many tt profs today could not get a tt-pos if they were on the market today
Do you mean if they had the level experience they had just starting out? If they went on the market now, they'd have "been in a tenure track" on their resumes and would have an in. The problem isn't that the track has narrowed, it's that it's closed.
― mh, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
tt hasn't closed by any means fwiw, it's just hard to get
― Euler, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
Well, the few times it's open, it's also narrowed, too.
― mh, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:00 (twelve years ago) link
if enough ppl were concerned with tt jobs howevz many years ago, maybe now we wouldn't be concerned with adjuncts instead. i mean...
sure, and this would be a better place to be starting out from when the higher ed crisis really starts to unfold
― iatee, Tuesday, 27 March 2012 21:02 (twelve years ago) link
fwiw, I am a tenured faculty member with ambiguous feelings about tenure; I think it suppresses wages at the top, actually. but I am getting kinda snobby here so I should back off.
you have the wall st 'in a free market, talent is gonna get paidddd' thing going and that story might make sense for wall st, people whose marginal value is very, very easy to measure* and who produce something w/ a measurable return. philosophy professors *do not do that*. your economic value is due to a. having a (de facto) union card b. the institutional norms of departments that 'compete' but as non-market actors and on their own terms. the only thing that can be easily liberalized and priced is that of teaching - which is already happening - and the market value is 'not very much'.
*I know this is not true, but it's 'the story'
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:18 (twelve years ago) link
er 'is that of teaching' = 'is teaching'
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:19 (twelve years ago) link
If you're really really good you'll still get a good job ime. If you're pretty good but not really really good - good enough to teach interesting courses, do some useful research - then you'll have to make a lot of compromises wrt what you want from life if you decide to stay in academia.
or else the grad student life is superficially slack enough that they slack & then are uncompetitive when the hungry ones completely outclass them
This is me, I think :( Still hanging in there, but I haven't really made a big *splash* yet and unless things change soon I can see the day when I leave for easier pastures and wonder whether that really was the best thing to do with 10 years of my life.
― James Bond Jor (seandalai), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:33 (twelve years ago) link
dude that's not true & I mean this with love but it just shows that you don't understand how Big Academia works, even in philolsophy: we get grants from industry, from govs, we schmooze with donors, we write shit people pay to read, we help scientists do their shit better. & yes we teach a bunch of credit hours too. but our contracts are for like 50% teaching 40% research 10% service & that's not because of the graciousness of the taxpayer, it's because we help everyone get paid. teaching def ain't the only thing with a "measurable return"
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:39 (twelve years ago) link
xp to iatee , to seandalai it sounds like it's time to rethink & maybe ask your advisor the hard q's about what she thinks about your prospects
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:40 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/7C3039DD-EF79-4E75-A20D-6F75BA01BE84/0/Trends.pdf
again 'really really good' isn't a concrete thing, it's contextual and the context is gonna continue to shift. these charts reflect *the bubble years*
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:45 (twelve years ago) link
show the raw numbers though, also # of credit hours per staff member
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:46 (twelve years ago) link
― Euler, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 8:39 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I mean this with love - you don't understand what 'measurable return' means. 'schoozing with donors' and 'help scientists do their shit better' do not fall under 'measurable return'.
it's not just the graciousness of the taxpayer either - it's also the graciousness of 18 year old kids. both of which are prob going to be less gracious in the future.
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:51 (twelve years ago) link
then "measurable return" is just lame corporate speak for something useless
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:53 (twelve years ago) link
money?
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:54 (twelve years ago) link
iatee: in most branches of academia, money is deeply tied to grants + research funding + lab funding etc. as well.
― s.clover, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:55 (twelve years ago) link
ie this leads to what you corporate types live off of! There's a return! Economists are so lame that they can't measure it; they should try harder, esp given their silly salaries & dumb curricula
& as I've conceded before 18 year olds prob ought to pay less for no name schools but flagship type ed is still great value, even by your sclerotic measures
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:57 (twelve years ago) link
also, would be interested in those charts both in absolute figures, and scaled by students. also, broken out by 4yr institutions, universities vs. colleges, etc.
― s.clover, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:57 (twelve years ago) link
yes
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:58 (twelve years ago) link
ppl in very many fields also can tell what "good work" is or is not by some measure beyond simply relative.
― s.clover, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 01:59 (twelve years ago) link
― s.clover, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 8:57 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
here's 1997-2007 http://www.aftface.org/storage/face/documents/ameracad_report_97-07for_web.pdf
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:25 (twelve years ago) link
Public research universities actually experienced growth in the proportion of full- time faculty hired into tenured and tenure-track positions. The proportion of full- time faculty members hired into tenured and tenure-track positions grew from 42 percent in 1997 to 46 percent in 2007, while the proportion of nontenured newly hired faculty declined from 58 percent to 54 percent between 1997 and 2007.
