The job description is up on Versatile PhD

I posted it up there this morning, if anyone cares.

Seriously, one or some of you should apply for this. Within 24 hours of posting on nonacademic sites, we've gotten a FUCKTON of resumes. Like 80. Out of those, only a few sound like they might be pretty good. And by "pretty good," I'm talking about the smart kid with the undergrad degree in theater and a couple years of admin experience seems the best so far. And that's not really our ideal candidate. Our ideal candidate has stronger writing and editing skills, but we're mostly getting admin types who can only do about half of this job. The admin part is easy -- we can train you for that in a week. The writing and editing skills require an EDUMACATION.

We did express this in the job ad -- essentially that you don't NEED a graduate education to do this job but we'd prefer someone who had one or who had elsewhere acquired the skills we're looking for. I'm hoping something will come along through Versatile PhD because the attitude I got from Grad U Placement Doofus was totally condescending and full-of-shit contradictory. The gist of our conversation was:

Me : There's this job one of your ABDs or recent PhDs might like to have.

Placement Doofus: But it's not an Tenure Track ACAMADEMICAL job. Waaaaaaaaaaaa!

Me: No, but it pays better than being a fucken adjunct. Pays better even than what newly hired assistant profs in your department get.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! A lot of our adjuncts have been trying for tenure track placements for several years now. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Why are our placement rates so low? They never used to be this bad. They used to be pretty good. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! Why are our adjuncts so unhappy?? They just need to ride this out for another year or two, and things will improve.

Me: No, things aren't going to improve. Even if they do, somebody could take THIS job for the intervening time and get the fuck off food stamps for a little while. Your adjuncts have no money and feel like they have no future. Why do you think they're so unhappy? Why do you begrudge them the chance to move in another direction? To a place where they would be actually appreciated and compensated accordingly??

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Our adjuncts are wonderful. They are too good for a crappy admin job. You yourself betrayed THE GREATEST PROFESSION EVER by leaving. Clearly, it was not your true calling. I must protect our graduate students and adjuncts from heretics like you.

Me: You are so full of shit the fumes are carrying across the internet.

Placement Doofus: By the way, your new job sounds really great. Can Grad U take credit for your success? It's so great to know our graduates are moving on to have such interesting careers. Our graduate students need to hear about this. They need role models. We should have you come back and talk to them one of these days after you start New Job.

Me: I don't have time for this. Can you just please circulate the job ad so that somebody else can move on to have, as you say, "such an interesting career"?

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaa! I'll ask around. There's Desperate and Pathetic Adjunct. Do you remember hir? Ze finished the year before you did and has been teaching for the department and going on the market every year since. Ze might be getting tired of that.

Me: Yes, I think I remember Desperate and Pathetic. But why don't you circulate to everybody? That way, everybody knows the job is available and they can make their own decisions about whether they're interested or not.

Placement Doofus: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! You're a heretic. You're trying to get people to leave the department. We can't afford to discourage our cheapass limitless supply of permatemps precious graduate students. I might circulate it. I'll see what I can do. I'll have to warn them about you first ... But can Grad U still take credit for your success in getting New Job?

Me: Fuck you.

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Maybe my attitude didn't help as far as getting word around. I was more polite, but I couldn't totally disguise that I thought Placement Doofus was full of shit. At least at New Think Tank (same as at Think Tank) you can tell people they're full of shit when they wax poetic about such free-market pipedreams as privatizing the sidewalks (dudes, that's actually in the job description, the "full of shit" part and everything!!). They appreciate knowing when they cross the line over to KrazyKrackpotKookville. Can't quite say as much about academe.

I think I'm gonna do another post when I get a little more time about what it's like being on the other end of the hiring process. Quite fascinating, actually.

"My graduate students are unhappy"

Somebody found this blog by Googling that phrase today.

No shit, Sherlock! Yes, your graduate students are unhappy. And you're just now figuring this out? You need to go read ALL of the posts over at 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School, then go read From Grad School to Happiness and the other post-academic blogs I've linked to in my blogroll, and then you need to come back over here and read my blog from the beginning to the present (though I do give you permission to skip some of the fluffy cat posts).

One of the many things wrong with graduate school is that too many professors view their graduate students through the lens of their own experiences as graduate students and subsequent paths to professorhood. While this may give you a warmfuzzy feeling of nostalgia, it doesn't make for having honest relationships with your graduate students today and can actually be harmful to them. in terms of preparing for both academic careers and nonacademic alternatives, if you base your guidance to them on the way things worked for you 30 years ago.

Case in point: A professor I had in graduate school used to frequently mention to us graduate students how ze had spent several years working in advertising before deciding to go to graduate school and pursue becoming a professor. Ze was fond of telling us how easy it was, as a newly graduated B.A. in English, to get hired as a copywriter for an ad agency, how ze came up with successful campaigns (one slogan is still being used by the client -- you'd recognize it!) , and how much money ze was making.

Ze gave all of this up because ze felt ze wanted to do something more meaningful with hir life than think up clever ways to dupe people into buying shit they didn't need. Humph. Noble aspirations, right? How many of my post-academic friends wouldn't kill for a job like this professor gave up? Luckily for hir, ze went to graduate school, "suffered" through the poverty of 6 years as a TA and adjunct cushioned by savings from the advertising job, and got hired in the early 80s onto the tenure track while still ABD.

