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Academic Choices

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Clarissa

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In case people didn’t see it in the comments, my university decided to eliminate most of its Humanities programs and fire tenured faculty. I will talk about the political reasons behind this later. Today, though, I want to use this situation to illustrate how I’m experiencing the exact same conflict between neoliberal mentality and nostalgia for stability that I wrote about earlier.

I like my house, my street, my church, my little town. I’ve lived here for 15,5 years, and that’s long for me. We have a vast shortage of foreign language teachers in the region, so I could easily find a job at a nice private Christian school. I looked, there are tons of offers. I’d probably even make more money. But I wouldn’t be a scholar. I would spend my days doing something I don’t like or value for money. Is that worth the stability, the familiar house, the friendships, the congregation? I very very sincerely don’t know.

On the other hand, I can go on the academic job market. That means newness, feeling so much younger, invigorated, inspired to read and write more. An adventure, new achievements. But it also means losing the friends, the places I’ve grown to love, and embracing the upheaval.

I don’t want anybody to think that I discuss the neoliberal subjectivity as some sort of an outsider who stands above it all. Nobody is above it. “But me, I’m different, I’m not like anybody else” is the most primitive of all neoliberal copes. This is why I’m sharing this story to show that in some way or another we all are pulled in these opposite directions.

23 responses to “Academic Choices”

  1. ed Avatar
    ed

    “We have a vast shortage of foreign language teachers in the region, so I could easily find a job at a nice private Christian school. I looked, there are tons of offers. I’d probably even make more money.”

    That’s good to hear. It’s good to at least have options.

    “On the other hand, I can go on the academic job market. That means newness, feeling so much younger, invigorated, inspired to read and write more. An adventure, new achievements. But it also means losing the friends, the places I’ve grown to love, and embracing the upheaval.”

    This has been the way of life in private industry for a long time. I think we’re just now seeing a more overt effort to destroy the last bastions of job security and stability: academic and government jobs.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      That’s exactly what my friend who came to our university from the pharma industry said to me 20 minutes ago. And yes, it’s the neoliberalization I’ve been talking about this whole time.

      I have zero emotions about all this because I’ve studied this process for a very long time. Other people are starting to do the stages of grief.

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  2. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    Are there ways to be a scholar outside of the confines of traditional academia? It’s a question worth asking since the path may not last within academia the way things are going.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      No, there isn’t, unfortunately.

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      1. Demotrash Avatar
        Demotrash

        In that case, I fear that humanities scholarship will cease to exist one day.

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        1. cliff arroyo Avatar
          cliff arroyo

          “humanities scholarship will cease to exist one day”

          I think that’s the goal. A long time ago Galeev pointed out that STEM types who hold the humanities in contempt are easy marks for pseudo-science (and scams….).

          Real humanities scholarship is one of the few defenses against political stupidity whether socialist, fascist or neoliberal.

          Some weird simulacrum will remain (humanities have mostly been co-opted already) but strictly curtailed and monitored.

          Liked by 1 person

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          1. random reader Avatar
            random reader

            True scholarship is already very hard to find. I am not familiar with the situation humanities, but in STEM is almost gone. It looks like we have a lot of students getting PhDs, but most of them never rise beyond being technicians. Sad thing is that most of us who are training them don’t even realize this.

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            1. cliff arroyo Avatar
              cliff arroyo

              “True scholarship is already very hard to find. I am not familiar with the situation humanities, but in STEM is almost gone”

              What do you think of Sabine Hossenfelder and her recent video about fraud in physic academia?

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          2. oldcowboy3 Avatar
            oldcowboy3

            cliff arroyo

            No, take a look at the corruption of feminism, the humanities and social sciences were politicized long before STEM.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              At the meeting where this plan was discussed, the director of the gender studies program was trying mega hard to excuse the administration. “This is not just to make savings, right?” she kept repeating. “This is to streamline and better serve students, right?”

              “No, it’s for the savings,” the Dean honestly declared.

              The only person who supported me and expressed deep dislike of the plan was the director of Black Studies whose program, for obvious reasons, is not under threat. Everybody else fellated the administration most obsequiously.

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          3. Demotrash Avatar
            Demotrash

            This is clearly the goal. I still hold out hope that a new university model could emerge. After all, universities were not always run in the particular way they are now, and that could always change again. But it’s a question of whether anyone cares enough to make that happen. After all, according to Clarissa, humanities professors did little to prevent the situation they currently find themselves in. Building a new institution would take even more work than that would’ve.

