Long time no blog
You'd think that with the semester over, things would be slower around here and I'd have more time for fun things like blogging.
But you'd be wrong.
Life has been much busier these past few weeks, not only because my two wonderful monsters are such fun, but also because we lazy academics often end up doing more work in the summer than during the school year.
Let me put that another way: we end up putting in more hours over the course of a day during the summer.
The big reason? Guilt. When I teach a full day of classes, have office hours and independent studies with students, meetings with colleagues and just general 'face time' from 9 to 5, then come home and grade papers and answer emails after the kids have gone to bed, I don't begrudge myself an hour to relax or blog or watch America's Next Top Model. But in the summer, there's none of the scheduled things, so you feel like you should just be working all day. That work is pleasantly interrupted by playing with the kids, doing yard work, repairing things around the house, and so on, but the overall hours spent keep creeping up.
Luckily, I have only three more major deadlines in the next month: an article for Literature Compass called "The Problem of Transformation: The Use of Medieval Sources in Fantasy Literature," a short, and hopefully humorous piece for Old English Newsletter called "An Anglo-Saxonist Gets His Fifteen Minutes, or, what happens when the media pays attention" (hint: they simplify the argument over the dating of Beowulf; imagine!), and an NEH Grant Proposal for the Tolkien Encyclopedia under their Reference Materials category (hell on earth). All of this will be done by July 15.
One quick thing: Close to final version of the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia Table of Contents is being reviewed by editor, editorial board, etc. Hopefully people will start getting letters requesting contributions. I'll keep you posted via this space.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Web Chat on Thursday
I'll be doing a live web chat about Tolkien scholarship for the Chronicle of Higher Education at noon on Thursday. Here's the link:The Chronicle: Colloquy Live: Frodo Lives! And So Does Tolkien Scholarship
Note that you can log on and ask questions in advance, and I'll try to answer as many as I can.
I'll be doing a live web chat about Tolkien scholarship for the Chronicle of Higher Education at noon on Thursday. Here's the link:The Chronicle: Colloquy Live: Frodo Lives! And So Does Tolkien Scholarship
Note that you can log on and ask questions in advance, and I'll try to answer as many as I can.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Update on Journalistic Practices
Just a quick update to this post to answer a few emailed questions:
Back in journalism school, it was drummed into us that you never, never, never try to give the reader the impression that you interviewed someone when you hadn't. I remember getting reamed out for quoting a researcher on elephant seals both from his interview with me and also from his published work and not being clear enough distinguishing the two. (By the way, this reaming was done by an excellent journalist and teacher, Jerry Lanson, then the city editor of the San Jose Mercury News, now the head of the journalism department at Emerson College. Jerry helped to convince me that I wasn't going to be a good journalist; I'll be forever grateful for that).
It's not necessary to go into detail on sources (as it would be in an academic paper), but you need to give your reader a clue: "in a web-published essay" or "in a recently published essay," or "X also wrote that." More importantly, you simply aren't supposed to pass off other people's work as your own.
I have a lot of criticism for my journalism education, and in retrospect it was a waste of a year except that I got to hang out at Stanford, where I met my wife (so going to Stanford was actually the second-best decision I ever made). But for all the attempted political indoctrination and the pervasive unconscious biases in the program, there was a deep committment to journalistic integrity. While my professors all argued that one can't be objective and one shouldn't even try, etc., they never would have stood for the kinds of manipulations and dishonest work on display in so many places. Whether this behavior -- from Jason Blair, to Dowdification, down to recycled quotes -- is the fruit of any specific policies that were adopted during that time period, I can't really tell. But journalism as a whole needs to do a much better job of policing itself and punishing those who violate the canons. I'd like to see journalism schools and editors really emphasize the basics of getting facts straight. But if my experience as a teacher is any guide, the students who are currently going into journalism just want to write opinion any way they can (too be fair, we did too, back in 1990-91, but our teachers and editors seemed to be somewhat better at forcing us to focus on the facts).
Just a quick update to this post to answer a few emailed questions:
Back in journalism school, it was drummed into us that you never, never, never try to give the reader the impression that you interviewed someone when you hadn't. I remember getting reamed out for quoting a researcher on elephant seals both from his interview with me and also from his published work and not being clear enough distinguishing the two. (By the way, this reaming was done by an excellent journalist and teacher, Jerry Lanson, then the city editor of the San Jose Mercury News, now the head of the journalism department at Emerson College. Jerry helped to convince me that I wasn't going to be a good journalist; I'll be forever grateful for that).
It's not necessary to go into detail on sources (as it would be in an academic paper), but you need to give your reader a clue: "in a web-published essay" or "in a recently published essay," or "X also wrote that." More importantly, you simply aren't supposed to pass off other people's work as your own.
I have a lot of criticism for my journalism education, and in retrospect it was a waste of a year except that I got to hang out at Stanford, where I met my wife (so going to Stanford was actually the second-best decision I ever made). But for all the attempted political indoctrination and the pervasive unconscious biases in the program, there was a deep committment to journalistic integrity. While my professors all argued that one can't be objective and one shouldn't even try, etc., they never would have stood for the kinds of manipulations and dishonest work on display in so many places. Whether this behavior -- from Jason Blair, to Dowdification, down to recycled quotes -- is the fruit of any specific policies that were adopted during that time period, I can't really tell. But journalism as a whole needs to do a much better job of policing itself and punishing those who violate the canons. I'd like to see journalism schools and editors really emphasize the basics of getting facts straight. But if my experience as a teacher is any guide, the students who are currently going into journalism just want to write opinion any way they can (too be fair, we did too, back in 1990-91, but our teachers and editors seemed to be somewhat better at forcing us to focus on the facts).
Journalistic practices
Jason Van Steenwyk via Glenn Reynolds points out that quite a number of high-profile journalists seem to be recycling the same quote from each other rather than going to the source. As a medievalist, I'd point out that Jason has identified descent due to shared error, exactly the way that we trace manuscript histories.
I'm someone who was going to be a journalist, and who has some training in the area (M.A., Stanford, 1991), so I know that this is a huge failure on the part of reporters (at least as far as their training goes).
I'm also someone who had exactly the same thing happen to me in January 2003, so I'm not at all surprised that so many big-time journalists are violating good-practice rules. It seems very common.
Back in 2003, there was a story in the London Sunday Times about my work on J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf translations. There were a lot of inaccuracies and problems with the story, but at least the reporter actually interviewed me. But after that, the story just took off. There were so many articles that I couldn't track them all down, and they invariably cobbled together quotations from the Sunday Times interview and from a piece of mine that had been published on the web, "Wrong About Almost Everything: Editing J.R.R. Tolkien". Of all the stories that came out, in many languages and formats, I'd say less than 2% of the reporters actually contacted me. I certainly was never interviewed in all the German papers that quoted me, nor in the Australian. But only 30% of the time did the reporters refer specifically to the Sunday Times story, and they never stated that they were quoting my published work without attribution, rather than interviewing me directly.
It may be that the specific case Jason mentions has to do with ideology rather than simple bad practice. It was my experience in journalism school and right afterwards that people at least acted as if they took attribution, getting the interview yourself, etc., very seriously. But there were no ideological reasons for reporters to do what they did in my case, and yet the same sloppy, dishonest practices were followed.
