January 15, 2009
The Psychology of Prestige
One of my favorite academic bloggers is Dean Dad, author of the very wise “Confessions of a Community College Dean.” In a recent post, he argues that the current crisis in academic hiring may have the salutary result of dispelling what I would call the “myth of meritocracy” in the job market. He argues that the economic problems higher education is facing have created such a mismatch between the size and quality of the applicant pool, and the number of available faculty jobs, that there is no meaningful way to correlate applicants’ quality (however defined) with success on the job market.
Surely there are many wonderful candidates who, through no fault of their own, will not get faculty jobs. There are also a lesser number (I hope) of weak candidates who will somehow manage to find academic employment despite their shortcomings. Despite those facts, Dean Dad writes, “we academics persist in believing that the Great Chain of Prestige, starting at Harvard and working its way on down, is founded in basic truth. And because it’s an objective reflection of merit, being anyplace other than at the tippity-top must reflect a personal failing.”
For a long time, I have thought about the way academics internalize that “Great Chain of Prestige.” It is quite literally bred in the bones of graduate students at the most competitive programs, and it is responsible, beyond doubt, for an enormous amount of unhappiness in the professoriate. Dean Dad is optimistic that the empirically verifiable falsity of that myth will lead to some kind of psychological restructuring among academics. I wish I were so hopeful, but I do think that his points are an excellent basis for further thinking about how we measure and value success as faculty members.
By David Evans | Posted on Thu Jan 15, 01:54 PM | Permalink | CommentThinking Twice About Jobs at Research Universities
An article on The Chronicle’s Web site today describes the results of an important new survey that shows a growing proportion of graduate students worry about balancing a career and family. As a result, they are turning away from a career at research universities in favor of one at teaching institutions that are perceived as more family friendly.
The survey of 8,400 doctoral students from University of California campuses was conducted in 2006-7 by Mary Ann Mason, a professor at Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Law Center on Health, Economic & Family Security, and by Marc Goulden, director of data initiatives in academic affairs at Berkeley.
According to their findings, only 29 percent of women and 46 percent of men rated research-intensive universities as family-friendly workplaces for tenure-track professors. In contrast, 82 percent of men and 73 percent of women considered teaching-centered institutions to be family friendly.
Of particular concern is the finding that many Ph.D. students who had aspired to work at a research university had had a change of heart on the way to the degree:
Forty-five percent of men and 39 percent of the women surveyed intended to become professors at a research institution when they started their doctoral program. However, once into their programs, the numbers dropped to 36 percent and 27 percent, respectively.
That shift was especially pronounced among women in the sciences, where a mere 20 percent of women “still wanted to become professors at research institutions, compared with 31 percent at the outset of their Ph.D. programs,” Audrey Williams June notes in her article.
So tell us, readers: Do those numbers surprise you? What can research universities do to improve their family-unfriendly reputation?
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Thu Jan 15, 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comment [1]January 14, 2009
Shining a Light on Administrators' Salaries
Arkansas state Sen. Gilbert Baker has proposed legislation that would “increase salary transparency” for university administrators at state-supported institutions, ArkansasBusiness.com reports.
The bill would require that state-supported higher education institutions submit a report listing each administrator there who earns a salary of $100,000 or more to the Higher Education Coordinating Board and the Department of Higher Education by July 1 each year.
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Wed Jan 14, 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comment [11]The report, which would be available online, would also include all special contract provisions for administrators, such as housing allowances, vehicle allowances, deferred compensations and “other fringe benefits.” The report would have to list the total value of each administrator’s compensation package and their respective funding sources.
Summertime Blues
Final schedules for summer school are now coming due. Large summer-school programs can create complications for faculty contracts. How should we handle positions that include mandatory summer teaching? This is especially a problem in education programs, where teachers dominate the student clientele or in small departments with significant summer service components. Some places give strong pay incentives (my favorite was a public institution that pays 1/6th of base salary per course, based on an 18-hour annual contract), while others shift contract loads (fall/spring loads reduced by a course or two in exchange for the summer courses).
What’s the fairest way to handle mandatory summer teaching?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Wed Jan 14, 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comment [3]SUNY-Stony Brook Settles With Female Postdoc Who Alleged Gender Bias
Sherry M.J. Towers, a former postdoctoral fellow in physics who said her faculty supervisor denied her maternity leave and told her she had to return to work within days of giving birth, in 2003, has settled her sex-discrimination lawsuit against the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The settlement was announced today by the American Association of University Women, which supported Ms. Towers in her lawsuit. The terms of the settlement are confidential, the association said.
