The Power (?) of Num nums

Please go read this brilliant piece right now, because it is so very spot on, and covers so many situations.

I scream-laughed. It is that good.

I Hate Myself so You Will Love Me

I am going through the academic hazing ritualright-of-passage writing my materials for the academic job market. For those who have never seen this process, it consists of boiling down all of your research into as few paragraphs as possible in such a way as to seem interesting to someone who might have no knowledge of what you study. In other words, describing an article in no more than two sentences, a book in a few paragraphs, and your future research in something akin to a tweet. Needless to say, it's not fun boiling down my life in the past six years to, ideally, nothing more than a paragraph each (though, I am unlikely to succeed at this goal).

All this is to say that I am really sick of thinking about myself. I don't know what it is like to be on the Bachelorette, but I imagine it to be akin to this experience. I spend days agonizing over and polishing my image so that some member of a hiring committee will like me and, if she doesn't, I'm tossed to the side.

At the same time, I am very fortunate to have a job and to have prospects for one in the future. I cannot imagine what it is like to be one of the thousands of people in the United States who have been writing similar letters for over two years with no employment prospects in sight. I guess, in that perspective, there's not much I should be complaining about

Horrible Case in Tenure Denial

I just saw this story about a shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Apparently, a junior faculty member who found out that she was denied tenure during a faculty meeting and shot six people in the room; three are dead. I cannot believe how sad this story is and how senseless this seems. Nothing, not even tenure, is worth this tragedy.

University of Hypocrisy

Today, Mark Blumenthal reports that the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers (AAPOR) censured Dr. Gilbert Burnham who is one of the authors of the Iraq War casualty paper.

Burnham was censured for not disclosing all of the study materials that were requested by AAPOR in their investigation, although it seems like he turned over just about everything. One of the main pieces that AAPOR claims was not turned over (though the allegations of what Burnham actually failed to be turned over is nowhere in the AAPOR press release) is the question wording. But, it seems (as Blumenthal notes), he did release his question template. Granted, it is not a survey instrument; but, I wonder if AAPOR has an Arabic translator to read the actual survey instrument -- and if so, how many members of AAPOR would be able to understand it. In response to the press release, at least two people (Blumenthal and Science blogger Tim Lambert) asked AAPOR to clarify what, exactly, Burnham failed to release to AAPOR. The answer

We do not provide public reports of the investigations but if there are other specific questions that I could answer, I would be happy to try to do so.

Basically, Burnham gets censured for not turning over all of his materials for review by an organization (of which, it should be noted, Burnham is not even a member) that cannot be bothered to turn over their own evidence used in the report. I have a lot of respect for AAPOR, and think that they did some great things during the election—aided tremendously by Mark Blumenthal—to make sure that the public and journalists knew how to interpret polls, but this is just absurd.^[1] What's good for the goose...

I am all for more transparency in data. I think that more needs to be done in social science (and public health) to deal with replication and increasing access to data^[2]; however, for an organization to claim that they can censure a non-member for ethical violations and then turn around and violate the same spirit of their rule strikes me as something members of AAPOR (I am not one) should address.

^[1] As a side note, I should mention that there are some problems with the Iraq studies. Their response rate is very high, particularly since they only went to sampled houses on a single day (although this National Journal summary quotes famous soc blogger Kieran Healy noting that this response rate is not unusual for Iraq) and, because of their sample size, the confidence intervals are very, very large. The appropriate venue for such debates, however, is in the academic press to challenge the validity of the findings, not for some organization to nitpick on violations of ethics of non-members.

^[2]In fact, a recent special issue of Sociological Methods & Research pertains to this very issue. I highly recommend the issue of the journal for many of the interesting points that are raised.