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:38 (twelve years ago) link
that's only looking at the group 'full-time faculty', which is a group of declining importance. they declined by 5.8% at public research universities as a proportion of total instructional staff.
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:43 (twelve years ago) link
― s.clover, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 8:55 PM (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
that's true and is on the more 'measurable' side of things though not entirely / is also why I picked a branch of academia that the institution doesn't depend on as much for research $ as my example.
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:51 (twelve years ago) link
we do fine for grants fwiw, maybe try picking on a less sciency humanities field?
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:55 (twelve years ago) link
also the data would be better if it told us # of credit hours per instructor, since that's a # deans care about
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:58 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not picking on anyone, I'm just reminding you that you get paid to do something that doesn't have a completely measurable economic value, so maybe don't worry about being underpaid cause of the tenure system
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 02:59 (twelve years ago) link
let's talk about your mom's measurable economic value, then
― Euler, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 03:03 (twelve years ago) link
her economic value is infinite she produced the smartest human being in history via 'labor'
― iatee, Wednesday, 28 March 2012 03:05 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.esquire.com/features/young-people-in-the-recession-0412#ixzz1qWgDYvmb
― iatee, Thursday, 29 March 2012 17:38 (twelve years ago) link
i think thats a really good article
― Lamp, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:01 (twelve years ago) link
he really economizes those 3 pages! these things are usually filled w/ anecdotal examples but he just plows through 20 subjects
― iatee, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:11 (twelve years ago) link
haha totally! its obv not super nuanced but it hits really hard, its unrelenting and i think the tone is really right
― Lamp, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:14 (twelve years ago) link
Critics may argue that teaching faculty members require long hours for preparation, grading and advising. Therefore they would have us believe that despite teaching only 12 to 15 hours a week, their workloads do approximate those of other upper-middle-class professionals. While time outside of class can vary substantially by discipline and by the academic cycle (for instance, more papers and tests to grade at the end of a semester), the notion that faculty in teaching institutions work a 40-hour week is a myth.
Citation?
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:20 (twelve years ago) link
Teaching three courses last semester probably amounted to a 60-h week.
Teaching one course this semester, on the other hand, leads me to a second occupation posting to message boards.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:21 (twelve years ago) link
The esquire article is ok but I'm very politically suspicious of the anti-boomer narrative circulating right now (even though that article at least hedges on whether it's actually their fault).
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:22 (twelve years ago) link
why are you suspicious?
― Lamp, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:23 (twelve years ago) link
it all interlocks a little too conveniently with the conservative agenda (the 60s represent moral bankruptcy, too much freedom is bad, "entitlement spending" is the cause of all our problems, etc.)
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:29 (twelve years ago) link
huh?
― iatee, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
it also conveniently absolves things like trade policy and financial deregulation of any contribution they've made to our economic decline
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:30 (twelve years ago) link
"boomer" is practically code for "big government liberal"
― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
waht
― iatee, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:31 (twelve years ago) link
Democrats may not be actively hostile to the interests of young voters, but they are too scared and weak to speak up for them. So when the Boomers and swing voters scream for fiscal discipline and the hard decisions have to be made, youth is collateral damage. Medicare and Social Security were mostly untouched in Obama's 2012 budget. But to show he was really serious about belt tightening, relatively cheap programs that help young people like the Adolescent Family Life Program and the Career Pathways Innovation Fund were killed.
― iatee, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:34 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah, half of that piece seems to be attacking Republican tax cuts.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:37 (twelve years ago) link
Our classes have swollen to such an extent that my university is experimenting with what it calls "graders": adjuncts who do the work of TA's but aren't considered such because they have experience dealing with student complaints and subbing for the prof. I'm done it for two years. On the one hand it's real easy money: adjunct pay without worrying about going to class every day (you show up when it's time to collect an essay or grade blog posts); on the other, I worry that this is the future of adjuncting: don't give an adjunct a full class but keep him as an appendage.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:40 (twelve years ago) link
wait, so these aren't just students doing it?
lots of full-time students get a stipend for grading, but I've never heard of paying non-students to do this; weird
― Euler, Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:43 (twelve years ago) link
The argument is: experienced adjuncts don't need supervision from the "primary instructor" and can handle students. I don't get a grade or evaluated for my performance either.
I have two classes like this now but thankfully I've got a third that's 100% my own.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:44 (twelve years ago) link
I've read about some schools outsourcing grading to India!
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:45 (twelve years ago) link
(Also, I am reminded again of the benefits of working in Saskatchewan.)
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:46 (twelve years ago) link
But you're giving the full stipend of an adjunct?
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Thursday, 29 March 2012 19:47 (twelve years ago) link