Clipmarks | dmegivern's 'academia' clips

Considering Social Class in Grad Admissions

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:12:20 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

In Grad Admissions, Where Is Class?

In the debate over affirmative action in undergraduate admissions, some have suggested that colleges need broader definitions of diversity — and that they should consider socioeconomic class as well as such factors as race and ethnicity. Many colleges do so, and explicitly note that they are trying to recruit “first generation” students or those from low-income families.

Oldfield notes in the article that the political science association has repeatedly issued various reports and studies calling for the discipline to be fully inclusive and to consider issues of class. But there’s not much evidence of anyone paying attention, he finds, at least in grad admissions.

Oldfield stressed that he was not arguing that there is an either/or dilemma with existing measures of diversity and socioeconomic class. “I don’t think we should replace one with the other. I think diversity really means diversity and that class should be thrown into the mix,” he said.

Tags: academia, class

Hmm, Pothead Ph.D.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:49:53 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Pothead Ph.D.

I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana.

I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities.

I'm an insomniac who averages four to five hours of sleep a night. The best way to deal with a sleeping problem is with regular exercise. But it's nice to have a secret weapon to knock me out on days when I can't make it to the gym. I'm certainly better off than peers who have flirted with Xanax addictions, or who waste their stipends on genuinely worthless stuff like Ambien or Lunesta.

Of course I've often felt troubled, politically, by my marijuana use: Here I am in the comfort of my apartment while unfortunate people are incarcerated for selling it to me.

Tags: academia, marijuana

Schools of Social Work Focus on Justice

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:42:48 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.mlive.com

Schools of social work focus on social justice; is that a problem?

In a column published in the Oct. 18 Ann Arbor News, columnist George Will vented his mistrust of social work academia. Schools of social work and the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics, he opined, enforce a particular agenda at the expense of a pluralistic student body.

Right-wing pundits like Will are aghast that a socially responsible president may enter in a year's time, and these pundits are at their mud-throwing finest as they attack anything remotely ideologically liberal. Through his interpretation of the NASW Code of Ethics and scant anecdotal evidence of a statistically insignificant fraction of the social work student consortium, Will builds a straw man out of hasty generalizations. His dialogue is littered with scary terms alluding to gay rights and the redistribution of wealth. This is "Reefer Madness'' 2.0.

How Academia is like a Relationship

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:12:16 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Can We Still Be Friends?

Breaking up with a college is hard to do. When I found myself seduced by a new job, I wanted to spare everyone the pain of a long, drawn-out negotiation and end things cleanly. The new position was a good fit, and my colleagues knew I had been unhappy. Why not just say goodbye, and move on?

"It doesn't matter," my friend argued. "If you don't give them a chance, they'll resent you. You have to let them try. If you just walk away, they will be angry and hurt."

Some bad feelings do linger on both sides. The fact is, I am leaving, and that remains something of a betrayal to my senior colleagues. As the semester ended, and I cleared out my office and packed up my things, very few of my elders said goodbye. There was no department party, no final round of drinks at the local pub, just some commiserating with fellow disillusioned junior scholars, and good wishes from the core of friends I feel lucky to have gotten to know.

Discrimination Based on Social Class in Academia

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:03:11 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

How Liberal Arts Colleges Perpetuate Bias

When you hire only those who have attended schools like yours, you practice discrimination.

By Michael J. Shott

Class bias persists in the academy. Class bias in higher education is not a recent phenomenon; it’s the reason we needed the GI Bill. In 1979, sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Everett Ladd concluded in an essay published in Qualitative and Quantitative Social Research: Papers in Honor of Paul F. Lazarsfeld that “prestigious, research-oriented institutions have drawn their professors disproportionately from the higher social strata.” Sociologists Robert McGinness and J. Scott Long wrote in 1988 in The Academic Profession: The Professoriate in Crisis that “the rewards of prestigious academic positions are much better correlated with measures of pedigree than of productivity.”

Class is the whale in the living room whose stinking carcass polite academic society politely ignores.

Tags: academia, social.class, college

The Many Tiers of Academia

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:59:46 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

How do working-class students end up at working-class colleges and universities? An inside account of the California state system unearths the class structure of higher education

By Renny Christopher

Note that I said I was "effectively educated" in elite schools, not "well educated." I chose my terms carefully, because part of my education included learning contempt for my family and the culture I came from, eradicating the dialect I grew up speaking, and learning values of hierarchy, ambition, individualism, and intellectual snobbery—what many would call "pride in intellectual achievement." I now characterize the years I spent working to unlearn my precollege self as my miseducation. But this miseducation came interlaced with useful skills-skills of rhetoric, of analysis—that my own students at the state university are not gaining.

