Tag / PhD

by Melonie Fullick

Who will hire all the PhDs?

The latest article I’ve written for the Globe & Mail looks at the question of whether Canada produces “too many” PhDs. This is something I’ve also discussed in past blog posts and presentations. I still think there is a huge disconnect in the way the government imagines PhDs as “skilled workers”, and the reality of their apparent job options. In the future I’d really like to do more research on how people come to see themselves as “successful” or not in a PhD programme, and how that affects their career decisions. The full text of the article is below.

A persistent theme in current discussions about graduate education and its outcomes is the question of whether Canada is “producing too many PhDs.” While enrollments (and numbers of PhD graduates) have increased with the encouragement of policy, more of these grads now struggle to find employment that matches the level and nature of their education – particularly employment in universities, as tenure-track faculty. The situation in Canada is not as dire as in the States where just this week it was reported that three quarters of faculty work as adjuncts, but accounts of under-employed PhDs working as waiters and cab drivers have become more common.

The question of precisely how many PhDs we “need” is one that’s directly tied to our ideas about the purpose of doctoral education. Debates about the ideal number of PhDs tend to be framed in terms of the academic job market, more specifically the demand for tenure-track professors at universities, because of the assumption that the PhD is intended primarily for those who want a career in academe. This assumption permeates doctoral education, partly because a doctorate is required in order to become a professor – professors are the primary educators of new PhDs.

Yet for 30 years or more, the availability of these jobs has been declining. The traditional academic career has become a focus of debate and critique because while PhD programmes have grown, tenure-track hiring has not kept pace. Universities have seen their resources reduced relative to the number of students enrolled, and they’ve coped partly by hiring contract faculty for undergraduate teaching. Meanwhile, we hear reports of hundreds of applications per tenure-track position, and of increasingly inflated expectations for applicants. Each cohort faces competition from the unemployed grads of previous years, as well as applicants from other jurisdictions such as the United States, Australia, and the U.K. Those who don’t find long-term faculty jobs may end up working in low-paid, unstable contract teaching and postdoctoral positions. This is why a now-infamous article in the Economist claimed the PhD is a “waste of time.”

In the past, there has never been a 100 per cent correlation between getting a PhD and becoming a professor, but the situation now seems more acute. With all the un/under-employment horror stories circulating, why do governments want to keep raising the number of PhDs? One reason is that they don’t view the PhD as a route exclusively to the professoriate. The logic of the “knowledge economy” suggests that increasing the number of people with advanced degrees – known as “highly qualified personnel” – leads to more innovation, and thus more economic development. What governments want are not more professors, but more well-educated people in many areas of the workforce. What governments can’t do is ensure that some students are keen to graduate with plans to enter those other areas, as opposed to academe.

Can there really be a purpose for the PhD other than as preparation for the tenure track? For more academics and students the answer is now “yes,” but in many doctoral programmes outcomes other than permanent academic employment are not viewed positively. Those who pursue them may receive less institutional support and faculty mentorship, because PhD supervisors are usually faculty who have primarily worked within the university, and they’re less likely to have cultivated professional relationships elsewhere.

Canada is only “producing too many PhDs” if every student is being encouraged to pursue an academic career and nothing else. In that case, there certainly aren’t enough positions to go around. One solution is that universities should increase tenure-track hiring so that more full-time permanent work is available. Yet even if this happened, it’s unlikely there would be enough jobs to “absorb” all those currently under– and unemployed, who are still on the academic job market. Should PhD programmes be reduced in size? Perhaps, but the problem with simply reducing enrollments is that it’s likely to restrict doctoral education to those who can most easily access the right resources. This lowers the chances that traditionally underprivileged groups will be represented among faculty at Canadian universities.

What’s most important is for prospective PhDs to have a clear understanding not only of the competitive conditions for academic jobs, but also the range of possibilities opened up by doctoral education, which are far more diverse than those generally presented in graduate programmes. Those possibilities must also be developed actively through collaboration between universities, governments, other non-academic organizations and students, so that the promise of advanced education isn’t lost due to lack of mentorship, guidance and opportunity.

