particularly in the humanities, really does run counter to our society's professed bottom line, which is profit
Why the emphasis on humanities here? Humanities research costs very little and they do the bulk of teaching GE's, etc, making their universities a tidy profit.
Cultural riches suck ass, but knowing things is fun.
1: I was thinking compared to science research, particularly the stuff that gets used by industry. But it was pretty sloppy of me to write it that way. I've got half a brain at the moment.
3: I figured, I just had to stand up for my side of the university - and I thought to myself, but wait! Heebie must be on our side too! I shall point this out in an annoying manner.
I'm not even sure how to state it more accurately.
5: Take out the words that are there and substitute some different words. (You're welcome!)
The humanities run counter to our professed bottom line, which is lean and muscular from all our time at the gym, like a pair of cycling shorts that have maybe should have been thrown away last season.
5: What about something like, "research without direct practical implications" or the like? I mean, it's not like lab scientists never waste money on fruitless projects, or that all physicists or mathematicians end up producing profit.
Remove the phrase "particularly in the humanities".
I found Gelman's response hilarious, if only for the part where he says "well, it must be so nice to be able to get things off your chest. How delightful for them!"
A "half-dozen or so articles" enough for tenure? For my advisor it was more like a half-dozen articles per year for ten years. Older faculty really did have it easy, I think.
I mean, it's not like lab scientists never waste money on fruitless projects
They often spend money on worthwhile projects that do not result in financial profit.
13: True enough. I'm whole-heartedly for funding everyone! Everyone gets money! That being said, I know of a few that really were just completely wasted. (That's going to be the case in every field, I know.)
Also, being in the humanities, I think it should be clear that I value knowledge for knowledge's sake.
Okay, maybe I'm making an invalid comparison across fields. But even in my field I know that back in the 60s people could get tenure having published only a handful of papers. Now it's barely possible to get an assistant faculty job at all without having written about twenty.
I am all in favor of having academics do useless research and have comfortable jobs, but I want it spread around more evenly. Right now you have a handful of tenured professors who can slack off or write on whatever they want, and a small army of overworked, underpaid adjuncts, with no security or academic freedom.
If it takes abolishing tenure to get the wealthh spread more evenly, so be it.
I am all in favor of having academics do useless research and have comfortable jobs, but I want it spread around more evenly.
Rob should run for president.
"particularly in the humanities" is accurate if you consider that the humanities are much more likely have the types of people who drive the profit lovers/right wingers insane.
Rob will have a hard time winning the election, with Joe the Professor lining up against him.
Since 18.2 demonstrates that rob went to the Barack Obama School for Negotiation, President does seem like a natural next step.
22: He's conceding all goals before negotiations even start, so that "compromise" ends up being pretty close to the original right-wing position, which has since drifted rightward?
Since he starts with the idea of abolishing tenure, I would say so.
Those of us in fields with no adjuncts are probably going to be hard to convince to give up the tenure system.
I'm not conceding all goals. I'm conceding the main goal of tenured faculty. Also, I think its time we admit that tenured faculty and adjunct faculty have different interests.
25: Physics has no adjuncts? Really?
I mean, I know a physics adjunct.
27: Well, none that are tenured. Or tenure-track.
27: They just can't account for them. It's the big flaw in their Theory of Everything.
The only physics adjuncts I know are the kind where they have a permanent job at one place and some kind of visiting job somewhere else. I mean, I'm sure there are some actual adjuncts somewhere in the world, but there certainly aren't very many of them, because few enough people take physics classes that there isn't a need for extra people with teaching-only jobs.
31: I think that you might be thinking only about R1 type schools here. Obviously you know your field way better than I do, and I could be convinced that the person I know is a complete outlier. (He teaches at a very small liberal arts college that doesn't have enough funds to actually have an entire physics department.) I realize that's a completely different sort of picture than a small tier of tenured faculty + many adjunct minions doing the actual teaching, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a fair number of such people teaching in community colleges, etc.