Tags: academia, working.class, college

Diversity, Discourse, and the Working Class Student

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:56:20 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

Diversity, Discourse, and the Working-Class Student

Everybody likes "diversity." But, sometimes, all the talk about it hides complicated realities.

By Janet Galligani Casey

For example, the working-class student is not well served by our current discourses on big-d Diversity. Attending to the special circumstances of lower-class students brings to the fore the many ways in which our diversity rhetoric continues to gloss over certain forms of cultural difference, and continues, in an unreflective manner, to advance the middle-class ideology of the academy as the normative one.

We might think for a moment about the entirely negative proposition of "outing" oneself as the child of a janitor or, in some settings, merely admitting that one's parents did not attend college—types of difference to which virtually no social value adheres.

Tags: academia, working.class, diversity, college

Women and Tenure in Academe

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:52:30 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.aaup.org

Faculty Forum: It Takes a Village to Create a Full Professor

By Charlotte Fishman

Why do I say it takes a village? In my experience, the women who successfully fight back have friends, as well as strong academic records: colleagues who support them, women's faculty groups who champion them, administrators who go to bat for them, journalists who write about them, legislators who inquire about them, and students who root for them. While every situation is unique, a supporting cast is essential—the "lone ranger" academic is not going to ride into the sunset on the back of her excellent work product alone.

Why don't professional women know this, as a rule? Why are women reluctant to reach out for help? The belief that virtue (merit) is rewarded has deep roots. Many high-achieving women were taught as little girls that if they did good work, recognition would follow as night follows day. They simply don't know what to do when this myth is punctured by the reality of discrimination.

Tags: academia, women, tenure

Cartoons Depicting Life in the United State circa 2007

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:19:00 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: blogs.newamericamedia.org

Tags: cartoons, political, healthcare, academia

Not Basking in Enough Reflected Glory

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:39:01 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I am one of the "near superstars" that left academia. It was an obnoxious environment fully of egos and professors who work with graduate students only to mentor the next superstar. Ick.

Clip Source: chronicle.com

What I believe now is that working with graduate students is not all it's cracked up to be. Graduate school is such an emotionally fraught time for most students that being in a program is like being a member of a profoundly dysfunctional family, complete with all-too-frequent psychodramas and even, at times, nervous breakdowns.

A variation of that type is the student who claims to want a plum academic career but who, upon completing the Ph.D. and landing a research position at a major institution, suddenly leaves the profession, insisting that family considerations were paramount after all.

Simply put, graduate school too often brings out the worst in students -- and, by extension, in faculty members as well.

What is frustrating is the apparent deceit of would-be scholars enticing you to help them become the field's next superstar, only to discover that it was all bluster and empty talk.

Tags: bitter, academics

American Academics

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:42:14 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: I honestly believe that conservative rationale and thinking is less complex and evolved than progressive thought. It makes sense to me that places where highly intelligent people gather will therefore tend to be liberal.

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Few Conservatives but Many Centrists Found in American Academe

By DAVID GLENN

Conservatives are a small minority within the American professoriate, according to a major study whose results were released on Saturday. The study -- which is arguably the best-designed survey of American faculty beliefs since the early 1970s -- found that only 9.2 percent of college instructors are conservatives, and that only 20.4 percent voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Tags: academia, liberal, progressive, politics

The Dark Side of Academia

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:33:31 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: This article discusses academics who don't become "stars"

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Is Graduate School a Cult?

For all its claims to the contrary, graduate education does not seem to enhance the mental freedom of many students, some of whom are psychologically damaged by the experience. As Newhouse suggested -- perhaps more rhetorically than seriously -- graduate school these days seems to have a lot in common with mind-control cults.

For anyone who has been in graduate school, numerous portions of Hassan's outline of the mind-control practices of cults will seem weirdly familiar. Reading through it, your initial tendency may be to laugh out loud. But proceed down the list and the parallels between cults and the experiences of many graduate students can become mildly disturbing.

Behavior control:

Information control:

Thought control:

Emotional control:

Maybe thinking of graduate school as a "cult" is silly. What's the difference between indoctrination and professionalization, anyway?

There are jobs out there for smart, creative people that don't expect you to sell your soul.

Tags: academia, professorship, education, college, graduate.school