Help, I'm trapped in an ivory tower! Or "what the fuck am i getting myself into with this academia stuff"

on search committee again this year

it won't take long just watch and see how the fellas lay their money down

another reassuring sign: 'customer service' link on a school's main page.

i am meeting grade grubbing for the first time in my career.

good luck usa.

it's repulsive. i want to take more points away.

is it pre-med students? yes it is pre-med students.

they are the worst

prepare for a call from the dean, srsly

yeah i am keeping copies of things.

since I already embarrassingly overshared on this thread i figured i owed an update on my book situation: split decision! well, the "negative" review wasn't all bad, it was "revise and resubmit." the editor, however, thinks the second reviewer "didn't get it" and wants to move on and try to get contract approval anyway. I have to write a diplomatic and polite response to the dissenting review for her to present to the board. fun times! i shouldn't complain though, this is (somewhat) good news!

is it pre-med students? yes it is pre-med students.

as someone who was once applying to med school i am half-sympathetic to these people (esp since here the gpa cut-off for the last 5 years has been 4.0) but lol yes, otm &c

ha i understand where it comes from. it's a bad situation. 4.0 is insane.

but in this case it isn't an a/a- borderline thing. this person is dreadful both academically (like my bet is she'll get a b-/c+ at the end of the semester on a course with an a- average, she's worse than the football players!) and in character, and the people who've told her she could be a doctor (her parents, her teachers?) have done her a terrible disservice.

ha caek like I dunno if you want to be a usa prof but if yes then this is like a daily thing

ha well 90% certain i'm not staying in academia, but if i were, the first thing i would do is leave the usa, but that's for unrelated reasons.

i have regular pre-med students who are a-/a and i expected that and can handle them. i can handle this girl too. it's just kind of shocking because it reflects so appallingly on whatever education and moral support and guidance she's had for the previous 17 years. i want to call her parents and ask to speak to any younger siblings in case they're doing the same thing to them.

perhaps she's a legacy admit

i almost never have gotten that anywhere except at the private school i taught at

i taught a class of 10 once in which 8 were either pre-med or pre-law. for the most part they were pretty great but you could tell school was very much a case of jumping through hoops for them. they simply wanted to perform well for me, and could probably take or leave any of the actual stuff discussed in class.

not that anyone should feel bad for getting a full-time college teaching gig, much less tenure

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/11/competing_for_tenure_is_like_competing_to_be_a_drug_lord.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/events/archive/2013/12/for-top-tier-universities-changes-in-higher-education-might-be-overblown/282180/

u of washington president:

Somebody once asked me how many professors work for me, and I said if you can ever find a professor who thinks he or she works for anybody, let me know.

heh

I jokingly call my chair my boss, but only when I want that person to take responsibility for something I don't want to bother with

i explained subordination to my students with the idea of an org chart, which only depressed me by how much institution seems to be bearing down on me for having so few people over me in the chart

if I just said "well the board of trustees and president and chancellor and provost and dean and chair are over me", it would be deceptive since it's really the *offices* of all those above me, which is like thousands of people since there are beaucoup deanlets and so on

and they're actually really, really nice

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/16/tenured-professor-boulder-says-she-being-forced-out-over-lecture-prostitution

worrying

my august employer http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/12/loyola_employees_camp_out_to_t.html#incart_flyout_news

how much of that is katrina-related and how much is just the usual academic budget disaster?

absurd mismanagement, overpriced c-list liberal arts school, faculty run amok.

katrina did wonders for private higher ed in new orleans as the city became a magnet for starry eyed do gooder types and profiteering "entrepreneurial" carpetbaggers. universities used sudden "financial exigencies" to purge faculty rolls of dissenters and underperforming-but-valuable programs (tulane axed CIVIL ENGINEERING after katrina ffs).

what's happening now is the inevitable easing of the post-k gold rush combined with the Death of Higher Education combined with a university so crippled by bureaucracy that librarians are tenured.

i think it's common for university librarians to be tenured.

i 'almost' got a job at loyno a few years back, seeing that makes me feel a tiny bit relieved, but then again i don't know anyone with a job whose institution isn't more or less on the brink of shutting down or turning into a degree mill

i don't think it's all that common these days. and from grueling firsthand experience it really shouldn't be. the real threats to academic freedom (a la your link earlier today) should be fought but diluting the pool with a bunch of frauds taking 6-month research leaves to assemble anecdotal evidence about library seating patterns doesn't help anybody and really just makes academia appear even more absurd to those not firmly attached to its teat.