Viewing every doctoral candidate solely as a future tenure-track prof is no more helpful than assuming each of us should calculate our own value only in terms of clear economic benefit to the nation. The assumptions in each case conflate students’ needs with the competing agendas of governments, which view PhDs as bearers of “human capital,” and of the graduate programmes that gain prestige by educating successful professors. But PhD grads have personal contexts to consider and lives to live, and we need to make sure they’re informed and prepared enough to make decisions that will work for them. Only then will we start to see a change in the way doctoral education works, not just for the economy and for the government but for graduates themselves.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches: Where from here?

This is the last part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 17, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches”: Where from here?

The last series of blog posts left me all blogged out for a couple of weeks, but I thought I’d offer a follow-up post regarding my thoughts on the e-course by Jo and Julie, on career planning and professional development, and a few other things.

What I found helpful about the course was that it provided me something to respond to, and in the process I found myself thinking harder about my current decisions. And because I’m feeling “stuck” and unfocussed at the moment, this was a valuable exercise. I tried to imagine my self in a particular role, and asked: what would I look like doing this job? How is that going to happen? Where do my current actions take me in terms of that kind of goal? Fairly basic stuff, but I find writing it all down tends to help me with coherence and direction. And when I’m feeling lost, I like to focus on the tangible aims that make it easier to make decisions in the present–since they build towards something in the future.

Some of the things I’m doing at the moment in order to provide myself direction–in a few different aspects of (academic) career development:

Making a decision about an academic “subject area” in which I could work comfortably, i.e. as a member of a department or program or team. This sounds like a no-brainer, and for most people in a PhD program it hasn’t been an issue since at least the MA level. But because of the way my interests have developed, choosing an “area” has been a less than straightforward process (my degrees are in Communication Studies, Linguistics, and Education).

A related task is to work towards drawing my various projects into a well-articulated and coherent research “map” that works within that subject area. I have diverse interests, but diversity is only a strength if it’s grounded in something stable like a good knowledge base, along with a plan regarding how the various pieces fit together and reinforce each other. I know well enough how everything is related, but I need to work actively to make those connections clear to others. This is important no matter what line of work I end up following.

…Alongside the usual academic channels, I’ve been experimenting with using social media to meet new colleagues and develop professional relationships, to “network” and to share/publicise my own work, to develop opportunities for contributing to ongoing debates (such as writing articles for other blogs and web sites), and to keep up with news/issues in my fields. As a result, I’m thinking about blogging and other “public communication” as part of academics being “public intellectuals”, not just professors or employees of the university. I’d like my blog to be a way to share my ideas even as I’m developing them in other ways (e.g. through research).

While I won’t swap social media for more traditional fora such academic conferences, participation in the latter is restricted for me because of the expense (travel, accommodation, registration fees) and timing. Sources like Twitter are an ongoing means of conversing with others whose interests I share, engaging in long-term exchanges that keep me thinking and that open up the discussion to anyone who can use a hashtag.

I’m working on teaching through practice (even just with my small tutorial group this year) and through development of approaches and philosophies; and I’m thinking about pedagogy rather than “teaching”, about theory and overall strategy as well as classroom tactics and practices. I’m looking for ways to examples that “stick”.

And in the context of our wired classroom, where students can use laptops and Blackberries to “tune out” from course discussions, I’m trying to understand and take into account the issues involved – “student engagement” and technology in the classroom; consumerism and credentialism; cognitive development in learning; differences in learning “styles” – and translate that back into an approach that gets students interested enough to abandon Facebook in the middle of class (high hopes, I know).

I still see teaching and learning as being about relationships, communication, partnership, mutual responsibility, motivation, feedback, confidence, hard work, listening, and changing your approach when something doesn’t work. Most important to me is to create an environment wherein questions and discussion can happen. With all that in mind I’m considering things like course design (in the abstract) and how this relates to pedagogy, particularly in terms of how different aspects of the course (curriculum/readings, assignments, tutorials and TAs, lectures) all have to work together in a way that makes sense to students.

I think that’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed the series of “Myths & Mismatches” posts, and if you’re following my blog – thanks for joining me!

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 10

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 17, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 10: What it takes, for what it’s worth.

Here is the last post in my series of responses to Jo Van Every and Julie Clarenbach‘s e-course on “Myths & Mismatches” in academic careers. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading these posts, and I recommend this e-course as well as other materials available on both authors’ web sites.

Mismatch #5: Mismatch of Skills

As discussed in a previous post in this series, we often gain more “skills” from graduate training than we think. But the “flip-side” of that fact is that those skills are also requiredto develop successful academic career.