Jason Van Steenwyk via Glenn Reynolds points out that quite a number of high-profile journalists seem to be recycling the same quote from each other rather than going to the source. As a medievalist, I'd point out that Jason has identified descent due to shared error, exactly the way that we trace manuscript histories.
I'm someone who was going to be a journalist, and who has some training in the area (M.A., Stanford, 1991), so I know that this is a huge failure on the part of reporters (at least as far as their training goes).
I'm also someone who had exactly the same thing happen to me in January 2003, so I'm not at all surprised that so many big-time journalists are violating good-practice rules. It seems very common.
Back in 2003, there was a story in the London Sunday Times about my work on J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf translations. There were a lot of inaccuracies and problems with the story, but at least the reporter actually interviewed me. But after that, the story just took off. There were so many articles that I couldn't track them all down, and they invariably cobbled together quotations from the Sunday Times interview and from a piece of mine that had been published on the web, "Wrong About Almost Everything: Editing J.R.R. Tolkien". Of all the stories that came out, in many languages and formats, I'd say less than 2% of the reporters actually contacted me. I certainly was never interviewed in all the German papers that quoted me, nor in the Australian. But only 30% of the time did the reporters refer specifically to the Sunday Times story, and they never stated that they were quoting my published work without attribution, rather than interviewing me directly.
It may be that the specific case Jason mentions has to do with ideology rather than simple bad practice. It was my experience in journalism school and right afterwards that people at least acted as if they took attribution, getting the interview yourself, etc., very seriously. But there were no ideological reasons for reporters to do what they did in my case, and yet the same sloppy, dishonest practices were followed.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Housekeeping / Graduation Speakers
I've enabled comments using the new Blogger tools, and I've also turned on the Atom Feed, if anyone cares. I'm worried that I'll have to delete comments due to comment spam, but so far, no 'bots.
Tomorrow is Wheaton's graduation, one of the most beautiful ceremonies in academia, I think. It starts out with the students lining the path to where the ceremonies are held (a hollow in the center of campus called the Dimple). Faculty process through the students, and they clap for us. At the end of the ceremonies, we reverse things, and the faculty lines up on the path and the students process between us. We clap for them. It's very simple, but very powerful. I love ritual anyway, but so many of my own graduations felt like empty ritual. Wheaton's isn't, because it's so personal. I know a big chunk of the senior class by name, and so I'll be cheering for a lot of different students as they get their degrees. And as they process out many of them will reach over to shake hands with or hug particular professors. It really illustrates the way that the faculty and students here feel like we've made a difference in each other's lives.
So the deep emotional content of the ceremony is the exact opposite of the ersatz profundity of the graduation speakers. We are scheduled to have Mary Robinson, and I've already been warned to bring a good book under my robe (and I will). I can't critique her yet, but I thought it might be funny to discuss some of the previous speakers we've had:
Surprisingly Excellent:
Of all people, Robert Reich, whom I just have never been able to stand when I've seen him on television, read his OpEds, etc., was the best of the speakers we've had. To my enormous surprise, he made the whole speach about the students, not about himself. He was funny, he teased them a little, made excellent jokes, and was genuinely warm. I couldn't believe it.
David McCullough, author of those gigantic John Adams books. He dug into his database and found a connection between an Adams descendant and Wheaton. She was actually in attendence, to his surprise, since she was 94 years old or so, and he interrupted his speach to lead the crowd in applause for her. He also made the speech about the students and encouraged and applauded them sincerely. Classy guy.
David Whittaker (sp?), Newsweek editor and son of retired professor. Nice guy. Knew the campus and the culture; told stories. Students loved him.
Director of the Getty Museum (sorry, can't remember name). Short and sweet, funny, personable, didn't take himself too seriously.
Truly Awful:
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist. I remember turning to one of my friends in the faculty and saying "I can't believe any educated human being could give a speech this shallow." His deep advice: "turn off your cellphone and your Blackberry." Wow. I mean, he had nothing to say, and now that I've heard him speak, I can never take any of his NYT stuff seriously again because, while he may have travelled the world, etc., he just spoke in one cliche after another. Ugh.
Worst Ever:
The historian from last year, whose name I'll update in here when I find it, who went on some kind of whacko, super-extreme, leftist rant. "You are graduating into the worst economy since the Great Depression." Huh? Not only a horrible thing to say to graduating seniors, but also a lie (unemployment rate was, what, 6.1% last year; I'm no economist or historian, but I think the Great Depression's was just a tad bit higher). The faculty kept clapping and clapping and giving standing ovations, etc., for what was like something you'd read on Democratic Underground. Again, I am not exactly a conservative (though I'm much less partisan -- I hate both parties -- than my colleagues), and I know that my colleagues say lots of stupid stuff about politics in the faculty dining room, but this guy was talking in front of students. And it seemed like he believed all of what he was saying. Somebody needed to adjust his meds.
Legendarily bad:
I was not at Wheaton when Connie Chung gave the most infamous of all graduation speeches, but the legend has it that she told a long, rambling story about having a dream that included her defecating in a dry-cleaning bag. I am not making this up. No one to this day has any explanation, but it's always fun to ask the older faculty to talk about that one speech, which in sheer awfulness has, apparently, never been surpassed.
I've enabled comments using the new Blogger tools, and I've also turned on the Atom Feed, if anyone cares. I'm worried that I'll have to delete comments due to comment spam, but so far, no 'bots.
Tomorrow is Wheaton's graduation, one of the most beautiful ceremonies in academia, I think. It starts out with the students lining the path to where the ceremonies are held (a hollow in the center of campus called the Dimple). Faculty process through the students, and they clap for us. At the end of the ceremonies, we reverse things, and the faculty lines up on the path and the students process between us. We clap for them. It's very simple, but very powerful. I love ritual anyway, but so many of my own graduations felt like empty ritual. Wheaton's isn't, because it's so personal. I know a big chunk of the senior class by name, and so I'll be cheering for a lot of different students as they get their degrees. And as they process out many of them will reach over to shake hands with or hug particular professors. It really illustrates the way that the faculty and students here feel like we've made a difference in each other's lives.
So the deep emotional content of the ceremony is the exact opposite of the ersatz profundity of the graduation speakers. We are scheduled to have Mary Robinson, and I've already been warned to bring a good book under my robe (and I will). I can't critique her yet, but I thought it might be funny to discuss some of the previous speakers we've had:
Surprisingly Excellent:
Of all people, Robert Reich, whom I just have never been able to stand when I've seen him on television, read his OpEds, etc., was the best of the speakers we've had. To my enormous surprise, he made the whole speach about the students, not about himself. He was funny, he teased them a little, made excellent jokes, and was genuinely warm. I couldn't believe it.
David McCullough, author of those gigantic John Adams books. He dug into his database and found a connection between an Adams descendant and Wheaton. She was actually in attendence, to his surprise, since she was 94 years old or so, and he interrupted his speach to lead the crowd in applause for her. He also made the speech about the students and encouraged and applauded them sincerely. Classy guy.
David Whittaker (sp?), Newsweek editor and son of retired professor. Nice guy. Knew the campus and the culture; told stories. Students loved him.
Director of the Getty Museum (sorry, can't remember name). Short and sweet, funny, personable, didn't take himself too seriously.
Truly Awful:
Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist. I remember turning to one of my friends in the faculty and saying "I can't believe any educated human being could give a speech this shallow." His deep advice: "turn off your cellphone and your Blackberry." Wow. I mean, he had nothing to say, and now that I've heard him speak, I can never take any of his NYT stuff seriously again because, while he may have travelled the world, etc., he just spoke in one cliche after another. Ugh.
