In an advice column published over at the Chronicle, William Pannapacker explores the somewhat puritanical approach that many professors have in their job.
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“Behind every suggestion that academics are not working as hard as we should be—expressed in countless op-eds and speeches—is an argument for more cuts to education: the elimination of tenure-track positions, more accountability measures, and the closing of entire departments. The recession has intensified the resentment many people feel toward professors who appear to have job security, good benefits, and relatively high incomes. Hardly anyone seems to know that most college teachers are adjuncts and that graduate students have none of those privileges. Our scholarly projects are met with incredulity that anyone could have paid for them.
Those tendencies have been in academe throughout its history, but the intensity of that culture today is a reflection of economic and social pressure to which our profession has been subjected for more than 40 years—for so long that few of us can remember a time when it wasn’t this way; when students could pay their tuition through part-time and summer jobs, and did not live in perpetual fear of unemployment.”
To read more, visit the original article at the Chronicle.
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Ruminations on academia’s “apocalyptic outlook,” from the perspective of a tenured English professor. Original article in the Advice column of The Chronicle of Higher Education.