" seems on the surface quite reasonable. 'Teach Psychology (or Bio, or 18th century novels) and shut up about Iraq already' would be the understandable reflex of many in the blogosphere. But that approach, if taken to its logical conclusion, means that one manipulates or dissembles in front of one's students. I have a good friend who does this: he's proud that at the end of a course, the students have no idea what his actual political leanings are. He plays Devil's Advocate for either side, he attempts to keep a poker face, etc.
I'm sympathetic to this approach (and it's basically what I do), but I wonder if letting students believe something that's not true (i.e., that I don't have an opinion on issue X) is an honest thing to do. Is that, at its heart, good, honest pedagogy?
On the other hand, while I respect the political passion that some teachers carry into the classroom, I wonder if it is the best use of the students' time and, more importantly, if it isn't an abuse of the teacher's authority. No matter how you try to disguise it, you as the professor have the power in the classroom situation, and passionate politics can come close to forced indoctrination or, just as bad, coerced play-acting by the students, which is the reflex of the problem of play-acting by the professor.
It also should be the case that there is certain content-material that needs to be covered in any course. If the politics gets in the way of students understanding this material, no matter how important or passionately held the politics may be, then the students are not getting everything they need from the class. Of course there's a balance to be struck between simply learning material and learning how to think about it, but that balance needs to be discussed and interrogated: by students, mentors, departments and administrators as well as professors.
But in the end, and I'm afraid that this won't be a popular sentiment in the blogosphere, I think that we need to give professors near-dictatorial power in the classroom and trust them to do the right thing, even though some will fail that test. Not because professors are necessarily any more virtuous than anyone else (far from it), but because no one has devised a good and fair system of checks and balances, and the alternative--controlling professors via administrators who don't know the subject matter, or within-institution ad hoc peer review--is possibly a cure worse than the disease. That's the problem with trying to deal with these kinds of problems via tenure review. Better to have a good mentoring program that nips them in the bud (although it seems like such an approach was tried). The good news, if there is such, is that most professors I know are immensely influenced by student evaluations and peer comments not so much because they're scared of not getting tenure, but because they genuinely want to improve.
But this begs the question of what happens when you get someone who abuses his or her power in the classroom, and for that I don't have an answer, except to say that if I honestly believed someone was doing that, I would vote against his or her tenure regardless of scholarship or evaluations.
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