I apologize for the ridiculously large gap between my last post and this one. Teaching and researching, but most of all, simply general living got in the way of my blog.
I titled this particular post as such after contemplating the sheer absurdity of the life lived by academics these days. There are two structural issues with being a professor in an "elite" university. One has to do with the administration, its increasing population of deans, provosts, vice presidents, vice-this, and vice-that. Let's think of this as a top-down issue.
The other is related to students, mostly undergraduates. Let's consider this a bottom-up issue. (It almost seems like graduate students are an afterthought because they usually require financial aid and departmental stipends to make it through graduate school, and with so few jobs for newly minted PhDs, their population on campus seems to be shrinking, in favor, say, of money-making, terminal master's programs and their full-tuition-paying students. These PhDs may not enter academia after all is said and done, but I know they have the wherewithal to land jobs in other intellectually rigorous fields outside of academe. Their diminishing populace is a shame, though, because I have yet to meet a PhD student I haven't liked, in the classroom or outside of it.)
Undergraduates and their families are paying through the nose for their educations these days. As I mentioned in my profile, tuition costs have exponentially outpaced inflation, rising by 35% over the past five years. If your family is upper-class and the rare exception out there able to pay in full (which is but a sliver of every entering first-year class), more power to you. However, if you're like the vast majority of other undergraduates at these elite institutions, even with grants for families making under $60,000 at places like Harvard and Princeton, you will most likely come out of college with a daunting and anxiety-inducing debt. Hence, these students must by necessity join the professional ranks right after graduation, with little space, time, or money to join Teach for America, or travel overseas and enjoy shared knowledge and culture with various global communities, or, god forbid, take time to breathe and figure some things out before entering the workforce. In the nearly twenty years since I graduated college, I've noticed (and others have systematically tracked with empirical data) the overwhelming number of pre-professional majors skyrocket at these universities, as understandably, these students need to follow paths to careers that will (at the very least) pay back their collective (undergraduate and graduate school) debts. Shoot, my wife and I are still looking down the sink hole of six-figure graduate school debt.
I am harping on the economic hardships faced by today's students because I've noticed how almost all of them - to a person - convey a desperation about choosing a "serious" college major because they can't justify anything else but biology (aka pre-med), pre-law, economics, or political science to families back home who may be mortgaging their homes and taking on second and third jobs to send their kids to school. Pretty heroic (of the families and the student), if you ask me. So, I get why kids are so easily dismissive of the work done in the social sciences and humanities - this is leisurely conversation, while econ problem sets or marathon science labs take immediate precedence. 'You're interesting, professor, but you're crazy if you think I can sell Amartya Sen's critique of Adam Smith to my family back home.'
Again, with great understanding, I have witnessed these students grow less interested in what we used to call a "liberal arts education" and become more invested in procuring the bachelor's degree and moving on...as quickly as possible. Now, of course, this observation doesn't apply to all of my students, but an alarmingly higher rate of students feel this way year after year (and why not, as we head into a double-dip recession?). The consequence, however, is that it becomes more difficult for people like me - who used to love teaching such great kids with their zealous intellectual curiosity - to stay in these institutions. The students' aspirations - while practical and concretely goal-oriented - nonetheless make the university function more like a vocational school, rather than as a true community of scholars willing to slow down, step back for a moment, and wrestle with great ideas of the past and pressing issues of the present - but students are young, so one can hardly blame them (although one of course does, especially when a student grade-grubs until his face turns blue).
I therefore hold the administration much more responsible. (Look, I concede that they hold the key to my retaining a job or gaining promotion, but if I can't speak truth to power, then you might as well kill me now.) This used to be an institution, and a work environment in general, where the faculty were allowed to make decisions, or at least feel like they were part of the decision-making process. Now, there isn't even a hint of solicitousness on the administration's part - it's more like utter disdain for the faculty's even deigning to inquire about "anonymous donors" or questionable "institutes" and "centers" breaking ground without faculty or student input. I'm not asking for pity or hand-holding; all I want is a little conversation. A sign that the institution still takes meritocracy and transparency seriously. I'm not the first to decry the corporatization of the university; many others, like David Perlmutter, Gaye Tuchman, Derek Bok, Mark C. Taylor, Martha Nussbaum, and Louis Menand, have been much more eloquent and incisive on this subject than I. Don't get me wrong: it's not like professors and students haven't fought back and - through civil discourse - pushed back against what's going on at these universities. But the die is seemingly cast, and a large majority of us (faculty) are scared shitless that we'll lose our jobs in these comfortable ivory towers or, worse, won't get tenure or promotion, unless we keep our mouths shut and toe the party line. The problem is I'm not sure what we're teaching our students by such an example.
We can't put the genie back in the bottle, either. All of those U.S. News and World Report rankings and the arms race among public and private universities to attract the best and brightest have collectively led to unnecessary additions to campus physical plants, overpriced maintenance of aesthetically pleasing but predominantly unoccupied classroom buildings (in other words, it's not like all of the lights, central air, and other amenities shut off when there's only a mouse stirring in that fabulous tech-heavy lecture hall), and constant branding to attract more customers (I mean, students), like the convenient website I saw blaring on the back bumper of one of our campus' ubiquitous patrol cars (as if anyone in a five-mile radius doesn't know whom or what those intimidating Blade Runner sedans are protecting). Students don't really want five different fast-food vendors in their social center or need more than a comfortable suite with a big enough common room for friends to gather. (People who think they do need all of that crap are the same people who believe Zuckerberg created Facebook to get into the Porcellian final club.) But when you charge students over $50,000 a year, you force them to feel like they need those extra amenities to justify the exorbitant cost. When I was an undergraduate (back in the '90s, mind you), I remember the administration telling me that the university's operating cost per student was $60,000; therefore, at the time, they told me, I should be happy to be getting a bargain at half the price (and I was, sort of). I don't necessarily doubt that the operating costs were indeed that high and remain so, but who's been overlooking the budget and costs all of these years? How can tuition legally (or ethically) be allowed to outdistance inflation by such unreasonable proportions? Our society's near flippant attitude about how much these behemoths cost has helped usher in the "naturalized" corporatization of the university, the seam-busting administrative apparatus, and the cold comfort that students, faculty, and the putative "community" feel about these places.
Obviously these are largely generalizations on my part, with exceptions to every observation: excellent students; wonderful colleagues; supportive administration; and rewarding days of classes and cultivating of students' projects. But something is eating away at the fabric of these institutions. And it's not the nonsensical explanation of women, minorities, or a "closing of the American mind" that plagues these campuses. Until we have an honest national (if not also global) conversation and debate about "what's going on," as the late great Marvin Gaye once sang, I'm afraid you'll have more mandarins at the helm, fewer committed scholars and teachers in the classroom, and an overcharged, poorly stimulated student body exiting the turnstiles at the edge of the quads.
