I was an in-state grad student who had a fellowship and full tuition waiver. It would make very little financial sense to keep me there. I’m not paying but am being paid. Even if I lost my fellowship I would only have to pay in-state tuition. It would have made the most financial sense to kick me out and replace me with a non-thesis international student.
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I have friends who are highly dedicated teachers who connect with their kids and work quite hard (and one’s in Middle School where I find this hard to fathom), and I’ve had 3 kids go through school. I haven’t seen what you’re describing. I don’t doubt there are a tiny number like this. I do doubt that gutting unions will fix this. I am certain it’s not worth the try, since everything I’ve seen suggests that states that have gutted teacher’s unions have worse educational outcomes.
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I can only speak for myself, of course. I enjoy pursuing intellectual endeavors and I enjoy teaching students, too. I like thinking about how our world have evolved or changed, and what has created those changes. I believe in the process of creating knowledge for future generations and I believe in sharing that knowledge (my own and those of others) with young people starting out on their path in life. I have no interest in creating students who all think like me, either. I want them to be able to apply a historical mindset to whatever path they choose in life and to be able to have compassion and empathy for others around them, which I think a well-grounded historical education can give them. So my own personal motivation is creating a better understanding of the world (however slanted my own view might be towards my own personal experiences in life) and in showing how a better understanding of history can improve one’s life. Whether I made the right decision to get a PhD remains to be seen. I don’t regret it and I think I can eventually find something to do with my “talents.”
Some probably join academia (specifically, the humanities) for similar reasons. Others think they can be the next Chomsky, Cornell West, or Zizek and want that kind of “outsider” (as they see it) glory. They want to be the bourgeoisie, but they don’t want the fig leaf of outsider status by being an academic (a conceptualization based on a certain kind of mythology, I think, based on the experiences of the 1960s).
I think it’s a different kind of smart, not just smarter. It’s also the kind of smart that is being lauded as the savior of the economy, I think. Smarts are contextual. You’re spot on that not everyone has a STEM aptitude, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t smart in other ways. But plenty of people are starting to make noises about how because humanities students “can’t get jobs” as if making money is the only metric that matters, that we should make those students pay more and that we should fund humanities programs less. That would be a fundamental shift away from how universities have evolved in the past few hundred years. I do think that the university system is in need of some serious changes, but making them simply high end trade schools, with the humanities as an after thought would be a mistake.
True - the entire economy is pretty precarious for large numbers of people, not just people in my field - that’s a general problem to be addressed, I think. There is more money flowing into the STEM fields right now and more institutional support, from the government and from corporations, because of the role that STEM is playing in our global economy right now. But $$$ shouldn’t be the only definer of value, IMHO.
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I didnt say smarter at all. Both my parents were good at hard science but I turned out good at information security/risk management.
Pretty sure that the point isnt making money to the level of getting rich, I think the concern is about the folks who studied the social alchemies not being able to support themselves.
Fact is I ended up with a “useless” humanities degree and thanks to the reality of the world, couldnt get a job in the field I wanted at the time (unions had something to do with that as well).
The world changes. Perhaps more trade schools/community colleges might serve some real world needs and still have some non career track educational components.
They sure are trying hard to move to one and hurricane season be dammed.
Welp…
I didn’t say that or imply that. Just letting you know my view of things. There is a general notion that somehow people who are in the STEM fields are somehow just flat out smarter than those of us with lowly humanities degrees. I think knowledge is specific and relative, and smarts are a whole different thing unrelated to knowledge itself. I don’t actually think I’m particularly smart, because I’ve known lots of much smarter people than me, many of whom are not in academia at all. I made no assumptions about how you feel about that, just letting you known how I see things. I don’t assume my views are anything other than that.
Surprisingly, you defund colleges and universities, and public education across the board, there is less money to pay educators. The problem is not just that “social alchemies” are useless, because the fact is that these fields benefited from the largess of the Cold War footing US government, which sought to systemitize those sorts of knowledge-bases, in order to shore up its global position (as did the Soviets). They at times came up with notions that were at odds with that position, especially since the 1960s. Except of course when it doesn’t/didn’t. These are choices made, by governments, to decide what does and doesn’t matter to support through public institutions, which are increasingly seen as hostile to some political positions. Whether that’s true or not, is another matter, but that’s the view.
