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

am i gonna watch the dismantling of higher education (public version) in my lifetime?

On that note I came across this the other day:

http://chuckrybak.com/uw-struggle-real-people-edition/

kinda lol but mostly sad that the first named example of the talent drain from Wisconsin left to go to... North Carolina

as long as kids from wealthy families can still get PhDs and tenure track jobs, i don't see what the problem is

The UNC bill is dismaying, no doubt. However, I disagree with this, unless "hard" means "physically demanding":

Teaching college, especially if you’re good at it, isn’t particularly hard.

Also, it is hard for me to see how someone could teach four courses in one semester and only be putting in 'full-time' (40h/wk) hours. Going by the figure of 2-4h or prep for every hour of teaching (http://americanfacultyassociation.blogspot.ca/2012/02/hours-for-teaching-and-preparation-rule.html), 12h of lectures a week would require 24-48h of prep and a minimum of 2h of office hours. 10h of marking/wk seems like a conservative estimate for that courseload. Someone who is teaching only courses that he or she has taught before with relatively light marking loads would still be putting in more than standard f/t hours.

I mean, one could cut back on those hours by becoming more of a textbook facilitator and using a lot of Scantron, which is the only way I can really understand the loads that people are being asked to take on. This does compromise pedagogy (not just research) imo.

it's not often that a 4/4 amounts to 4 totally different courses, in my experience (though it does happen--usually to adjuncts).

I've taught 5 courses in a semester before; what gives more than prep time is emotional labor. I gather that this isn't labor that matters to bureaucrats and their enablers; what's in question is its role in learning. I think it's enormous, particularly for more marginal students whose motivation is constantly under barrage from distractions. make me teach more students and I will not be as good as motivating them.

the last place i worked had a 5/5 load for all full-time staff, from what i could see they tried to rarely assign more than 2 preps at a time, tho sometimes 3, but their course assignments were extremely siloed (no one ever outside their 'area')

pedagogically, some courses really don't take much - plug and chug calculus e.g.; 12 sections at a time may all be using the same texts for institutional reasons, and those things are so highly refined that they basically walk both student and staff through what to do, so you just do it and then do some problems

otoh i teach from primary texts and try to reread them before each time i teach (the more i've taught, the less i _have_ to, but still it makes the teaching better), and it's a pretty wasteful approach resource-wise, takes a lot out of you to have to delve back into them rather than just running w/ yr standard story come classtime

yeah with literature i tend to re-read along with the class and that can be time consuming when also prepping.

the weird irony of all this is that never (in the humanities) have research demands been higher. i dunno about you, but im sorta ok with every english professor in the world not needing to churn out a half dozen books in their career.

yeah at this point in my life I have prep down, but it's the emotional part that can't be prepped, and I can't/don't want to give it up, turn into some automaton up there, b/c I think it's the only thing that keeps students involved. I agree with Plato and Augustine that learning comes from love, and while the object of love isn't the teacher, the teacher plays a role in conducting and focusing that love, and her person is involved in that.

i think that's a big part of why i stick w/ rereading, to a certain extent i find it hard to give a proper shit w/o getting caught back up in the texts, they're a major part of what i love about the discipline

absolutely

I need to give a shit for the students to give a shit

& if "they" want to make it so that I can't give a shit anymore, then I'm done with teaching

prohibited

it's not often that a 4/4 amounts to 4 totally different courses, in my experience (though it does happen--usually to adjuncts).

A new Temporary Lecturer position was advertised on the Music Vacancy List yesterday that does this. (There are actually five courses in the fall and six in the winter but some of them are worth less credits such that they amount to a 4.33/4 load, assuming that one course is 3 credits. I'm not sure why a 4th-year analysis course would be two credits if a second-year theory course is three credits, though.)

I know someone who did 5/6 (with two sections of one course in the second semester so he was actually teaching 5 distinct courses that semester) at a VAP job. He worked 12h days 7 days a week.