Worst Ever:
The historian from last year, whose name I'll update in here when I find it, who went on some kind of whacko, super-extreme, leftist rant. "You are graduating into the worst economy since the Great Depression." Huh? Not only a horrible thing to say to graduating seniors, but also a lie (unemployment rate was, what, 6.1% last year; I'm no economist or historian, but I think the Great Depression's was just a tad bit higher). The faculty kept clapping and clapping and giving standing ovations, etc., for what was like something you'd read on Democratic Underground. Again, I am not exactly a conservative (though I'm much less partisan -- I hate both parties -- than my colleagues), and I know that my colleagues say lots of stupid stuff about politics in the faculty dining room, but this guy was talking in front of students. And it seemed like he believed all of what he was saying. Somebody needed to adjust his meds.
Legendarily bad:
I was not at Wheaton when Connie Chung gave the most infamous of all graduation speeches, but the legend has it that she told a long, rambling story about having a dream that included her defecating in a dry-cleaning bag. I am not making this up. No one to this day has any explanation, but it's always fun to ask the older faculty to talk about that one speech, which in sheer awfulness has, apparently, never been surpassed.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
"Overproduction" of Ph.D.'s, redux
I've received a surprising amount of email and a few web comments about the post just below, but I haven't been able to respond due to grades being due and baby not sleeping through the night (though he slept from 12 to 6:30 last night, so that was good; we're making progress).
One of the contributors to the comments on Elisabeth Carnell's blog, Dorothea Salo, wrote:
Carnell has already pointed out that it's not quite true to generalize so much. I can point to three friends out of my fairly small circle of close friends who are also Ph.D.s who got their degrees with no interest in a tenure-track job at a research institution. One wants to be a University President and needs to do the Prof. thing as a stepping stone, one wants to head the English dept at a community college, and the other is already Dean of the Graduate school and will almost certainly continue to move up in administration (and said friend is my age!).
But that's not really my point. I'm more concerned with this:
Setting aside the erroneous personal approach (I'm not sure what my "ilk" are, but if they teach at teaching colleges like Wheaton, have no graduate students of their own, and don't rely on any graduate students to teach classes in their departments, I'm not sure that the condemnation really holds water), I think there are real intellectual problems embedded in this statement.
"That goal is out of reach for a substantial percentage of those who try for..." Yes, it is, numerically. But we don't know which students it will be out of reach for. All the proposals I've read -- eliminating Ph.D. programs if they don't place 40% of graduates in tenure track jobs, etc.--assume that one can tell very early on who is good enough. But that's silly, given how much dumb luck is involved in the job search. For instance, you'd think candidates at the Ivies would be "better" than those elsewhere. That hasn't been our experience at Wheaton. While it's true that someone with an Ivy Ph.D. will probably get more consideration at a research-oriented school, such a person is actually at a disadvantage for us, since he or she is probably too specialized, lacks teaching experience, lacks ability to wear many hats (though this may be the way said candidates put together their vitae and letters; personal I reject all Ivy candidates who don't mention teaching in the first paragraphs of their letters.). So in terms of applying for jobs at small liberal arts colleges that are teaching-focused, a person from a "marginal" institution (like my own degree from Loyola-Chicago), has at least as good a chance as one of the more privileged.
More importantly, I'm not sure how it is a "lie" to allow people to continue in a Ph.D. when the job market is bad. Everyone in graduate school knows the job market realities--we talked about it constantly, from the day I arrived in my second M.A. program (my first M.A., in journalism, was different because no one in the program wanted to go into academia). The sound-bite was: "I can't believe you're specializing in medieval. To get a job in that field you have to wait for someone to die." To which I replied: "But a lot of medievalists are ancient, and maybe there will be a plague or something." This was on the first day of graduate orientation.
Now In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood argues that graduate students mentally overvalue their chances of success, and he may be right, but I think that's no different from people who want to go into medicine, law, art, music, acting, tv, film, or publishing. In every case, when you know something about the inside of the field, you quickly learn that there are trade-offs between the enjoyment of the job, the difficulty of getting one, the money, the hours, the politics, etc., that make the grass greener somewhere else. For really desireable jobs, in any field, the competition is fierce, as you'd expect it to be, since the reward can be so great.
I object to the idea that people have to be forcibly prevented from entering that competition for their own good, and so that they don't 'waste' their lives. Our sorting mechanisms at every stage are inefficient and unjust, but there is somewhat less inefficiency and injustice at later stages -- when the person has a publication record, teaching experience, etc. -- than simply trying to judge a person's potential based on an undergraduate transcript. Perseverence, bullheadedness and desire, sustained over a long period of time, are in my mind better indicators than a bunch of A's in undergraduate courses.
I've received a surprising amount of email and a few web comments about the post just below, but I haven't been able to respond due to grades being due and baby not sleeping through the night (though he slept from 12 to 6:30 last night, so that was good; we're making progress).
One of the contributors to the comments on Elisabeth Carnell's blog, Dorothea Salo, wrote:
"I also think Drout mischaracterizes what the dream *is*. The Ph.D is NOT NOT NOT the terminal goal for (I would argue) 95+% of those who enter Ph.D programs. THE TENURED JOB IS THE TERMINAL GOAL. If that goal is out of reach for a substantial percentage of those who try for and/or achieve Ph.Ds, then Drout and his ilk are doing them a hell of a disservice, wasting a lot of their lives on a lie."
Carnell has already pointed out that it's not quite true to generalize so much. I can point to three friends out of my fairly small circle of close friends who are also Ph.D.s who got their degrees with no interest in a tenure-track job at a research institution. One wants to be a University President and needs to do the Prof. thing as a stepping stone, one wants to head the English dept at a community college, and the other is already Dean of the Graduate school and will almost certainly continue to move up in administration (and said friend is my age!).
But that's not really my point. I'm more concerned with this:
If that goal is out of reach for a substantial percentage of those who try for and/or achieve Ph.Ds, then Drout and his ilk are doing them a hell of a disservice, wasting a lot of their lives on a lie."
Setting aside the erroneous personal approach (I'm not sure what my "ilk" are, but if they teach at teaching colleges like Wheaton, have no graduate students of their own, and don't rely on any graduate students to teach classes in their departments, I'm not sure that the condemnation really holds water), I think there are real intellectual problems embedded in this statement.
"That goal is out of reach for a substantial percentage of those who try for..." Yes, it is, numerically. But we don't know which students it will be out of reach for. All the proposals I've read -- eliminating Ph.D. programs if they don't place 40% of graduates in tenure track jobs, etc.--assume that one can tell very early on who is good enough. But that's silly, given how much dumb luck is involved in the job search. For instance, you'd think candidates at the Ivies would be "better" than those elsewhere. That hasn't been our experience at Wheaton. While it's true that someone with an Ivy Ph.D. will probably get more consideration at a research-oriented school, such a person is actually at a disadvantage for us, since he or she is probably too specialized, lacks teaching experience, lacks ability to wear many hats (though this may be the way said candidates put together their vitae and letters; personal I reject all Ivy candidates who don't mention teaching in the first paragraphs of their letters.). So in terms of applying for jobs at small liberal arts colleges that are teaching-focused, a person from a "marginal" institution (like my own degree from Loyola-Chicago), has at least as good a chance as one of the more privileged.
