Maybe I'll try your idea of just listing a masters degree.
-- Nathan Newman
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kelley Walker" <kelley at interpactinc.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2001 3:53 PM Subject: Re: Exploitation ofa academics (was reparations)
At 05:12 PM 3/20/01 +0000, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>Hey, Kelly, I had to go to law school to get a job in my 30s after I was
>canned. Other frienbds of mine in similar situation report that for
>humanities stypes w/o technical skills, business people are very reluctant
>to hire them, they are viewed as having goofed off, not having had real
>jobs, not being serious, and also as being snooty and unlikely to fit
in. --jks
i was offered an assistantship at Binghamton's Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture program. i turned it down precisely because, altho i loved phil, i was scared witless about what i'd do with a master's or phud if i didn't get an academic position. history or sociology seemed a lot surer a bet and i could always teach high school.
a colleague from William Smith, Vera Whisman, had a similar thing happen to her after she spent 5 years on a full-time "visiting professorship" waiting for the college to come up with funds for a tenure hire. she didn't get the job despite being lured along for those years. when hiring time came, they just couldn't resist what is rampant in every other workplace: "the grass is greener" syndrome where a inhouse candidates are passed over. it's supposed to be an asset, to be a "known" quantity, but it works against you because now you're boring and those others seem like untapped potential. yadda.
as you know, she was dead in the water after losing a tenure track job. it was 5 yrs after the phud was conferred. Vera went to community college afterward and became a nurse. my heart sunk when i spoke to her on the phone about it all. imagine re enrolling in community college?! she took it in stride. she did, in part, because she was a new mom and her partner, tho they'd split, lived in the area and they'd agreed to co-parent since Vera's ex was the one who actually gave birth to the baby.
had she not been geographically bound to the area, as a sociologist, she could have done many other things: think tank, research, technical writer, work for textbook company, editor, etc.
as for the phud, the advice i got was that you just don't tell them. if you tell them you have a master's, you're cool. this is about anti-intellectualism in the US, yes? i went thru same with my current boss. he was worried i wouldn't stick around etc. what did you do all those years? well, you worked as a researcher for OSU. You turn your committee work, research, writing into project planning, grant writing, etc. yadda.
i'm not saying it's right or justifying it. but we really shouldn't be surprised! this is what my mentors told me right away! i was on the incoming grad student selection committee. the fac were discussing how many positions we had to dole out and something came up about how we enrolled more grads than we could really pump out.
i finally asked a mentor about this. why on earth are we pullingin more grads than we can every really pump out? we had a long talk about social control/labor discipline. i'm gonna get all functionalist on ya, but forces competition in the workplace. make everyone believe that the only thing they can do or should want to do is be an academic and you have scared adjuncts willing to very nearly pay a uni for the privilege of having a job.
she knew what she was talking about. her father, grandfather, etc had all been presidents at elite liberal arts colleges in New England.