Writing, Just not Here

It has been well over two weeks since I last posted here, after expressing a hope that I would be able to write more frequently after my last post. Ah well, I recall hearing something about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

Most of the radio silence was caused by the fact that I was busting my behind to finish my second prelim—essentially our version of a master's thesis, I suppose. Anyway, it is a journal-length article that I am hoping to send out this month, meaning I'm not sure how much I will be able to commit to the blog in the near term. I did finish and defended last week, which was a huge relief. Although my committee gave me several great, albeit time-consuming, suggestions to make before I send the paper out for review, I am feeling really good about it. Now I hope that I can figure out how to incorporate all of the suggestions.

Passing this prelim made me step back and evaluate grad school. In part because I am looking to finish in the relatively near term, in part because this was the last bureaucratic hurdle (as in paper to get signed) to jump before moving onto my dissertation, and in part because it did feel like an accomplishment. Although completing my second prelim was considerably later in the timeline than it should have been, this was largely due to the fact that I have had several other opportunities along the way that have delayed this particular event but, I hope, have helped my career progress.

Thinking about this also made me realize that there is great advice out there about getting through grad school and different parts of the grad school experience. I realized one particularly salient suggestion from lmw's class on "Launching your Academic Career" which suggested: "Think about each step along the way and what issues you faced, how you handled them, and what you learned." Although I didn't write one out step-by-step, I was thinking that it might not be a bad idea to write it up now so that I can remember the pitfalls and get through the next several papers much more quickly.

It also made me realize how little instruction I have received on the "brass tacks" of writing. This is probably somewhat due to the fact that we all have our own styles of working and, to each of us, they all seem a little dysfunctional (see Impostor Syndrome). Part of it, I'm sure, is that there are, from what I can tell, deep divisions between the kind of writing for qualitative projects and quantitative projects^[1]. I am lucky to have had the good fortune and opportunity to collaborate on projects with two different professors, so that I could see how it's done. This is obviously the best, but there are some basic things that seem to be fairly consistent and it just seems weird to me that this part of academia is kind of left hanging. For instance, we don't really have an academic writing course or a proposal writing course as part of the curriculum. Although lots of professors will incorporate this into their classes, there isn't anything going over the basics of how that is done in a systematic way.

Part of me also wonders if it is because writing has become so basic to many professors (and, even, advanced grad students) that it is easy to forget what it was like to learn to do these things. Like riding a bike - I can remember learning, but I'm not sure that I could teach someone now how to do it... Or learning to drive, things that are so basic I do them mindlessly now took a great deal of effort to learn (which, caused endless consternation for both of my parents as they were teaching me...like, not SLAMMING on the breaks when I tried to stop). That's part of what I love about having both a grad student and larger community in the blogosphere—we get great advice on both levels. Now, I just need to be sure to do my part to contribute my fair share...

^[1] In fact, one of the interesting criticisms given to me in my defense was that I was trying to combine a sociology focused on cultural analysis and one based on quantitative writings and my writing ended up falling, unsuccessfully, somewhere in between those two.

Times & Tenure

This story from the NYT about the diminishing prevalence of tenure in American colleges and universities in their top-stories feed. I think that they do a decent job presenting the basics, but—as is always the case&mdahs;miss some of the larger issues that are presented with diminishing tenure track positions.

While the story talks exclusively about public universities and all of the examples cited here are non-flagship public universities, the same trends can be seen in private universities as well. The number of tenure-track positions is drying up across the board. While the administrators may cite the lack of public funds and the inconsistency of public funding from states (or cities and counties for many community colleges), this trend is not entirely due to the the lack of funds. It is true that public higher education has suffered in recent years and often the non-flagship universities are hit harder than the flagship universities^[1], but if it is also happening at private and flagship universities there must be something larger. Furthermore, this trend is coming at a time when tuitions are so high that Congress is considering action and endowments of many universities are through the roof.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that many universities are employing WalMart-like management strategies. WalMart, the biggest private employer in this country and largest retailer in the world, perfected the art of "just-in-time" delivery of goods. Rather than paying for the manufacture, shipping, and storage of a huge inventory, they honed the method of supplying just enough product to meet demand with as little time as possible. No sense in those Christmas hats sitting on the shelves on Boxing Day when they couldn't be sold until the next year. Get just enough to meet demand, get more delivered next-day if you run out and constantly re-stock the shelves straight from the delivery truck. The same now works for professors teaching classes. Rather than having a full-time job with job security, professors are hired on semester contracts. Their pay, healthcare (if they have it), retirement benefits (again, if they have it), access to the library and university facilities lasts for those 17-weeks. If the department has enough enrollment, the professors receive a full course-load—if not, well...I hope that they planned on getting half the paycheck or less for those four months.