More importantly, I'm not sure how it is a "lie" to allow people to continue in a Ph.D. when the job market is bad. Everyone in graduate school knows the job market realities--we talked about it constantly, from the day I arrived in my second M.A. program (my first M.A., in journalism, was different because no one in the program wanted to go into academia). The sound-bite was: "I can't believe you're specializing in medieval. To get a job in that field you have to wait for someone to die." To which I replied: "But a lot of medievalists are ancient, and maybe there will be a plague or something." This was on the first day of graduate orientation.
Now In the Shadow of Mt. Hollywood argues that graduate students mentally overvalue their chances of success, and he may be right, but I think that's no different from people who want to go into medicine, law, art, music, acting, tv, film, or publishing. In every case, when you know something about the inside of the field, you quickly learn that there are trade-offs between the enjoyment of the job, the difficulty of getting one, the money, the hours, the politics, etc., that make the grass greener somewhere else. For really desireable jobs, in any field, the competition is fierce, as you'd expect it to be, since the reward can be so great.
I object to the idea that people have to be forcibly prevented from entering that competition for their own good, and so that they don't 'waste' their lives. Our sorting mechanisms at every stage are inefficient and unjust, but there is somewhat less inefficiency and injustice at later stages -- when the person has a publication record, teaching experience, etc. -- than simply trying to judge a person's potential based on an undergraduate transcript. Perseverence, bullheadedness and desire, sustained over a long period of time, are in my mind better indicators than a bunch of A's in undergraduate courses.
Friday, May 07, 2004
"Overproduction" of Ph.D.s.
[Now that's an exciting title for a blog post. People who don't care about the insider stuff of academia and only come here for the Tolkien stuff will probably want to scroll down or come back tomorrow]
Erin O'Connor, whose blog I've read regularly and enjoyed a great deal for quite some time, has a long, semi-angry post in which she discusses perceived problems in academia, including but not limited to the use of adjunct faculty, the difficulties of the job market and the problems of properly rewarding good teaching. In earlier posts I've addressed some of these issues previously (treatment of adjuncts
; exploitation of graduate students ), and given the foot-high stack of papers to grade (35 annotated translations in Anglo-Saxon, 25 15-page Chaucer papers, with final essay exams from both classes and final objective exams in Anglo-Saxon still yet to come in), this isn't going to be as long or detailed a post. But I wanted to address something that I believed for a long time that I've only realized lately is a morally and ethically problematic position.
Prof. O'Connor states
Note the passive voice in "it is agreed." I used to agree, and I'm pretty sure that most people in the profession would agree. And I now think that they are and I was wrong.
Why is there seen to be an "overproduction" of Ph.D.s? Because there are only X number of jobs available in the academic system, and there are some number greater than X people who want those positions.
Thus the competition for those positions is particularly fierce. And, given the laws of supply and demand, the pay for the positions will be lower and the work demands higher than they would be in other circumstances. Thus, the reasoning goes, if there were fewer Ph.D.s looking for jobs, those people both in the jobs and looking for jobs would be better off. Reduce the number of people getting Ph.D.s and everyone would be better off.
Well, except for the kids who want to get Ph.D.s and would now be blocked from doing so due to the planned reduction in the size of the labor force. Thus 22-year-olds who want to go to graduate school and study would have to be locked out, not for their own good, but for the good of others -- either those already in the system or those who would somehow be deemed to be more deserving.
In practice this would mean that a very few, "elite" programs would produce the next generation of professors. After all, if you're going to reduce supply, then you'd logically cut the programs that are "lesser" in some way. (Unless there were an across the board cut--i.e., each school agreed, cartel-like, to reduce their acceptance of Ph.D. students by, say, 10%--almost impossible to imagine; and if it did happen, it would lead to no school being able to create or build a new Ph.D. program).
Because I am not personally invested in the myth of the superiority of, say, the students who go to ivy-league schools, I am not very confident that such a restriction of supply would be good for the profession intellectually. But it would be an even greater moral disaster, since it would create even more of a "rich get richer" system than already exists. Furthermore, such a restriction of Ph.D. slots would lead to earlier and earlier decisions having greater and greater effects. For instance, now a person could start as an un-funded student in a Ph.D. program, still earn a Ph.D., do a great dissertation and get a job. Since under a regime necessary to significantly reduce the number of Ph.D. students, the un-funded students would be the first to go (since they would be, presumably, less capable -- on paper, at least -- than their funded counterparts), you would have very early "lock-in": screw up one class your junior year of college and that's it.
To me the biggest problem in the elite side of the American educational system is this too-early lock-in. Students are tapped as capable or not way too early in their development. Med schools now in some cases are judging applicants based on the second decimal place in their GPA (because so many applicants are 3.8x or 3.9x). This is ridiculous in that it shows nothing about the different abilities of the students except, maybe, who had a little dumb luck on a final exam in a sophomore organic chemistry class. It just as stupid when the process is applied in other fields.
Prof. O'Connor believes, as I believed while I was in graduate school, that schools produce Ph.D. students to solve labor problems. I am not so sure. I think schools produce Ph.D. students because there is a demand, by students, to become Ph.D.s, and teachers want to grant that demand. If you restrict the number of students who can attempt the Ph.D., you are doing an injustice to those students who are capable of doing the work, who might prove themselves later on, but who, at the time of admission to the program, don't look as good on paper.
A quick illustrative story:
A friend from graduate school came to my institution as part of a relationship (i.e., partner was accepted, my friend moved to the city due to partner). Friend was never deemed worthy of funding for a variety of what seem to me to be trivial reasons. Friend persevered. Friend ended up with the consensus #1 job in Anglo-Saxon his second year on the market. Friend has a book out, another under contract, and is on glide-path to tenure at Research 1 school. If Ph.D.s were restricted, I doubt friend would have been allowed to continue. Also, at the same time friend was continuing to be refused funding, another acquaintance was getting the "gold-plated" funding package: a named scholarship, no teaching requirement, extra research money. Said acquaintance never finished. Suggests that early identification of who is or isn't good enough is pretty haphazard.
Sometimes we should be a little Foucaultian about ourselves: reducing the "overproduction" of Ph.D.s makes guiltless 22-25 year-olds suffer the loss of their dreams for the benefit of other people. Fewer Ph.D.s would make for better lives and better remuneration and better prospects for those who already have them: as Foucault points out, self-interest dressed up as humanitarianism has a particularly bad record, historically.
[Now that's an exciting title for a blog post. People who don't care about the insider stuff of academia and only come here for the Tolkien stuff will probably want to scroll down or come back tomorrow]
Erin O'Connor, whose blog I've read regularly and enjoyed a great deal for quite some time, has a long, semi-angry post in which she discusses perceived problems in academia, including but not limited to the use of adjunct faculty, the difficulties of the job market and the problems of properly rewarding good teaching. In earlier posts I've addressed some of these issues previously (treatment of adjuncts
; exploitation of graduate students ), and given the foot-high stack of papers to grade (35 annotated translations in Anglo-Saxon, 25 15-page Chaucer papers, with final essay exams from both classes and final objective exams in Anglo-Saxon still yet to come in), this isn't going to be as long or detailed a post. But I wanted to address something that I believed for a long time that I've only realized lately is a morally and ethically problematic position.
