9 ms·

Why I'm walking away from one of the best jobs in academia

101 points by jhonovich 11y ago

seunosewa 11y ago
He's leaving a well paid job that gives him considerable influence because there are serious problems in academia that cant be solved easily. I find it difficult to imagine that he will find a alternate career path without that issue. Every profession/industry has serious systemic problems. I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply to find out the real reason why he's leaving his job, or reconsider his decision to leave it if it's not too late.
- baby 11y ago
  Completely agree with you > I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. You didn't have time to think about what you were doing, was it the right thing, was it what you wanted, etc... I always wondered how that kind of case usually ends. The people who've been doing one thing only in life, and ends up in a job right away. I guess your world can crumble in your mid-life.
  - jleyank 11y ago
    I might be misreading the story, but (a) there should be some mention of (staggering?) tuition debt from Law and Grad School or (b) did he transition from tenure-track to tenure? "Walking away" from failing to get tenure is merely a step ahead of the moving vans. Tossing tenure, however, is a significant personal and career move that should be discussed in some depth. And going through two professional post-graduate schools (in the US anyway) costs serious coin. Can such debts be forgiven or delayed in any way, or did the author split from both a job and regular meals? Hopefully, this isn't a "poor little rich kid" story following the path he was told to follow and then realizing that the result's not beer and skittles? If so, I hope the author finds out what he'd like to do... Should be well-trained for the law or politics. Politics with training and a heart would be a nice change!
  - nashashmi 11y ago
    > That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. I don't think the choice of study path is a problem. After all, he was doing this for 20 years and does not have a problem with what he was teaching. He has a problem with the people that benefited or did not benefit from his work. ... "Why don't you do something more meaningful with your life?" ... The real problem is he thought life would be perfect, that there would be no problems he would have a hard time solving, that everything would be as imagined. And the early success did give him false visions of grandeur and an amazing world. Early success just was not sustainable. In the end, the reality that overcame was that life sucked and will continue to suck. Only little pockets of joy exist here and there. Especially when you are a bleeding edge researcher.
    - estefan 11y ago
      > In the end, the reality that overcame was that life sucked and will continue to suck. Only little pockets of joy exist here and there. Ever considered a sideline as a motivational speaker?
  - at-fates-hands 11y ago
    >> That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. You didn't have time to think about what you were doing, was it the right thing, was it what you wanted, etc... This is a great point and one I think clearly happened to the author and to a lesser degree myself. I was all about going into academia, being a professor, travelling the world on other people's money and studying romantic cultures in far away places. I was warned about the environment then (early and mid 00's) and the lack of pay, but I wanted to experience it so bad. I had blinders on and all I wanted was my doctoral degree and then kickstart myself into a PhD program. I burned out in epic fashion and took a few years off and regrouped. In the meantime, a half dozen of my friends graduated and landed teaching jobs, and others started in their doctoral programs. Within a year, they were all out. Either pivoting and going back to school for a completely different major, or pivoting into some other field and out of academia completely. I was lucky and avoided most of it - but without my burn out, I'm afraid I probably would have been in the same place as the author. Without a real examination of where I was going and what I really wanted to do with my life, I almost lost several years finding out academia really wasn't the place I wanted to be. I look back and see I really dodged a bullet.
- bko 11y ago
  Perhaps his problem is that he's not really generating any value. He's just spinning his wheels. I would be frustrated in a job where I'm not helping generate anything of value, regardless of the perks. Many people try to find meaning in their work.
  - mcguire 11y ago
    "...he's not really generating any value..." Please define "value".
- scott_s 11y ago
  Academics do not have large salaries. They have two primary things that make up for it: freedom in what they do, and the feeling of having a positive impact on their students specifically, and society in general. So, if we consider his entire compensation, think of it as salary + freedom + positive impact. This essay is explaining why he thinks that the freedom and positive impact parts of his compensation are significantly less than he initially thought. When that's the case, the next obvious question is: is this worth it? He's answering no. All occupations have problems, but he may find another occupation where he feels all aspects of his compensation (not just monetary) are worth it.
  - reagency 11y ago
    Tenured academics also have long term job security and increasing amounts of paid free time as they get older, past the age that they would have a hard time holding a senior job in industry.
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    Tenure track professors get paid pretty well, adjuncts get paid like Scientology staff.
    - amyjess 11y ago
      The example he used in that article was an adjunct making $15k and a professor making $60k. If that $60k is actually his salary, that's not great. Now, if one of the other commenters is right and he's at UT Arlington, $60k is a perfectly liveable income here, but any professional job with more than a few years experience is going to surpass that. As a software engineer in the same metropolitan area with about 6 years experience, I make $66k/year. I'm not even that good, and I'm probably younger than him.