What ends up happening to many of these professors is that they try to line up a full-time teaching load by stringing together three or four jobs at three or four local institutions. In Michigan, as the NYT article mentions, professors would go from U-M Ann Arbor to U-M Dearborn to Wayne State to one of the several community college systems in the area. While they are teaching full time, they aren't getting full-time benefits because they technically have three to four different employers. The pay is bad, healthcare is either not offered or unaffordable and they are lucky if they have an office in one of the four campuses, nevermind all four.

Just-in-time operations for retailers may work^[2], but for educators it is a disaster. Professors, at their best, are supposed to be working with students to provide them the tools they need to understand the world, both for their future employment and as engaged citizens. They are not lawnmowers, lawn gnomes, cheap clothes or groceries or any of the other thousands of items available at WalMart. They are not a product on a shelf waiting to be taken home by a family paying the lowest price. When a professor is teaching four classes at four different campuses without an office, they aren't providing office hours, answering student's questions, contributing to the service functions on campus - all of the things that allow professors to have a real impact on students' lives. No, they are driving interstate highways rushing back an forth, trying to grade one exam in time to receive another that day. And, of course, forget term papers or semester projects that allow students to expand their knowledge to their own interests. In the ever-demanding just-in-time world, they give tests that can be answered by scantrons (if they are allowed to use the grading machine). Ultimately, education as a whole suffers and students who have the most tenuous grasp on a college education, first-generation college students, minorities, working mothers who are enrolled at community colleges and local state universities are the ones who are forced to deal with this the most.

It's a deplorable situation that needs to be fixed. If Congress, state legislators, education policy wonks and others are serious about fixing American higher education, then this is a problem that urgently needs to be addressed. Otherwise, no amount of fancy new tech center, student gym or other expenditures made possible by the egotistically exorbitant gifts by donors so that they can view their name a building are going to matter if the professors mandated with teaching the students can't teach.

Cross-posted at Free Exchange

^[1] In my experience, this is in no small part due to the fact that many state legislators are often alumni of the flagship universities and tend to be less so for the non-flagship local campuses. Supporting a local branch of the state university system is seen as garnering pork for your constituents but trying to get money for the state flagship universities as part of one's alumni obligations is seen as noble -- and is one of the few things that can cut across party lines.
^[2] Of course, there are also major problems for workers and communities for the just-in-time methods of corporations like WalMart as well.

Academic Freedom is Us

I feel very good to have finally fulfilled a long-standing promise to start posting away from my home here at Free Exchange on Campus. The blog is one of the major components of the work being done by the Fre Exchange Coalition. The Coalition was set up in order to counter the kinds of outlandish and false attacks by David Horowitz and others on true academic freedom in our nation's colleges and universities^[1].

The problem with these people is that, in the cloak of arguing that they are attempting to "eliminate liberal bias" in the classroom, they are arguing that there should be a kind of litmus test applied by the states in order to make sure that classes being taught are "fair and balanced" (in the FOX News sense of the term). Seriously, they have proposed legislation on the issue and even acquired floor votes in some state legislators. The goal is not to increase diversity, but to go back to the standard "Great Man" theory of teaching (specifically using Universities to teach how great America is because of the work of now-dead old-white-men).

The problem with all of this is that, just like the media being attacked for a liberal bias, Universities are overly conscious of something that is probably not a wide-spread problem and it stifles debate on campuses around the country. Although this is not the only problem facing academic freedom (lack of tenured faculty lines would be a good example of another), the fact that true academic freedom is under attack at all is very disconcerting and something that needs to be addressed. Hopefully this effort will be one part of that.