Prof. O'Connor states
It is agreed that there is a massive overproduction of Ph.D.'s, and that departments that are contributing to this massive overproduction of Ph.D.'s are grossly irresponsible toward grad students even as they serve their own needs very well (they get the cheap labor they need to get freshman comp taught, and they get a pool of smart, interesting students to whom faculty can administer narcissistically gratifying graduate courses). Usually, the solutions offered to this problem run along the lines of suggesting that fewer Ph.D.'s should be produced, that those that are produced should be better supported, and that "The Profession," as comprised of hundreds of discrete departments, should renew its commitment to the tenure track by, well, being very committed to it (this commitment in turn is organized around an ideal of hiring as many TT faculty as possible, cutting back on adjunct labor as much as possible, and placing as many newly minted Ph.D.'s as possible in TT jobs). It doesn't work, and it can't..
Note the passive voice in "it is agreed." I used to agree, and I'm pretty sure that most people in the profession would agree. And I now think that they are and I was wrong.
Why is there seen to be an "overproduction" of Ph.D.s? Because there are only X number of jobs available in the academic system, and there are some number greater than X people who want those positions.
Thus the competition for those positions is particularly fierce. And, given the laws of supply and demand, the pay for the positions will be lower and the work demands higher than they would be in other circumstances. Thus, the reasoning goes, if there were fewer Ph.D.s looking for jobs, those people both in the jobs and looking for jobs would be better off. Reduce the number of people getting Ph.D.s and everyone would be better off.
Well, except for the kids who want to get Ph.D.s and would now be blocked from doing so due to the planned reduction in the size of the labor force. Thus 22-year-olds who want to go to graduate school and study would have to be locked out, not for their own good, but for the good of others -- either those already in the system or those who would somehow be deemed to be more deserving.
In practice this would mean that a very few, "elite" programs would produce the next generation of professors. After all, if you're going to reduce supply, then you'd logically cut the programs that are "lesser" in some way. (Unless there were an across the board cut--i.e., each school agreed, cartel-like, to reduce their acceptance of Ph.D. students by, say, 10%--almost impossible to imagine; and if it did happen, it would lead to no school being able to create or build a new Ph.D. program).
Because I am not personally invested in the myth of the superiority of, say, the students who go to ivy-league schools, I am not very confident that such a restriction of supply would be good for the profession intellectually. But it would be an even greater moral disaster, since it would create even more of a "rich get richer" system than already exists. Furthermore, such a restriction of Ph.D. slots would lead to earlier and earlier decisions having greater and greater effects. For instance, now a person could start as an un-funded student in a Ph.D. program, still earn a Ph.D., do a great dissertation and get a job. Since under a regime necessary to significantly reduce the number of Ph.D. students, the un-funded students would be the first to go (since they would be, presumably, less capable -- on paper, at least -- than their funded counterparts), you would have very early "lock-in": screw up one class your junior year of college and that's it.
To me the biggest problem in the elite side of the American educational system is this too-early lock-in. Students are tapped as capable or not way too early in their development. Med schools now in some cases are judging applicants based on the second decimal place in their GPA (because so many applicants are 3.8x or 3.9x). This is ridiculous in that it shows nothing about the different abilities of the students except, maybe, who had a little dumb luck on a final exam in a sophomore organic chemistry class. It just as stupid when the process is applied in other fields.
Prof. O'Connor believes, as I believed while I was in graduate school, that schools produce Ph.D. students to solve labor problems. I am not so sure. I think schools produce Ph.D. students because there is a demand, by students, to become Ph.D.s, and teachers want to grant that demand. If you restrict the number of students who can attempt the Ph.D., you are doing an injustice to those students who are capable of doing the work, who might prove themselves later on, but who, at the time of admission to the program, don't look as good on paper.
A quick illustrative story:
A friend from graduate school came to my institution as part of a relationship (i.e., partner was accepted, my friend moved to the city due to partner). Friend was never deemed worthy of funding for a variety of what seem to me to be trivial reasons. Friend persevered. Friend ended up with the consensus #1 job in Anglo-Saxon his second year on the market. Friend has a book out, another under contract, and is on glide-path to tenure at Research 1 school. If Ph.D.s were restricted, I doubt friend would have been allowed to continue. Also, at the same time friend was continuing to be refused funding, another acquaintance was getting the "gold-plated" funding package: a named scholarship, no teaching requirement, extra research money. Said acquaintance never finished. Suggests that early identification of who is or isn't good enough is pretty haphazard.
Sometimes we should be a little Foucaultian about ourselves: reducing the "overproduction" of Ph.D.s makes guiltless 22-25 year-olds suffer the loss of their dreams for the benefit of other people. Fewer Ph.D.s would make for better lives and better remuneration and better prospects for those who already have them: as Foucault points out, self-interest dressed up as humanitarianism has a particularly bad record, historically.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
The End of the Semester
Classes at Wheaton end on Friday, and the collective insanity of the campus is in full career. It's both a good and a frustrating time to be a professor. Good, because for many students, only the pressure of the looming final deadline will motivate them to do their best work. And it really can be their best work, because they've had a semester of preparation under their belts. At this point in Anglo-Saxon, the students are mostly (I think) cursing me for assigning too much work. But we translated fifty lines of Beowulf in class today and they got it. They just rolled through syntactic constructions that would have baffled them two weeks ago. Because they're tired, frustrated and a little surly they didn't recognize how well they'd done, and because I was trying to push as hard as possible for one more day, I didn't yet let on how proud of I am of them. But my take is that out of the 35 students in the class, there are a good 25 who could successfully complete a Beowulf seminar (i.e., translate all 3181 lines in a semester).
Of course this time of the semester is frustrating when you're dealing with students who have let things slip too long and now want to try to overcome the handicaps they've set for themselves. And there's also the rash of illnesses (most probably real, due to stress levels) and family emergencies (most probably faked, but I don't push it; I give students the benefit of the doubt) that comes with the end of the semester. Add the fact that there are so many students at even super-extended office hours that you pretty much don't get ten minutes to think in the course of day, and it's tiring (add the often-waking, always-hungry one-month-old and it's really tiring).
But there's such a heady air on campus among the students that your pulse quickens: they are excited, scared, energized, spring-fevered. It's the end of the year, and so much life must be crammed into a couple of weeks. A great feeling.
Classes at Wheaton end on Friday, and the collective insanity of the campus is in full career. It's both a good and a frustrating time to be a professor. Good, because for many students, only the pressure of the looming final deadline will motivate them to do their best work. And it really can be their best work, because they've had a semester of preparation under their belts. At this point in Anglo-Saxon, the students are mostly (I think) cursing me for assigning too much work. But we translated fifty lines of Beowulf in class today and they got it. They just rolled through syntactic constructions that would have baffled them two weeks ago. Because they're tired, frustrated and a little surly they didn't recognize how well they'd done, and because I was trying to push as hard as possible for one more day, I didn't yet let on how proud of I am of them. But my take is that out of the 35 students in the class, there are a good 25 who could successfully complete a Beowulf seminar (i.e., translate all 3181 lines in a semester).
Of course this time of the semester is frustrating when you're dealing with students who have let things slip too long and now want to try to overcome the handicaps they've set for themselves. And there's also the rash of illnesses (most probably real, due to stress levels) and family emergencies (most probably faked, but I don't push it; I give students the benefit of the doubt) that comes with the end of the semester. Add the fact that there are so many students at even super-extended office hours that you pretty much don't get ten minutes to think in the course of day, and it's tiring (add the often-waking, always-hungry one-month-old and it's really tiring).
