How are 'Less-than-Wonderful' Graduates Hired at RA Universities?

Why would Literature PhDs be working in Moe's Bookstore? Do we really know for sure that the Moe's cashiers really are PhDs in Literature or are they merely super-intelligent people ... who might still be working toward the PhD or saving up for grad school while living with Mom and Dad? From the way you write of it, I'm guessing that Moe's must be very much like a University Bookstore or a Barnes & Noble or a Borders. If that's the case, no further explanation needed. Many liberal arts types find the bookstore environment one in which the "intellectual capital" balances out the low wages somewhat. Before & during the grad school experience, especially at the "traditional ages" of 22 to 29, low wages are somewhat taken for granted. And, if they've been there ten years or more, they may well be making double or triple the minimum wage by now. Maybe they've worked their ways through their PhDs while working their bookstore jobs and just stayed on after not finding their dream professorships because they're top of the wage scale now. And so it might be difficult to find a comparable-paying job. That is why there are so many PhDs driving Metro Transit Service buses in Seattle. I also once knew of a former Professor of Philosophy at Western Washington University who became Northwest Regional Manager of Half Price Books in Bellevue and Seattle, Washington and who later founded his own used bookstore, Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, Washington. So it might also be fueled by a dream of future bookstore proprietorship.

 

I don't think there are many tenured professors that post here regularly, most of us that do teach are adjuncts. My teaching experience, such as it is, consists mostly of community college, and I was recently hired as an online adjunct. None of the schools are going to crack US News' Top 100 in any category, trust me.

 

Well, I once met a chap who walked into a fast-food joint wearing an Earlham College sweatshirt and was surprised to learn that the cashier knew that it was a Society of Friends (Quaker) school in Indiana that had a very well-regarded graduate program in religion and knew moreover that one of Earlham's alumni was one certain Josiah Cox Russell, who went on to become Professor of Mediaeval History at the University of New Mexico, where he published quite extensively on the Black Death and the demographic decline of fourteenth century Europe.

 

Is it easy or hard to find a university teaching position? I suppose it depends on your field. It appears that there is a much higher demand for business professors or or education professors or psychology professors (professorships in applied professional fields) than there is for history professors or political science professors or philosophy professors (professorships in liberal arts fields). I think this is because students nowadays are looking for education and training in "useful" majors that will likely lead to relatively high-wage employment in a degree-relevant field rather than education in some "useless" major that might improve one's cultural literacy but that will likely lead to taking a McJob and moving back with Mommy and Daddy.

I think that the Sixties/Seventies emphasis on so-called relevance had a definite negative effect upon liberal arts education in the USA. Liberal arts professors should have stuck to their guns and made official explanations as to why the liberal arts are still relevant in today's society rather than yield to an "anything goes" atmosphere of the times. Now, unfortunately, we are a society run by cultural literacy because no-one seems to see the value of a liberal arts education.

Of course, colleges and universities, like any other employers, are in effect businesses. As such, their objective is to get people to do the most amount of work for the least amount of money. Having discovered this incredible money-saving device (wages, pro rata, are lower and no benefits) called the part-time temporary assistant professorship (elsewise known as the adjunct professorship), I doubt that many universities are going to go back to the model of hiring full-time tenure-track assistant professors with benefits packages anytime soon.

 

Very true - Andy B and I are the only ones I know of.

Lot's of people willing to state their opinion tho

 

And Lord knows, the only opinions that count for much are those of tenured faculty..... especially ones who know where to use an apostrophe correctly... <eye roll>

 

Gosh! It would be very sad if one really had to be a doctoral student in order to be a degreeinfo.com poster! Now, that would just totally destroy the main purpose of this board! Which is, of course, to allow the novitiate to come to this board and ask where he/she can find schools offering associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in his/her field, become knowledgeable about distance learning, and then, in his/her turn, impart said knowledge to other newbies coming up behind him/her.

I, for one, have never talked about my own teaching gigs, as I've had none as yet, though I've vaguely mentioned having missed a voice-mail message calling me in for an interview because I was in hospital at the time.