This professor was smart and talented, but the times were different, too -- not just the academic job market but the nonacademic job market. Because today you can major in things like ... advertising (!) ... it's much harder to get hired for the kind of job ze had with a B.A. in mere English. And much, much harder if you compound your job search with the whole "overqualified/underqualified" shit us post-academics are dealing with.

So, in other words, telling graduate students they always have "other options" without encouraging them to prepare themselves for those options is disingenuous. It's you old professor types taking the narrative you've spun upon your own lives to explain the circumstances of your successful careers and comfortable lives and imposing it on the lives and careers of your graduate students. It's irresponsible to do so. Stop it!

Yes, your graduate students are responsible for making the decision to postpone money-making career objectives for the "life of the mind," but they also look up to you with somewhat rose-colored lenses, respect you, and seek to emulate you. A few years into the Ph.D. program, when their reality starts to bump up against the rosier narratives you represent, yes, they tend to get goddamned unhappy -- not to mention stressed about how they've fucked up their futures, frustrated by their increasingly limited options, depressed by their poverty, and generally messed up by the mindfuck that is graduate school.

And I'm telling you this as someone who basically, in a lot of ways, liked academe and wished I could have found a way to stay. You owe it to yourself to understand WHY your graduate students are so unhappy, and, if you care about the mentorship aspect of your job as a professor, you owe it to your students to help them figure out sustainable ways to cope with the realities of what academe has today become.

Funny

After reading about A Post-Academic in NYC's recent encounters with the dean at the place that could suck her like a giant vacuum back into academe, I was reminded of a certain undergrad prof I had who HATED university administrators with a vengeance. How did ze deal with these negative feelings without getting fired? Ze had pet snakes. The snakes ate live mice. Undergrad Prof named these mice before putting them into the snakes' cages ... after university administrators.

Nice, huh? Sorry about the light posting lately. I suppose I could just post random shit. Sometimes I do that anyway! But ... well, just stay tuned. Hopefully, the number of things I both want to blog about and can blog about will get back to normal soon.

Via

Holy Shit! I Could Have a Tenure-Track Job Yet!!

One of those few tenure-track positions I applied for back in the fall apparently has not closed their search yet. I learned this on Friday. I've been too overwhelmed to post until now.

They requested additional materials from me in November, and I dutifully sent along a writing sample, recommendations, and my teaching philosophy. But then I didn't hear anything. I assumed they had moved on and had just not gotten around to sending out the rejection letters. By January, I had totally given up on the academic search -- my third and last, as you know.

Friday I came home from work, poured myself a drink, and checked voicemail ... and ... Holy shit! There's this message. It's from Regional State U only an hour away from Crapital City. They were impressed with my application when they received the additional materials back in November, but they'd had to put their search on hold because funding was uncertain. They didn't do MLA interviews and hadn't contacted anyone since the request for additional materials. But ... their funding came through and they would like to know if I am still available. They need to move their search along quickly, and I am on a short list of candidates. They would like to do a phone interview, which will possibly lead to a campus interview ... and then, possibly, a return to academe on terms I can accept!!!

Aarrrgggghhhh, I'm getting ahead of myself. Nothing is certain except the phone interview, which is this coming Thursday.

There's a lot to think about here. Given that I am a type 2 leaver, as JC puts it ("people who still love academia, but who know that their ability to get a job that pays them a fair wage in an area they'd like to live is severely hampered by the academic job market or some other factor"), I've never really been happy about leaving. I left because it was unsustainable to stay. But, the prospect to  return in a position that pays a reasonable wage and allows me to live where I want? ... and, most importantly, do what I love and am good at?? I don't think I could refuse (are you kidding?!?), even given my ambivalence -- which has only grown in the time I've been away -- over academe's many, many flaws.

I spent all day yesterday ruminating over my old syllabi, pondering "ideal" courses I'd like to teach, book lists, my research plans (sort of on hold since the conference I blew off but still in my head), and other things they're likely to ask about. It felt, in a way, like I was returning home after a long, wearying absence. I really do miss all this shit, you know?

*     *     *     *     *

Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck.

What Counts as an Academic "Success" Story?

Spanish prof's post about how her department measures success among their recent BAs got me thinking about what counts as success at the graduate and early career levels for academics. Really, it's a matter of perspective, but whose perspective dominates and why? Perspective is relative to position, and it's worth observing how someone with a particular set of accomplishments looks very different to those comfortably ensconced within than it does to those on the margins of academia. And yet, not surprisingly, it's the dominant perspective that informs starry-eyed, prospective graduate students and other outsiders who romanticize what academic life must be like and prevents tenure-track faculty and administrators from having to confront the real life consequences for their students of the system they prop up.

Here are the facts of our "Success Story":

Success Story finished undergrad at the top of hir class and was accepted to a PhD program at Fancy Pants U. While a graduate student, Success Story continued to earn many accolades. Because ze produced poetry in addition to the required research and analytical writing, professors praised hir "originality," fellow graduate students admired hir "devil may care" attitude, and the undergraduates ze taught for nearly 8 years enjoyed the edginess of hir classes. As a graduate student, ze published a handful of poems in very respectable venues and handful of reviews in obscure academic ones, but ze never published any substantive criticism or interpretation. Nonetheless, during hir last semester ABD (hired ABD perhaps because ze went to Fancy Pants U and hir brilliance was a foregone conclusion -- I digress), ze was hired as Visiting Assistant Professor (VAP) at a 3rd tier, teaching intensive, regional public university in the rural South, thus smoothly transitioning from graduate school to professorhood. A year into this 3-year appointment, ze publishes a book of poetry but still has no academic publications, other than a handful of reviews.