But there's such a heady air on campus among the students that your pulse quickens: they are excited, scared, energized, spring-fevered. It's the end of the year, and so much life must be crammed into a couple of weeks. A great feeling.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Why so Expensive?
Welcome "One Ring" readers. I hope you are interested enough to look into the rest of the blog, and I certainly hope you're interested in Tolkien Studies.
I've received a few emails about the price of the text (and a link from BAW, whose toddler seems to be about a year younger than mine: don't despair, it gets much easier very soon; so much easier that you'll go insane and decide to have another one... which is what we just did)
But, yes, Tolkien Studies is quite an expensive book. There are a few reasons. First, the fewer copies you make, the more each has to cost. We are only guessing at the audience for a serious scholarly journal about Tolkien, and WVU Press is taking a real risk, but they're not going to print a huge number of copies and then have to warehouse them. Hence, a high price per copy.
Second, we decided to print the journal as a hard-bound annual to further differentiate it from Mallorn and Mythlore and other paper-bound journals. Mallorn and Mythlore both publish excellent work, but we wanted to occupy a different niche, and 'look and feel' is part of that niche -- but it costs.
Finally, Tolkien Studies is, in the words of someone who has held up a copy (I haven't gotten mine yet) "an absolutely beautiful book." I'm really proud of not only the content, which is great, but of the style and the look. I spent a huge amount of time examining old, beautiful books published by Oxford, Cambridge, etc. and trying to abstract their best features while still retaining the readability of more modern books. I think (if I do say so myself) that it worked, and I think that JRRT would be pleased by the look of the journal.
My contact, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that he's going to buy five or six of the issue and stockpile it: "in ten years this issue #1 will be going for $300 on eBay." That would be cool.
And one last thing: I've learned that if you need out-of-US postage, it's an additional $25 (ouch; try to find some way to get around that, like having a friend buy it for you or something), but if you subscribe rather than just buying an issue, and if you're domestic shipping, you don't have to pay the approx $6 shipping.
Welcome "One Ring" readers. I hope you are interested enough to look into the rest of the blog, and I certainly hope you're interested in Tolkien Studies.
I've received a few emails about the price of the text (and a link from BAW, whose toddler seems to be about a year younger than mine: don't despair, it gets much easier very soon; so much easier that you'll go insane and decide to have another one... which is what we just did)
But, yes, Tolkien Studies is quite an expensive book. There are a few reasons. First, the fewer copies you make, the more each has to cost. We are only guessing at the audience for a serious scholarly journal about Tolkien, and WVU Press is taking a real risk, but they're not going to print a huge number of copies and then have to warehouse them. Hence, a high price per copy.
Second, we decided to print the journal as a hard-bound annual to further differentiate it from Mallorn and Mythlore and other paper-bound journals. Mallorn and Mythlore both publish excellent work, but we wanted to occupy a different niche, and 'look and feel' is part of that niche -- but it costs.
Finally, Tolkien Studies is, in the words of someone who has held up a copy (I haven't gotten mine yet) "an absolutely beautiful book." I'm really proud of not only the content, which is great, but of the style and the look. I spent a huge amount of time examining old, beautiful books published by Oxford, Cambridge, etc. and trying to abstract their best features while still retaining the readability of more modern books. I think (if I do say so myself) that it worked, and I think that JRRT would be pleased by the look of the journal.
My contact, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that he's going to buy five or six of the issue and stockpile it: "in ten years this issue #1 will be going for $300 on eBay." That would be cool.
And one last thing: I've learned that if you need out-of-US postage, it's an additional $25 (ouch; try to find some way to get around that, like having a friend buy it for you or something), but if you subscribe rather than just buying an issue, and if you're domestic shipping, you don't have to pay the approx $6 shipping.
Monday, April 26, 2004
Tolkien Studies I has Shipped!!
The first issue of Tolkien Studies has shipped from the publisher and should begin arriving in subscriber's mailboxes any day now. I haven't seen the actual issue yet (just proof copies), but it's pretty exciting. There's an order link and some material here at the new web address: http://tolkienstudies.org, and below I've pasted in a Table of Contents, but I thought one or two readers might be interested in the saga of how to get a new journal started.
Several years ago, I think maybe as long ago as late 2001, Doug Anderson (editor of The Annotated Hobbit) got in touch with me to talk about Beowulf and the Critics. We ended up becoming friends, and in a phone conversation, he said, in response to my and Hilary Wynne's Tolkien Bibliography, that what the field really needed was a serious, scholarly journal, "something like Tolkien Studies."
"Let's found it, then," I said.
Doug introduced me to Verlyn Flieger, and the three of us decided to see if we really could start a serious, scholarly journal dedicated to Tolkien alone. We immediately ran into the chicken/egg problem: scholars didn't want to contribute unless we had a guarantee of publication. We couldn't get a press to pick up the journal without a complete issue (and then we ran into problems getting a press). But Tom Shippey and a few others believed in us, agreed to send work, and the rest was just an unbelievable amount of hard work -- editing, sending things out for review, working with authors, soliciting for more articles, etc. As of August 2003 we still didn't have a press and so were going to self-publish, and then my friend Pat Conner and I got to talking at the wine hour at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. He mentioned that WVU press, of which he was now the director, was doing pretty well with its journals. "Well," I said, "I have just spent the summer doing the layout for a new journal. Do you want to publish it? It's called Tolkien Studies."
It was just an unbelievable coincidence that Pat wanted to pick up a new journal and we had a complete issue all laid out and ready. So now you can take a look and see what you think.
Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review
Contents of Volume 1:
Tom Shippey, "Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien's Elvish Problem"
Gergely Nagy, "The Adapted Text: The Lost Poetry of Beleriand"
Verlyn Flieger, "'Do the Atlantis Story and Abandon Eriol-Saga'"
Anne Petty, "Identifying England's Lönnrot"
Carl F. Hostetter, ed., "Sir Orfeo: A Middle English Version by J. R. R. Tolkien"
Mark Hooker, "Frodo's Batman"
Michael D. C. Drout, "Tolkien's Prose Style and Its Literary and Rhetorical Effects"
Olga Markova, "When Philology Becomes Ideology: The Russian Perspective of J. R. R. Tolkien"
Thomas Honegger, "A Note on Beren and Lúthien's Disguise as Werewolf and Vampire-bat"
Dale J. Nelson, "Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien's Fantasy"
Douglas A. Anderson, "Tom Shippey on J.R.R. Tolkien: A Bibliography"
Also included is a Tolkien Bibliography for 2001 and 2002.
ISBN 0-937058-85-8
The first issue of Tolkien Studies has shipped from the publisher and should begin arriving in subscriber's mailboxes any day now. I haven't seen the actual issue yet (just proof copies), but it's pretty exciting. There's an order link and some material here at the new web address: http://tolkienstudies.org, and below I've pasted in a Table of Contents, but I thought one or two readers might be interested in the saga of how to get a new journal started.
Several years ago, I think maybe as long ago as late 2001, Doug Anderson (editor of The Annotated Hobbit) got in touch with me to talk about Beowulf and the Critics. We ended up becoming friends, and in a phone conversation, he said, in response to my and Hilary Wynne's Tolkien Bibliography, that what the field really needed was a serious, scholarly journal, "something like Tolkien Studies."
"Let's found it, then," I said.