      - bachmeier 11y ago
        60K for an assistant professor in history sounds about right. Pretty much any assistant professor position in the humanities is going to have a starting salary at that level or less in a not highly ranked university.
- blakeyrat 11y ago
  To be fair, the guy's fully qualified as a lawyer. It's not like he's going to work at McDonalds.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
prodmerc 11y ago
> Online education isn't the solution Eh, speak for yourself, it is the solution for millions of people who want to learn something, not only have the degree as an end goal...
- ghaff 11y ago
  It's probably worth observing that he's specifically referring to his field: history. The couple of times that I've dipped into liberal arts classes online I've thought they were pretty horrible. I'm sure you can have captivating lectures but with limited personal interactions and feedback--especially with a MOOC--they don't really work as classes. Discussion boards don't scale that well under the best of circumstances. MOOCs can be reasonably effective as learning tools for things like programming. They don't have a real business or certification model but that's a somewhat separate discussion. But for history, literature, etc. I'd mostly rather just read a good book.
  - mercer 11y ago
    There's no reason why MOOCs can't be effective in the humanities. I think the problem is that there's much less overlap between those who are skilled at teaching, say, history and those who are skilled at creating good online courses. I've noticed this same lack of overlap in the field of journalism. I know quite a few people who are really good (and successful) in their field, but despite being in their late twenties or early thirties, they're shockingly inept at operating computers. This is a problem, in my opinion, because much of what (specialist) journalist do is find the story in high volumes of data. And computers are great for that: RSS readers, DEVONthink (or other personal databases), good google searches, collaboration through, at the very least google docs, etc. And yet they settle for ordering books, reading huge stacks of newspapers, cuting out the good articles and writing in their paper notebooks, and composing word documents that they send around via email with -2 added to the filename. But I digress. My point is that there's significant low-hanging fruit in combining technology with the 'stuffy' areas of academia or fields like journalism, but relatively few people from either side collaborate in this area. In part, I think this is because of a fundamentally different personality/temperament and social surroundings, and in part I suppose it's because this 'low-hanging fruit' is not low-hanging when it comes to profit. That saddens me. But the fact remains that if I as a data/tech/web geek were to 'fuse' with one of my journalist friends, great things could happen. While such a 'fusion' is unlikely, I'm still trying to find a good starting point for collaboration.
dctoedt 11y ago
The Vox article lists his name as Oliver Lee. From his bio at the bottom plus an Atlantic article [1], it appears his full name might be Oliver Lee Bateman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington [2]. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-grade-inflation/373251/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-cas... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverleebateman https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverleebateman
- bbulkow 11y ago
  He has apparently written about Justin Beiber's bulge. It's an entertaining romp worth reading. http://www.mademan.com/justin-bieber-and-the-battle-of-the-bulge/ http://www.mademan.com/justin-bieber-and-the-battle-of-the-b...
dghf 11y ago
> Finally, I realized not even students were too invested. When my best friend visited my campus to give a talk, he observed one of my lectures. I've got many shortcomings as an academic, but lecturing isn't one of them. I've been on TV, radio, podcasts — you name it. By professor standards, which admittedly aren't that high, I could rock the mic. But while my friend sat there, semi-engrossed in the lecture, he found himself increasingly distracted by the student in front of him. That student, who like all in-state students was paying $50 per lecture to hear me talk, was watching season one of Breaking Bad. Well, a lack of investment by students is a plausible interpretation. Another is that the OP isn't as good at lecturing as he likes to think.
- bko 11y ago
  But why did the student even bother showing up?
  - adrusi 11y ago
    Attendance requirements likely.
    - xlm1717 11y ago
      The author did mention that his class did not have an attendance requirement ("In a class with no attendance grade...").
  - mkozlows 11y ago
    Because you can get stuff from lectures without paying full attention. I download those Open Yale Courses lectures, and listen to them while driving to work. Driving, obviously, takes up some fraction of my brain, but I find that I still have plenty left over for listening. Would I get more out of it if I listened while sitting at a desk and taking notes? Probably. But I'm getting a lot more than nothing out of it. And obviously TV-watching is harder to combine with lecturing (among other things, the student presumably had to have closed-captioning on), but fundamentally the idea of doing two things at once when neither of them demands your complete attention isn't that weird.
JackFr 11y ago
> When I started out, I believed that government regulation could solve every problem with relatively simple intervention. You don't have to be a tea-partying libertarian to see that such an idea is shockingly naive.
- pekk 11y ago
  Not quite as naive as believing that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away.
  - murbard2 11y ago
    Not quite as naive as thinking that the belief that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away is anything more than a strawman for the libertarian position.
    - tertius 11y ago
      Break that apart just a little more. Except if it was your goal to write something hard to understand.
      - murbard2 11y ago
