Reader Omega Man posted a video about the economically devastated region of West Virginia. I’ve been to West Virginia, and I’ve got to tell you, that kind of poverty wasn’t something you’d find even in Ukraine. At least, until the war began. It’s an absolute tragedy what happened in West Virginia. The unemployed coal miners and industrial workers there are, indeed, collateral damage of the global transformations they didn’t anticipate. What I hope for is that they stop waiting for somebody to bring the past back, accept that the changes are permanent, and move on.
As I look at West Virginians in the video, I keep thinking of academics. The same thing is happening or is about to happen to us. We should be better equipped than the unemployed coal miners to figure out what’s happening because it’s our job. But that is not the case.
Just like the miners blame the changes on a convenient scapegoat of the EPA or Obama, academics think it’s all about evil administrators, corporatization, and what not. But they need to accept that the lifestyle where you could publish one or two articles in a lifetime, get tenure, and teach the same old Intro to whatever for the next 30 years is dead. And the sooner we bury its putrid corpse, the faster we can find a model that will work for the present and the future.
Clarissa's Blog 
I agree that academia is changing. What model do you think we’re moving toward? That might be a separate post in itself.
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” What model do you think we’re moving toward?”
I think maybe a Best Case Scenario, Worst Case Scenario (and Most Likely to Happen if it’s neither of those) would be interesting.
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Worst Case Scenario is that people keep clinging to the old, comfortable model while the whole thing goes to the dogs and they bemoan the hostile reality. It’s the case of refusing to give up a portion to save the whole. If you insist that it’s normal and laudable to get tenure on the strength of 1 published article and a Full professorship on the strength of one more***, prepare for the entire institution of tenure to disappear for everybody except for 10-15 people belonging to the creme de la creme of researchers.
***This is not an exaggeration or a rhetorical device. This is an absolutely real position people keep expressing to me verbatim.
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Best Case Scenario: there is a million things that can be done once we abandon this old model. For instance: yes, students require a lot of remediation. BUT! We don’t have to teach them every single thing they need to catch up on before we actually introduce college-level material. We can embrace the kind of pedagogy that works like crossing a pond by jumping from one stone to another: http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/woman-jumping-on-kobbel-stones-over-a-small-pond-picture-id564189907?k=6&m=564189907&s=170667a&w=0&h=E-uAaIiiU2iooPWbdLcvrXW3RtS1WcxV8uafkvNYD6w=
We give students the stones and they fill in the blanks. There is no time to nurse and baby them through every tiny mousy step. This is not how the world works any more. And I am absolutely convinced they will adapt in no time. All of the Intro and Beginners courses should be slashed by 80%.
In terms of research, it should no longer be “How much (or rather, little) do I need to do to get a passing grade on my yearly eval?” Rather, it should be, “What do I do every day to build up my own name (yes, it’s branding, that’s what it is) and, consequently, the university’s?”
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And the “service” we do should not be about snoozing on some ridiculous, useless committees. The real service is the kind of thing I or xyqademiqz or Fie do on our blogs. That’s what is really valuable. While dozens of stupid committees are wasting years on coming up with mission statements on how to argue the value of academia to the larger society, we do that work every day on our blogs. But nobody cares about that. Or about my research agenda. No, it’s all about “only” sitting on 10 committees and not on 15. Because a colleague who has published fuck all and has done nothing in the public arena is obviously much more valuable than I am by virtue of sitting on every dumb committee in existence. Yes, I’m resentful.
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Maybe I should move on out of the University once for all. But I’ll not do that because I’m not rational as the West-Virginians.
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Maybe I should move on out of the University once for all. But I’ll not do that because I’m not rational.
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