Doug introduced me to Verlyn Flieger, and the three of us decided to see if we really could start a serious, scholarly journal dedicated to Tolkien alone. We immediately ran into the chicken/egg problem: scholars didn't want to contribute unless we had a guarantee of publication. We couldn't get a press to pick up the journal without a complete issue (and then we ran into problems getting a press). But Tom Shippey and a few others believed in us, agreed to send work, and the rest was just an unbelievable amount of hard work -- editing, sending things out for review, working with authors, soliciting for more articles, etc. As of August 2003 we still didn't have a press and so were going to self-publish, and then my friend Pat Conner and I got to talking at the wine hour at the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. He mentioned that WVU press, of which he was now the director, was doing pretty well with its journals. "Well," I said, "I have just spent the summer doing the layout for a new journal. Do you want to publish it? It's called Tolkien Studies."
It was just an unbelievable coincidence that Pat wanted to pick up a new journal and we had a complete issue all laid out and ready. So now you can take a look and see what you think.
Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review
Contents of Volume 1:
Tom Shippey, "Light-elves, Dark-elves, and Others: Tolkien's Elvish Problem"
Gergely Nagy, "The Adapted Text: The Lost Poetry of Beleriand"
Verlyn Flieger, "'Do the Atlantis Story and Abandon Eriol-Saga'"
Anne Petty, "Identifying England's Lönnrot"
Carl F. Hostetter, ed., "Sir Orfeo: A Middle English Version by J. R. R. Tolkien"
Mark Hooker, "Frodo's Batman"
Michael D. C. Drout, "Tolkien's Prose Style and Its Literary and Rhetorical Effects"
Olga Markova, "When Philology Becomes Ideology: The Russian Perspective of J. R. R. Tolkien"
Thomas Honegger, "A Note on Beren and Lúthien's Disguise as Werewolf and Vampire-bat"
Dale J. Nelson, "Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien's Fantasy"
Douglas A. Anderson, "Tom Shippey on J.R.R. Tolkien: A Bibliography"
Also included is a Tolkien Bibliography for 2001 and 2002.
ISBN 0-937058-85-8
Sunday, April 11, 2004
A Good Excuse for Lack of Blogging
Mitchell David Cornel Drout was born by Caesarian Section on April 9, 2004 at 2:05 a.m. He weighed 7 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20.25 inches long.
Mother and baby are home from the hospital now and doing fine. Big sister is very proud.
Onomastics: Since so many people have asked, Mitchell's middle names are in honor of his grandfathers, and he is now the fourth generation of Drouts to have "David" in his name.
"Mitchell" itself is a Germanic form of "Michael," but it is also a pun: in Anglo-Saxon, "micel" means big or strong. The Hebrew name "Michael" means "He who is like God," so when Anglo-Saxons read the biblical name "Michael" they saw a nice connection with "micel," a word which survives in dialect as "Mickle," i.e., "He was mickle strong." (This same process explains why there are so many Japanese-American girls named "Naomi" : that's a biblical name and a word in Japanese that means 'beautiful'). Mitchell's sister's name can also be read as a bi-lingual pun: Rhys Miranda is homophonic with Latin "Res Miranda," "Beautiful thing."
(See, everything can be made nerdy if you try hard enough)
Mitchell David Cornel Drout was born by Caesarian Section on April 9, 2004 at 2:05 a.m. He weighed 7 lbs. 3 oz. and was 20.25 inches long.
Mother and baby are home from the hospital now and doing fine. Big sister is very proud.
Onomastics: Since so many people have asked, Mitchell's middle names are in honor of his grandfathers, and he is now the fourth generation of Drouts to have "David" in his name.
"Mitchell" itself is a Germanic form of "Michael," but it is also a pun: in Anglo-Saxon, "micel" means big or strong. The Hebrew name "Michael" means "He who is like God," so when Anglo-Saxons read the biblical name "Michael" they saw a nice connection with "micel," a word which survives in dialect as "Mickle," i.e., "He was mickle strong." (This same process explains why there are so many Japanese-American girls named "Naomi" : that's a biblical name and a word in Japanese that means 'beautiful'). Mitchell's sister's name can also be read as a bi-lingual pun: Rhys Miranda is homophonic with Latin "Res Miranda," "Beautiful thing."
(See, everything can be made nerdy if you try hard enough)
Monday, March 29, 2004
Living Vicariously Through Students
I'm not actually sure that's what I'm doing, but I certainly get a great deal of happiness and satisfaction when I see my students achieve great things. The latest is my Old Norse student (the one who insisted I teach her ON even though I hadn't ever formally studied it; I stayed a week ahead for about a year, and since then we've just been working together to translate from Egil's Saga). But that brilliant student just won a Fulbright Scholarship to study literature at the University of Reykjavik in Iceland for a year.
One of my other super-brilliant students from a couple of years back is now deciding between the two best Anglo-Saxon Ph.D. programs in the world: Cambridge University and the University of Toronto.
I get great joy from their success, especially since both didn't get off to the most auspicious starts at Wheaton but then found themselves. I also really like watching students surpass me (and they really can do that in language skills, since they're starting so much earlier than I did). And finally, I love watching my students earn awards and get accepted to places that I could never have (and probably never will) earn or get into. I think I'm getting a glimpse of how great it is going to be to watch my kids grow up and achieve some of their dreams.
I'm not actually sure that's what I'm doing, but I certainly get a great deal of happiness and satisfaction when I see my students achieve great things. The latest is my Old Norse student (the one who insisted I teach her ON even though I hadn't ever formally studied it; I stayed a week ahead for about a year, and since then we've just been working together to translate from Egil's Saga). But that brilliant student just won a Fulbright Scholarship to study literature at the University of Reykjavik in Iceland for a year.
One of my other super-brilliant students from a couple of years back is now deciding between the two best Anglo-Saxon Ph.D. programs in the world: Cambridge University and the University of Toronto.
I get great joy from their success, especially since both didn't get off to the most auspicious starts at Wheaton but then found themselves. I also really like watching students surpass me (and they really can do that in language skills, since they're starting so much earlier than I did). And finally, I love watching my students earn awards and get accepted to places that I could never have (and probably never will) earn or get into. I think I'm getting a glimpse of how great it is going to be to watch my kids grow up and achieve some of their dreams.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Tolkien Studies volume I
The first volume of Tolkien Studies is now at the printer and should be available in April. Here you can see a copy of the brochure for Tolkien Studies I from West Virginia University Press. As you'll note from the Table of Contents, we've gotten some truly excellent scholars to contribute to this first issue, and I'm really pleased with how it all came out.
On the other hand, getting a new journal started was a nightmare that has taken years. Doug Anderson, Verlyn Flieger and I decided to found TS back in 2001 or even 2000 (that's how long ago it was; I can't really remember) and it's taken this long to get things together. The problem is one of those chicken and egg things: good scholars don't want to contribute until there is a press and a committment to publish. Publishers won't touch something, usually, until it's actually complete (this is the nightmare problem I'm having with the tenth-century poetry essay collection).
We went with the "if you build it, they will come" approach for TS, but for a long time it looked like we would either have to self-publish (with all the risks, the steep learning curve, etc.), or that the whole thing would collapse into humiliation.
Supposedly no one is starting new journals, and no one is starting single-author journals, so the publication of TS in April is a real tribute to the interest in J. R. R. T. and the quality of the best work being done right now.
