Why Is Academic Publishing So Slow?

OK, that's a rhetorical question. I'm not expecting you to answer.

Why am I posing this rhetorical question then? Well, the organizer of the conference panel from which I have just gracefully excused myself (see Monday's post) is putting together an edited collection on the same subject as the panel. Ze'd asked me to contribute to this, too, months ago, but I had forgotten. When I told hir I wasn't coming to the conference, ze asked if I still wanted to contribute. Cool, I said. Sure! Why not? How firm is the publisher's commitment and when do you need the paper?

I was expecting ze would say April ... May, maybe. Even June, to give people a chance to finish up their semesters and flesh out the conference versions of their papers.

Nope. Ze doesn't need it until December! Holy crap. It would likely be several months for the review process to happen after that and another six months to a year before the book came out. And that is if the publisher remains interested. My last experience with an edited collection dragged out for two and a half years and was eventually dropped by the publisher (but that's another story and hopefully not to be repeated).

Jeezusfucke!! Oh, the tyranny of procrastination! Do you know how much crap gets pumped out here at Think Tank, just in this office of Think Tank, in any given WEEK? I mean, it's not academic writing. A fair amount of it is recycled and revised versions of earlier material. It's not complex the way academic writing is or as heavily sourced, but some of it is actually researched. And, while people here don't teach, they do have other responsibilities besides writing. Like going to meetings and planning events and raising money. And yet shit gets done. Maybe it's the money. If people don't research and write here, whatever you may think of the content or quality, they don't get paid. Donors want to see evidence you're doing something with their money, so you produce articles and op-eds and reports. And then you write proposals for more funding. In academe, the same correlation between what you produce and when and what you get paid does not exist. So, people take their time. Hell, if you're on the tenure track, you have 5-7 years to turn your dissertation into a book. And that's just to get it accepted by a publisher -- add a few more months to a year before you can send Grandma a copy.

Academe's glacial publication pace does not give me hope for systemic reform. Not in my lifetime.

I will do the paper, though. There are no travel costs, and if the edited collection falls through, there are a few journals I could send it to. It would get picked up by one of them. Not that doing this does anything for me career-wise, academic or otherwise. It's just an idea I want to follow through with for a bit, take for a ride and see where it goes.

Via

What You Know Matters Less Than Who You Know

Social capital, or whatever you want to call it, counts a lot, maybe more -- maybe a lot more -- than any of us postacademics struggling to figure out what to do next with our lives would like to think.

But it's not as if social capital is really separable from economic or cultural capital. These things go together. Unfortunately, though, cultural capital -- the thing we have the most of as an un- or underemployed post-academic -- is perhaps the least important when separated from the other two.

A Post-Academic in NYC has been posting lately about the humiliating shit formidable obstacles ze has faced while trying to find work. And we've all been there, to one degree or another. We all have stories about the difficulties we've faced at finding meaningful employment. The most recent post about signing on with a temp agency illustrates what you have to do when you don't know the kinds of people you can just call up and ask for a job or a referral. On the one hand, when you're unemployed, doing the kinds of things the temp agency asks if ze would "mind" doing is fine and dandy. A paycheck is a paycheck, whether you have a PhD or just a GED.

On the other hand ... filing? Filing?!??

I'm not being a snob. I'm not putting down mindless administrative tasks. Somebody needs to do them -- and get paid to do them. But I would bet that A Post-Academic in NYC has many other talents of greater use to society than filing. It's just that a PhD doesn't mean squat when you don't know anyone and don't have the economic capital to sit back and bide your time practicing your craft until the right "opportunity" comes along. You take what you can get.

Wouldn't it be nice, though, to be able to pick up the phone, call up your friend the editor of a major national journal, propose a topic for an essay you'd like to write, and be able to write what you want to write while building upon your already well-established reputation? Yes, dear readers, for some people it is that easy! No, you can't do this sort of thing if you're just some socially talented neanderthal or a rich jackass who has opinions but can't string together three coherent sentences. You do have to be a reasonably decent writer. You have to be tolerably smart. And you have to have a track record and an audience.

But ... how do you get those last two things (or whatever the professional equivalent is in your field) when your preeminent concern, now that you've left academe, is earning enough money just to get by?