“Success” at an academic job involves juggling aspects of work that require both collaboration and independent, creative work; maintaining a high level of communicative competence in both spoken and written forms and for diverse audiences; working both within and without structures and time constraints, as the context demands/requires; and having both micro- and macro-level understanding of a topic or issue or project.

While “for some people, these skills come naturally”, many of us will need to learn to balance our strengths and weaknesses to achieve the necessary results; personally I think I’ll need a workaround for my introversion (I now call it being “selectively social”), for my non-linear mode of approaching things (though I’m getting much better at dealing with that), and for my chronic perfectionism about research/writing (the blog helps, I think). I worry that I’ll be too “taxed” by teaching to finish any worthwhile research, that my focus couldn’t be sustained while my attention has to be stretched in so many different directions. But then I also know that when I get into a scheduled “groove”, I often rise to the challenge and get more work done than I would otherwise.

The question posed by Jo and Julie is whether “making do” in this way is “sustainable” for you. Like students, academics “have wildly different skill sets” and while “there may be a way to bridge that gap […] it may not be worth the time and effort required”. In other words, if the demands of the job feel like “too much”, there may only be so far you can go in terms of professionalizing yourself. In my case, I ask myself whether I can learn to hone my focus for shorter periods in order to cope with the fragmentation of diverse scheduled tasks, and whether I can clobber my perfectionism and just “let go” of my writing the way others seem to be able to do. Whether I can get around feeling a disheartening sense of personal responsibility every time a student does poorly. Will “trying harder” be enough?

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 9

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 17, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 9 – Finding Your Place.

Today’s myth from Jo and Julie is one I find quite important – perhaps because I’ve done quite a bit of moving around throughout my life. I’m giving this one a lot of consideration as I ponder the next steps.

Myth #5: Geography Doesn’t Matter

In case you hadn’t heard, “academia is notable for the lack of control we have about where we end up geographically, especially in a job market with few opportunities.”
I know that for me, place has always had importance. Sometimes there’s more of a connection to the people around me (as there is in Ontario, where I’ve now lived for quite a while). Other places just feel “right” whether I know someone there or not (Montreal, for some reason; and New Zealand, probably because I grew up there). There are also places like England that I love to visit, but where I could never see myself living.

In a profession where long-term positions are becoming harder to obtain, mobility becomes an asset in your job search. But this is also the reason why “it’s not uncommon for people to end up in geographic locations that just don’t work for their lives and personalities.”

There’s more to place than climate and topography: “let’s face it — being the only person of color or queer person around is rarely sustainable.” The latter point is at least semi-relevant to me personally, and I think it applies to one’s life-politics (as opposed to life-style) as well. For example, I know a lot of people who have applied for work in the U.S., but I wouldn’t personally feel comfortable moving there even for a temporary position. That’s a personal preference, which also stems from cultural tastes and familiarities developed over a lifetime. But it’s also savvy to know and understand that there’s no way I would “fit in” at a college in rural Arkansas (or at least, that’s not how I want to spend my time).

Why is it, then, that where you work is supposed to be irrelevant? To return to a running theme in these posts, if you’re living “the Life of the Mind” then “geography doesn’t matter — because you can take your mind anywhere.” This is of course untrue at every level of post-secondary education (and elsewhere). It’s also an idea underpinned by the separation of mind and body, by the ideal of the ascetic/academic, and by the assumption of a guarded boundary between the university and the “real world”.

I feel the same way about my living/working space as I do about geographic location–I’m more stressed, it’s harder for me to work, when I’m living in an unpleasant environment and there are people with whom I don’t get along. At the moment I’m lucky, I have a great space and I share it with only my cats; I’m an introvert so this works out very well for me. I admit that I need quiet and physical order to get my work done, mostly because my mental state is usually pretty chaotic (or “creative” to put it nicely). The same point applies to institutional spaces, something I wrote about here.

I agree that geography, that place, “matters to our happiness, it matters to our health, and it matters to our relationships” and that this affects how well we’re able to do our jobs. When you make a decision you need to take into account that place contributes to your career trajectory often in unforeseen ways. Just as the wrong institution or department can be a “mismatch” (often a career setback), so can the wrong city/town or country.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 8

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 15, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 8-Are You “At Home”?