Here's how former professors, advisers,  and other drinkers of academe's Kool-Aid will see Success Story:

Ah, of course Success Story got a job! How could ze have done otherwise? Ze is brilliant, a brilliant poet with a promising future. And, of course, everyone from Fancy Pants U DESERVES a job. They wouldn't have gone to Fancy Pants U in the first place if they weren't true professor material, truly ready to dedicate themselves to the Life of the Mind. This wonderful VAP position is a great step ahead on the career ladder for Success Story, with the market as terrible as it is. Only the best and brightest get jobs of any kind, and this one will give Success Story the opportunity to prove hirself as a teacher with a VERY different set of much more challenging students from the ones ze taught SO successsssfully at Fancy Pants U. And we congratulate Success Story for having hir first book of poems published. Ze is as much a poet as a scholar, and we have no doubt ze will soon be able to turn hir attention to producing the scholarship ze needs to progress from successsssssful VAP to even more successssssssful tenure-track assistant professor. We have faith ze will be hired into an even better position when the term of hir VAP ends.

 Here's how other graduate students and adjuncting recent PhDs still entertaining hopes of an academic career but somewhat sobered (if schizophrenically) by the realities they see all around them might see Success Story:

Oh, Success Story is soooooooo lucky to have gotten a job, any job at all. I'd kill for a 3-year VAP position, even if it was in Rural Subtropical Wasteland. But ze really does have to teach a lot down there. The load is 4/4, which doesn't give hir a lot of time for research. No wonder ze chose to work on that book of poems. At least it was something ze wanted to do and is getting recognition for. But ... it won't look great to tenure-track hiring committees if, 3 years out from the PhD, ze still doesn't have any academic publications, not unless the position ze is applying for is in creative writing, ideally somewhere that offers an MFA. And we all know how many of those there are! Still, ze went to Fancy Pants U. Ze will get something. I sure wish I had gone to Fancy Pants U! Then I wouldn't be stuck adjuncting. Everyone knows it's not the quality of your scholarship but where you did your degree and who your adviser was that committees look at first. If only I had a better pedigree, if only I'd gone to Fancy Pants U! After all, I applied for that same VAP position. I have 5 full-length, peer-reviewed articles and a publisher is currently reviewing my monograph, and I didn't even get an interview. Sigh. Maybe next year. Success Story is an inspiration to us all. After all, you can never hope to get anywhere in this profession unless you try and try again.

 Here's how cynical post-academics might see Success Story:

Are you kidding me? You'd have to pay me a lot more than $37K a year to take a 3-year VAP in Rural Subtropical Wasteland teaching 4/4 to a bunch of brats who shouldn't have passed the 9th grade. Oh sure, it does have a decent honors program. But do you think, as a VAP, you're going to get to teach the honors kids? Hell no! Success Story is mostly teaching comp, not poetry, and that's hardly good for building hir CV. Moreover, I don't know whether Success Story is single or has a partner, but I certainly would not drag a partner to Rural Subtropical Wasteland. There's nothing there but the university and Walmart. Ze would be unemployed and we'd both have to get by on my $37K. Even if the cost of living is lower, what happens after 3 years when the VAP ends? If Success Story doesn't get another gig, tenure-track or otherwise, ze certainly wouldn't be able to afford to move back to Fancy Pants U City, not unless ze has rich parents. Maybe the book of poetry will bring royalties? Ha, good luck with THAT! And why hasn't ze published any scholarship anyway? It's not as if ze can get by on just having a degree from Fancy Pants U forever. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Yet another awesome reason to leave academe!! Good luck to you, Success Story! You are academe's future, so make the most of it!

Good God, you get the nerdiest fucking people when you do a Google image search for "visiting assistant professor" and why-the-fuck are people who got their PhDs more than 10 FUCKING years ago at places like Emory, UNC Chapel Hill, and the London School of Economics still Visiting Assistant Professors (just click on the link)?

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.

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.

Shoulda Coulda Woulda

One thing us postacademics get really tired of hearing really quickly is some version of the following:

If I were in your shoes, I NEVER would have made the mistake of going to graduate school. Everybody knows there are no jobs in academe, and nobody in their right mind should spend that much time, effort, and money on education and professional training that will NEVER pay off with a job. I just can't understand why so many otherwise smart people make such a stupid choice.

To be fair, I don't hear this, personally, all that often. But just the other day, an acquaintance was telling me about a friend, somebody still in her 20s but gainfully employed as a journalist, who is seriously considering going for a Ph.D. in the humanities. "I just don't get it," my acquaintance (who does not have a higher ed background and never considered graduate school) says to me,

I keep pointing out to Crazy Friend there aren't any jobs and, like, why would she quit the job she already has and borrow money to go for a useless degree? That's just mind-warpingly unfathomable. Is Crazy Friend being willfully ignorant? As far as I can tell, you'd have to be. I really just don't get why people just shut themselves off from what they don't want to hear and believe. The facts are pretty stark.And there's no shortage of articles, news stories, and blogs telling everyone that cares to listen that going to graduate school in the humanities is a bad idea. Why don't people listen to reason? I told my friend not to go, but she won't listen. She wants to be a professor.