Academics aren't known for their stellar social skills. The attraction of cultural capital -- which is something you can earn by being smart and studying and acquiring a fancy degree -- draws many people to academe who both lack social capital and don't have access to economic capital. I include myself in that group. As much as I enjoyed research and teaching, I pursued the path I did because, in part, belonging to "the profession" conferred a kind of status -- even as a graduate student and adjunct -- I didn't have access to any other way. Except ... when I left, it seemed, my career options were pretty much the same as they were when I finished undergrad. Here I am doing admin work. Yay! And there's no one I can call up to offer my talents and availability to do otherwise.

And what would I have to offer anyway? I'm a decent writer and tolerably smart. Tremendously distinguishing characteristics! Except ... not really. Not unless you have the other kinds of capital, too.

Via

Not Going to the Conference

In case you missed it, I've been bloviating about being invited to present at a conference for the past 6+ months now. Over those months, I put some time into thinking about what I wanted to present and sketched out an outline for the paper. I shrugged off the cost by putting off actually booking the hotel room and flights. I had a ballpark idea of what I'd be out-of-pocket, but I rationalized spending this amount because my conference travel was always funded in the past. I figured one last hurrah on my own dime would be worth it. And plus, I really was looking forward to going.

But ... this past weekend, I spent some more time thinking about the paper ... and then forced myself to confront the actual booking of travel. And ... the end result was, with credit card in hand, I decided it wasn't worth it. Not that my paper wouldn't be good or that I wouldn't have a good time ... just that I can think of better things to do with $750. A lot of them.

Like buying a pair of these little beauties:

Manolo Blahnik Colorblock Spectator Sandal $945

Kidding!! (Sort of...)

And that would be just the airfare and hotel. What about food, drinks, and cab fare to and from airports? It would end up costing almost $1000 for spending 3 days in a city I'd otherwise never go to present a 20 minute paper to, most likely, an audience of fewer than 20 people?? Even if I thought this would somehow open up magical networking opportunities to relaunch my academic career (and, trust me, I'm not that delusional!), what was I thinking???

So, I emailed the panel chair a little while ago with a lame excuse involving my "day job." And that's the end of that frivolous fantasy -- about as worthwhile as a ridiculously expensive pair of pretty pink shoes you can't walk more than half a block in.

In Passing

I met another leaver today. I went to a meeting involving a project Think Tank is working on in collaboration with some other groups. Two people came from one of the other groups. One had been working on the project for a long time. The other was introduced as an intern. I thought ze looked a bit old to be an intern -- maybe late twenties or early thirties. Ze seemed smart, too. Took a lot of notes.

Later, as we were leaving and chatting on the train, ze asked me how long I had been at Think Tank and how I ended up here. I told hir.

Turned out ze had just left academe recently. Interdisciplinary social sciences and cultural studies program. This internship was hir "escape." There are more of us out there than you might think, hiding out in the strangest places!

I was just about to tell hir about my blog when the subway train doors opened and I had to get off.

I'm sure well talk again.

Grad U Wants to Know What I'm Doing Now

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

I got an email from the department secretary the other day: "We are compiling data on people who completed the program within the past two years. (This is new. They never used to ask what happened to people.) What is your status now? At your earliest convenience, please let me know the organization you work for and your position title."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!

Two amusing assumptions there:

1. Clearly, I do NOT have a tenure-track job. If I did, they'd already know about it.
2. I am EMPLOYED. Somewhere. In a position with a title I'd be proud to share with them. WTF kind of crack are they smoking?

When I didn't reply, I got a second one. I suppose it would be helpful of me to let them know one of their former "stars" is doing scut work. But why would I do that?

They can Google me.

Perhaps the department secretary would like to trade jobs for a few weeks? Ze makes more money than I do. Ze ought to know how to Google someone.

Through the Looking Glass

Blogging, we commonly presume, carries with it a veracity similar to autobiography. Whether bloggers use real names, totally anonymous pseudonyms, or pseudonyms openly linked to real people, we attribute a subjective truth, at the very least, to the lives bloggers appear to represent.

Why is this? A persona is not a person, no matter how much or how little correlation exists, or that readers think exists.

At least with other kinds of writing, we respect distinctions: An autobiography is not the same as an autobiographical novel, which is not the same as a "regular" novel merely informed by the author's experiences. Nor, again, is a "regular" novel the same as an epistolary novel, with its deliberate gesture towards "real" people telling a "real" story through "their own" writings.