        (Not quite as naive as (thinking that (is anything more than (the belief that (every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away)) (a strawman for the libertarian position))))
        tertius 11y ago
        I don't think "no government" is libertarian, that's anarchy.
        murbard2 11y ago
        Anarchy isn't utopia, but on the balance, I consider that real governments (not the platonic disinterested central coordinator) introduce more problems than they solve. Not every problem is caused by the government, but that doesn't mean they can be solved by government, nor does it mean that they warrant having a government in the first place.
irln 11y ago
Education today puts way too much emphasis on the education as the end instead of it being a means to an end. Students are, understandably, so caught up in achieving a grade to "level up" instead of a) really learning the material and/or b) reflecting on whether the material is interesting enough to spend their life pursuing.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  I think maybe it's a way for the institutions to avoid responsibility for the result.
Shivetya 11y ago
I have always believe we didn't have a student loan debt problem but a student loan loaning problem. Not everyone deserves let alone needs to go to college. The idea that the government will loan money to people regardless of major is just wrong. Worse, since the government is paying a schools are accepting of such federally guaranteed money then why cannot the government dictate costs as it does with medical care? Why cannot it state, in your area one hour credit is worth X. We will not loan more than that. Textbooks cost Y. Schools, both public and private, are mills to take in effectively free money to pay out in seriously overpaid positions as football coaches and administrators (college Presidents and such) all the while many rest of very fat endowments.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >Not everyone deserves let alone needs to go to college. Not every degree plan deserves/needs subsidization in this manner. But, be careful or we may end up with a very utilitarian college system (assuming that's a bad thing).
ClassyHacker 11y ago
>The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college. Ya that won't happen. The fed wants their share of the pie as well, and since you can't get out of your student loan, even through bankruptcy, the government will eventually get their money back plus interest. There's no incentive for the government to reduce it. If anything they'll increase the funding so they'll get more interest out of future generations. Also college being the de facto next step after high school it'll be like this for at least decades to come. You'll have to be like the Japanese tsunami stone markers: "beware of tsunami and don't build below this point", and tell your kids "beware of easy money and make sure it's worthwhile" but it's gonna be pretty hard to go against the government system.
Balgair 11y ago
I hear the guy, but it rings hollow. His life has been nothing but success, reading through his piece does not reveal any true failures career-wise. I fear this decision is going to be taken back in a few years and he will become faculty again as he realizes that he really was that one very lucky person, an afford not given in other circles. Best of luck to the guy as he figures out life in not roses and that taking a stand can be very stupid and not nobel, something I think he thinks he is doing here.
- bachmeier 11y ago
  > I fear this decision is going to be taken back in a few years and he will become faculty again as he realizes that he really was that one very lucky person, an afford not given in other circles. There is a very good chance that he will never get another tenure track offer if he changes his mind. The job market in history is very, very tough.
  - Mz 11y ago
    He is also probably burning bridges by writing this scathing article. That alone may make it impossible.
    - Balgair 11y ago
      I'm not talking Harvard or Temple for job prospects for him coming back, but rather a tenure track job at a C- level school. Something that is secure and muddles along at above the poverty line. His record, though tarnished, will be more than enough for many places that will take him. Does he have a family or children? I suppose not, as fathers are (anecdotally) more risk adverse. If he chooses to have a family, I suppose that his decisions may change.
      - bachmeier 11y ago
        > His record, though tarnished, will be more than enough for many places that will take him. The job market in history is more competitive than you could ever imagine. The competition for a tenure track position at a D- level school is insane. Many strong candidates are unable to get any tenure track offers, even at a community college.
yessir2134 11y ago
Too bad Michael O'Church was banned from HN. He as some really interesting things to say on this very topic (and from reading this article, he appears to have nailed it): https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/academia-the-prisoners-dilemma-and-the-fate-of-silicon-valley/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/academia-the...
andrewclunn 11y ago
> I was a cultural historian, in command of critical theory and immersed in the latest and best work on gender and sexuality... So is the real reason you're giving it up because you've realized that critical theory is a load of crap? No? It's "the institution"'s fault? Suuure it is.
- throwaway1967 11y ago
  Nice catch! He must have realized the real motivations behind Critical Theory (a torch that was passed from Psychoanalysis to the Frankfurt School) and once you know this stuff you can't un-know it, and all of the will you once had for teaching goes away with the realization one has been utterly duped. EDIT: Now that I've read the piece, the author seems unaware he was duped. He says "Activism informed my teaching" which would be a very damning quote had he known the motivations of those behind Critical Theory. He must have really just drunk the kool-aid without questioning, as they're taught to do (otherwise they're "authoritarian"!).
davidp 11y ago