17: The 1960s were before the heyday of the least publishable unit. That shit has gotten way out of hand. Stuff that ought to be one solid paper is instead up to ten shitty ones. Tenure committees don't actually read the damn things, so it's no obstacle to success.
33: That's not just the tenure committee. At least in medical research, you often need to publish preliminary stuff to get money to do the next step.
33: No, that doesn't explain it either. People back then could get tenure in theoretical physics even having written a handful of short papers, all under 10 pages. It was really, really easy to get tenure in those days. People now routinely produce four or five 30-page papers per year. The people who go overboard on least publishable units write ten or twenty 10-page-or-less papers per year. They're still producing much more work every year than some older people I can name produced in their whole career.
32: True! I don't know anything about community colleges.
I see Community on Thursday nights, but now the TV season is over.
37: College wide, Last Chance Community College is about 80% dependent on adjunct labor, and in the Arts and Humanities we are about 70%. I don't think the hard sciences can deviate far from that average.
...even having written a handful of short papers, all under 10 pages.
I do like that the papers have gotten shorter because people seem to be getting to the point much quicker. I don't think you can directly equate effort with page count.
People back then could get tenure in immunology even having written a handful of short papers, all under 10 pages. It was really, really easy to get tenure in those days. People now routinely produce three or four 12-page papers per year. The people who go overboard on least publishable units write six or eight 10-page-or-less papers per year. They're still producing much more work every year than some older people I can name produced in their whole career.
I do like that the papers have gotten shorter because people seem to be getting to the point much quicker. I don't think you can directly equate effort with page count.
In my field the papers have gotten shorter because they're all accompanied by an online PDF of supplementary data. The standard paper in "Science" or "Nature" is basically unreadable because it has to contain three times as much data as an average paper in an average journal, in 1/3 the space. Plus a 25-page PDF that you have root through to figure out what's going on.
Plus a 25-page PDF that you have root through to figure out what's going on.
Often it is that complex. Often it seems complex because there are 14 authors with different interests or because somebody should have done another draft.
Then there are the experimental particle physicists, who need 14 pages just to list the names of all their co-authors.
A few years into grad school, I went to a presentation that was all about how to get your dissertation turned into a published book. Just before it started, I turned to a friend of mine who was sitting next to me and said: "Shouldn't [friend's adviser, whose career started in the 1960s] be here?"
(Although, the fact is that the friend's adviser has been quite influential and has published some articles that were near book length. That kind of trajectory should have stayed possible, but history went book-crazy long ago.)
My dissertation was published as a book, of course.
My dissertation killed as many trees as a published book even thought I never finished it.
47,48: Not that I've read it, but I can judge a book by its cover.
The cover was a most serious endeavor.
Was your dissertation an automated logging machine but you never finished the "off" switch?
I like how Rubinstein has to neatly undermine his own argument in order to defend himself against his former chairs.
52: Close, but his peculiar design was always doomed to fail because it required that the incoming pieces of wood do the Samba, and everyone knows it's extremely difficult to teach a log a rhythm.
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Okay, no more bad jokes—I'm off to swim see an overpriced concert!
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57: He's being paid to watch Great Big Sea.
I tried academia, but just couldn't hack it. It was so hard! Mom says I'm better off working at the Radio Shack anyhow. It's right beside the Cinnabuns! YUM!!!
I love how his department heads pretend to have been left in the dark. "We had no clue, we wish somebody had come to us." Nobody was preventing them from sitting in on one of his classes or reading his evaluations.
My favorite comment from RMP (2.3 rating) is this puzzling remark:
Nobody understands what he is talking about. Everyday he comes in with an empty coffee cup and takes sips throughout the class even though there is nothing in his cup!!!
Also, there's Build-a-Bear across the mall. Last Thanksgiving, I made a turkey with two hearts! GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!! He's the best. Sometimes I just lie in bed all day tickling him. He LOVES my ToStickles!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! ToStickles! I got 'em!