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  3. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    That’s hard. Even in my husband’s job, which is nothing fancy, the tendency is for people to move for a better offer now and then. We’ve moved enough. We have a church community we love and are an active part of, and the kids *need* the stability, if we can manage it. We’re trying to stay. We have friends, the kids have friends. That’s not something we are historically good at, so it’s not something to be let go of casually.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I agree, and I also waited for many years for stability.

      This just has to happen right before we are finally going to get the new Ukrainian priest. I want to stay just for the priest.

      I don’t know. It’s hard to decide.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  4. Demotrash Avatar
    Demotrash

    I’ve chosen rootedness, but I’m conscious that if I ever get a college degree it would limit my career prospects

    Liked by 3 people

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  5. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    Why/how does/should/can a state college in southern Illinois have a gender studies programme? What’s the point?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
      oldcowboy3

      Avi

      Endoctrination, and make work positions for both academics and administrators. In short, there never was any rational point.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “Why/how does/should/can a state college in southern Illinois have a gender studies”

      Yeah… I understand things like African American or Latino or Jewish or Native American studies etc as sub-groups with interesting and evolving histories….. but ‘gender studies’ is like colleges of education… they field hasn’t had any particular insights for decades…. I can imagine having a professor on staff to teach an intro course, but beyond that?

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Well, they do have a course on “The Culture of Drag” and another on “The Liberating Potential of Divorce.” And also something about fat phobia.

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    3. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      They have an interesting history. When I first came here in 2009, they were completely adrift because feminism had won everything and there no longer seemed to be a point.

      The program floundered for over a decade and recently found a fresh breath in turning almost entirely to the trans agenda.

      That would be an important thing for a gender studies program to examine. How the fact that feminism achieved everything pushed it to demand more and destroy its own achievements. Sadly, there’s not enough self-awareness to do that.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “feminism had won everything and there no longer seemed to be a point”

        Au contraire! Somewhere around 1989 feminism had done everything it could in the west… the next logical step was to directly confront non-western misogyny (there is, of course, a lot to go around)

        But social science theory was in the grips of the likes of Edward ‘don’t dare criticize non-western cultures, you bigots!’ Said and French ‘there is no truth…. don’t look at what we did in WWII’ theorists and feminists stood down and turned inward.

        I agree a critical assessment of the philosophy behind the trans…. thing and examination of questions of ‘cui bono?’ but modern feminists are mostly unable to do that (esp those at universities).

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Yes, of course, that could have been a good direction. Another one would be what I suggested back in 2008 and have only seen confirmed since: why do women self-infantilize in direct relationship with how much freedom they get.

          But instead we continued slaying long-dead dragons.

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  6. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I read this post with interest and am thankful for the education. I work in a financial learning organization and we hire teachers and professors, many of whom have struggled with the switch. They aren’t stimulated by the differing learning modes and academia functions very differently from our institution. Many people simply leave after a year or two and go “back to college”. But I work with others who, for the sake of familial and financial stability (one of the options you mention in this post), stay. They lament the loss of academia and look for ways to supplement the work that doesn’t stimulate them with pet projects that do.

    I never had the luxury of procuring a college degree so I have spent most of my career doing ‘just in time’ training and working hard for one of the lower paying positions. I write in my spare time and have gone to many writing conferences. I always dreamed I’d get published. But I had 3 young children to feed and had to do what had to be done to pay the mortgage, childcare, etc. So I never finished my novel. I enjoy this blog (though I have been away a while) because I feel like I have the luxury again of learning from a professor.

    I am very saddened to learn they are eliminating the humanities programs at your school. I also wonder if they are going to lean more heavily into artificial intelligence. My company is forcing us to learn this technology to speed up production of training courses. I have a specific loathing for AI for many reasons, not the least of which is the dilution of the human experience. Why would I bother to read an AI generated article that is a homogenization of many voices? But we keep being told “AI is the future. We must embrace it.” I wonder about your thoughts on this.

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  7. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    “…why do women self-infantilize in direct relationship with how much freedom they get.”

    Hmmm, when you find one that doesn’t, you marry her because she is “more valuable than rubies”, or in the current argot, a unicorn ;-D

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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