But we assume blogs are like diaries. Whether we know the authors as real people, think we know them, or have utterly no idea who they are, we read each entry believing its contents more like autobiography than fiction.  Yet, it is a persona, not a person, that speaks to us, a digital construction of an identity that develops and evolves with each new post.

Some graduate student has probably already written a dissertation entitled Blogging, Baudrillard, and Barthes: Authorial Simulacra and the Creation of Hyperreal Identities in Online Communities.

Barf. Don't worry. I won't take that any further. But, just as a thought experiment, consider the following:

What if you were to find out that "recent Ph.D." didn't have a Ph.D., didn't work at a think tank or as a secretary, and had never even gone to graduate school? What if "After Academe" were a work of fiction, invented by a stay-at-home mom who had once entertained aspirations of going to graduate school and becoming a professor and wanted to explore the "road not taken" as a means of finding consolation for her choices? She had considered writing a novel but found the immediacy and flexibility of blogging more appealing. Her husband has an important position at a think tank, and she sometimes helps out with administrative tasks.

What if you were to find out "recent Ph.D." was actually a tenured professor who, while always advising his undergraduates NOT to go to graduate school, saw his graduate students year after year -- many of them very talented and committed -- trying and failing repeatedly to get jobs, lingering on in the department as adjuncts? What if he felt terrible about this situation but couldn't speak openly about reforming the department, despite tenure, without being ostracized by other faculty and administrators? What if graduate students wouldn't listen when he told them to walk away because, for them, his position undermined his ethos, making them feel as if he simply thought they weren't good enough, a feeling that only reinforced their determination to prove him wrong? What if "After Academe" were a work of creative nonfiction this professor hoped would convince graduate students and other recent Ph.D.s, whom he could not otherwise reach, that they had other options? What if a former graduate student of his was now working at a think tank?


Of course, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but sometimes readers do raise questions about the real identity of "recent Ph.D." My answer is this: I am as "real" as you want me to be. And the "book" you ask about ... why would you treat it any differently than the blog? If I wrote a book, it would have to fit in a genre: autobiography, creative nonfiction, novel. I'd be an "author" and I'd "die" when you read my "text." Blogging is its own genre, but it can freely incorporate any number of others. And since a blog only ever is, as a text, incomplete, the author/persona retains an active role, disembodied but not dead.

What if "recent Ph.D." is just a highly imaginative, clever, and creative undergraduate, contemplating graduate school but discouraged by what ze has heard? Ze would be just as happy, happier even, if ze could become a famous writer, inventing new literary forms, reaching wider audiences, cultivating "art for art's sake," but for now, ze finds hirself interning at a think tank, bored and overdosing on critical theory.

Won't you follow me through the looking glass? How much of me is you and vice versa?

Via

Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghh!

Just look at this:

Isn't he just the cutest? Ha! Don't be fooled!! Look at those demonic eyes. He's an evil bastard, I tell you. As Peaches was leaving for work this morning and I was just about to, SOMEBODY decided he had spring fever and made a mad dash for the door. Then this same SOMEBODY climbed the neighbors' 8 foot fence, dug holes in the garden, tried to down the bird feeder, and hissed at the neighbors' kitty watching enviously from the window. (Ironically, the neighbors put this fence up in the first place to keep the feral cats ... from digging holes in their garden and stalking the birds.)

Neither Peaches nor I could get in the yard to bring him back because there's a lock on the 8 foot tall gate and nobody was home. Eventually, the Evil Bastard wearied of the yard, dug his way out from under the fence, and bolted across the alley. Coaxing, treats, and catnip were all to no avail.

An hour went by. The Evil Bastard sang to the birds, ate grass, knocked over a trash can, scuffled with one of the ferals, and kept a minimum of 30 feet between himself and anything human.

What finally got him in?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeow!!!

I Just Got an E-mail Damning Me Today for Working at Think Tank. How Has Your Day Been?

Think Tank is caught up in a bit of a kerfluffle of late. I can't disclose anything specific, but, suffice it to say, ignorance abounds on both sides. Certain Think Tank "experts" are known widely for taking a contrarian view of Subject X. Other people who work here, myself included, as well as others who are politically further to the right, take the mainstream view and are somewhat embarrassed to be associated with the position and policies Think Tank promotes with regards to Subject X. We find it willfully ignorant.