Yes. I know. Historian here, after all. “Change over time” is sort of our stock in trade. And historical knowledge does trickle into other places in our society, too, it’s not just the purview of academia.
My point is the humanities, the sum of human knowledge outside of the economy and the specifics of a particular job, matter - not just to the elites. Restricting that to those who can afford to pay will continue to reinforce the world view of some people over others.
And I’m not opposed to trade school and community colleges in the least. They are valuable institutions which we should actually support and fund in this country. I certainly don’t look down on the people that go there and would happily take a job at a community college, as I feel that it would be an incredibly valuable use of my time. That doesn’t mean that I think that the humanities are unimportant or shouldn’t be a critical part of education. There is no reason we can’t do both, and I think that anyone suggesting we can’t either lacks imagination or has an agenda or an axe to grind.
But, once again, I’m only speaking from my own POV. Feel free to dismiss it as some how out of touch or ignorant of reality.
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There seems to have always been glory lauded upon Big Science maybe even going back to the Natural Philosophers. Not always positive glory but glory nonetheless.
“NASA sends men to the Moon” is a heck of a better headline than “New paper in Gender Related Social Linguistic Theory published”.
Lets assume that is a true scenario for the sake of discussion. As a historian you can cite examples of nations having changes of priority over time. Some decades ago a gay pianist and an alcoholic painter were valuable instruments of politics in a cultural clash between superpowers.
There was of course some limited tolerance for the pink/red aspects of academia, the useful idiots, etc. They were allowed to feed at the trough along with the egg heads, even if they got a smaller share.
Public priorities change though. When the public has a shift of perception of some segments of academia from researching & teaching subjects that enrich the soul to obscurist anti-social and high weirdness that are completely counter to general social values, it takes some big justification that they be allowed to feed at the tax trough.
Granted there shouldnt be a political values test as to who gets to ascend within the Ivory Tower. Granted that arts, literature, history are of value to the development of people as a whole. But not every special interest can be funded. And when a system guarantees funding for those who have climbed higher in the tower that means there isnt funding for those who havent.
Maybe I do have an axe to grind, but if so it may come from the fact that I personally value the humanities as part of education and kind of resent that some bad apples cause the humanities to be perceived as extraneous baggage.
Perhaps not every kind of study needs to be academic? Perhaps Gendered Anti-Capitalist Origins of Underwater Basket Weaving tenure chairs can be privately funded and held at arms length from the rest of the Academy? Perhaps the humanities has grown to be too broad and needs to be more strongly segmented?
I’m kind of in favor of the last, as in “physician heal thyself” (before the State removes a leg to address a broken toe) kind of way. I dont know how to do this. I may personally think Noam Chomsky and his like are full of shit but OTOH they are part of what Makes America Great, that we have these entrenched voices criticizing the system. But that doesnt mean that some parts of the Academy arent horrid parasites that turn oxygen into uselessness at the expense of those who pay tax or tuition.
It all comes back to bubbles in the end 
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Sure. It didn’t just happen because. It happened because of a changing society that challenged the prevailing economic, social, and cultural world view. Within that, choices were made. Human beings make choices, not in a vacuum and not always with a full array of options open to them. [quote=“Israel_B, post:67, topic:90096”]
“NASA sends men to the Moon” is a heck of a better headline than “New paper in Gender Related Social Linguistic Theory published”.
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And at one point, it was seen as critical to fund both of those. [quote=“Israel_B, post:67, topic:90096”]
Lets assume that is a true scenario for the sake of discussion.