Ms. Towers was employed by Stony Brook and assigned to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a federal facility outside Chicago. She filed the federal lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in December 2004. She said the university had failed to extend her postdoc contract after she complained about gender discrimination by her supervisor — John D. Hobbs, an associate professor of physics at Stony Brook also working at Fermi.
At the time she filed the suit, Ms. Towers told The Chronicle that her case represented the difficulties that women — and mothers in particular — have in pursuing academic careers in science. According to the AAUW, Ms. Towers is now preparing for a career as a high-school teacher of physics and mathematics.
Neither the university nor Mr. Hobbs returned telephone calls seeking comment.
By Robin Wilson | Posted on Wed Jan 14, 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comment [2]California Universities to Freeze Top Administrator Salaries as Budget Crisis Worsens
California’s two public-university systems announced Friday that they would freeze the salaries of top administrators, one of many steps the systems are taking to cut costs during the state’s most severe fiscal crisis in decades.
The University of California, which has weathered compensation scandals in recent years, said it would freeze the salaries of 285 top administrators and place strict limits on bonuses and other forms of compensation. California State University said it would freeze salaries for dozens of top administrators, stop most hiring, and institute travel restrictions for employees.
Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California, also provided details of a plan to limit undergraduate freshman enrollment by 2,300 students, or 6 percent, during the 2009-10 academic year. The university’s Board of Regents is expected to formally approve both the enrollment cut and the salary freezes at a special meeting next week.
Lawmakers in California, which faces the prospect of a $41.6-billion deficit by the middle of 2010, have yet to approve a budget, but public colleges are anticipating significant cuts over the next year. Campuses of the University of California have been asked to prepare plans for cuts ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent.
“The magnitude of the state’s budget crisis continues to grow, along with the uncertainty of the future fiscal picture,” Charles B. Reed, chancellor of Cal State, said in a written statement. “We are instituting these cost-saving measures, knowing that the state’s fiscal situation worsens each day.”
State leaders have been unable to agree on a budget to close the deficit, creating the possibility that the state will start to run out of money in the next several weeks. The gridlock has already had an adverse effect on its colleges: A statewide ban on state-financed construction projects for 90 days will prevent Cal State from continuing work on administration buildings, libraries, and other projects, the university announced today.
Starting on February 1, the state may also be forced to delay payment for state Cal Grants to students, which could make it difficult for some community-college students to stay in school. The delay would be a reprise of a similar situation in September, when grants for community-college students were threatened because the Legislature was nearly three months’ late in passing the previous budget.
By Josh Keller | Posted on Wed Jan 14, 01:01 PM | Permalink | CommentJanuary 12, 2009
Women versus Women
Thanks to Historiann for calling attention to an article in The New York Times about why some women undermine one another at work.
In the article, executive coach Peggy Klaus offers a familiar litany of explanations for such (mis)behavior:
Probably the most popular one is the scarcity excuse — the idea that there are too few spots at the top, so women at more senior levels are unwilling to assist female colleagues who could potentially replace them.
Another explanation is what I call the “D.I.Y. Bootstrap Theory,” which goes like this: “If I had to pull myself up by the bootstraps to get ahead with no one to help me, why should I help you? Do it yourself! […]”
Others contend that women mistreat one another because of hyperemotionality, leading them to become overly invested in insignificant nuances and causing them to hold grudges. I’ve encountered this phenomenon among women who feel personally assaulted when someone criticizes them or their ideas.
Historiann, however, shares some other ideas in her excellent post. She suggests that while the “scarcity excuse” might be a real factor in the traditional workplace, inside the ivory tower it makes little sense:
Unlike people outside of academia, who are vulnerable to layoffs and being replaced by younger and cheaper employees, tenured faculty are safe. They’re made men and women, so they have nothing to lose when their junior colleagues succeed, and if they have even a glimmer of civic-mindedness about their jobs they’ll be happy that their colleagues are thriving and making the department look good.
