[csaa-forum] battling and rattling around in the ivory tower

[Danny Butt]

It's nice to see a few of the "experienced" academics sharing some insight
here (Graeme's reminder of the not-so-good-old-days being particularly
vivid). I had a conversation with Barbara following her initial (unintended)
post suggesting that the issues around employment are kind of like the
"conference gossip" I sent to the list - they're things that traditionally
circulate around our institutions but there's no reason why lists like this
can't democratise that knowledge a little. Like most organisational
environments, the "rules" and the "ways things work" are usually somewhat
different, but discovering the tacit knowledge is a real challenge for the
initiate. For that reason alone I think some sociological study is helpful
for the aspiring academic (though some rhetoric doesn't go astray either :).
Thanks again to Melissa for providing the space.

There have been a few points come through that I'd like to acknowledge, and
place within the context of my own move to leaving tenured academic work in
favour of some other options. I hope it becomes clear that my own situation
is far from normal (media worker -> consultant -> design lecturer at a
Polytechnic-> research centre director -> theory academic in a "new uni")
and I'm not trying to discourage Mel, Rebecca, or anyone else from pursuing
their academic career, but outlining some things I've learnt and
perspectives that can be added to the mix so far.

1) Teaching. I appreciated Graeme's comments on teaching, as it's the reason
I went to tertiary education in the first place. Unfortunately, from what I
can tell being a good teacher will do little for your career, even in a
teaching-oriented institution.  Part of the reason from my POV is the way
undergrad teaching is cordoned off from the broader environment. As Elspeth
pointed out, external profile, networks, and connections are what provide
opportunities (even at the ARC level this is embodied in "linkage" :7). But
the students know that their essays/projects don't really make a difference
to anything, except their progress through the institution depending on
evaluation by stressed and overworked teachers who can't give the kind of
feedback a good editor would in the commercial environment. Your manager
knows that they can reduce costs and increase their "Effective Space
Utilisation" by putting more people into fewer classes, and it has very
little real impact on the number of students who will sign-up next year, who
tend to choose uni for prestige, profile or location. The research quantum
never lies, but overall teaching performance is not published or (in my
experience) given much more than a pat on the shoulder and "keep up the good
work". The model for teaching management is "risk management and
surveillance" rather than professional development. Compare that to pulling
in an external research grant. Research generally leads to being on the
telly and VC's love that. So you'll be actively mentored for your research
career. The economics of education simply determine that good teaching comes
way down the list of institutional priorities. Of course, there's a ton  of
personal satisfaction and growth to be gained from teaching, and I find it
ethically quite sad that good teachers end up being pulled from the
classrooms for career reasons. On the other hand, my classroom management
workload seems to increase exponentially (I can now run PeopleSoft queries
to get class lists and check on attendance and exclude those who haven't
paid their fees - fantastic!) as the administration budgets collapse, and my
ability to develop involving teaching experiences suffers. So I think part
of the solution (and this can address the "impact" issue around the
attractiveness of journalism) is in making the undergrad experience more
"applied" - connect it to things happening outside the institution. That's
in theory. In practice, it's very difficult to do anything, especially if
it's not commercially oriented. From what I've seen it takes people with
vision, passion high energy levels and a commitment to breaking down
institutional barriers. That might be you! For me, I've had enough for the
moment :7.

2) A reason why teaching sucks: what students sign up for and what they get
are two different things. In some ways what they get might be better. There
are many ways it's patently worse. But the main thing is that this
expectation gap affects the student experience in negative ways .While there
are many areas of disagreement I could raise with Terry Flew's "The New
Humanities" in Continuum, he is I think nailing some critical issues facing
undergrad humanities education.  The value proposition for the humanities is
outdated and no-one's put enough time into making it clear *how* an
undergrad degree is going to be important for students in the highly
commodified and unstable post-uni life that differs greatly from the 1970s.
I think part of the reason no-one has is because even if they know (and some
do), they also know that the day-to-day realities of the institutional
structures don't support that rationale nearly as well as they could be
expected to given the cost. As kiley suggested, more often it's individual
teachers who make it work. And good teachers are very hard to use as
marketing because they keep moving around. Of course, in some quarters, we
can lay some blame with the knee-jerk resistance to "vocationalism",
check-lists of "career opportunities for graduates" blithely reproduced from
year to year (I've done it), and general inattention to the very real
economic questions students face about their futures.
 
I just find the level of institutional unresponsiveness to their consumers
amazing.  If anyone's seen any good ones let me know. The only ones I can
recommend in NZ are the Wananga (Maori tertiary institutions).