The author is completely spot-on that the problem arises with the funding system. It's a classic case of policymakers confusing correlation and causation, and subsequently cause and effect: They have assumed, and continue to assume, that getting a college degree _causes_ higher employability/earnings/etc., even though the data only indicates _correlation_; consequently they said "more must be better" and tried to push as many people into college as possible in a misguided attempt to cause higher wages. The truth is more along the lines that high employability for abstract (and disproportionately high-paying) professions is highly correlated with academic ability, and it is the latter that accounts for more of the overall success than the degree itself. In other words, many high-earning people would have some of those higher earnings even if they didn't go to college at all. The fact that many of those people choose to go to college is an _effect_ of that ability, not a cause.
fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
I'm not quite as demoralized as the OP author; but I can say that now that I have seen how the sausage is made, I have a lot less respect for the institution and the process. These places are stuffed with lazy, unmotivated (or perhaps demoralized) risk-averse people[1]. Crab mentality? Check. There is also every kind of greedy shameful opportunist charlatan on the campus; they can smell money from a mile away, and they will soak it up like a sponge while they produce nothing (I'm talking mostly about gratuitous mid-level administration). Industry is just as bad, companies will engage in so-called "partnerships" which are mainly a way for the legislature to give tax money to profitable businesses, using colleges to launder it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I have seen it first hand, and could do nothing (nothing reasonable) to stop it. I can also say that it will not help your career if you refuse to participate. I can't wait for some of these people to retire or succumb to entropy, of even better if some of them are jailed. I suppose it is naive to hope that their replacements will be better. I have a couple of words of advice for the guy though. Don't worry about the jerk who watched breaking bad in class as long as he isn't bothering anyone else. Also don't worry about the ones who sit behind and watch along. It's their prerogative if they want to pay $50 bucks to have a place to check their social media and watch reruns. They're doing a public service, subsidizing the other students' education. Re: Online Ed. Even though it currently sucks, it's here to stay. It's in beta right now, and it may change a lot before some college actually gets it right, but it isn't going away and that's a good thing. Colleges that are followers, (ie: Blackboard customers) are going to lose big. The winners will be the ones who continue to innovate until they nail it, the rest will be decimated and or become testing centers. As in every profession, there is a cohort who associate one's ability to find dark trousers and a collared shirt with "professionalism". Whoever thought that there was no conservatism at the Uni was wrong. Ignore them if you can, placate them if you must. Spend your energy where it does the most good. [1] - And also some very fine people.
- willchang 11y ago
  I would love to read an account of the games that administrators play, or of how businesses use universities to "launder money", if you know any. We've all seen numerical analyses that suggest that administrator compensation is way out of whack, but I've yet to read a good ground-level account of it.
mcguire 11y ago
A great quote (that I've said a few times myself, but I'm humble and don't need my name associated with it) from an article[1] linked by an article[2] linked by the post: "I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn't data, the singular of it sure as hell isn't, either." [1] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identi... [2] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid
mcguire 11y ago
"The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college." I suddenly think I agree. But I don't expect it to happen. The major downside, of course, is that a significant fraction of young Americans won't be able to go to college. (The corollary, that they won't be able to find jobs, is pretty much taking care of itself: they won't be able to find jobs anyway.) By and large, going to college is a good thing in itself: being exposed to challenging ideas and different people is good for an individual and for a democratic populace, even if I (or you) don't agree with the opinions someone ends up having. But in an environment like this, that isn't really going to happen. The other downside is that some people (a small minority?) with limited financial means won't be able to reach their full potential. Take someone who could have gone to MIT and invented brilliant new things after being exposed to the full range of difficult ideas. Instead, they go into a job training program and come out excellent at a limited range of very marketable skills. (In the article's situation, essentially all computer science, software engineering, information systems, and so on are job training programs, so....) Perhaps that's actually a positive, as far as the individual is concerned, but it's certainly an opportunity cost overall.
Mz 11y ago
Well, I wonder what he plans to do next. My mother always said "It's easy to criticize (or destroy) something. It's hard to create." I agree there is a lot wrong with the world currently. But I also wonder at the wisdom of his decision. I walked away from a job at a Fortune 500 company for health reasons. This seems like someone who is extremely privileged, doesn't really appreciate how privileged they are, and is throwing away a position not easily gotten back if the decision to go turns out to be one he regrets. Perhaps he won't. He has been published in various venues and done a lot of different things. Perhaps he will readily land on his feet. But I wonder if he will discover that it isn't any better anywhere else and regret this choice.
chrisra 11y ago
Seems like there should have been 100 footnotes: *in the university I worked at, not all of academia.