The first volume of Tolkien Studies is now at the printer and should be available in April. Here you can see a copy of the brochure for Tolkien Studies I from West Virginia University Press. As you'll note from the Table of Contents, we've gotten some truly excellent scholars to contribute to this first issue, and I'm really pleased with how it all came out.
On the other hand, getting a new journal started was a nightmare that has taken years. Doug Anderson, Verlyn Flieger and I decided to found TS back in 2001 or even 2000 (that's how long ago it was; I can't really remember) and it's taken this long to get things together. The problem is one of those chicken and egg things: good scholars don't want to contribute until there is a press and a committment to publish. Publishers won't touch something, usually, until it's actually complete (this is the nightmare problem I'm having with the tenth-century poetry essay collection).
We went with the "if you build it, they will come" approach for TS, but for a long time it looked like we would either have to self-publish (with all the risks, the steep learning curve, etc.), or that the whole thing would collapse into humiliation.
Supposedly no one is starting new journals, and no one is starting single-author journals, so the publication of TS in April is a real tribute to the interest in J. R. R. T. and the quality of the best work being done right now.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Every i dotted and t crossed
A review for Beowulf and the Critics just came in (from Medium Ævum, sorry, no link) and it's fairly negative. No problem with that. I've gotten a bunch of positive reviews, including the Mythopoeic Society's award for scholarship, so I can't complain that someone didn't like the book. And the review is reasonable; the author (whom I don't know) has apparently no axe to grind and doesn't take me to task for unreasonable things. But it got me to thinking about some reviews that I've done, and the problem of reviews in general.
Reviews in medieval studies (and probably in other fields within English as well) are big opportunities for people to drop H-bombs on their rivals, promote their own work and play that annoying kind of "gotcha" that medievalists are so good at. But reviews are also essential, because there is so much scholarship out there and so little time to read it all (though I have to admit that I personally am not very much guided by reviews; I read the Bibliography for Old English when it comes out in the OEN, immediately ILL everything that sounds interesting, and spend the next few months working through the pile of articles and books).
Most of the larger problems of reviews simply will only be solved if people are nicer to each other, which is unlikely to happen on a large scale, but there is something that might be worth emphasizing through informal networks: it does not invalidate an entire large work of scholarship when an author (plus anonymous reviewers, editor and copy-editor) misses a typo. It's one thing to point out substantive errors (such as the typo of Richfield for Lichfield in my book that my reviewer caught) that could confuse someone. It's another to do what I did in a review where I pointed out that the author had mis-spelled the title of his own article in the bibliography. That was a petty "gotcha" moment and I now really wish I could take it back.
Yes, of course, everything is supposed to be accurate and flawless, etc. But it is very unfair (and I see this all the time in medieval reviews) to focus on tiny little jots and tittles while ignoring the big picture of whether or not the work itself is of decent quality. I certainly am a niggler. For some reason, I notice little things that no one else appears to care about, and when they are wrong they bother me, and they possibly reduce my confidence in the author or editor. But my personal quirks shouldn't be elevated to "high standards" of, say, lack of typos when they miss the point of the main argument and only tell the reader that the ankle-biting reviewer had a sharper eye for some detail.
I think a short paragraph at the end of the review that says "minor errata" or just "errata" and then lists corrections and page numbers is very useful. I tried to do this for my review of The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England by Robert Stanton (but I really only found one switch of Alfred for Ælfric in the entire book). I'd like to see people move away from the "gotcha" and stick to the substantive criticism that should be included in a good review.
This seems to be the case for the on-line Medieval Review, by the way, which suggests that having practically unlimited space in which to write actually reduces the number of petty comments: perhaps there's a connection, though it seems paradoxical.
A review for Beowulf and the Critics just came in (from Medium Ævum, sorry, no link) and it's fairly negative. No problem with that. I've gotten a bunch of positive reviews, including the Mythopoeic Society's award for scholarship, so I can't complain that someone didn't like the book. And the review is reasonable; the author (whom I don't know) has apparently no axe to grind and doesn't take me to task for unreasonable things. But it got me to thinking about some reviews that I've done, and the problem of reviews in general.
Reviews in medieval studies (and probably in other fields within English as well) are big opportunities for people to drop H-bombs on their rivals, promote their own work and play that annoying kind of "gotcha" that medievalists are so good at. But reviews are also essential, because there is so much scholarship out there and so little time to read it all (though I have to admit that I personally am not very much guided by reviews; I read the Bibliography for Old English when it comes out in the OEN, immediately ILL everything that sounds interesting, and spend the next few months working through the pile of articles and books).
Most of the larger problems of reviews simply will only be solved if people are nicer to each other, which is unlikely to happen on a large scale, but there is something that might be worth emphasizing through informal networks: it does not invalidate an entire large work of scholarship when an author (plus anonymous reviewers, editor and copy-editor) misses a typo. It's one thing to point out substantive errors (such as the typo of Richfield for Lichfield in my book that my reviewer caught) that could confuse someone. It's another to do what I did in a review where I pointed out that the author had mis-spelled the title of his own article in the bibliography. That was a petty "gotcha" moment and I now really wish I could take it back.
Yes, of course, everything is supposed to be accurate and flawless, etc. But it is very unfair (and I see this all the time in medieval reviews) to focus on tiny little jots and tittles while ignoring the big picture of whether or not the work itself is of decent quality. I certainly am a niggler. For some reason, I notice little things that no one else appears to care about, and when they are wrong they bother me, and they possibly reduce my confidence in the author or editor. But my personal quirks shouldn't be elevated to "high standards" of, say, lack of typos when they miss the point of the main argument and only tell the reader that the ankle-biting reviewer had a sharper eye for some detail.
I think a short paragraph at the end of the review that says "minor errata" or just "errata" and then lists corrections and page numbers is very useful. I tried to do this for my review of The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England by Robert Stanton (but I really only found one switch of Alfred for Ælfric in the entire book). I'd like to see people move away from the "gotcha" and stick to the substantive criticism that should be included in a good review.
This seems to be the case for the on-line Medieval Review, by the way, which suggests that having practically unlimited space in which to write actually reduces the number of petty comments: perhaps there's a connection, though it seems paradoxical.
Monday, March 08, 2004
The crapulence of academics
will continue to amaze me no matter how long I am part of this profession. If professors wonder "why do they hate us?" (and many do), they need only look at how they treat their colleagues, students, and anyone who disagrees with them. Just in the past few days I've seen such examples of the complete lack of even rudimentary courtesy and respect that I am once again embarrassed to be part of the profession.
Game theory says that these sorts of things should be responsed to, in "tit for tat" mode, but doesn't that (probably necessary policing), just end up dragging down the discourse still further? When does turning the other cheek, or counselling someone to do so (this is what I'm really worried about; I can take care of myself, but I don't want to give bad advice), just enable the jerks?
will continue to amaze me no matter how long I am part of this profession. If professors wonder "why do they hate us?" (and many do), they need only look at how they treat their colleagues, students, and anyone who disagrees with them. Just in the past few days I've seen such examples of the complete lack of even rudimentary courtesy and respect that I am once again embarrassed to be part of the profession.
Game theory says that these sorts of things should be responsed to, in "tit for tat" mode, but doesn't that (probably necessary policing), just end up dragging down the discourse still further? When does turning the other cheek, or counselling someone to do so (this is what I'm really worried about; I can take care of myself, but I don't want to give bad advice), just enable the jerks?
Friday, February 27, 2004
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.
(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.
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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