Bottom Line

[jbor]

> 
> http://www.workplace-gsc.com/features1/nelson.html


Isn't it a mite obvious that the length of a tenured professor's career will
outstrip the length of a PhD candidature by a ratio of around 7:1? So that
the numbers of graduates clamouring with bated breath for that one position
on the dear old prof's demise has increased almost exponentially by the time
the longed for day finally arrives? Why is there an automatic assumption
that postgraduate studies will or should lead to a job in a tertiary
institution anyway?

What are the PhD candidates themselves thinking and expecting when they
enrol, and what or who has led them to believe that they will get full
academic tenure at the successful completion of their degree? How were they
supporting themselves while they were studying? Good Lord, how many
postgraduates are simply twenty- or thirty-something "professional students"
mooching off Mom and Dad and the research bursary for as long as they can:
"all the punks, lushes, co-eds in love, woebegone PFCs--the whole host of
trodden-on and disaffected" at Mike Lupescu's party in 'Mortality and Mercy
in Vienna', chattering on about "Zen", "San Francisco" and "Wittgenstein",
shooting craps and whining about their disaffectedness to willing
father-confessor stooges like Cleanth Siegel?

It's all very well to attack the short-sightedness and instinct for
self-preservation of the academy, and these criticisms are no doubt apt, but
aren't the students themselves (and their parents, too, perhaps) at least
partly to blame for the predicaments they find themselves in, for the same
short-sightedness and elitist mentality? What about the self-funding
part-timers who work their way through higher education courses and
postgrad. degrees, first ensuring that there is bread on the table and a
roof over their family's head before embarking on that quest for academic
glory? In gleefully accepting the exploitative wages and work conditions at
these institutions (and there is enormous competition for these low-paid
tutorial and associate positions because of the imagined "prestige" which
accrues to such appointments, and the expected weight they will add to their
CVs in the long run when finally they do get their bite at the cherry of
tenure) these graduates are merely justifying and perpetuating the
inequities within the system, aren't they? There are well-paying jobs enough
in primary and secondary schools, and security and tenure and health schemes
and super and job satisfaction, and time besides for their own intellectual
advancement if they so desire: these postgraduates need to get over the
elitist mentality which makes them perceive themselves as too good for such
"menial" and "insignificant" travail. (And, such vocations are in fact the
cornerstone of social change.)

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