101 points by jhonovich 11y ago

He's leaving a well paid job that gives him considerable influence because there are serious problems in academia that cant be solved easily. I find it difficult to imagine that he will find a alternate career path without that issue. Every profession/industry has serious systemic problems. I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply to find out the real reason why he's leaving his job, or reconsider his decision to leave it if it's not too late.

baby 11y ago
Completely agree with you > I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. You didn't have time to think about what you were doing, was it the right thing, was it what you wanted, etc... I always wondered how that kind of case usually ends. The people who've been doing one thing only in life, and ends up in a job right away. I guess your world can crumble in your mid-life.
- jleyank 11y ago
  I might be misreading the story, but (a) there should be some mention of (staggering?) tuition debt from Law and Grad School or (b) did he transition from tenure-track to tenure? "Walking away" from failing to get tenure is merely a step ahead of the moving vans. Tossing tenure, however, is a significant personal and career move that should be discussed in some depth. And going through two professional post-graduate schools (in the US anyway) costs serious coin. Can such debts be forgiven or delayed in any way, or did the author split from both a job and regular meals? Hopefully, this isn't a "poor little rich kid" story following the path he was told to follow and then realizing that the result's not beer and skittles? If so, I hope the author finds out what he'd like to do... Should be well-trained for the law or politics. Politics with training and a heart would be a nice change!
- nashashmi 11y ago
  > That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. I don't think the choice of study path is a problem. After all, he was doing this for 20 years and does not have a problem with what he was teaching. He has a problem with the people that benefited or did not benefit from his work. ... "Why don't you do something more meaningful with your life?" ... The real problem is he thought life would be perfect, that there would be no problems he would have a hard time solving, that everything would be as imagined. And the early success did give him false visions of grandeur and an amazing world. Early success just was not sustainable. In the end, the reality that overcame was that life sucked and will continue to suck. Only little pockets of joy exist here and there. Especially when you are a bleeding edge researcher.
  - estefan 11y ago
    > In the end, the reality that overcame was that life sucked and will continue to suck. Only little pockets of joy exist here and there. Ever considered a sideline as a motivational speaker?
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  >> That's the problem with graduating so early and following your initial studying path. You didn't have time to think about what you were doing, was it the right thing, was it what you wanted, etc... This is a great point and one I think clearly happened to the author and to a lesser degree myself. I was all about going into academia, being a professor, travelling the world on other people's money and studying romantic cultures in far away places. I was warned about the environment then (early and mid 00's) and the lack of pay, but I wanted to experience it so bad. I had blinders on and all I wanted was my doctoral degree and then kickstart myself into a PhD program. I burned out in epic fashion and took a few years off and regrouped. In the meantime, a half dozen of my friends graduated and landed teaching jobs, and others started in their doctoral programs. Within a year, they were all out. Either pivoting and going back to school for a completely different major, or pivoting into some other field and out of academia completely. I was lucky and avoided most of it - but without my burn out, I'm afraid I probably would have been in the same place as the author. Without a real examination of where I was going and what I really wanted to do with my life, I almost lost several years finding out academia really wasn't the place I wanted to be. I look back and see I really dodged a bullet.
bko 11y ago
Perhaps his problem is that he's not really generating any value. He's just spinning his wheels. I would be frustrated in a job where I'm not helping generate anything of value, regardless of the perks. Many people try to find meaning in their work.
- mcguire 11y ago
  "...he's not really generating any value..." Please define "value".
scott_s 11y ago
Academics do not have large salaries. They have two primary things that make up for it: freedom in what they do, and the feeling of having a positive impact on their students specifically, and society in general. So, if we consider his entire compensation, think of it as salary + freedom + positive impact. This essay is explaining why he thinks that the freedom and positive impact parts of his compensation are significantly less than he initially thought. When that's the case, the next obvious question is: is this worth it? He's answering no. All occupations have problems, but he may find another occupation where he feels all aspects of his compensation (not just monetary) are worth it.
- reagency 11y ago
  Tenured academics also have long term job security and increasing amounts of paid free time as they get older, past the age that they would have a hard time holding a senior job in industry.
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  Tenure track professors get paid pretty well, adjuncts get paid like Scientology staff.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    The example he used in that article was an adjunct making $15k and a professor making $60k. If that $60k is actually his salary, that's not great. Now, if one of the other commenters is right and he's at UT Arlington, $60k is a perfectly liveable income here, but any professional job with more than a few years experience is going to surpass that. As a software engineer in the same metropolitan area with about 6 years experience, I make $66k/year. I'm not even that good, and I'm probably younger than him.
    - bachmeier 11y ago
      60K for an assistant professor in history sounds about right. Pretty much any assistant professor position in the humanities is going to have a starting salary at that level or less in a not highly ranked university.
blakeyrat 11y ago
To be fair, the guy's fully qualified as a lawyer. It's not like he's going to work at McDonalds.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

prodmerc 11y ago

> Online education isn't the solution Eh, speak for yourself, it is the solution for millions of people who want to learn something, not only have the degree as an end goal...