Via

I just shake my head at both sides. Sure, the "I don't get it" crowd has a point, but, rationally speaking, if so many otherwise intelligent people are continuing to ignore obvious signs that graduate school is a trap, there must be more to it.

There IS more to it. Consider:

Prospective (and, indeed, current) graduate students get a lot of conflicting information and mixed messages they aren't really equipped to sort through. For example, the student might have read some articles in Inside Higher Ed or the Chronicle (or any number of mainstream publications) that talk about the dearth of academic jobs and what a big waste it is getting a Ph.D. To a nonacademic with no graduate school inclinations like my acquaintance, this is both the only information they have and the only information they think they need to be able to pass judgment on someone like Crazy Friend.

But the aspiring student has a host of other information -- some of it quite personal -- to grapple with. There is the praise from undergraduate professors, some of it no doubt truly misleading the student to believe they are the "special" exception -- a standout even among those talented enough, passionate and committed enough, to be distinguished from the masses. Of course, this praise does nothing but perpetuate the myth of meritocracy. Even if your undergrad profs are right about your talent (and ... well-meaning as they might be, they're probably wrong), how good you are only matters when How Good You Are Matters matters more than How Well You Fit Based on the Frantic Review of 600 Candidates Right Before Finals (all of whom were similarly praised and encouraged by their undergrad profs years ago).

So, if students can depersonalize praise and be objective, they would less likely fall into the trap, but most people would have a hard time doing that -- and the naysayers would, too, if they were on the receiving end of this encouragement and had an interest in further academic pursuits.

Also, the strong interest in further academic pursuits itself leads even those not drunk on their undergrad advisers' praise to believe "facts" and "statistics" about job placement rates used by departments to promote their graduate programs. Speaking personally, this was one of the largest factors clouding my judgment. Since a few years had passed between the time I finished undergrad and started grad school, I had some distance (like acquaintance's Crazy Friend). Rather than overzealous praise, my own desire to succeed in a profession I cared about, coupled with more disciplined work habits and more general maturity than the typical 22-year-old entering a grad program, led me to choose a program that, while not the most prestigious, for one thing, had what appeared to be a very robust number of job placements.

In other words, I DID look at career prospects. The larger picture represented in the media told one story, but the program I'd been accepted to and looked forward to attending told another. And this was 10 years ago, when the kind of information readily available today to anyone with Internet access wasn't out there -- was either not collected (and, in many cases, still isn't) or was misrepresented (i.e. placements are meaningless unless you know how many others who started the program the same year have since either dropped out or are working as adjuncts). At the beginning and throughout my time as a graduate student, I repeatedly heard announcements of tenure-track job placements, along with yearly totals that seemed impressive .......... impressive, that is, until several years in I started observing how many others the department was simply retaining as adjuncts, with and without the Ph.D., and how many just walked away, just disappeared without a trace to become postacademics. My understanding of who adjuncts were -- and how many of them my own department employed -- was limited by my experience. During the first few years, I saw them as failures, if I saw them at all. Duh, why weren't they following all the CV-building advice I was and publishing and presenting at conferences? But later ... well, who knew there were so many? And who knew so many of them were there due to no lack of competence on their part? They were doing the same things junior faculty on the tenure track were doing (they had to in order to stay competitive for tenure track jobs elsewhere); the university simply wasn't acknowledging it.

A very large department like the one at Grad U depends on a significant degree of invisibility, whether deliberately reinforced or not, to make the kinds of claims it makes about job placement that allow them to recruit and retain people like me -- and probably like you, too.

*     *     *     *     *

There's a lot more to say on this subject, but this post is long enough for today. The bottom line is that there's a bigger picture the Shoulda Coulda Woulda naysayers outside academe aren't privy to. Take responsibility for your choices, but don't let anyone get away with telling you you're stupid for not doing your research before you got into this mess. It's more complicated than what some pundit writes for a general audience, however much truth she or he may tell.

Next time: Two very different ways of thinking about why academe NEEDS people who put their love for the pursuit of knowledge first and their best interests career-wise last ...

Re-Reading an Academic Job Ad

Regular readers remember me posting a month or so ago about how I would do a very limited, very selective academic job search this year.

The gist of that post was that there were 5-6 jobs that might be worth applying for, given my idiosyncratic concerns. One of these -- the one that was of the MOST interest to me -- has a deadline coming up soon, but re-reading the ad, I found myself noticing a few red flags, as well as reconsidering some of the basics:

• Despite being advertised as a "tenure track appointment," the job is only for "an initial three-year period." I find this opaque and troubling. Nobody gets tenure in three years. Is there some kind of initial review process going on here? Or, is this simply a more clever and deceptive way of designing a contingent position? Sure, we'll hire you onto the "tenure track (hehe)" for a few years. We'll pay you a bit better than a full-time adjunct. But ... we'll expect more, too, in terms of service and other obligations, and when your first three years are up, we'll give you the choice of continuing on for another three years at the same rate of pay -- or leaving, so that we can hire some other desperado willing to do even more for even less than you, as long as it comes with the title "assistant professor."
• "This position is contingent on the availability of funds at the time of hire." So, what, you're going to interview people, bring a few to campus, and then put them on hold for a month or two or three while you work out your budget before making a decision? Or better yet, lead your favorite candidate to believe he or she would be getting an offer ... only to get a letter reading, "We are sorry. Due to lack of funds, this position has been canceled." Hey, it's not like any of these candidates will have other offers waiting! Why not offer them a glimmer of hope?
• Not listed in the job ad, but after visiting the institution's website, it appears that A LOT of this department's courses are taught by adjuncts, even though they do not have a Ph.D. program. That would make me seriously uncomfortable. Because, you know, I would know that my privileges -- such as they would be -- would be had at the expense of my adjunct colleagues. 
• Yes, it's true that I wouldn't have to move, but the commute, by public transit, would be two to two and a half hours each way (about an hour each way by car). Even if I could get a TTH schedule, I'd probably still end up renting a small apartment or room to stay in 1-2 nights a week to minimize trips. And given the cost of living around here, over the course of a year, that, along with the cost of transportation itself, would eat up what would be the difference between my current crappy secretary salary and what would likely be the starting salary of this "tenure track" position.

Am I being overly paranoid? Am I looking for reasons to lose interest in the few academic jobs that seem like potentially, possibly a good "fit"? Maybe. Will I change my mind and not apply? Maybe. Because, after all, there still is that nagging old problem: Right here in my own backyard, there are A TON of jobs, conveniently located, but THEY ARE ALL BEING DONE BY ADJUNCTS.

It just seems more and more like a Catch-22 scenario, no matter how you look at it, unless you get a job at a college that A) does not have a PhD program and B) does not rely on adjuncts.

Whatever else you might say about nonacademic jobs, at least there are ... more possibilities ... more options and fewer limitations ...

Stay tuned for further updates.

"A" os for ... Academe, Adjunct, Adviser, Absurdity

In case you haven't heard, a new movement among adjuncts has arisen to raise awareness, assuming a bright, vermilion letter "A" as its new symbol. You can read about it at the Chronicle here:

A red “A” signifies that you are an adjunct, some other contingent faculty member, or that you sympathize with contingent faculty members. The idea is to signify some level of unification and to spread awareness. Imagine if a student sees more and more red letters on faculty doors. The student may even see a room full of letters, or letters mysteriously attached to hallway desks (because there is no office or door). Eventually, a student is going to ask someone what it means.

If I were still adjuncting, I'd have that "A" on my door (of the office I shared with 5 other adjuncts). I'd put it on a t-shirt. I'd have it on a bag I carried student papers around in. Heck, I might even put it on my syllabi, next to the rest of the alphabet soup after my name.

Needless to say, I think this is a great idea for raising awareness. Most students really have no clue about the differences in status among their "professors." They know a TA is not a professor, and that's about it. They certainly have no idea what an adjunct is nor why they should care.

I do wonder how far it will go or whether those who speak up and take this symbolic action and have the courage to answer students' questions will not be censored by those who see a threat to their own status. As one commenter puts it over at the Chronicle:

To engage in free speech you have to have tenure. Adjuncts don't have tenure or any of its protections or privileges. They should be very careful, lest the University or College send its thugs, viz., the tenured faculty, to break up their symbolic action.

But, then again, what are they going to do? Fire all the adjuncts? Not hardly. Maybe if just one or two brave souls showed their resistance. But not if the whole adjunct/TA/permatemp workforce did. It'd be a catch-22. Permit them their symbolic action, which embarrasses you, your department, and your institution, or fire them and teach the comp, gen ed, and other classes you think you're too good for.

Via

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The sheer absurdity of self-delusion that permeates academe at all levels has really started to get to me. It's fair to say it's even beginning to poison how I feel about my own "independent scholar" projects. After all, those projects, should they reach publication, would be intended as contributions to to an academic culture that -- while preserving its intellectual integrity for the most part -- is exploiting its workforce, selling its graduate students a false bill of goods, saddling its undergraduates with an increasing burden of debt yet increasingly weakening prospects for employment, and generally telling itself a bunch of lies about the importance of the work it does produce.

This post and the comments following it say volumes. Now, I don't know a whole lot firsthand about how advisers and others writing letters of recommendation for academic job candidates go about their business, but I do recall a post on this same blog about a year ago (I'm too lazy to find it and link) about how search committees looked at letters, especially from advisers, as neither here nor there. As a matter of course, they expected glowing letters. Non-glowing letters might raise a red flag, but, beyond that, a candidate's own materials (and interview, if it got to that stage) mattered a lot more.

Such is slightly absurd, but at least there's some sense to it. Yes, a candidate's own materials SHOULD matter more (even though we are talking about that always ambiguous matter of "fit"), but references of one sort or another are obligatory. Now, however, I am told, that what letters say DOES matter, especially after your first time or two on the market. And not only that, but who writes them at this stage matters more, too. It isn't enough that your adviser, whom you have worked with for 8 years or so, writes you a glowing letter. No, you need other people from outside your grad institution, too. In other words, search committees "like to see that job applicants are networking, conferencing, and reaching beyond their intellectual cradles (so to speak).  It’s a sign of intellectual and professional maturity."