But willful ignorance goes both ways. Really, when you send hate mail to people you don't know because you think the place they work -- which you know nothing about except unsubstantiated rumors you've read on partisan blogs -- is unequivocally Evil with a capital "E," what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Am I supposed to feel bad? Am I supposed to quit? My office doesn't even deal with Subject X.

Even if I am sympathetic to your views, how am I supposed to take you seriously when you send me a statement like this?

To all of you good people at [Think Tank],

I very sincerely hope and wish that you all experience a loss of someone close to your heart, who perished very young as a result of _______________, a major cause of _____________.

My 27 year old son, a former US Nuclear Navy Engineer, died unnecessarily from complications induced by ______________.

May your God forgive you.

I DAMN YOU.

Yeah, awesome. Fuck you, too, whoever you are. Great way to promote tolerance, understanding, and world peace.

Why Employers Should Hire PhDs

UPDATE: See below.

Several of my fellow post-academic bloggers have lately been expressing the frustrations they're currently experiencing as they search for nonacademic employment. A Post-Academic in NYC writes here about the problem of being perceived as overqualified. Unemployed PhD for Hire writes here about the problem of fit, which is a problem on the academic job market, too, but outside academe it's more concrete. For example, it's hard to re-brand yourself as a career changer when your highly "transferable skills don't match up to the competition who have EXACTLY the experience/training/skill set that organizations are looking for."

As I see it, these are problems of perception and stereotyping on the part of employers, rather than problems post-academics bring with them to the job search, but because the end result is that post-academics end up on unemployment instead of gainfully employed, these problems decidedly become theirs. Here's the thing, though: While most unemployed post-academics will eventually find jobs (Hang in there, guys! It really is just a matter of time!), the real losers are the employers who overlook smart, talented people who are potentially their most outstanding workers, people who have the greatest likelihood of progressing within the organization, and those with the highest probability of making important contributions. Remember, somebody will eventually hire these people and reap the benefits. Why not let it be you?

In no particular order, here are some specific reasons why employers should hire PhDs:

They will work for food.
OK, this is not literally true. You do have to pay them a salary. However, since they have been working for so little for so long, you can probably get away with offering them less than the person they're replacing was earning. To a former adjunct whose salary has been $20K for the last 8 years, $40K looks pretty good, even if the person who previously held the position was making $50K (that is, as long as your post-academics do not know this, but why should they?). Now, your post-academics will eventually wise up to things and you'll have to give them more money or they'll leave, but you can certainly save a little in the short-term. And, eventually, you will want to pay them more in order to keep them because they will be doing a good job. Even if you give them a raise, you might still be paying them less than their predecessors. All around, it's a good deal!

UPDATE: I feel compelled to tell you I am speaking only partially ironically here. In fact, given your salary history, it is very likely your first nonacademic employer will lowball an offer. While some positions do have fixed, non-negotiable salaries, this is the exception rather than the rule. You can and should negotiate. Know what the salary range is for that job type in your location. If you get an offer that seems low, it probably is. Probably, it is less that your predecessor was getting. Within reason, ask for more. Trust me, that $5-$8K means A LOT more to you than it does to your would-be employer. You will get taken advantage of if you are too naive to look out for yourself. And this has longer term consequences. If you start making $40K when you could have started at $48-$50K, this will impact what you're offered for your next "next" job. And you can't afford this because you have a lot of lost time to make up for.

They are flexible and adaptable.
It must seem ideal to HR folks to find an "exact" match for an open position, someone who's done exactly the same job somewhere else but for whatever reason wants to change jobs. Score! This person would hit the ground running. You'd have to invest very little in training. Why would you NOT choose this person over a post-academic? You'd have to be crazy, right? Wrong. As great as it might seem at the outset, let's consider the long-term, a year or two or three or ten down the line. Do you want a robot who can only do EXACTLY the same thing over and over and over again? No! We all know policies and procedures change. We know that technology changes. We know upheaval in the ranks of the higher-ups means doing things differently for the plebes, and sooner or later, there's always a change at the top. Somebody who ONLY knows how to do EXACTLY the job you hire them for in the short-term will likely be much less able to roll with the punches. In fact, that may be why this person is looking for a new job in the first place. By contrast, your PhDs may require a little extra patience and training at the beginning but down the line they will be much more flexible and able to use that new software or write those documents in the new and improved way or figure out how to complete whatever new task or project it is you need them to. Why? Because their expertise isn't just in their subject knowledge. Their expertise is learning itself. Since the most important thing you learn in graduate school is how to learn, your post-academics are a major asset to a growing, thriving, evolving organization.