My series of responses continues today with one of the most crucial issues you might end up facing as a graduate student or as a professor…

Mismatch #4: Mismatch of personality

Every workplace, every university department or academic “unit”, is more than the sum of its walls and windows, its rules and regulations. It’s a place that emerges partly from the interactions of the people involved, i.e. faculty, staff, students, and so on; “the basic personality of departments, not to mention universities, is a conglomeration of many factors”. These include institutional orientation (e.g. research or teaching); departmental divides along theoretical, methodological or generational lines; and “the particular configurations of personalities that just don’t work well together”.

You’ve probably noticed after spending years in university environments that you feel more at home within some of these spaces than in others–and you might have identified some of those factors that “work” for you. But it’s really hard to tell what a “good fit” might be from only brief interactions with place, and with people and institutional structures. I’ve often felt afraid of making the wrong call on this point, since “much of this personality […] isn’t apparent at first glance”. And it feels even more important when one thinks about applying for faculty positions; as a student there is always the option of switching programs or institutions, but faculty need to be able to fit in eventually with their colleagues and with the university in the long term.

Jo and Julie argue that when a “personality” disconnect occurs, “the problem isn’t you–it’s just the mismatch between what you need and what they offer.” You can work with compromise up to a point, but you need to recognise if and when “you just don’t fit the culture of the department or institution”.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 5

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 11, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 5: The Myth of Academic Meritocracy.

Today’s “myth” from Jo and Julie is possibly the biggest one of all, and thus the most destructive should you buy into it whole-heartedly. It ties in with every other point that’s been made thus far in this series…

“Myth #3: Merit is Everything.”

I just want to point out that my response to this issue is always a very personal one, for reasons I will partially explain below.

For the record, the ideal of meritocracy–that you succeed at academic work primarily because of how smart you are–is a myth (as Jo and Julie state: “Excuse our language, but this is all a fucking load of steaming crap”). And there are plenty of examples that illustrate it. One of them is the issue of socioeconomic class, something that has an effect literally from birth. In the research on post-secondary education (PSE), SEC is a clear factor and yet one that various researchers attempt to mitigate by making the claim that cultural capital matters more than economic capital. Any study you’ve seen that makes claims about the improving influence of the “number of books in the house” is a study making claims about class and culture in this way. The problem is that if you used the available statistics to draw a nice Venn diagram, you’d discover that the overlap between “class (economic) privilege” and “cultural capital” makes the diagram look more like one circle than two. Translation: you may have more books in the house, but you might not have the money to pay for an academically elite private school, or even for the extra tutoring that improves your grades and helps you win that merit scholarship. Money matters at least as much as “merit”.

Money also matters when you decide it’s not worth going into $35,000 worth of debt to finance your degree, even if a degree is “an investment that really pays off” as the research tells us (again and again). I know I didn’t want to go to graduate school if it meant I’d have to increase my student loan burden. Does that mean I would have been somehow “less smart” if I hadn’t gone? As it turns out, my grad degrees have been financed primarily by merit-based scholarships. Does that mean I’m now, somehow, inherently smarter than you? (Hint: the answer is “no”.) In the PSE research literature, this attitude of mine is called “debt aversion”. To me, coming from what would financially be called a working-class background, it’s called “common sense”.

Socioeconomic class is only one of the reasons why “merit” is a concept that draws a veil over the causes of “success” and “failure” in academe. But it’s the one with which I have the most intimate familiarity, and it’s why this response of mine is mostly about money/class/privilege vs. merit.

Jo and Julie write that the myth of merit-based success “doesn’t build us up -— it makes us live in fear that, any day now, someone is going to figure out that we aren’t as smart as they think we are, and then they’ll kick us out.” This is why so many (particularly female) graduate students suffer from what’s known as “imposter syndrome“.

But what I’ve noticed is that some people seem completely impervious to the debilitating threats to self-confidence – the daemons of self-doubt – that I know I have wrestled with in the past and continue to battle on a regular basis. Who are those people, and why do they seem so certain of their own place, of the value of their work, and of their intelligence? Career development in academe is dependent not only on how “smart” you are, but on your own assessment of your capacities and how your put that to work; and because we want to believe in “merit”, we often denigrate our own efforts and doubt ourselves even when we succeed (it was “luck”, or something else). The required confidence is harder to develop when you’ve spent your life not being outstandingly successful, and you’ve been assuming it was entirely due to your own deficiencies as opposed to other factors.