Two things are wrong with this:

1. This profession takes it as a matter of course that people WILL be trying for MORE THAN TWO YEARS (!) to get a job AFTER they have earned the credentials qualifying them for those jobs.
2. In order to be out "networking, conferencing, and reaching beyond their intellectual cradles," they need to retain a foothold inside academe. As adjuncts. As postdocs. As VAPs. In other words, the unspoken subtext here reinforces the "privileges" of affiliation. Just stay in the game, and you'll have a better chance next year. Remain complicit and the system may reward you in time (yeah, like, when Hell freezes over for the majority of us). 

So, I guess I'm already at a disadvantage on this year's market. Not only am I on my third try, but I've not been out networking and blah blah blah like I'm supposed to. Sure, I'm going to a conference in March, but I haven't been to one in over a year. Who has the time or the money? Moreover, I know that at least two of my four committee members can speak outstandingly well about "the importance and value of [my] work." There are two non-committee members I could potentially ask, but why bother these people for the 5-6 jobs I'm applying for, which don't even ask for letters with the initial materials?

Oh, the charades are unending .... because, you know, seriously? Most of this "important and valuable" work will end up gathering dust on the library shelves or off in some obscure, institutionally affiliated, password-protected corner of cyberspace devoted to boring-to-anyone-who-doesn't-have-alphabet-soup-after-their-name academic journals. Really? Lives are at stake? Wars will be won and lost? The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer if this person doesn't get the institutional support of a tenure-track position?

Come on. I'll be the first to say that I find these same dusty tomes worthwhile. They contribute to an ongoing conversation that is itself valuable and important in a "this is humanity trying to figure itself out" sort of way. But really, most of what we do on its own ISN'T important or valuable to anyone outside a very small group of academics -- to the extent that, once we're no longer "still in school," we're supposed to search far and wide for these few people for whom our work IS important and valuable so that they can explain it to search committees who otherwise couldn't figure it out for themselves!!?

This says more about how too many folks on the tenure track see their own work than about the actual work of job candidates.

Absurd.

We. Have. Already. Been. Doing. This. Job. For. Years.

You search committees are fooling yourselves if you think you're doing a service to the profession, the field, or even your own department by believing this process is getting you the very best "fit." For every person you hire, there are a hundred others who could do just as well if not better. Stop wasting your time. Given the number of applications you're getting (that you cannot POSSIBLY sort through with true integrity), you'd do just as well putting all the names in a hat and picking one -- or, hell, pick three or four to interview.

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"A" is also for acquiescence, anger, answers, and action.

Via

Monday RBOC

Nothing especially provocative here today, folks. Just some random Monday thoughts and a few responses to other posts around the blogosphere:

• JC put up a thoughtful post earlier last week about The Two Types of Postacademics. To these two types (the leaver who hates academic life and just wants to get the hell out and the leaver who finds the working conditions unsustainable but still likes the work and wants to keep one foot in the door), I would add a third type: The would-be postacademic who is trapped inside academe, not for lack of trying to get out but because, despite the relative success postacademics like JC and I have experienced finding nonacademic work, it really is NOT a walk in the park for a great many would-be leavers, such as Sisyphus. Go on over to that blog and read some of the posts from back in the spring of 2010 (like this one about "operation moving into parents' basement"). Sisyphus has been on the academic job market since 2006, and when even her adjuncting gigs started to dry up, she started looking for nonacademic work, in conjunction with her ongoing academic searches. For a while it seemed as if this was all to no avail. Even now, she's in the 2nd year of a 2-year postdoc and back on both academic and nonacademic job markets yet again. Things are bleak, my friends. Bleak. Start planning your exit as soon as you possibly can because the nonacademic job scene in your region may present almost as many obstacles as the academic one.
• Over at Selloutyoursoul, James has a post up about a book he has written, soon to be released, about how humanities majors can find nonacademic jobs, as he apparently has recently done. I applaud his efforts and success, but the self-help genre in general really kinda makes me throw up a little in my mouth: Follow X Simple Steps and You, Too, Can Overcome All Your Obstacles and Have the Perfect Career and Life You Always Dreamed About. I haven't read this book (it's not out yet), so I can't comment, but, as with any promise, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
• The same person who invited me to be on a conference panel is now asking me if I want my paper to be in an edited collection ze is putting together on the same subject. I have mixed feelings about this and haven't said yes or no yet. My grad student self would have said, "Oooo, yes! Another publication!! Awesome!!!" My postacademic self says, "Edited collections are a pain in the ass. At best, they take forever. At worst, after taking forever, the project gets canceled (as has since happened with another piece I wrote). Even for purposes of applying for academic jobs this year, I don't need this extra line on my CV. Plus, a longer version of this paper would be part of Project Dissertation to Book. I've already published several articles excerpted from PDB. I fear that publishing too much more of it in other venues would lessen the interest a book press would have in it. Plus further, even should PDB never come to pass, I have other journal options where I could potentially place this paper." Academic readers, what are your thoughts on edited collections?
• Crocodiles with Coffee did a great post last week on how to properly clothe yourself outside academe. Indeed, "a suitable affirmation"! Not every nonacademic job requires you to wear a suit every day. Mine is a good example. While certain occasions (such as events we host on the Heap) do require proper attire, there is no dress code for regular workdays. The thing is, I find that if I don't at least aim for something approaching business casual, I feel less like working. Not that my job requires much focus or anything, but if I'm in baggy jeans or yoga gear, I feel like I should be on the couch lounging with the kittehs, not doing ... well just about any of the random stupid stuff I do around here in the office. Even going out to lunch dressed like a slob (or in some frumpy outfit left over from academe), I feel out of place. So, yeah, figure out the role you think you might want to play as you move into your "next" job and dress the part.
• Next stop, Crapital City, this Thursday:

My Analysis of This Year's Academic Job Market Insanity

A it turns out, the Academic Jobs Wiki has the job listings up that I was grousing about in my previous post (I tend to overreact to things that piss me off), and, based on my ability to compare the wiki to the JIL last year, I think it's pretty accurate. At least, I don't think I'm missing anything important.