They are risk takers.
It takes guts to walk away from a career you've put the kind of effort and energy into that most post-academics have put into becoming professors. It takes guts to expose yourself to the unknowns of the nonacademic job market. It takes guts to work at getting a foothold by applying for entry-level jobs your undergraduate students are likelier to get interviews for than you are. It takes guts to turn your back on the work you love for the sake of your integrity, your sanity, and the chance to put poverty behind you. Risk takers are an asset to almost any industry. They are good at looking ahead and will do what they think is right and lead others to do the same. They innovate, whether we're talking about more efficient administrative procedures or better ways of building team cooperation or strategies for improving an organization's operations and progress. Do you want to hire people who are just good at doing the same thing over and over and over again? No, you want those who are forward thinking and embrace change.

They are resourceful, responsible, and capable of doing the job with minimal supervision.
PhD candidates, over the course of the many years it takes to complete the dissertation, may meet with their advisers and/or other committee members only a few times a year. Some advisers give virtually no feedback other than a thumbs up or thumbs down on any particular chapter. To get to the end of the process and successfully defend a dissertation, someone with a PhD had to draw upon unfathomable intellectual and emotional resources and take responsibility for doing whatever it took to get to the end of the project. When an adviser says, "This chapter doesn't work for me. Fix it," without saying what's wrong with it or how to fix it, a PhD candidate heads back to the library, back to the prose of the chapter itself, back to the logic that apparently didn't hold up under scrutiny, and figures out how to fix it.

They are good at problem solving.
In addition to the above paragraph, which is also an example of problem solving, curiosity and inquiry lead to research that answers questions or resolves problems. Moreover, having spent time as teachers, they've had to deal with student behavioral problems, like plagiarism, and pedagogical problems, like getting apathetic students to engage with the subject and participate in class discussions. Often, they've had to do these things with minimal support from supervisors.

They are smart.
Hiring a Ph.D. doesn't guarantee brilliance. Probably, you're not getting the next Albert Einstein. But you are getting somebody who came up with a research project independently and had the mental wherewithal to carry it out successfully. Content expertise aside (and, really, you don't care about the subject of their dissertation), completion of the project says this person, at the very least, has functional frontal lobes. While many job listings for general, merely-need-basic-capacity-to-think-to-succeed positions specify "B.A. preferred," the B.A., these days, no longer guarantees that someone actually does have a fully operational brain (as a former college instructor, I speak from experience!).

 They get stuff done.
 Ever wonder what it's like to undertake a major research project independently, work on it (or the preparation leading up to it) every day for the better part of a decade, prep to teach three classes  every week, grade 100 papers or exams every 2 weeks, prepare to present your work publicly at conferences you travel to 2-3 times a year, and submit your work to peer-reviewed journals -- all while earning a salary of around $20K? Yeah, I didn't think so. If you need stuff done, your PhD will get it done, more than likely at warp speed.

Lastly, let's not forget they are also steadfast and reliable (it took them a decade, give or take, of sisyphean toil to get where they are now, without any promise of rewards at the end except completion of a project very few people will ever know about), have integrity (it would have been easier to have just forged the damn diploma!(, and will immeasurably bolster your self-esteem by validating your choice NOT to pursue a PhD yourself!


So, what are you waiting for? Go out and hire a PhD today!

17th century handwritten doctoral diploma

For the Love of Words

No wonder so many nonacademic employers view post-academics with distrust when it comes to writing. Even though academics produce a lot of prose, they tend to bloat it with static verbs and meaningless filler. How else do you get a sentence like the following from a scholarly article about a novel:

Many _______________ argue, then, that it is not so much the difference between ________ and _________ that is at fault in our _____________, as the way in which that difference has been used as a justification for __________________________.

You and I have both read much, MUCH worse (remember the academic sentence generator from this old post?), but this sentence reads like a template. I left out identifying words, but you could fill in almost anything in those blanks and plunk it down in the literature review in your article.

ZzzzzZZZZzzzzzzZZZzz. How boring! I'm asleep already and there are another thirty pages to go. In case you are wondering, I'm reading the article to catch up on where the "field" is at before writing the paper for that stupid conference I'm supposed to present at next month. (Note: I have NOT reserved a hotel room or booked a flight yet. What does that tell you?)