ghaff 11y ago
It's probably worth observing that he's specifically referring to his field: history. The couple of times that I've dipped into liberal arts classes online I've thought they were pretty horrible. I'm sure you can have captivating lectures but with limited personal interactions and feedback--especially with a MOOC--they don't really work as classes. Discussion boards don't scale that well under the best of circumstances. MOOCs can be reasonably effective as learning tools for things like programming. They don't have a real business or certification model but that's a somewhat separate discussion. But for history, literature, etc. I'd mostly rather just read a good book.
- mercer 11y ago
  There's no reason why MOOCs can't be effective in the humanities. I think the problem is that there's much less overlap between those who are skilled at teaching, say, history and those who are skilled at creating good online courses. I've noticed this same lack of overlap in the field of journalism. I know quite a few people who are really good (and successful) in their field, but despite being in their late twenties or early thirties, they're shockingly inept at operating computers. This is a problem, in my opinion, because much of what (specialist) journalist do is find the story in high volumes of data. And computers are great for that: RSS readers, DEVONthink (or other personal databases), good google searches, collaboration through, at the very least google docs, etc. And yet they settle for ordering books, reading huge stacks of newspapers, cuting out the good articles and writing in their paper notebooks, and composing word documents that they send around via email with -2 added to the filename. But I digress. My point is that there's significant low-hanging fruit in combining technology with the 'stuffy' areas of academia or fields like journalism, but relatively few people from either side collaborate in this area. In part, I think this is because of a fundamentally different personality/temperament and social surroundings, and in part I suppose it's because this 'low-hanging fruit' is not low-hanging when it comes to profit. That saddens me. But the fact remains that if I as a data/tech/web geek were to 'fuse' with one of my journalist friends, great things could happen. While such a 'fusion' is unlikely, I'm still trying to find a good starting point for collaboration.

dctoedt 11y ago

The Vox article lists his name as Oliver Lee. From his bio at the bottom plus an Atlantic article [1], it appears his full name might be Oliver Lee Bateman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington [2]. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-grade-inflation/373251/ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-cas... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverleebateman https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverleebateman

bbulkow 11y ago
He has apparently written about Justin Beiber's bulge. It's an entertaining romp worth reading. http://www.mademan.com/justin-bieber-and-the-battle-of-the-bulge/ http://www.mademan.com/justin-bieber-and-the-battle-of-the-b...

dghf 11y ago

> Finally, I realized not even students were too invested. When my best friend visited my campus to give a talk, he observed one of my lectures. I've got many shortcomings as an academic, but lecturing isn't one of them. I've been on TV, radio, podcasts — you name it. By professor standards, which admittedly aren't that high, I could rock the mic. But while my friend sat there, semi-engrossed in the lecture, he found himself increasingly distracted by the student in front of him. That student, who like all in-state students was paying $50 per lecture to hear me talk, was watching season one of Breaking Bad. Well, a lack of investment by students is a plausible interpretation. Another is that the OP isn't as good at lecturing as he likes to think.

bko 11y ago
But why did the student even bother showing up?
- adrusi 11y ago
  Attendance requirements likely.
  - xlm1717 11y ago
    The author did mention that his class did not have an attendance requirement ("In a class with no attendance grade...").
- mkozlows 11y ago
  Because you can get stuff from lectures without paying full attention. I download those Open Yale Courses lectures, and listen to them while driving to work. Driving, obviously, takes up some fraction of my brain, but I find that I still have plenty left over for listening. Would I get more out of it if I listened while sitting at a desk and taking notes? Probably. But I'm getting a lot more than nothing out of it. And obviously TV-watching is harder to combine with lecturing (among other things, the student presumably had to have closed-captioning on), but fundamentally the idea of doing two things at once when neither of them demands your complete attention isn't that weird.