haha ok sorry. so much rage.

what's going down here right now is that every college at loyno has to shrink its personnel budget by a certain percentage. that early retirement might help but what we were told is that only staff would be cut. the university wishes to retain the "special qualities" of its tenured/tenure-track faculty (all the adjuncts and extraordinary are p much gone already and there aren't any in the library anyway) so the entire burden of the layoffs falls on the (small, hardworking) staff. my job is not in danger as these morons wouldn't know what to fucking do with any of their tech shit if i weren't here but it's still infuriating.

this is all because they projected 975 freshmen this year and got, no joke, 625. and retention rate is in the toilet anyway.

some cuts, mainly to staff, were floated at my school to offset the same kind of enrollment-related shortfall.

as a precarious academic temp i was somewhat frustrated to see the faculty rallying themselves to 'solidarity' with staff who are essentially office workers. surely they have specialized expertise, career experience, etc., which would make losing a job hard (since there won't be that many employers looking for that specifically), but on the other hand, who's going to have a harder time finding work, the administrative staff or the adjuncts whose course assignments just turn out not to be there six months from now?

rage!!

precarious.

both, all, of my spring classes (starting january 13) just got cancelled because of low enrollment.

why does it have to be such a disaster to be a teacher??

: (

ugh I'm really sorry to hear that.

if some good things happen for me in the next few days I may have a shot at a postdoc somewhere but after that man I don't even know.

i learned today from a friendly student that my 'colleagues' have apparently been talking me down to the advisors, who play a heavy role in directing students during enrollment, so it's no wonder i didn't make the numbers for my courses that everyone else did.

this is some bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KVyRqloGmk

i need to calibrate my anger, somewhere in between that and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7iOGfUdn0o

are you a temp?

yes, so i doubt i have any recourse, i wasn't guaranteed to get anything anyway.

it's one thing to not get the courses you were offered / promised / penciled in for because of being subject to the vicissitudes of enrollments and budget lines

but it's another thing to have full-time faculty actively contributing to it

once in grad school an older professor was describing the stupid pointless low-stakes decades-long intradepartmental spats that academics get into and i told him he wasn't really painting a rosy portrait of our future careers. he stopped and thought about it for a second and said, "well, you get summers off."

stakes = my rent and groceries

I hope things work out for you, j. this sort of thing is so shameful and depressing.

on a brighter note, I got some good news finally: my book is gonna be published!

haha you've just been waiting to bust that out huh

i have WRITTEN TO A VICE PRESIDENT, probably get a lotta empty sympathies in return

haha I literally just heard!

good luck with the vp. sounds like a super fucked up situation

i don't think joe biden is going to help here (hiyo!)

srsly though good luck. sounds nuts.

and i have gotten… the brushoff until after break, from a subordinate, near close of business on the last day of the semester.

nice how administrators who make $100k and $90k per can set things aside for a couple weeks and enjoy their holidayz

good work ryan

http://csufacultyvoice.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-dissertation-of-chicago-states-vice.html

none more righteous than those who uncover academic plagiarism by useless academic administrators

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/opinion/a-solution-for-bad-teaching.html?hp&rref=opinion

thoreau something something confirmed desperation

just had my first ever skype interview. now I'm preoccupied with how my face seemed super red somehow. interesting experience though. somehow it's easier for me since I'm not always the best at good eye contact. plus you can sweat like crazy and get away with it!

Just submitted my first grant application (an R03) yesterday, and it didn't end up being as shitty and blatantly uncompetitive as I'd feared! Still, the paylines are so low that it's a struggle not to think of it as a waste of time.

skype interviews are nice because no one has to travel for what'll be a 30-60 minute deal. I've been interviewed on skype once & have participated in skype interviews of job candidates about 40 times, and yeah, the physical things like eye contact, sweating, skin color, matters a lot less. I think they're pretty ideal for short-form interviews. fwiw my current department skips short-form interviews altogether; we just go right to flyouts

thankfully this is for a postdoc and there's no more interviews. so my my didn't-blow-it performance will stand.

i had a skype interview once, it was awkward, they had a whole committee huddled about two yards away from a computer