Not really relevant to this post, but my favorite example of a student's public rating gone awry was when someone posted a huge rant - maybe on livejournal? - about how horrible a professor was and how the grading was unfair and it was almost believable--except then at the end the student posted an actual paper that was a source of the complaint. A horrible, horrible paper, as many of the student's commenters were quick to point out.
From the OP:
If Rubenstein believes that everything should be evaluated on how profitable it is, then he has a point.
I didn't really get that that was his point.
Rather, he's pissed off about what he considers to be the ideological straitjacket -- liberalism, progressivism -- of universities in general and sociology in particular. He'd like to be ashamed that he's taking in so much money and benefits post-retirement, money that he feels he doesn't deserve, at least in comparison to the struggles other people are experiencing, and wants other tenured profs to think about this too. He thinks the higher educational system is failing in its mission to create and nurture critically thinking students who are actually of some use -- and that's the closest I come to reading him as making remarks about profit-generation.
That's my charitable reading.
60: Everyday he comes in with an empty coffee cup and takes sips throughout the class even though there is nothing in his cup!
That... that's a little odd.
I do sort of get the impression, at most universities, that though department heads could theoretically sit in on people's classes and read their student evaluations, they a) typically don't really have the time and b) doing so would fly in the face of the culture of mutual respect and presumed independence on which academic departments tend to operate. Supervisors of fellow faculty are not "managers" in a corporate sense.
66: (b) is certainly correct in my experience. It would have been considered very bizarre indeed for anyone to sit in on a tenured professor's classes. For one thing, supposing the sitter-in felt something was amiss in the class, what is he or she to do about it? Deliver a stern talking-to to the professor? I really don't know what structures are available for remediation in such a case.
Agreed, just pointing out they had every opportunity to find out if they wanted to. "Nobody told us!" assumes they wanted to know or would have done something, which is not the case.
In any event, I suspect that many of us have experience in a department in which there's at least one senior faculty member just treading water. The one I TA'd for -- along with two other grad students -- delivered intensely boring, rote lectures, which I made it through myself only because I was attending to what I needed to fill in and build upon in section for the undergrads. To help them out. The prof did exercise due diligence in meeting weekly with us TAs to discuss the proceedings; unfortunately, he also insisted that we upgrade horrible papers, such that any student submission whatsoever, even a hand-scribbled incoherent one-page paper, be considered no worse than a C. Hrmph.
Everyone knew this about him, though I don't know if the higher-ups (the revolving chairs) did. It's really not clear what, if anything, they could have done about it. He was otherwise quite charming and mild, and his wife was lovely.
66
In our department, the chair wouldn't be caught dead in another faculty member's class, but every faculty member's teaching is evaluated by another faculty member at least every two years. This includes sitting in on a class.
Most departments (in my field) have at least one deadweight faculty member. Usually someone who worked hard to get tenure but then burned out. They no longer do research and their teaching is usually terrible because a) they don't care and know they can't be fired, and b) they are often intensely bitter about their failed research program so they take it out on the only people they can, the students.
65 is more charitable than I can buy. I think he's saying:
1. Suckers, look how much I got overpaid.
2. Even the hardworking profs are mostly just screwing around with mental masturbation
3. Therefore the tax-payers are getting screwed.
In other words, the point of a job is to optimize your ratio of money to hours worked, and the point of any consumer/taxpayer in society is to get as much material benefit as possible while paying as little as possible. Ie profit-based.
69: "Nobody told us!" may mean that whatever means there might have been that would have justified official action on their part were not employed on anyone's part.
But no, I don't know what means those would have been.
69
Most of the time nothing can be done. Being mediocre or lazy is not sufficient to get you fired from most jobs, let alone a tenured position.
73:
2. seems right. 3. seems right. I'm willing to buy 1, minus the "suckers" part. He's not crowing over the taxpayers getting screwed in this case, but wringing his hands about it. Somewhat theatrically.