JackFr 11y ago

> When I started out, I believed that government regulation could solve every problem with relatively simple intervention. You don't have to be a tea-partying libertarian to see that such an idea is shockingly naive.

pekk 11y ago
Not quite as naive as believing that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away.
- murbard2 11y ago
  Not quite as naive as thinking that the belief that every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away is anything more than a strawman for the libertarian position.
  - tertius 11y ago
    Break that apart just a little more. Except if it was your goal to write something hard to understand.
    - murbard2 11y ago
      (Not quite as naive as (thinking that (is anything more than (the belief that (every problem works itself out as long as the government goes away)) (a strawman for the libertarian position))))
      - tertius 11y ago
        I don't think "no government" is libertarian, that's anarchy.
        murbard2 11y ago
        Anarchy isn't utopia, but on the balance, I consider that real governments (not the platonic disinterested central coordinator) introduce more problems than they solve. Not every problem is caused by the government, but that doesn't mean they can be solved by government, nor does it mean that they warrant having a government in the first place.

irln 11y ago

Education today puts way too much emphasis on the education as the end instead of it being a means to an end. Students are, understandably, so caught up in achieving a grade to "level up" instead of a) really learning the material and/or b) reflecting on whether the material is interesting enough to spend their life pursuing.

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
I think maybe it's a way for the institutions to avoid responsibility for the result.

Shivetya 11y ago

I have always believe we didn't have a student loan debt problem but a student loan loaning problem. Not everyone deserves let alone needs to go to college. The idea that the government will loan money to people regardless of major is just wrong. Worse, since the government is paying a schools are accepting of such federally guaranteed money then why cannot the government dictate costs as it does with medical care? Why cannot it state, in your area one hour credit is worth X. We will not loan more than that. Textbooks cost Y. Schools, both public and private, are mills to take in effectively free money to pay out in seriously overpaid positions as football coaches and administrators (college Presidents and such) all the while many rest of very fat endowments.

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>Not everyone deserves let alone needs to go to college. Not every degree plan deserves/needs subsidization in this manner. But, be careful or we may end up with a very utilitarian college system (assuming that's a bad thing).

ClassyHacker 11y ago

>The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college. Ya that won't happen. The fed wants their share of the pie as well, and since you can't get out of your student loan, even through bankruptcy, the government will eventually get their money back plus interest. There's no incentive for the government to reduce it. If anything they'll increase the funding so they'll get more interest out of future generations. Also college being the de facto next step after high school it'll be like this for at least decades to come. You'll have to be like the Japanese tsunami stone markers: "beware of tsunami and don't build below this point", and tell your kids "beware of easy money and make sure it's worthwhile" but it's gonna be pretty hard to go against the government system.

Balgair 11y ago

I hear the guy, but it rings hollow. His life has been nothing but success, reading through his piece does not reveal any true failures career-wise. I fear this decision is going to be taken back in a few years and he will become faculty again as he realizes that he really was that one very lucky person, an afford not given in other circles. Best of luck to the guy as he figures out life in not roses and that taking a stand can be very stupid and not nobel, something I think he thinks he is doing here.

bachmeier 11y ago
> I fear this decision is going to be taken back in a few years and he will become faculty again as he realizes that he really was that one very lucky person, an afford not given in other circles. There is a very good chance that he will never get another tenure track offer if he changes his mind. The job market in history is very, very tough.
- Mz 11y ago
  He is also probably burning bridges by writing this scathing article. That alone may make it impossible.
  - Balgair 11y ago
    I'm not talking Harvard or Temple for job prospects for him coming back, but rather a tenure track job at a C- level school. Something that is secure and muddles along at above the poverty line. His record, though tarnished, will be more than enough for many places that will take him. Does he have a family or children? I suppose not, as fathers are (anecdotally) more risk adverse. If he chooses to have a family, I suppose that his decisions may change.
    - bachmeier 11y ago
      > His record, though tarnished, will be more than enough for many places that will take him. The job market in history is more competitive than you could ever imagine. The competition for a tenure track position at a D- level school is insane. Many strong candidates are unable to get any tenure track offers, even at a community college.

yessir2134 11y ago

Too bad Michael O'Church was banned from HN. He as some really interesting things to say on this very topic (and from reading this article, he appears to have nailed it): https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/academia-the-prisoners-dilemma-and-the-fate-of-silicon-valley/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/academia-the...

andrewclunn 11y ago

> I was a cultural historian, in command of critical theory and immersed in the latest and best work on gender and sexuality... So is the real reason you're giving it up because you've realized that critical theory is a load of crap? No? It's "the institution"'s fault? Suuure it is.

throwaway1967 11y ago
Nice catch! He must have realized the real motivations behind Critical Theory (a torch that was passed from Psychoanalysis to the Frankfurt School) and once you know this stuff you can't un-know it, and all of the will you once had for teaching goes away with the realization one has been utterly duped. EDIT: Now that I've read the piece, the author seems unaware he was duped. He says "Activism informed my teaching" which would be a very damning quote had he known the motivations of those behind Critical Theory. He must have really just drunk the kool-aid without questioning, as they're taught to do (otherwise they're "authoritarian"!).

davidp 11y ago

The author is completely spot-on that the problem arises with the funding system. It's a classic case of policymakers confusing correlation and causation, and subsequently cause and effect: They have assumed, and continue to assume, that getting a college degree _causes_ higher employability/earnings/etc., even though the data only indicates _correlation_; consequently they said "more must be better" and tried to push as many people into college as possible in a misguided attempt to cause higher wages. The truth is more along the lines that high employability for abstract (and disproportionately high-paying) professions is highly correlated with academic ability, and it is the latter that accounts for more of the overall success than the degree itself. In other words, many high-earning people would have some of those higher earnings even if they didn't go to college at all. The fact that many of those people choose to go to college is an _effect_ of that ability, not a cause.