That self-interrogation of course informs the comparisons we’re (tacitly) encouraged to make between ourselves and others in grad school. We look at what other are doing, wondering why they seem to be “succeeding” when we’re not. Why do some people seem to be able to effortlessly afford that trip to the conference in San Francisco or Sydney or that three-month stint touring the Far East? Significantly, success in academe also depends on the capital you can invest in further professional experience, where additional available resources mean not having to take on two extra jobs to finance your conference travel (or pay the rent!), thereby losing time you could have spent on researching. Success, in the form of useful capital, builds on itself.

As someone who’s currently riding out my second large merit-based scholarship, obviously I have extremely mixed feelings about the concept of “merit”… on the one hand I represent, statistically, an aberration that should prove the effectiveness of meritocracy: a student without economic means who’s been able to get to the doctoral level, and to do it by winning awards for academic excellence. But sometimes all I see are the thousand other ways in which this story could have ended, the many times I felt like dropping out because I was so sick of being broke and angry and tired and stressed, and the others I knew who were smart and talented and dedicated and still didn’t win the scholarships I won, and who did leave, blaming themselves all the way. I tell myself I made the right friends, got the right advice, stepped into the right subject area at the right time. Surely these were the things that stood between me and a return to a past where I washed dishes for a living instead of marking undergraduate essays.

The line feels that slim–a paperwidth of possibility–one that can be “re-crossed” at any time, given the assumed tenuousness of my success. Because I will probably never feel as if I truly deserve what I have.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 4

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 11, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 4: Structural Faults?

Continuing my weeklong blogging escapade of commentary, today’s “Mismatch” from Jo and Julie is one that relates quite directly to my own research project on governance of universities…

“Mismatch #2: Mismatch of Structure”

Structure relates to the functioning and ultimately to the purpose of the university. Jo and Julie write that the purpose of the university is to “transmit the best that has been thought and spoken (i.e., maintain tradition) and advance the state of human knowledge through novel research (i.e., innovation)”. And they rightly point out that there’s something of an inherent contradiction between those two things, one that is dealt with in different ways depending on things like disciplinary context.

With the changing context of the university as institution comes changes to the way academics are expected to do their jobs, including how they work with colleagues, where their funding comes from and how it’s allocated, how teaching appointments may work, what’s expected in terms of research and “engagement” with scholarly work and life, and so on. Jo and Julie cite the example of interdisciplinary work and the (lack of) institutional structures designed to facilitate it, and one of the ways in which even the best candidates in graduate school can “fall through the structural cracks”.

In spite of what looks like an obvious topic of study (post-secondary education), I’ve found that my own work seems to be pretty interdisciplinary–probably because of my background in multiple areas of study, which in turn is feeding (I think) an existing intellectual tendency. I follow paths that interest me and I’m usually focussed on some specific kind of “problem” or issue. If there’s an answer to my questions in another discipline, then I tend to start extending myself and sniffing around that territory in search of something useful for my purposes. And in the process of this, I’ve realised that interdisciplinary/”innovative” work is or can be fairly unsafe, depending (again) on the environment in which you’re working and on what your goals are. It’s hard to build an academic career in an environment rooted in disciplinary distinctions when you’re not sure which conferences to apply to, which scholarly associations to join, and (my own current problem) which journals would be appropriate venues for your research.

My tactic thus far has been to take “slices” of things and relate them to specific disciplinary areas, e.g. if a particular paper or presentation topic relates more heavily to Communication Studies, then I take that into account and try to tailor it to that perspective. It doesn’t always work, but it gives me something to start with. My hope is that knowing the norms and expectations of this environment will help me to find ways to work within the existing/evolving structure, even as I’d like to be a part of changing it–though as Jo and Julie note, “the university has a lot more inertia than you do” so to expect to make your own “place” within it is to take on a complicated (though obviously not impossible) task.

You may not feel like you really “fit” anywhere, but this feeling can have different causes and implications. It could signify that you’re on the “cutting edge” and doing work that will in time have an important place, but it’ll be a place you’ll have to carve out for yourself. Or it could just as easily mean that you should be looking for a career in some other arena that better accommodates your interests and needs–and as I’ve discussed previously in this series, there’s no reason why academe needs to be the only environment in which you can write, think, and produce scholarly work.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 3

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 9, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 3: Assessing Your Qualifications.