Anyway, you should check out the blog and my first post.

^[1] For a great example of the kinds of things that they propose, check out Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. Of course, don't take everything there at face value, check out TPM's coverage on Horowitz's inaccuracies and exaggerations.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Part of my ongoing fascination with the implication of the internet is how a revolutionary new technology can have an impact on the non-virtual social world. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the impact of Wikipedia on the way in which existing social institutions, particularly the news media or academia, adapt to the proliferation of web-based reference material. squires pointed out that Wiktionary "is basically a recapitulation of whatever is already published about the topic"^[1] and is not, therefore, really a new social form as much as a new medium through which traditional social forms exist. But another interesting question is what happens when those institutions are confronted with new technology and, potentially, forced to adapt.

This has been brought to light in a thread at Orgtheory.net where the appropriateness of blogging the content of academic talks given at university seminars. The discussion has also continued to Jeremy Freese's Weblog. Jeremy has taken the position that "anything that is cv'able is blogable"—a position, which, in my opinion is very sensible. Jeremy has certainly taken some heat in the Orgtheory thread and feels that he is "staking out a lonely position" there. The main objection (and, indeed, the main thrust of the thread) is expressed by Ezra Zuckerman's position that early adapters to the blogosphere have a huge advantage if they can institutionalize blogging as an academic norm whereby late adapters and people who have higher costs (i.e. those that do not derive enjoyment from blogging) are forced to adapt. This, Ezra argues, cedes an incredible advantage to early adapters that, I perceive, he thinks is unwarrented^[2].

This brings up several interesting sociological questions that I find really interesting, in no small part because sociologists are the subjects of a sociological inquiry (very postmodern). The first question to me is the role of institutional norms in the development of new technology -- a topic which I discussed in my Wikipedia post mentioned above. Ezra brings up one of my main points from that post when he says "the main reason I don’t do this is that I have no time." While, overall, I agree with Jeremy that public discussion is a positive for the discipline, I also recognize the externalities considered by Ezra. If academics are required to respond to online discussions about their work that they did not initiate, it represents a significant investment in time that is required for which one might not receive any formalized institutional recognition. Where does this work fit in the academic triumvirate of teaching, service and research — especially when we know that the last of those is prioritized the highest? If, as Ezra suspects, bloggers are able to transform the academic norms to require that professors respond to online comments, then some recognition of this responsibility needs to be recognized by departments and institutions. This is particularly true for non-tenured faculty members who give up valuable research time responding to blogs and is probably part of the reason why Jeremy keeps emphasizing that his ideas are most applicable to senior faculty.

The second interesting question presented by this discussion is the role of social norms and scripts. The general consensus over the course of the Orgtheory.net thread is that permission should be requested to blog about an academic presentation. Jeremy brings up the fact that there are two forms of permission: 1) a request for permission where the receiver of the request has a legitimate claim to deny that permission (i.e. a child asking his parents for an extra scoop of ice cream for desert), or 2) a request for permission that is a linguistic hedge to show deference where the receiver of the request is expected to oblige (i.e. asking someone to turn the volume down if one has a headache). There are legitimate reasons to ask for permission. The most important, in my view, is allowing the author to respond if s/he so desires. I think that Jeremy would agree that the goal of discourse is not furthered if the original author is not given a chance to respond. In fact, a lack of response would be antithetical to Jeremy's goal. It reminds me of a similar thread at Crooked Timber where academics place the request "Please do not cite or quote without permission" at the tops of papers. This is essentially a form of moderation to ensure that researchers citing the work have the latest version or that the authors know where their work is being used to contribute to an academic discourse. To me, this is the second sense of permission.