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It’s emperically true. Unless you think I’m unreliable, as an academic in a southern state that has seen funding dry up for public education across the board. If you don’t think I’m reliable, then there isn’t really anything I can say to make you believe what I have to say, of my own experiences as someone who has pursued a degree through the public education system, all of my life. I have never NOT gone to a public institution for my education. I’ve paid in quite a bit into that system, through the taxes my family has paid, and directly in fees and tuition during my education.
This historically true. They also funded African American musicians, some of whom staked out quite radical positions at home, to represent our cultural heritage to the rest of the world. Neither me, nor U. Mich professor Penny Von Eschen made up the jazz tours and what the state department officials and musicians said about those tours. Our work is ground in textual sources that you are more than welcome to travel to Arkansas and DC to verify, if you happen to think we’re lying about. You can also consult my friend from Emory, who studied how the US intelligence community actively patronized and supported many leftists scholars in places like France and Italy as a bulwark against the Soviet backed view of socialism. Again, my friend spent a year on the road traveling to various archives around the US and in France and Italy to piece that story together.
Did I say otherwise? Again, historians study change over time, and they are rather focused on figuring why that is the case.
Um. Okay. Not sure what to say about that? Do you honestly think that the vast majority of academics are focused on " obscurist anti-social, high weirdness." I assure you, most of them are not. Especially coming out of public institutions. Historians, especially have a very strong conservative streak, with regards to what we study. I study mass culture, because it’s such a massive force in the modern world today.
There isn’t, in theory. There will be an economic one, if we completely eliminate the humanities from public education, as if they don’t matter. There, contrary to the fears of some more conservatives academics, plenty of political diversity at the upper reaches of academia… much less economic diversity. That matters, I think. Even the most leftist of profs or grad students who don’t come from a public education background or a working class background, tend to not fully understand that background. They often make erroneous assumptions or look down upon working class people.
Fair enough. I do think you paint a rather broad brush and focus on the minority of academics, often at elite universities that don’t have to worry about a job later. I promise you that a vast majority of us are not engaged in “basket weaving” degrees and do deeply care about public education for as many people as possible. I’m here, not because I’m seeking out some sort of ivory tower position, but because I actually care about the young people I’ve taught and want to help them to have a better life at the end of their education. I believe that the humanities are part and parcel of that and that gutting them for some sort of “cost savings” measure will actually be more expensive at the end of the day. [quote=“Israel_B, post:67, topic:90096”]
before the State removes a leg to address a broken toe
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In some states, this has already happened. [quote=“Israel_B, post:67, topic:90096”]
that we have these entrenched voices criticizing the system.
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And that is precisely what the attack on the humanities, systemically, in more conservative states, are seeking to root out. It’s not just that “basket weaving” is considered a luxury, but that the humanities, which you say you value, are considered a luxury. It’s the rhetoric that’s hiding that it’s the people considered “radical” politically, on the left anyway, who are being attacked. It’s the assumption that the academy is some bastion of leftists, subversive politics that is seeking the overthrow of all western institutions, which just doesn’t hold water. There is a strong political edge to all this. As someone who’s course work was once called into question by a conservative activist, I know what of I speak. Again, you can take my word for it or not. The person requested a copy of my syllabus, because I dared to use Zinn in my classroom. She found nothing problematic, of course, because I don’t run my course like an indoctrination session. I run my courses like a class where students are free to dissent with whatever I have them read, as long as they read it and think about it.
Who gets to decide that? You? Me? Trump? Who gets decide which human endeavors are worth supporting at a society and which ones are useless luxuries that we can do without?
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Why though? Because the moon story is sexy and the gender studies story isn’t? You can make anything sexy and anything else unsexy using the right words. If putting whitey on the moon is so important, how come we haven’t done it since Gil Scott Heron sang about it?
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Also, the piece of paper you get when you graduate doesn’t determine the job you have for the rest of your life. There are such things as transferable skills.
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It’s totally reasonable to compare the work of one academic to that of the 400,000 people employed by the Apollo program.