Today’s “myth” from Jo and Julie is a real classic, something that can be unconsciously inculcated from the moment you enter graduate school-! And it’s this…

“Myth #2: You’re Unqualified to Do Anything Else”

This is the illusion that even after successfully completing a PhD, there’s still no-one other than a university who’d hire you–because what “real-world” relevance is there for your academic training? (And look–there’s that “Real-World/Academia divide again.) Part of the reason for this assumption is that in graduate school, the focus is placed heavily on “content knowledge” and not on the skills and “process knowledge” that come along with grad school experiences. And (discipline-specific) content is generally less transferable to work outside the university.

This is an idea that works alongside “Myth #1”, that “success” after the PhD means becoming a tenured research professor (and that any work outside the university is somehow “lesser” than an academic job). Not only are you unqualified for a job in another field; it would also be an admission of inadequacy to abandon the quest for tenure-track employment. In some cases this line of thinking can be quite potently inhibiting.

As the authors point out, “the reality is that, outside of academia, most jobs are far more about your skills than about your content knowledge – and just by virtue of having been through graduate school, you’ve amassed a lot of relevant skills” relating to research, writing, editing, presenting, organizing, collaborating, assessing, teaching…the list goes on.

I still feel as if I’m simply not aware of most of the job options I have in front of me (but with a much better sense of possibility than I had several years ago). Though I’m in a position where my topic of research is one that can apply in more than one context, I still have so little idea of my own usefulness outside the university classroom–and how to put that to work. I’m fairly sure I still have talents I haven’t yet discovered, and I think that’s been the major lesson I’d take away from the past 8 years or so. After all, when I abandoned my BFA after two years, I never imagined I’d end up studying Communication Studies, Linguistics, and Education (and doing well at it). I know I have a lot of fears and insecurities to overcome, but I think I’d rather feel significantly uncertain than feel as if I’m staking my career on only one prospect.

Jo and Julie also write that “academic disciplines act as though they’re in competition with one another, viciously defending methodological and content boundaries between fields that one might think would have lots of things to say to one another.” I don’t know if it’s my own interdisciplinary background or perhaps a kind of inherent pragmatism, but I’ve never held much to the maintenance of boundaries between different kinds of knowledge. My reasoning is that I’m more likely to be able to address a problem critically if I can do it from multiple angles; and that is a skill highly applicable to the “real world”.

Lastly, there’s “a general denigration of intellectual work” in our culture (speaking broadly about Anglo-America), such that what is “academic” is considered to be irrelevant, disconnected from reality somehow–like academics themselves. This is reinforced by the beliefs we may hold about the “narrowness” of our education, beliefs that can prevent us from seeing our own value in contexts other than academe. They can also prevent us from learning how to communicate the relevance of intellectual work to larger publics, which is a increasingly an expected function of faculty work as well.

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 2

This is part of a series of posts that was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches”. Here is the link to the original post, from January 8, 2011: “Myths & Mismatches” Part 2: Time, Place, and Opportunity.

“Mismatch #1: Context”.

It’s a great idea to address conflicts of context, the “external circumstances” that have an effect on our career successes, because a lot of self-destructive psychological baggage can come from the idea that one’s “failure” is entirely one’s own fault. And while it’s important to take responsibility for your own decisions, just as crucial is the ability to recognise when your (lack of) “success” is being influenced by factors beyond your control. These factors can include anything from personal issues with health and family, to a simple lack of appropriate positions or an over-supply of candidates in your particular academic field; they are “more about timing and luck than […] a comment on your worth as a person or quality as an academic”.

In spite of the sense of it, I feel quite ambivalent about this point. because if I looked at the list of contextual factors in my own case, I’m pretty sure I’d pick another path to follow. That’s not meant as a comment about my own capacity–more as a point about the nature of the academic job market, which has declined considerably in the past 25 to 30 years. One reason for this pinch is that the “production” of PhDs has increased; and another is that simultaneously, the proportion of tenure track academic positions has actually decreased as universities have come to rely on short-term contract faculty (or “adjuncts” as they are referred to in the U.S.).

