[lbo-talk] A Glimpse into the Fate of Ph.D's currently

shag carpet bomb shag at cleandraws.com
Tue Jun 12 14:58:59 PDT 2012


doesn't it just kill ya that sociologists pull that shit. I watched it up close at HWS. the woman to whom it happened is a nurse-midwife now! I remember having conversations about the topic - about the way *other* organizations managed to ignore structural factors and blame individuals for their "failure" to land a tenure track when the sheepskin was still, uh, warm? And then watched them turn around and do it.

even better was the time the hiring committee - hiring for a position in a department that wanted to cultivate a rep for studying CREG (class race, ethnicity, gender) -- pondered whether someone from a community college background was, you know, not such a great choice because, well, you know, how could she be any good if she started out in a community college. @@ fucking idiots.

At 09:07 AM 6/12/2012, Alan P. Rudy wrote:
>On Monday, June 11, 2012 at 10:44 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote: > the worst
>part is that, for a lot of profs I knew, they'd take positions > like that
>and do it for five years. by the time tenure track opened up > somewhere,
>they'd been on the market for five years. As a consequence, a > lot of
>places wouldn't even look at their application on accounta the > belief
>that, if no one wanted them in that five years, then they must suck > so
>why bother. (same thing happens in regular job market, even when the >
>lack of job is due to structural changes in the economy/recession. >
>employers thinK: what's wrong with this guy he couldn't get a job in the >
>last 5 years. > > This runs quite parallel to my experience, though I
>had the added burden of having resigned from a tenure stream position at a
>Research I institution in the face of a sure loser of a tenure case

the
>unbelievable, and I mean utteerly unbelievable, luck of having the ABD
>wife of a colleague teaching at a nearby R2 university hear about what was
>happening to me from a professor in another department at my then-present
>university and decide to both tell me about an open full-time temp
>position where she was teaching as a temp AND tell the chair there that
>they'd be fools not to hire me (and not because I could teach the courses
>the just-retired husband of the chair was teaching), couldn't have been
>more fortuitous. That the department I was hired into as a temp got the
>tenure line back and wrote the job description in a way that fit me (and
>another full-time temp who'd been there less time) really well was also
>remarkably lucky given the U's fiscal straights, however much it had to do
>with my qualifications and performance. I cannot imagine that my
>applications to a wide variety of colleges and universities over the last
>six years were chucked on the scrap heap for all the asociological reasons
>Shag lists and implies

damaged goods no matter what other qualifications
>and capabilities I'd developed. ___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list