Of course, there are some that talk with a straight face about teaching with 18 graduate credits. This is apparently allowable under accreditation agency regulations. But I doubt that it really happens that often, so I think that those who expect to enroll in a master's program, quit at 18 hours, and still land a professorship are probably in for a rude surprise.

 

That's a cool degree...

Ted,
I like your MA in Military Studies/Civil War better than your two MBAs!

- Carl

 

Re: That's a cool degree...

You know something, Carl, I do too. Being at heart a radically ticked-off left wing social science intellectual, I've always considered MBA degrees to be a worthless act of prostituting one's intellectual capacities to a morally bankrupt capitalistic system.

 

Then please state your own opinion about the question I asked:

Is it easy or is it hard to get a university teaching position?

In particular, the kind of position that would get your name, and your degrees, included in a university's faculty listing.

My own observations, admittedly from a lowly student's eye perspective, have been that it's very hard to get a full-time or tenure-track position. There typically are a lot more applicants than positions. The selection process seems to be pretty grueling and candidates are examined very closely.

My bookstore clerk example was only meant to illustrate that some very good candidates, with impressive degrees from well known programs, can't find work.

But we simultaneously have the spectacle of RA universities listing faculty, some apparently long term, with very questionable degrees.

What's up with that? how does it happen?

How do degree-mill graduates get jobs when Ph.D.s from prominent universities can't?

 

Interesting that you interpreted the message the way you did

 

There's a very good article at www.adjunctnation.org "Talk-Talking the Talk-Talk" that addresses this.

Theory aside, every institution differs greatly in their hiring process - no matter what the legal theory is - which is a shame, because I feel that the closer an organization hews to the ideal - the better the results.

My particular impression is that the unspoken "comfort" factor is very important - which is why so few tenured faculty post here and why so few of the "in-your-face" crowd will ever achieve a tenure-track position. It's not simply a matter of tallying up the points.

Hope this helps.

 

Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

How intellectual is it to imagine a "system" being moral?

The outputs must exceed the inputs and only capitalism (free-market) achieves that result.

 

Re: Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

I believe that the notion of "prostituting one's intellectual capacities to a morally bankrupt capitalistic system" was a notion that I picked up as a young man in 1984-1985 from one certain Eric Manhart, a fellow MA student in Social Studies/History at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. It sounded like such good ticked-off left-wing rhetoric that I gladly adopted the phraseology myself. On the other hand, good rhetorical one-liners are not necessarily very intellectual. For that matter, more often than not, the good rhetorical one-liners are decidedly intellectually void.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

Thine, mine or the intertwine?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

Rhetorical one-liners are designed to appeal to the masses, i.e., the lowest common denominator. Therefore, they have to be intellectually void. This is so regardless of which end of the political spectrum they are coming from.

 

Re: Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

1. Individuals have hearts and minds and souls. Individuals have the capacity to be moral, immoral, or amoral. A "system" is a thing, an entity, devoid of any heart or mind or soul. Perhaps you can enlighten me on whether or not a "system" can be moral, immoral, or amoral and why or why not.

2. Is it necessarily so that outputs cannot exceed inputs under other systems, be they command economy, slavery, feudalism, mercantilism, or socialism? Do you know this for sure? Or is this just ideological fuzzy thinking?

 

I guess that's obvious, if published Ph.D.s from the University of Texas can't find positions but graduates of degree-mills can.

I'm still curious about how it happens and about what that says about the state of American higher education.

I don't understand the relevance of 'legal theory' to this. There aren't any laws regulating faculty hiring as far as I know.

So you are suggesting that university administrators hire people that they personally like, regardless of the candidate's professional qualifications? That does seem to occur on occasion, but the American higher education system is in trouble if it's a widespread practice. It certainly doesn't resemble the instances of faculty hiring that I've observed.

That's just an intentionally provocative non-sequitur.

Unfortunately it didn't.

 

Re: Re: How are 'Less-than-Wonderful' Graduates Hired at RA Universities?