Really, I am still engaged with the subject of my paper and have read a handful of sources that have kept my attention. Nonetheless, I cannot escape bad academic writing. It abounds. It makes me embarrassed for my discipline. True, we taught something resembling templates in the freshman comp classes at Grad U to help students understand the rhetorical moves writers and speakers make, but the goal, after they'd practiced using the templates, was to have them make those same rhetorical moves in their own ways, to speak in their own voices.

It may have gone out of fashion in academe, but I still believe you cannot separate content from form. We are what we eat. You are what you speak.

I hope those of us who've had the clarity of mind to leave academe will also leave our bad habits behind. Outside academe, if you can write about complex things in clear and concise language, without reductively treating your subject yet without wasting words, you can call yourself a writer, people will respect you, and they will read what you write. Inside academe, unfortunately, everybody is a "writer," whether anyone reads what you write or not, and if you can obscure simplicity in arcane and turgid language, muddling your subject and bloating your sentences, then you can call yourself not only a writer but a scholar, too!

Haha. Ahem. Hmmmmph.

I love words. Have I mentioned that before? Not everyone in  academe does, especially literature people. Some of them hate words. Don't ask me what they're doing in academe. In some cases, it's their only opportunity to posture at being hipster intellectuals, carrying around heavy books, wearing black, drinking too much, chain smoking, looking down on everything and everyone. Or, at the opposite end, you have the frumpy dumpies. The ones who forget their glasses in the freezer and wear mismatched socks. They NEED something obscure to hide behind. Or be buried under.

*     *     *     *     *

But I love nekkid words, my peoplz, sexxxy and unruly words!!! I love words that misbehave with grace, words that tumble like Olympic gymnasts, flip and twirl and cartwheel and balance perfectly, even upside down.

I love free and easy words dancing beneath my fingers, appearing on my screen and yours all at once!

(That's where you're supposed to say "Awwwwwwwww, we love you, too, recent Ph.D.!")

Happy Valentine's Day, friends! Here's some luuuuuv art from the streets of Crapitol City:

Random Observations from Inside the Belly of the Beast, Part II

Last year, I blogged here about having to attend a certain super conservative conference when I was still very new at Think Tank.

Back again this year, not a whole lot had changed. I still found it ironic that I had attended an MLA conference here at this same hotel a number of years ago. There were still women walking around in heels way too high to wear to a conference of any kind (it's a bad sign when you can tell they're having trouble walking yet still trying to be sexxy -- and since when are 6" heels "conservative" anyway?), security was still ridiculously tight (they wouldn't let me into the exhibit hall to go to Think Tank's booth to pick up my badge because, well, I didn't have a badge! Had to call someone to bring it), and the crazies were still abundantly present. Here are some questions of deep significance conference attendees inspire us to ponder:

Shall we build a time machine and return to the America of the 18th century? Things were just so awesome and revolutionary then!

Maybe Google will help with the software for that time machine. Hey! WTF is Google doing here? Whose side are they on anyway? Lest you thought otherwise ...

What can furries teach us about being conservative in the 21st century?

And one of my favorites, an impromptu performance that initially generated righteous outrage and hostility: "What, are those motherfucken hippies I see? Oh, I fucken HATE hippies!! Where are the cops? How did those Occupy shitheads get in here? Where are the cops? I'm just gonna go beat the mess outta those dirty sons-a-bitches!!!"

Actually, while the cops did appear soon enough, these guys were "legit" (See the badge hanging off the one sitting on the box?) and were singing, in the style of hipster troubadours, about how "America was great/Before we all had to hyphenate." You know, like, African-American, Latin-American, Indian-American -- when we were all "just Americans"!!

What would all these "Americans" (mind you, once again, I could count on one hand the number of nonwhite attendees who passed by Think Tank's booth over the course of about 6 hours) have done if the "Occupy shitheads" had gotten in and glitter bombed the place, as they were threatening to do? Oh, I was sooooooo hoping to witness that! Well, except for the large presence of NRA supporters also in attendance. Except for a few minor disturbances, for better or worse, the Occupiers mostly stayed outside.

For fuller coverage, go read what Wonkette has to say. Their people actually attended the speeches and events and whatnot, which I did not. Go here or here. Or even here! Go on, you owe it to yourself to check out those links!!

*     *     *     *     *

Meanwhile, things have settled down back to normal here at the office, after all of last week's excitement. No shortage of protesters, though. Should we free Tibet? These people, seen today from my office window, think we should.