So, here's my take on the job situation this year (which was what I was going to write about earlier, had I not had to confront yet another slap in the face from Establishment Academe):

Barring comp positions, generalist positions (although I may give these another look later), VAPs, and postdocs, there are exactly 28 jobs across the U.S. for which, broadly speaking, I am qualified to apply.

That's about what it was last year, and, no, reader, that is not "good." That is not even kinda sorta OK. If there were 30 or 50 or even 200 people seeking these jobs, then maybe it would be OK. But last year, I got letters back saying I was one of 450, 500, 600, and in one case, 700 applicants. That is not "OK." That is .... is there a word that means bleaker than bleak? Because, in addition to everyone that didn't get hired last year, there is now a whole new bright-eyed, bushy-tailed crop of ABDs and recent PhDs headed out on the market.

Now, as if that weren't bad enough, all of those 28 jobs are not actually a good "fit" for me. The post-academic blogosphere lately has been a-buzz with discussions of what constitutes "fit," but on the simplest level, "fit" is about your sub-specializations. Those 28 jobs are grouped together on the job lists by nation and time period, and based on ONLY nation and time period, I am a good match for all of them. Indeed, in a "normal" job market (was there ever such a thing?), you'd expect that someone with a Ph.D. in a particular language and literature would have a chance at getting hired for a position that had a concentration in EITHER fiction or poetry. Or drama, for that matter. And certainly, in terms of my teaching experience, I could make a case for my proven ability to teach in any of these areas. But, alas, my dissertation and publications only deal with one of them. And so, in a candidate pool of (let's be on the generous side here) 600 people, my application is getting tossed out -- no matter how brilliant I am -- right off the bat if my specialty is fiction and the job specifies poetry and 300 of those 600 applicants wrote their dissertations on poetry. Why would I waste my time and money and effort? (And yet, that is the advice job seekers are given when advisers say, "Apply to anything and everything for which you are remotely qualified -- you never know!" Bullshit.)

Add to the poetry/fiction/drama distinction specialty indications in various more narrow time periods. Instead of the 19th c., for example, an ad might specify "the 19th c. with preference given to those whose work focuses on the Romantics." If your dissertation is on the Realists or Naturalists, you're fucked and you should just not bother, even if you know a thing or two about the Romantics and wouldn't mind taking your research in that direction. And, further, there are preferences expressed for specialization in various regional and ethnic literatures. Even if you have an interest in X, taught a course with a unit on X, wrote a chapter of your dissertation on X, there are umpteen hundreds of candidates who did their whole dissertations on X. Don't waste your time.

So, let's recalibrate. The new number of jobs for which I am qualified to apply, readjusted for these various sub-specializations, is 13.

That's right, kids, a whopping 13 jobs for how many hundreds of applicants?

YeeaaaAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Here are a few more things worthy of note:

• Among those original 28 jobs is one at Grad U, a job in an area in which there must be at least 50 adjuncts who would kill for a chance to prove themselves on the tenure track. Grad U, you motherfuckers, why don't you promote an adjunct, somebody that already has a proven track record of teaching in the department?
• Of the 13 jobs that "fit" me, only 5-6 actually interest me (a variety of idiosyncratic reasons).
• Salaries aren't listed for most of the jobs, but there are some. These jobs describe themselves as "competitive," but, from where I'm sitting right now with a glimpse of the Great Nonacademic Beyond, they seem more pathetic than competitive, especially if you're asking somebody to pick up and move across the country. You know who a salary of $50K for teaching 4/4 might seem "competitive" to? Burned out, impoverished adjuncts, that's who. You see how this works? This SYSTEMIC problem of labor exploitation is already affecting assistant profs, the group that comprises the next step up in the hierarchy after adjuncts. If you're comfortably situated on the tenure track now and don't think the problems of current job seekers are relevant to you, think again. If you care at all about the future of the profession, you should be getting involved in changing the system.

So, here's where I stand: There are a couple of jobs that seem like a good enough "fit," from my standpoint at least, to be worthwhile applying for, and I will apply for them. One -- and this is now at the top of my list -- is even close enough to where I live that I wouldn't have to move (though it would be a serious bit of a commute). Also, this is NOT an "elite" school. It is very much within the realm  of possibility in terms of likelihood to hire someone from someplace like Grad U.

However, friends, while I may be casting about one more time, I really have no expectations. As I've said before, I like teaching, I like research, I like writing. I would like to be able to do these things as my job -- and to get paid for doing them as my job, well, let's start with at least as much as I'm earning as a secretary ... and that ain't much!

For all that I might like such a job, I am also more than well aware -- now much more so than I was the first time I went on the market (this is my 3rd time) -- that this profession is seriously dysfunctional and that taking such a job in certain environments is ethically unsound.