I'd certainly like to think that.

Research universities are hiring researchers. Or at least they are weighting research highly. So they are going to be looking at candidates' research histories: where they worked, what they did.

I think that you are right, at least in some cases. And that troubles me, frankly. If there's a class of school that tries to 'fly under the radar', as you put it, then that's pretty good reason to avoid lower-tier schools.

But on the other hand, there are all those unemployed Ph.D.s to factor in. I'm sure that a lot of them would love to land a tenure track position, even if it is at a small college that doesn't offer graduate programs located in a rural town somewhere. From what I've seen, when positions open up at colleges like that, there's pretty stiff competition for them.

(There are worse things than finding a good stable prestige job and living in an old house on a tree-lined street in a friendly college town where the cost of living is low and where the biggest problem is lack of jobs.)

That's why I was wondering if the situation is radically different in different fields. Competition may be fierce for tenure track jobs in the humanities and only a little less so in the sciences. But there may be jobs going begging in business administration or nursing.

Yeah, when a subject suddenly becomes popular overnight, like security has since 9-11, there's going to be a lot of demand and not enough people with conventional qualifications to meet the need. So I imagine that employers might be hiring lots of people weighting military and police experience more than advanced degrees and academic experience. (That's certainly not a bad thing.)

But it may open the door to individuals with impressive experience but questionable degrees. And perhaps some of those people are so clueless about mills and accreditation that they think that getting a quickie 'doctorate' might increase their employability. (Maybe they are right.)

But speaking for myself, when I see schools teaching the newly-trendy security related subjects while simultaneously displaying an inability to distinguish questionable academic credentials... I can only ask how in the world they hope to distinguish potential terrorists. A degree mill degree is the academic equivalent of six Saudis boarding a jetliner with boxcutters. If security specialists are gonna wave them through, they aren't doing their job. There's a basic level of alertness and discrimination required.

Unless you are Knightsbridge.

But yeah, a lot of these people aren't just teaching an individual class, they are long-tern employees who have been there for years.

I think that this is probably the most common explanation.

Often if a faculty listing includes the year when the individual was hired and the years that particular degrees were earned, you see that people were hired before they suddenly started sporting their doctorate. So obviously the questionable doctorate wasn't a factor in hiring.

I guess that many times it's just a vanity degree. And in some cases a non-accredited school may have some borderline academic value (some of the CA-approved numbers perhaps) and in decades past these may have been the only DL options available to people exiled in remote college towns.

I suppose that Jim Nagrom's 'comfort' point is relevant to the incentive pay issue. If you have been teaching at a small college for years, if you are everybody's friend, then they are probably going to process your incentive pay application without asking too many questions. They may even be fully aware that the degree is bogus, but it's a 'good' way to give what they believe is a deserved raise to their pal. Maybe it's just their way of working the system.

Unfortunately, as students and colleagues become more discerning, it can become a real embarassment to all concerned.

Amen. And what really pisses me off is that they may be right on occasion. The two things aren't unrelated.

If academic hiring is really as lax as it sometimes seems, and if even the elegantly berobed college administrators aren't above corruptly working the system now and then, then why in the hell shouldn't other people buy a phony degree and try to work it themselves? If it works, then exploit it.

I take this stuff as a direct insult to students like me. It's a very elaborate high-toned academic way of telling students "screw you".

Students have an inherent interest in the integrity of the educational enterprise. In fact, students are precisely the reason that the whole edifice exists, much as the professors and administrators would like to ignore that fact.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: That's a cool degree...

Obviously, I'm late to this thread and because of this I've hesitated to comment. But, despite that, here is my comment.
A system may, in some respects, be a "thing," but it is a thing that has been created by, and is comprised of people. How about the US legal system? Flawed, but good. How about the US educational system? Flawed, but good. Ted, when you say that these systems (as well as others) are devoid of any heart, soul, etc. you are essentially exempting yourself of any personal responsibility for how these systems operate. These are YOUR systems and they reflect YOUR values. Ante up.
Jack