Ah, life in Crapitol City ...

Consensus: "The Outrage of Adjuncts"

Over at Minding the Campus, there's a good piece up entitled "The Outrage of the Adjuncts." The author doesn't say anything astoundingly new. You've heard it all here and at other post-academic blogs before, many times over. Her main points are that 1) "By systematically underpaying and mistreating the non-tenured faculty who bear the burden of basic education, colleges are systematically cheating their own students," and 2) adjuncts, taxpayers (since they fund student loans and public colleges and universities), as well as students and their parents have a right to be outraged.

What's new in this piece is that the author is a conservative, and yet the point-of-view she expresses is that ending the plight of adjuncts and thereby improving the quality of education should be a bipartisan issue. She doesn't get into specific strategies for reform and the divisive and ideological rancor they raise -- e.g. Where would the money for better adjunct salaries come from if not from higher taxes? Or, how do you fix the adjunct problem without destroying the tenure system? (My take on where the tenure system fits in is here.) But she lays a foundation for consensus, and I think that's an important first step.

The author's experience attending the New Faculty Majority "summit" recently also illustrates how rhetoric can inhibit reform. She was initially skeptical and put off by the "Neo-Marxist phrases [that] filled the air: "wage theft," "neoliberal agenda," "corporate America," "under assault from the right," "privatization of the production of knowledge," and "marketization of the university." But "NFM's sole Republican board member, Matthew Williams, was able to advocate for the non-tenured without invoking Karl Marx, the Occupy movement, or anti-globalization guru Naomi Klein."

Let's be clear: I personally don't think NFM is wrong for invoking Karl Marx, the Occupy movement, or Naomi Klein. However, the mainstream audiences who need to understand what's up -- because, fundamentally, it affects them, their kids, their pocketbooks, and the future of education in this country (and, hence, this country's standing in the world) -- are more apt to respond to centrist arguments tying the plight of adjuncts to the quality of education rather than "radical" abstractions or down-and-dirty demonstrations (which, these days, are getting more attention for rodent infestations than clear politics, anyway). Again, not that I think NFM is wrong at all for making these arguments, but the theory you use to analyze something and the rhetoric you use to present it to an "outside" audience need not exactly match.

And the author does a good job of tying the plight of adjuncts to the quality of education without blaming adjuncts for being bad teachers, as often happens. It goes without saying (since you all know it and I've said it many times before and many of the blogs I link to regularly discuss it) that many adjuncts are very talented teachers. If you doubt or have forgotten, just go read what Anastasia currently has up to refresh yourself. Yet, I don't care how talented you are. Living on a salary under $20K, having no job security, no benefits, and no career future after you've spent a decade earning an advanced degree -- not to mention having no decent office space, no resources for research, no departmental support, and having to commute to multiple campuses -- will cause your teaching to suffer, no matter how talented you are. It's only a matter of time. So, it's a fine line to talk about the plight of adjuncts and how this impacts quality of education, but we have to do it. It's the only way we're going to get the attention of people outside acadene.

I tried to leave a comment over there, but I kept getting error messages. Here's what I wanted to say:

Absolutely right on with this: "By systematically underpaying and mistreating the non-tenured faculty who bear the burden of basic education, colleges are systematically cheating their own students."

I walked away a semester after finishing my Ph.D., but academic culture perpetuates the myth that if you hang on for a while and keep trying and keep up with your research and publication while you're adjuncting, you'll eventually get onto the tenure track. This has a powerful resonance for a lot of people, and it's not that easy just to "walk away," as many, including myself, often tell others. But I looked around and saw adjuncts who were great teachers AND had strong publication records, even books, and yet had been trying unsuccessfully year after year -- 6-10 years in a few cases. I didn't want to be them years down the line and so I left, but it wasn't without anger, frustration, and bitterness at giving up doing what I loved, what I was good at, a career I'd spent a decade of my life working towards, and a job that arguably was making a more valuable contribution to society than the general admin work I now do for a nonprofit (by which I simply mean you don’t need an advanced degree to do it well). Shouldn't university faculty, especially those with Ph.D.s, earn at least as much as their department secretaries?*

And I'm so glad you find common ground here between Right and Left. It's something we should all care about and work together to reform.

 *Department secretaries at Grad U earned between $40K and $70K when I was there, depending on how long they'd been there and what their responsibilities were.