3) Echoing another point of Elspeth's, isn't it ironic that universities
should be so bad at cultural diversity! Too many of my colleagues in various
NZ uni departments have stories around their failed attempts to address race
or gender imbalances among faculty. My own efforts in trying to induce
change (as someone with a consulting background who should be skilled at
this!) have left me fairly depressed and I would definitely list this as a
key factor in getting out.

4) If I can generalise about some generational issues I think that younger
academic staff today are much more ambitious than, for example, some of the
stories here suggest about "the old days". Younger staff in my experience
tend to take an interest in shifting the dynamics of the institution, as
well as having a research career and being good teachers and community
servants. Right away, not in a few years' time! I'm not sure that I support
Graeme's "concentrate on teaching for a few years" advice. There are many
available options now (as the number of academic/journalist hybrids who've
posted have shown), and even if many of them are equally stressful and
disappointing, I think you should be able to construct some sort of life for
yourself that is developing all your interests simultaneously. Call me
idealistic. 

5) More and more I believe that institutions basically have a DNA that
determines the kind of interactions that are possible within them and is
extremely resistant to change. While I don't want to be dismissive of
Andrew's call for a more multifaceted view -  nor do I want to diminish
Elspeth's 7 year trial! - my employment advice is to look at the broader
culture of your institutional environment and ask whether it shares your
values. If it doesn't then set a date for getting out of there, the sooner
the better. Don't get sucked into "paying your dues". Ask around to find
some places which might support what you're trying to do, and try and
develop some relationships in those places. Good managers are always keeping
an eye out for good potential employees, that's why having a profile helps.
The work might not come immediately but it will happen. I can't count the
number of job offers I've had from just being someone with a big mouth who
writes a lot to mailing lists. Similarly, I'm always thinking "Hmm, I'd like
to work with that person someday" when I come across someone doing
interesting stuff.

6) Related to the DNA point, I think it's worth remembering that what people
like Graeme and other early CS academics did was hack the university system
and create something new (as Ken Wark might put it). It wasn't about
reforming English departments (even if according to Ben Agger English has
since arguably turned out to be more interesting than Cultural Studies!). It
created a new discipline, that ended up raising the questions about English,
Sociology, etc that couldn't be raised within the departments themselves. I
think we've been through a generation of CS and I can see emergent models
being proposed that will call the existing constraints of education into
question as well.  Goran Therborn argues that there are overdue
conversations in the humanities and social sciences over what constitutes
scholarship (this relates to the applied research outputs question). He asks
of sociology:

> How does sociology compare as a social science with political science and
> economics? Has sociology anything specific to contribute to cultural studies?
> Where is the positive difference  between a sociological study and a TV talk
> show, or ambitious journalism, or a social play/novel? Is there any value
> added to sociological research in comparison with the investigations of
> Bureaux of Statistics, of opinion pollsters, market researchers, and
> consultants?

For more activist academics, these questions raise not problems of
disciplinarity but  *opportunities for change*. The opportunity is to use
the diminishing role of the university as the proclaimed source of all
knowledge, to forge new and speculative relationships between academia and
other cultural forms. I think we understand intuitively (as do many of our
students) that academic reflection is a very important part of the task of
changing the world, but it can't do it in isolation. The question is "if not
this model of education, then what?" Treating your own professional career
and institutional environment as a research project is a good place to
start. We have to make whatever the future of academic employment is going
to be. Remember that the first PhD was awarded in Germany in 1870! We don't
have to take this form as immutable (unlike the professionalised gringo
complaints around academic labour e.g. invisibleadjunct.com). The Creative
Industries discussion has a lot to offer here.

7) I think it's exactly the market model uni that is providing some of the
most interesting opportunities to rethink what education means and how we
can work professionally in this environment. Yes, I'm talking about Business
Process Outsourcing. Research subcontracts are common, but this can (and in
the online environment will) be extended to tuition. The NZ Education Review
notes that NZ tertiary institutions are subcontracting private education
providers to supply tuition that will attract more than $46 million in
government funding. My question is, if you can amass enough
knowledge/reputation capital and people you want to work with - and we know
that you no longer need a physical university to accumulate that capital
e.g. think tanks and CRCs - could you actually create an independent
environment to do education properly, and concentrate on providing
specialist pedagogical and research services to existing institutions who
need them? The work of places like sarai.net, c3.hu, banffcentre.ca/bnmi,
etc. suggests that it could be possible. That's what I plan to spend
post-tenured life finding out.

Sorry about the extended length of that rant.

x.d

--
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