Bruce,
Your comments and the article strike a responsive chord for me. I've
never been an academic, having recently completed a career in
private-industry information technology. I remember a time in private
industry when we had time to work on projects that were interesting and
maybe had some future payoff. We even did Quality, in which we dug for
root causes to eliminate and improve our lives, our products, and
operations in general. Then we couldn't afford the time to think and we
abandoned Quality for Market-Based Quality, meaning we only thought
about quality if the customers were catching on to our lousy products.
We had Work-Life Balance, which became Work-Life Integration, which, I
believe, means being on duty 24x7 as a way of life.
Now that I'm retired, I am a volunteer officer in several academic-based
scientific societies. Some of the other officers in these societies are
university employees. I think I am seeing them pull back from giving
time to the societies because of work pressures. It's not something
overt, just that I perceive a reluctance to do the work of the societies
during the university work-day. I attribute this to budget cutbacks,
competition for jobs, etc. To some extent, as a taxpayer, I'm happy
that university employees are careful to give a full day's attention to
their assigned duties. On the other hand, it seems to me that the
academic-based scientific societies serve as an extension of the
university, doing things that the university itself cannot do
efficiently. If the university employees are forced to stop these
activities, I think perhaps we as a society lose more than we might know.
Perhaps, the article and your concerns reflect an extension of the
malaise affecting private industry into academia. I would presume then
that it's roots reside in our culture as a whole. I would describe it
as a focus on the short-term rather than the long-term, a focus on
getting mine as opposed to service to all, and something that sure
looked like "anti-intellectualism" to me which I first encountered it.
That's probably enough for now.
Tom
--
Tom Schweich KJ6BIT [email protected]
http://www.schweich.com
http://twitter.com/schweich
Bruce Robertson wrote:
All,
I"m a postdoc searching for a faculty position in ecology. I just read
the article below, which recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher
Education. It paints a grim picture of academia, now and for the
foreseeable future. I'm highly productive, love research and teaching
and feel that academia is where I belong. Yet, I find myself very
disheartened by many aspects of the current academic environment and
this article seems to bear some of my perspectives out. I would really
appreciate if any faculty would comment on this article as it relates
to their experience....though, if this article is correct, they will
be far too busy to read this. :)
Cheers, and article below--
Bruce Robertson
Postdoctoral Fellow
Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center
Current mailing address:
3310 West Main Street #101
Kalamazoo, MI 49006
206-718-9172
[email protected]
Homepage: www.msu.edu/~roberba1/Index.html/