The other reason that I find it to be appropriate to ask for permission is because, as an author, I might have stronger or weaker confidence about particular conclusions. If I were a faculty member and Jeremy came to me and asked "Would you mind if I wrote about your presentation on my blog?" my response would be "Yes, please feel free. Let me make sure that you have a copy of the paper. I should tell you that I believe conclusion A to be very robust, but I am more hesitant about conclusion B. Therefore, I plan to do more work on that part of the paper - so you might want to keep that in mind when you are writing." (In my head, I would also be thinking, "Whoo hoo! Now the hundreds of people who read Jeremy's blog will read about my research!"). In this way, I am not restricting what Jeremy writes or limiting the benefits to the field, but am, in a sense, providing a guide to replicate the kind of fruitful discussion that can happen at academic seminars where constructive criticism is created to a wider audience than those who attend a single academic seminar at a single (or a couple) of institutions^[3].

All of these questions bring to mind other important questions of sociological importance. The first, who is the academic "public"? Is is the "invisible college" linked instantly through the internet or the older, established community linked through the slower academic journals? This, then, is related to a second question. As sociologists look for a greater position for public sociology, then the role of the internet needs to be part of that discussion. On the one hand, academics are not journalists. Our discipline is marked by careful consideration of all available evidence and this mission might be undermined if we are pushed to discuss work much more quickly or frequently. Trying to do both the "journalistic" side of research (responding to blogs, posting about research) and the "academic" side of research (publishing in journals, writing grant proposals) means that there either need to be benefits for doing both (in tenure reviews, for instance) or that both cannot be done as successfully without requiring more time devoted to this work.

^[1] I tend to find the same thing is also true in Wikipedia; however, what I notice more of in Wikipedia than in traditional academic published research is citations to mainstream media sources such as the Washington Post or New York Times. While this is still a very circumscribed list of potential citations, it does expand the understanding of some topics beyond their strictly academic research to at least include sources that have a much larger circulation.
^[2] Of course any summary does injustice, but in the interest of providing background, I don't want to reiterate the whole thread here.
^[3] By restricting the conversation only to people at particular institutions is also a way in which privilege is created and maintained. While early-adapters might have an advantage creating externalities to benefit bloggers, restricting conversations to academics in the ivory tower also creates externalities for those who would need to academics in those settings. The difference, I think, is that that kind of privilege is accepted while blogging changes the "winners" and "losers" of privilege and, thus, causes this much discussion. I think that this is the point that Dave made to my Wikipedia post.

Who knew?

Good readers of my humble blog, I am still working on said paper. I have not gotten very far in terms of writing, though I am rather proud of myself that I managed to understand an article about the complexities of HLM without needing someone to sit down and hold my hand and explain it to me. Maybe the previous four years of such hand-holding actually [gasp!] meant that I have learned something in grad school.

Anyway, I digress. What I have learned is that writing academic papers is really hard. It is amazing that I have been working on this paper for six months, not including the initial analysis and conference submission, and yet cannot find a way to frame the paper to be "interesting" in the sense that anyone except for me and maybe four or five colleagues would want to read it. I have thought out how to frame it, written a draft, read a few more articles and, suddenly, I feel like I should re-write the whole thing. This is depressing because I chose this paper, which is sort of equivalent to my master's thesis, because it was "contained" — by which, I mean that I wouldn't have to learn about a whole slew of new methods, techniques and literature to be able to write it. Unfortunately, I was sadly awakened to the fact that the life of academia is not one of idle comfort writing whatever thoughts come into one's head so that one can then indoctrinate poor unsuspecting students into believing those thoughts all the while pulling in a many-digit salary at the expense of the public taxpayer, student tuition money or federal subsidies.

No, I am learning that being an academic is hard work, with many revisions of thought, changes in perspective, distilling (and recoding) of data, writing and re-writing, waiting to see if others find it worthy, more writing and re-writing, revisions of thought, arguing about why reviewers' thoughts are off-base, waiting some more to find out if some editor deems a single thirty-page article worthy of her or his press' ink. Who knew it was so hard?

[UPDATE]: Now Microsoft Word has conveniently deleted all of the pending changes that I had made. Wonderful...

In my dual role as a graduate student and employee

I was catching up on the internets today since I finally have service at my apartment [which, is also serving as my "office"] and was reading an interesting series of posts from Female Science Professor. FSP is a fascinating blog by a woman employed at as a full professor at a Research I university in the physical sciences and often has interesting tidbits about the life of academics and the particular life that women face in science departments in the country.

