Bottom Line

[Derek C. Maus]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, jbor wrote:

> Why is there an automatic assumption that postgraduate studies will or
> should lead to a job in a tertiary institution anyway?

Why is there an automatic assumption that there is an automatic assumption
in this regard? Have you actually talked to a recent graduate student in
the humanities, because the *vast* majority of my colleagues have no such
assumption, even if they still do hope that this will somehow be the
result of the process.

> 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? 

Anyone thinking this is an idiot. I dare say that 99% of those I have met
in graduate school are not idiots. Ergo...Again, what leads you to believe
that this attitude is so common...the words of profs like Cary Nelson (who
I actually like quite a lot) who are already tenured from a time when the
jobs/applicants ration was under 100:1?

> 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

Yeah...and those no-good lazy homeless too! All junkies and prostitutes.
Where the hell does this come from, rj? Columbia and Yale are not the
fucking status quo, y'know? "The research bursary" pays me $12,300 a year
to teach three courses and work full-time on my dissertation...hardly the
path to financial glory (and as to mooching off Mom and Dad, you'll find a
few, but probably not as many as get taken on at Dad's firm after getting
that B.A. in marketing...).

> 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? 

Some of them...what about the other 95% who aren't like that?

> 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?

You just described about three-fourths of the graduate students in the
English department at UNC. Who the hell sets out for "academic glory"
any more, anyway. 

Interviewer: "Why do you want to go to graduate school?"
Applicant: "To be the next Allen Tate, sir. America really values its
            literary intellectuals and I want to bask in that glory."
Interviewer: "Well, you've certainly got your priorities straight. Let
              me teach you the secret handshake and tell you about the 
              job at Stanford that awaits you."
Applicant: "Oh goody, fuck the poor!"

> 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.)

Say, rj...applied for an elementary school teaching job in North Carolina
recently? If not, you ought to...there's a shortage of over 10,000.
"Well-paying", "time besides", "security" and "tenure" are not exactly
words that spring to mind, especially given the system that also
encourages social promotion and test-score achievement models. Teaching
150 students in outmoded classrooms with shoestring budgets and an
administrator more concerned with campus discipline and football is not a
sign of non-elitism, it's probably the sign of sainthood.  

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Derek C. Maus               |   "Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be
dmaus at email.unc.edu         |   human beings if you didn't have some 
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    |   pretty strong feelings about nuclear
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/  |   combat."  --Major Kong, DR. STRANGELOVE
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