So, we'll see. Some afternoon when Think Tank Boss is on the road, I'll put together my 5-6 applications and send them out, and then I will forget about all of this nonsense. If something comes of it? Fine, we'll take that step by step. If nothing comes of it? Fine. I will be done with this parody of a profession once and for all. I will cast my career lot elsewhere and pursue my research and writing interests independently.

And, friends, this is about as sane a take as I can possibly hope to offer you on the insanity that is the academic job market.

Via

Your MLA Membership Is No Longer Enough to Get You Access to the Job Information List

Dear MLA:

I have been a member of your organization for the last decade. Paying my dues while in graduate school was a sacrifice, but I kept up with them because I valued the work you do for the profession. Not only that, but I've contributed to the life of the organization and the profession by presenting on panels at several different annual conventions.

To date, I remain a member in good standing, but I renewed my membership this year primarily because I wanted access to the Job Information List. Sadly, once I finished graduate school and was no longer still a "student," I had to quit my job as an adjunct because I couldn't support myself on the salary and could no longer, in good faith, take handouts from my family. Indeed, had I not had a supportive partner and family, I may well have faced the prospect of food stamps while an adjunct. Choosing to take a nonacademic position was a no-brainer, but, at the same time, I'm still on the fence about whether I want to pursue a career as a professor. At the very least, I wanted to take a good look at this year's JIL, decide if there were any positions for which I seemed a good enough "fit" to apply, and, if there were, go ahead and apply for them.

So, when I finally made my way over to your website today and logged in, I was extremely disappointed and exasperated to find the following statement posted:

Beginning in August, if you are not in a member department, you may join ADE [Association of Departments of English] as an affiliate member to receive access to the JIL.

I was already well aware of how individual institutions privilege affiliation, but why, when you allow me to join the MLA as an "independent scholar," do I need FURTHER affiliation to access the JIL? At the time that I renewed my membership for 2011 at a cost of $70, I was NOT informed that I would have to pay MORE, an additional $80 (!), to have access to the JIL. I identified myself at the time as an "independent scholar" (I could have lied) and, given that dues are progressive and based on income, I was honest about choosing the appropriate income category (again, I could have lied). There was NOTHING about having to join an ADDITIONAL professional organization -- for a profession about which I already have serious misgivings -- in order to view an MLA resource.

I can only conclude that the MLA is choosing to reinforce its complicity with the system of contingent faculty serfdom that plagues this profession. As long as we continue to work as adjunct serfs, the MLA is more than willing to gift us with the privileges of "affiliation." But challenge the hierarchy and the system by opting out, and oops! Sorry!! No more JIL for you!!! You must have given up. Only people who still BELIEVE are welcome. You must BELIEVE enough in The Profession to sacrifice your dignity and well-being, and perhaps then we will condescend to offer you a MERE LOOK at the list of this year's jobs, many of which you are more than qualified for but none of which you will ever be a good enough "fit" to have.

Really, what does the "privilege" of viewing the JIL do for us anyway but reinforce the delusion that, this year, there is "hope," that, this year, all is not "bleak" --  that, this year, we might find the "right" job for which we are the perfect "fit," and that, indeed, this year offers ever so much more promise for a better future in the profession than last year did?

If MLA leadership really cared about EVERYONE in this profession and not just those within the tenure system, they would be encouraging adjuncts to do just what I've done and walk away -- that is, until pay and working conditions improve. They would be more actively promoting alternative careers for Ph.D.s. They would be seriously involved in supporting efforts to shrink graduate programs.

But what would happen if more of us -- if large numbers of us -- were to "just say no" to disgracefully low pay, no job security, no benefits, and no opportunities for promotions and raises despite good performance? What would happen is that compensation for ALL faculty positions would have to become more competitive, that the tenure system would have to be reevaluated and made more just, and that both universities and our society more generally would have to reckon more seriously with the REAL costs of higher education.

All of which would mean publicly questioning the myth of meritocracy that props up the current system of rank and privilege. After all, how would those on the tenure track know just how special they were if it weren't for the bilious masses on the adjunct track who, year after year after pathetic year, look hopefully to the JIL, like Tantalus, for the fruit of respectable employment that is forever out of reach?

So, what am I going to do? Am I going to pay the extra $80 to join the ADE? I don't know. I will probably, at the very least, take a good, hard look at the postings at Inside Higher Ed first. And you know what else? I figured I'd just continue to renew my dues every year, at least until I figured out what this business of being an "independent scholar" meant for my post-academic life, but fuck that, MLA. Don't count on me to renew my membership and waste even more money on dues in 2012.

Best,
recent Ph.D.

Honey Badger Don't Give a Shit About the MLA Job Information List

So, word has it that the MLA Job Information List is up. Awesome! I haven't troubled myself to look yet, but if you have and are freaking out at what's out there (or, like NOT out there!) and the whole prospect of writing all those shitty letters and sending out your materials for shitty jobs you could give a shit about but think you desperately want anyway ... well, I got news for you!

The Honey Badger could give a shit about the JIL, and you, friends, need to be a little more like The Honey Badger. Just watch this video. Imagine you're The Honey Badger ... and those jobs? (Wait, what jobs?) Those jobs? Just imagine those jobs are the rats and snakes and larvae The Honey Badger likes to eat. And you just annihilate those applications, like The Honey Badger! Rip 'n shred those motherfuckers!!

Srsly, people, you need to watch this video:

Now, don't you feel better?