[lbo-talk] Working-class Academics

joanna bujes jbujes at covad.net
Sun Dec 5 20:15:45 PST 2004


When I applied for a job at SUNY Plattsburgh (I had a Ph.D. from Berkeley), I found myself competing for that tenure-track spot with five hundred others. One of them was from Princeton. I was told this at a faculty dinner, where I was also told that were it not for the fact that they had to hire a woman, they would have hired the guy from Princeton. It was these kind of warm fuzzies that sent me running (away) a year later.

The point being, it's a buyer's market: there are so many top tier candidates looking for jobs, the second and third tier schools can afford to take their pick.

Joanna

Eugene Vilensky wrote:


>"As "lower-status colleges" greatly outnumber "prestigious
>research-oriented universities," it is fair to hypothesize that the
>majority of college teachers come from working-class backgrounds, by
>the standards of the aforementioned researchers' works."
>----
>I disagree. All 8 state schools in KY have made it a point to "strive
>for excellence" which to them means throwing money at top faculty
>while driving tuition up 13% per year. As the elite schools train
>many more professors than they can themselves employ, and as podunk
>universities such as mine have made their *salaries* competitive (at
>the expense of the working / middle classes, i believe), I believe the
>trend is for 2nd and 3rd tier professors who have nonetheless attended
>top institutions and by the above definition come from privileged
>background to take positions at lower status colleges.
>
>Sigh our school president always makes a point to never mention that
>being a top institution means having top tuition prices. But shucks,
>who needs more college graduates when they all end up leaving
>Kentucky, anyways?
>
>On Sun, 5 Dec 2004 22:02:28 -0500, Yoshie Furuhashi
><furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>"Working-class Academics":
>><http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/12/working-class-academics.html>.
>>--
>>Yoshie
>>
>>* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
>>* "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and
>><http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>
>>___________________________________
>>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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