It seems clear to me that he was indeed overpaid, but it's not clear that he's arguing that as much labor as possible should be gotten for as little money as possible. Rather, that the value should be commensurate with the compensation. (Granted, parties will differ tremendously on how to measure that value, and there's the sticking point, and in fact it may be the case that Rubenstein would measure that value very differently from the rest of us, but I can't get from there to the proposition that he believes that everybody should be working at, say, adjunct wages.)
...but wringing his hands about it. Somewhat theatrically.
Like Lady MacBeth as seen in a high school play.
He's a member of a privileged class mentioning that he's a member of a privileged class, in his view, and saying that other members of his class are likewise privileged. He thinks they aren't delivering, just as he didn't.
Yes, it's weird, and inflected with all sorts of resentful stuff, but I have to say that retiring with the guarantee of 80% of your final salary annually for the rest of your life is indeed extraordinary.
It is at that, depending on what your final annual salary is.
You can bump it up at the end by working overtime.
I fully understand that Rubenstein's piece is, in several parts, a veiled attack on what he understands to be the liberal state. He's not exactly subtle about it. However, he has one or two points.
How do you work overtime as a prof?
Plus, retirement is at age 70.
I've always been amazed at how few slackers there are among tenured profs. Yeah, I've encountered a couple, including one who like Parsi's didn't allow us to fail anyone. Most, however, continue to work hard after getting full prof status.
I've always been amazed at how few slackers there are among tenured profs.
Me too. Why there was no real possibility of me becoming one.
81: Rubenstein said he retired at 64 and bumped up his final salary by teaching summer classes the summer before. You'd have to read the Rubenstein piece, first one linked in the OP.
One thing left out of some discussions of retirement plans that offer incentives for people to come back and add to their income by doing essentially their old jobs part time is that if you get enough people to do this, you can avoid hiring new full-time employees, which can lead to overall savings (and a certain amount of frustration for younger job-seekers watching positions disappear) as that means no need to pay for training, health care, an additional (no doubt smaller) pension plan, and other benefits. This happens in libraries.
Just like in real life, almost no academics get defined benefit plans anymore. The Illinois academic system is one of the last holdouts.
All the essay reveals is that Rubenstein is an opportunistic fuckhead. If he really believed it was so unfair, he should have resigned and done something worthwhile. Instead, he has chosen to write a passive-aggressive ideologically driven screed.
Just like in real life, almost no academics get defined benefit plans anymore. The Illinois academic system is one of the last holdouts.
Coincidentally, Illinois is actually raising taxes to deal with the baffling problem of a lack of tax revenue, instead of the normal procedure of lowering taxes and jacking up unemployment rates.
Because I'm not paid like a staff member of the Illinois academic system allowed to tweet pictures of my balls anymore, I'm attempting to regrout the bathroom floor tile as a way to save money perform mascultinity.
I'm wondering how fucking lazy it is if I just left the stupid toilet there and figured nobody will see that grout anyway? Also, the washer and dryer.
88: Your washer and dryer is in the bathroom? I've seen a house that had them in the kitchen but I can't recall ever seeing a combination bathroom/laundry room.
I pee very poorly, so we had them moved.
There's a laundry closet in the back of the bathroom with the same flooring as the rest of the bathroom. I decided just to leave the grout there. I'm still afraid of pulling the toilet up, but think I may have to.
That didn't go well. Some people blame the white man. Other people say no matter who was in flooring at Home Depot, it just wasn't going to work.
92: You should have gone to Home Despot. They tell you exactly what to do.
The bathroom floor now is about 1/3 de-grouted tile, 1/3 bare plywood, and 1/3 grout so strong it laughs at diamond-crusted bits. Off to swim a very late dinner.
Your washer and dryer is in the bathroom? I've seen a house that had them in the kitchen but I can't recall ever seeing a combination bathroom/laundry room.
I don't think I've ever seen an apartment where that isn't the case. Not so much in American houses, but European ones as well.
In my grad school apartment, the bathtub/shower was in the bedroom. I loved that so, so much.
96: I am imagining a waterproof bedspread, and H-G groggily turning off the alarm and turning on the shower in the same move. Probably not very practical that way, though.
You could just sleep in the bathtub!