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago

I'm not quite as demoralized as the OP author; but I can say that now that I have seen how the sausage is made, I have a lot less respect for the institution and the process. These places are stuffed with lazy, unmotivated (or perhaps demoralized) risk-averse people[1]. Crab mentality? Check. There is also every kind of greedy shameful opportunist charlatan on the campus; they can smell money from a mile away, and they will soak it up like a sponge while they produce nothing (I'm talking mostly about gratuitous mid-level administration). Industry is just as bad, companies will engage in so-called "partnerships" which are mainly a way for the legislature to give tax money to profitable businesses, using colleges to launder it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I have seen it first hand, and could do nothing (nothing reasonable) to stop it. I can also say that it will not help your career if you refuse to participate. I can't wait for some of these people to retire or succumb to entropy, of even better if some of them are jailed. I suppose it is naive to hope that their replacements will be better. I have a couple of words of advice for the guy though. Don't worry about the jerk who watched breaking bad in class as long as he isn't bothering anyone else. Also don't worry about the ones who sit behind and watch along. It's their prerogative if they want to pay $50 bucks to have a place to check their social media and watch reruns. They're doing a public service, subsidizing the other students' education. Re: Online Ed. Even though it currently sucks, it's here to stay. It's in beta right now, and it may change a lot before some college actually gets it right, but it isn't going away and that's a good thing. Colleges that are followers, (ie: Blackboard customers) are going to lose big. The winners will be the ones who continue to innovate until they nail it, the rest will be decimated and or become testing centers. As in every profession, there is a cohort who associate one's ability to find dark trousers and a collared shirt with "professionalism". Whoever thought that there was no conservatism at the Uni was wrong. Ignore them if you can, placate them if you must. Spend your energy where it does the most good. [1] - And also some very fine people.

willchang 11y ago
I would love to read an account of the games that administrators play, or of how businesses use universities to "launder money", if you know any. We've all seen numerical analyses that suggest that administrator compensation is way out of whack, but I've yet to read a good ground-level account of it.

mcguire 11y ago

A great quote (that I've said a few times myself, but I'm humble and don't need my name associated with it) from an article[1] linked by an article[2] linked by the post: "I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn't data, the singular of it sure as hell isn't, either." [1] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identity http://www.vox.com/2015/6/5/8736591/liberal-professor-identi... [2] http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

mcguire 11y ago

"The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college." I suddenly think I agree. But I don't expect it to happen. The major downside, of course, is that a significant fraction of young Americans won't be able to go to college. (The corollary, that they won't be able to find jobs, is pretty much taking care of itself: they won't be able to find jobs anyway.) By and large, going to college is a good thing in itself: being exposed to challenging ideas and different people is good for an individual and for a democratic populace, even if I (or you) don't agree with the opinions someone ends up having. But in an environment like this, that isn't really going to happen. The other downside is that some people (a small minority?) with limited financial means won't be able to reach their full potential. Take someone who could have gone to MIT and invented brilliant new things after being exposed to the full range of difficult ideas. Instead, they go into a job training program and come out excellent at a limited range of very marketable skills. (In the article's situation, essentially all computer science, software engineering, information systems, and so on are job training programs, so....) Perhaps that's actually a positive, as far as the individual is concerned, but it's certainly an opportunity cost overall.

Mz 11y ago

Well, I wonder what he plans to do next. My mother always said "It's easy to criticize (or destroy) something. It's hard to create." I agree there is a lot wrong with the world currently. But I also wonder at the wisdom of his decision. I walked away from a job at a Fortune 500 company for health reasons. This seems like someone who is extremely privileged, doesn't really appreciate how privileged they are, and is throwing away a position not easily gotten back if the decision to go turns out to be one he regrets. Perhaps he won't. He has been published in various venues and done a lot of different things. Perhaps he will readily land on his feet. But I wonder if he will discover that it isn't any better anywhere else and regret this choice.

chrisra 11y ago

Seems like there should have been 100 footnotes: *in the university I worked at, not all of academia.