In this series of posts, FSP is reacting to the NYT article on Harvard's task-force report that teaching should be institutionally emphasized (available here). The task-force's summary of Guiding Principle (p.5) is:

To renew its commitment to excellence, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences must motivate and empower committed teachers as well as distinguished researchers, and actively encourage intelligent pedagogy as well as pathbreaking research. Devoted teachers abound at Harvard, yet their individual efforts are often not perceived as central to institutional priorities.

and, among the major principles that should be addressed:

Tenured faculty should lead by example, requiring of themselves the same commitment to teaching that they ask of junior colleagues and graduate students who are at earlier stages of developing their capacities as scholars and teachers.

That this is garnering attention because it is Harvard disturbs me a little bit; but, on the other hand, the fact that it is garnering attention is a distinct positive. The Harvard interim president acknowledges, “If we don’t do it ourselves,” President Bok said of the government pressure, “they’re going to make us do it their way.” And to see "their" way, look at the crumbling school infrastructure and massive privatization under No Child Left Behind.

Following the initial commentary, FSP took on two issues that were brought up in the comments of the initial post: first, she commented on the teaching/research/service requirements while teaching at a research university; then she discussed the issue of "buying-out teaching requirements. The first post is an interesting read for those interested in tenure and a discussion of promotions in academia [although, as an interesting side note, I find it interesting that neither FSP nor her commenters found that teaching and research were related activities], but it is actually the second that I found more interesting.

The question revolves around the practice of "buying out" teaching requirements. This is a practice where one would write into a grant proposal a certain amount of money that would be used to pay the professor's department a set fee in order that the professor does not have to teach the class that semester. Often, the department will then hire an adjunct or, if it is a required graduate course, strong-arm a less-prominent researcher to teach the course [or, simply not teach the course].

As I posted there, I have two major concers about this practice.

1. In my role as a student, I have found the course offerings in graduate level courses to be strinkingly sparse. While graduate education is certainly not built on a foundation of taking classes in the same way that an undergraduate course of study is, graduate-level elective classes are often the time where students are exposed to the background literature in their field or sub-field or where new literatures can be discovered. By curtailing these offerings, my department has made it more difficult for me to obtain my degree in a timely manner (another, apparent pet-peeve of most universities).


2. Second is the prospect of my future employment in the field of academia. As Dr. K points out in the comments, the adjuncts that are hired to teach these "bought-out" semesters are paid far less than the tenured or tenure-track professors who bought out their commitment. Adjuncts have no job security, and what security they have depends on their evaluations from their students which, logically, leads to grade inflation. They have severe curtailments on their academic freedom as they are at best short-term contract employees and, at worst, at-will employees.

I find it interesting in the debates surrounding academic freedom and adjunct parity often overlook at the entire context of institutions of higher education. When I have brought up the issue of graduate education in debates about adjunct parity, I am often met by either a) open hostility telling me that adjuncts could never instruct me the way that tenured or tenure-track professors could or b) outright confusion. I seem to get the response, "What the hell does this have to do with anything?" The same could be said about debates I have had regarding academic freedom - we (rightly) concentrate on Horowitz's big legislative agenda, but often forget the day-to-day, quotidian (thanks wobblie) experiences that threaten academic freedom on campus.

I know that there must be dozens of other banal rules, regulations and policies that threaten the very ideals of a free and fair academy such as this one. While we target the large-scale n'er-do-gooders such as Horowitz and ACTA and fight with (or as) the adjuncts and contingent employees that deserve fair treatment with legislation and national campaigns, short term goals should include targeting policies such as these to make them more fair, equitable and just. I believe that research should provide an instrument to help teach and that teaching should provide the energy and ideas to supply creative research. At times, one needs more resources to commit to research; I just hope that Harvard and other instutions take seriously the recommendations of the task-force to value teaching the same way they value research.