She also takes issue with with idea that “women mistreat one another because of hyperemotionality,” arguing instead that in her experience it is “men who are inclined to lash out emotionally” simply because they can get away with it. While a woman who shouts or gets angry (or, heaven forbid, cries) in the workplace is typically viewed as “a crazy b!tch,” a man can express anger without hurting his career, Historiann writes. In fact, men often “use anger” to their benefit — to make a point or get their way, she adds.
An overlooked, but better explanation is that women are generally “more critical of women, and they hold other women to higher standards than they do their male colleages. No matter what women do, it’s never enough, and it can always be twisted to be evidence of something bad that highlights a defect in your career,” Historiann concludes.
How prevalent is the phenomenon of women bullying other women in academe, and what explains it?
By Gabriela Montell | Posted on Mon Jan 12, 02:10 PM | Permalink | Comment [23]Truth in Advertising
I enjoy trolling Snopes.com for interesting stories about urban legends that sometimes end up being true. This advertisement for a philosophy position, which turned out to be real, caught my eye. It has bounced around higher-education Web sites before, but it’s worth a glance. It includes this classic sentence: “Our students tend to be poorly prepared for college level work, intellectually passive, interested primarily in partying, and culturally provincial in the extreme.” Apparently the ad was never intended to be posted, but when it was, it took on a life of its own, including several rounds of attention. Now it’s a great case study in the flukes and flaws of academic job postings.
If truth in advertising were applied in a draconian way, what might ads from your department include? What positive attributes might be articulated?
By Gene C. Fant Jr. | Posted on Mon Jan 12, 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comment [1]Professors Question University's Plan to Award Bonuses on Basis of Student Evaluations
The chancellor of the Texas A&M University system wants to give faculty members bonuses of up to $10,000, based on student evaluations, but some professors are raising concerns about the plan, saying it could become a popularity contest, The Bryan-College Station Eagle reported.
Faculty members can decide whether to participate in the pilot program, which is being offered at the system’s flagship, in College Station, and at its Kingsville and Prairie View campuses. Though details are preliminary, officials said, the goal is to offer awards starting at $2,500 to the top 15 percent of participating instructors.
Martha Loudder, an accounting professor and a former speaker of the faculty senate at College Station, questioned the fairness of basing the awards “solely on student evaluation.” Ms. Loudder, who has received the university’s most prestigious teaching award, said she feared that “some very good teachers will be left out.”
Administrators counter that the purpose of the program is to measure student satisfaction, not teaching effectiveness. “This is customer satisfaction,” the chancellor, Michael D. McKinney, told the newspaper. “It doesn’t have to do with tenure, promotion, status. It has to do with students’ having the opportunity to recognize good teachers and reward them with some money.”
By Charles Huckabee | Posted on Mon Jan 12, 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comment [9]Federal Lawsuit Accuses College of Not Stopping Harassment by President
Washington — The U.S. Department of Justice sued Luna Community College on Friday, accusing the New Mexico institution of doing little or nothing to stop its president from sexually harassing a subordinate employee in 2005 and early 2006.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, seeks unspecified damages on behalf of Charlene Ortiz-Cordova, who at the time of the alleged harassment was academic director. The suit was filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which among other things prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of sex.
According to the Justice Department, Ms. Ortiz-Cordova was subjected to unwanted sexual contact, gestures, and comments by the college’s president at the time, Leroy Sanchez, in a manner that created a hostile work environment.
She complained repeatedly about the unwanted attention to her immediate supervisors, the lawsuit says, but only after a year had passed did one of them alert the college’s human-resources department of Ms. Ortiz-Cordova’s complaints. Mr. Sanchez was told to avoid contacting Ms. Ortiz-Cordova, the suit alleges, but he was never disciplined and nothing further was done about the matter.
Ms. Ortiz-Cordova left her job in 2006 and filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigated and verified the allegations. It referred the case to the Justice Department after attempts at a “voluntary resolution” with Luna failed.
The college could not be reached for comment over the weekend, but according to the Associated Press, it told the EEOC last year that the sexual contact between Ms. Ortiz-Cordova and Mr. Sanchez was inappropriate but consensual and did not represent harassment. Mr. Sanchez retired as president in late 2006.
In a news release, the Justice Department said that it rarely filed lawsuits citing Title VII, only 12 in all of 2008, and that this was the first of 2009.
By Andrew Mytelka | Posted on Mon Jan 12, 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comment