[edit because typing is hard]
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Clearly, the one academic is bankrupting the whole American economy. Better cut funds for public education. /s
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I once had knowledge explained in very broad terms that made sense to me. If a “blank slate” student is on flat ground at sea level; the STEM fields focus on cutting as deep of trenches as possible in those fields, and the humanities focus on making wide gradually flat spaces of the same volume. The sum of someone’s knowledge is then not just the amount of water those cuts can hold, but also how well the water can flow between each dug up section of ground.
I don’t know how true it is, but it lines up with my experience.
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It would. The humanities classes are the best part of community college. Job skills are mostly simple and straightforward and could be learned via on-the-job training. Expanding the mind with history, psychology, philosophy, economics, etc. is the real value add of college.
Yes, because one of those is a very tangible product of work while the other is an idea. Humanities people do work with real results. But they’re a lot harder to see, harder to credit, and much more debatable. Aside from some conspiracy theorists, it isn’t really challenged that NASA succeeded in sending men to the moon. How successful Utah’s attempts to solve chronic homelessness have been is much more easily argued depending on how you count the homeless and how you classify them, for example.
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> not billionaire sociopaths
The Not-So-Great Pumpkin is a Psychopath, not a sociopath.
Psychopaths are very personable while sociopaths are very anti-social.
Have to get these things straight. We don’t want to mis-identify Drumpf.
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I’ve spoken to tech workers on and off for almost 20 years about unionizing. I was part of a unionization effort of permatemps at Microsoft 20 years ago. The arguments I get in response all cite variations of this bit above. “We’ve got it good and I can make great money, why fuck with it?”
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Well, except the devs don’t want to. See my previous entry above.
I think it is tragic because folks in tech should organize but they don’t see it. Unions don’t have a very good reputation amongst white collar folks these days.
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It has occurred to me, on occasion, that I am an “industrial worker,” of the kind we still have in the US today.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, upper management convincing, say, engineers, that their interests lie with management, rather than labor, is an impressively successful scam.
On the other hand, it is my impression (which is certainly true in some, though might well not be all) that in union shops, advancement and wages have a lot more to do with seniority than with actual ability. That’s not really something that parses well to knowledge industry jobs like software and engineering. Often, though, especially in large companies with incompetent HR people, you have to move on to a different company to actually negotiate to get what you are worth.
Me neither. It’s not clear to me what kind of an organization would be better for these industries.
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I wasnt challenging your experience there. The “lets assume” construction acknowledges that while there may be different points of view on a subject, the following will address one point of view as correct above others.
I get all what followed that. Referencing Van Cliburn and Jackson Pollock was supposed to indicate my understanding of State sponsorship for the very purpose you describe but not limit it to those two examples. There is of course a view of history that this was more effective than military methods, that the USSR was undone by blue jeans & the beatles more than hot bits of the cold war and Star Wars (Regan not Lucus).
I thought I made it clear that I did not think so what with the “one bad apple” reference that followed.
Maybe part of the problem is thinking of people in terms of “class”? To me the word has too much baggage. For example all the discussion about why the DNC screwed up this time tends to focus around that very word as if it was still in any way a relevant model. This is a problem not only with the Dismal Science but the bits of formal thinking which try to borrow from it. In a publish or perish world, sticking to an outdated yet scholarly referenced path is safe.
Again, didnt mean to indicate that was in any way the majority, only a well recognized minority that gets perceived as representative when it in fact is not.
Sure, and the thought experiment I concluded with was about how to change that perception. I honestly value some/lots/cant measure percentage of the non Sciences and would like to find a way to not toss the baby out with the bathwater.
Which is exactly the sort of political litmus test I referred to above. In this particular example, Zinn may be a crackpot but even a cracked pot can hold some water so it isnt unreasonable to include in a syllabus for “some people think like this” as part of a balanced curriculum.
I dont know and didnt propose a solution. Its a complicated question. Note that I didnt even say that the most oroboros parts are useless luxuries but that perhaps they can be funded in different ways. This isnt even a new idea. I have a family member whose job was raising funds for a university and part of that was to get wealthy people to help fund unpopular causes. Why not get the Soroses of the world to fund the Departments of Underwater Basket Weaving?
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