So I do feel uneasy about the context in which I’m finishing my own PhD, one that I think is becoming more evident to more people, though I don’t recall that there was ever a frank discussion of prospects and odds during any of my graduate courses. While the PhD is not just about “getting a job”, I think career-development should be emphasised from the beginning in a more well-rounded fashion so that by the time students reach year 3 or 4, they have a better sense of their options and a balanced idea of what factors they can “control” in terms of later employment options. This could be seen not as simple “job training” but as a reasonable/thoughtful process in which to engage considering the significant commitments of time, effort and resources that are required to complete a PhD, and the shrinking chance of achieving a tenure-track faculty position. It could also help graduate students to develop awareness of their strengths and capacities, and to build the resilience and adaptability that help with creating and navigating through a professional career (in whatever field).

by Melonie Fullick

Myths and mismatches, part 1

This series of posts was written as a response to – and a means of thinking through issues raised by – an e-course by Jo VanEvery and Julie Clarenbach called “Myths and Mismatches“. According to Jo and Julie, the “goal with this series is to help you understand your experience [in academe] as both personal and structural.” This was a helpful series for me, since I was in the process of thinking through the implications of seeking a tenure-track job (hence the in-depth blog responses).

Here is the link to the original post, from January 8, 2011: “Myths and Mismatches”, Oh My!

Over the next week or so I’ll be blogging my responses to “Myths and Mismatches“, an e-course by Jo Van Every and Julie Clarenbach. The goal of this series is to bring attention to a number of “myths” that can get in the way of making “conscious career choices” in the academic environment, particularly for those who are feeling “dissatisfied” with academic work.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (and blogging about it too), since I need to make decisions about “where to go” next, and I find the options overwhelming. I thought it would be interesting to think through my responses to Jo and Julie’s course by writing about each of them as they arrive in my inbox.

“Myth #1: The Life of the Mind, or, Academia Is the Only Game in Town”

The first post refers to a misconception about the nature of academe, the idea of the “Ivory Tower”–one that is perpetuated by media images of university life. Jo and Julie advise us not to fall into the trap of imagining “academe” as a cloister into which one can retreat from the Real World whilst pursuing one’s ideas in peace among like-minded colleagues (and as far from possible from demanding undergraduate students, for example).

I would say it’s no coincidence that this concept of the Lone Scholar is reinforced by the ideal of the tenured research professor, which we’re generally encouraged to think of as the norm or the goal. If this utopian environment/position ever came close to existing, it was a characteristic of the traditional “elite” model of university education, something I’ve written about in previous posts.

The point here is that given the current context, you’re certain to be disappointed if you see this as the ideal, since the job description for professors includes juggling not only research but also teaching, committee and other “service” and administration work, student advising and mentoring, attending and planning events and conferences, and and array of extra-curricular work/activities. In fact the trend is for professors to be more “engaged” with audiences beyond the university because ultimately, public communication is what strengthens and smooths the relationship between universities and the communities/contexts in which they operate.

In terms of my own experience, I don’t think this idea of the “life of the mind” has ever been one to which I’ve had much access; and as wonderful as it sounds, I’ve also never really expected to be able to participate. Jo and Julie make the point that the mythical Great Solitary Thinkers were all men, which is only one part of that equation; there aren’t too many role models to emulate. I also don’t come from a particularly privileged background (economically or culturally), so my expectations have been different all along. I certainly never imagined I would end up doing a PhD at all. Since my undergrad years I’ve talked a lot with full-time faculty and had a good look at what happens in the day-to-day life of tenure-track professors (and part-time/contract profs as well). Probably the combination of these factors is why I’ve always felt ambivalent about the idea of trying to become a professor, as a specific career track. The increased competition in recent years has only made me feel less certain.

Jo and Julie point out that the flip side of “academe as intellectual cloister” is that the “world” outside the university is a barren and banal place, devoid of intellectual engagement. I think the myth of “real world” vs. “academe” is quite destructive, including that of a corporate/business world that’s somehow inherently unethical and opposed to academe. It simplifies the problems faced by universities, often reducing them to an “us vs. them” argument, and it precludes the possibility of meaningful engagement across boundaries. This kind of belief also seems to entail that academe is somehow more ethical than other environments. But to cling to that idea is to set oneself up for a despairing fall–academics are no more (or less) inherently moral or “good” than other groups.