Angst in Academia: Professors who Ditch their Jobs

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I take up this topic reluctantly, because I write this Blog not as a member of an academic institution, and most certainly not as a representative of Academe, or one who is in any way typical of the academic.  I see myself more as someone akin to a high-school teacher, albeit a more educated one, especially since my students are more likely to take up a job outside academe than to pursue an academic career.

A posed photograph that accompanied the Slate post

A recent article in Slate magazine by Rebecca Schumann (about whom I know next to nothing, to my shame,) highlights both the large number of professors who leave academia in disgust or dissatisfaction, either before or even after receiving tenure, and the large number of articles these people have written, to explain their reasons.  So much so that Rebecca S. suggests that “Why I Quit Academia” could well become a sub-genre of the American Essay.

I’m admittedly an outsider to the society of professional intellectuals.  I was more interested in what was going on inside the heads of my unworthy students than inside my own head, or even inside the heads of my colleagues.  I have known, in a vague kind of way, that many of those in the humanities (I suppose I ought to capitalize that): Philosophy, Literature, and History (and, at our own institution, Religion, which is a shame,) are accustomed to thinking deeply, and no doubt are convinced that it is better not to think at all than not to think deeply.  They talk of Kafka and Wittgenstein, and are probably acutely concerned about how the thinking of these gentlemen may be translated into something that can apply to the world of today.  But, as I confessed earlier, I am completely devoid of philosophical angst; I was content to know that it was in good hands.

But why are people leaving academe, and why are they making a fuss about it?

There is general belief that in many instances, American universities reward mediocrity than excellence, especially if the mediocrity is accompanied by an easygoing disposition, and the excellence with perhaps an irascible nature.  It is hard to discern whether this opinion is the result of unhappy experiences in seeking tenure, or whether there is a trend in this direction because of the way tenure works and is awarded in typical universities.  Let’s face it: giving tenure to some curmudgeon dooms a department to potentially years of suffering.

There is belief that the trends in the hiring of Administrators disgusts and offends the faculty of many institutions.  Some big universities have hired CEOs of big corporations as their presidents, and to be honest, a lot of universities are beginning to see themselves are being more able to cope with the problems of funding with a corporate boss at its head.  (As I observed in an earlier post, universities have been driven to desperation deliberately by certain vicious elements among political conservatives and certain business interests, and universities don’t often have the insight to see what is happening to them.)

There are issues that were not discussed in Ms Schuman’s post (or article).  Faculty who are concerned with teaching (as opposed to only research) are anxious about whether succeeding generations of incoming students are able to cope with the material they have to offer.  It is irksome to have to review and re-deliver information that should have been absorbed years earlier by students, and to re-teach skills that should have been acquired long before coming into college.  This is what will drive me from the “groves of Academia,” though the hiring practices at my institution could begin to play a role sooner or later.  There is a steady pressure to lower standards that never lets up.

Something that infuriates almost every colleague I know is the attention given to university athletics.  Honestly, the athletics programs at many schools is a source of income, and the old hands in the Admissions Office know that they would have a tough time beating the bushes for prospective freshmen if not for the hordes that want to play football for the school.  Well, f%#$ football, I say.  In the same line of thinking, the relentless marketing that the school needs to deploy grinds me down.  The TV spots, the endless magazines, the constant presence of photographers in the classroom ... all this promotion is undignified at best, and often disgusting.

I can’t do justice to the whole subject of the brain drain that is at the heart of the phenomenon I’m trying to report on, because many of this category of academic took up their fields because of the kind of subject they were in; there was little for a philosopher to do, outside of a university, in a different way than there is little for a mathematician to do outside the mathematics classroom; while I would much rather teach mathematics than have to jockey a calculator for some building contractor, I do have other options.  Leaving academe is not death to me.  And now, it appears, leaving academe was not death to a lot of these others, either.

Still, we have to be concerned.  The university was an essential part, a very special part of the world in which I grew up, just as was the library, the concert hall, or the museum.  It seems desperately important, to me, that the institution of the University should be rescued from extinction, and not by commercializing it, either.  I would suggest that it was the attempt to Free-Enterprise-ify the university that began the spiral of decay that this most recent essay illuminates.  We cannot insist that all members of our society must be productive enough to satisfy some arbitrary criteria.  It does take all sorts.  But can we keep them all in the style to which they’re accustomed?  Why, or why not?  Describe.

Arch.