12h days 7 days a week is the tt life at an R1 tbh, on the low end really. well, and grad school too if you want that r1 tt fun. ish is def nuts though

I mean, I don't know how he counted his hours. I didn't take much time off at all when I taught three courses in a semester tbh so 4/4 or 5/6 seem hard to fathom for me. (In the 2014 winter, when I had two heavy courses + a fair bit of private/music-school teaching + was performing, composing, and interviewing, I got sick at least four times, which I mostly attribute to overwork.) Currently have something approaching work/life balance, which feels hard to let go of.

I kind of doubt I'd get an R1 TT, whether or not I wanted it, tbh.

keep in mind I am not very smart so maybe the real deals can work a lot less than me and still make bank research-wise

i left academia before i had much contact with non-departmental administration but now i am on an an academic committee. oof.

right?

i mean we're trying to do something really interesting curriculum wise, but jeeeeeeeeeez

i think the problem is more pronounced because we're trying to do something related to data $cience and startups, and there's the way this is done in startups, and it doesn't map particularly well onto academia right now because it's still an embryonic prof discipline, and then you've got all these middle-aged administrators who read about it in a copy of business week, or got into a conversation about it in a united club...

lol suddenly i have the eerie feeling you are an ex-university physicist i know who just left to do a data $cience startup

everybody's doing it

while here i am just holdin my nuts

http://coreyrobin.com/2015/04/14/before-you-get-that-phd/

Max Weber, Science as a Vocation:

Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation [ advanced degree ], the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza [ abandon all hope, you who enter here ]. But one must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my “calling.”‘ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief.

Just got called in for an on-campus interview for a VAP (maybe renewable) version of what would basically be my dream job. Did not expect this.

Private business had been picking up and I was starting to feel comfortable-ish here so I still wonder.

there's a VAP open near here next year, probably just far enough to have to move, kind of the best kind of place i could hope to have a permanent job, but it's unclear whether that's a real possibility

feeling ground down by my current jobs, tho, so the urge is coming back to just apply for shit and say whatever, i go where the winds blow

The nearby VAP seems like it might be a good move if you're not happy with your current jobs idk. What would be the cons?

rejection, turmoil, etc

i'm not a great fit, so i'm trying not to care much, but they do have a faculty to whom i'd be congenial, who know my people, etc.

congrats on the interview, Sund4r!

"not a great fit" used to seem like not a terribly big deal, but a few years into the job market it feels like the kiss of death.

Thanks!

I've never really known what 'not a great fit' means tbh.

good luck s

it means other things (too weird, likes hegel too much, etc.), but in this context it just means they want me to teach classes i am not actually qualified to teach other than because phd

Cmon if you have a PhD in the area you should be able to teach any undergrad class in the area

sure but when's the last time your department had you teach history of ancient e.g.

lol I'm on the books for it this coming year, did it three years ago too

augh well there's gotta be one where they're like euler hell no don't let euler teach that, get someone who knows what she's doing

no way dude

Maaaaaaybe aesthetics

so you read greek?!

no but I do kiss that way

Well I sorta can a bit but we're just talking sophomore level stuff. my chair's a classicist and he's cool with me doing it so

anyway that's not how the VAP market works now

if they want 6 courses that's more than half ethics and social/political, they hire an ethicist; there are four million ethicists

yeah it's true you gotta narrow down somehow but otoh you just need someone to cover classes so make a case in yr cover letter

Cmon if you have a PhD in the area you should be able to teach any undergrad class in the area

No one believes this in music unless you are counting theory/composition, musicology, ethnomusicology, music tech, performance as different "areas".

Private business had been picking up and I was starting to feel comfortable-ish here so I still wonder.

I guess my fear is that if I actually get the VAP, I run the risk of going away for a year and then having to build things up from scratch again. Can't really avoid these sorts of risks in this 'job market', I suppose.

"Cmon if you have a PhD in the area you should be able to teach any undergrad class in the area"

this is not at all true in the sciences

haha it is not true in philosophy (or literature i'd wager!) either despite what euler says, but we do have the remnants of this myth of the 'total philosopher' - also a widely-present ideology of 'it's all arguments innit'

natural sciences maybe

true in math though