Recently I was privy to be at a function at a well-known research university, where the new faculty for the year were invited to a small reception, just an hour or two, with drinks and hors d'oeurves (I don't know if I spelled that right, but you know what I mean. After 30 or 45 minutes, the host, who was the Dean of Arts and Sciences, or whatever this particular college is called, got everyone's attention. He asked everyone to gather around in one room in this fancy house, and asked the department chairs of the respective new faculty hires to introduce each of them by saying some brief comments.
What followed was 30 minutes of department chairs' blowhard puffery, trying to impress everyone else in the room with how outstanding their new hire was. My new assistant professor has won this award, and has this many publications. Oh, well MY full professor has been given this honor, and has served in these positions and so on and so on. Of course, it was civilized, and everyone took their turn in the circle, it wasn't a back-and-forth argument. At the end, the dean congratulated everyone on how impressive they were, and everyone reconvened for another glass of wine.
But to an outsider who knows what the road to academia is like, this came off like a bunch of overprivileged people with inflated egos patting themselves on the back, bean counting journal article publications, awards, books published, and exotic previous appointments. I couldn't tell if they knew how fortunate they were, and that most likely they were there not because of their special talent, but because they happened to go to the right school with the advisor with the right connections. Of course they are all talented and dedicated hard workers, probably more so than I am. (What can I say, I'm writing a blog instead of working on publishing stuff right now.) Well, it was pretty sickening, and I thought of what it might be like to have a bunch of rich businessmen sit around and brag about how rich they were, how many companies they owned, how many vacation houses, etc. all while exploiting their workers and the tax code. But these were professors, department chairs, and deans. I would expect a little more humility. But it didn't seem to be this way, at least here.
The incentives in the academic system are perverted and broken, and the decision-makers don't mind having their cushy jobs, and being able to point to numbers to justify their decisions, rather than the quality of teacher or researcher they've hired. (Would it be much harder to come up with an alternative way to measure the quality of a professor? of course. But what exists now is a system that rewards those with connections, preys on students with lofty ambitions in a big pyramid scheme, and only somewhat resembles a meritocracy.)
If you are or were someone who was spit out by this system only to find yourself taking a boatload of part-time teaching jobs just to make ends meet, you should be disgusted. I know I was.
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