Worst Professor Ever

Recently, someone wrote in saying they felt I had no hope. I thought that was obvious already, but just in case…

A while a ago there was an NYT article about ‘adjunct’ lawyers. To me this was further proof that higher ed is DOA. And yet I see so many of my former students flocking to law school ignoring obvious signs of not just oversupply but MASSIVE oversupply. There are already too many people with advanced degrees, and there will not be new jobs created just for them, so the problem won’t go away. Especially since there are too many regular ol’ BA’s floating around now, too.

The preposterous income-to-debt ratio is exactly what defines the adjunct instructor class, and now it defines the debt-ridden, just-out-of-college class. I’m betting lawyers are about to experience the same exciting and precipitous decline academics have — I’ve already heard one lawyer say they got into this for love, and not money. Ha. It’s only cold comfort that MBA’s are next in line.

Things are absolutely, positively not going to get better just because any individual refuses to see that they are not a special case in this overwhelming tide of evidence.  It’s time to start looking for jobs that don’t value that piece of paper — and while we’re at it can we please just admit that one American ideal  (everyone deserves an education because we’re all equal) is directly at odds with another  (a degree means you’re exceptional)? Embrace the cognitive dissonance, people, because it’s only going to get worse.

This is why I left. I decided that there was no way in hell that any individual teacher could make a whit of difference within this behemoth and nonfunctional system. I also deduced that teaching — real teaching — was a product no one wanted in this consumer-driven culture. No “customer” ever wants to be told they’re average or their project sucks and needs to be started all over again, especially by a real person instead of a computer. Making those computers do stuff, on the other hand…well, that looked like something that would continue to be in demand.

Being DOA goes double (if that’s existentially possible) for the humanities — the funding is gone, and not coming back. Humanities get no respect. Why? Because the court of public opinion just doesn’t care. I’d even say it actively despises abstract thinking. Meanwhile science, math, and pseudo-science are still getting an automatic hall pass for being all, y’know, sciencey and stuff. Did you see Obama giving prizes to humanities teachers? I didn’t.

But humanities people,  j’accuse. I’m not a huge fan of ‘Darwinian’ economics; deliberately ignoring reality, on the other hand, means I stop feeling bad for you. Where’s the free will here? Or are you too invested in your pseudo-monasticism to admit that normal Americans don’t care about what you’re doing? No, they really don’t, and they also don’t read the NYT or listen to NPR, while we’re at it.

And yes, I know, politicians also lie when they claim they are speaking for the many, but at least they are speaking to the many because they are using bazillions of dollars to saturate the media. Teaching is not. Higher ed is not. The humanities certainly are not. In my experience, academics are actually proud of how few people care about their subject, which is just sick. This is why I hated many, perhaps most, people I came in contact with as an academic. I’m frankly shocked I have so many academic fans.

Anyway. I thought, why not get get myself into a position of some security, in a field where people did have power and money and influence on the majority, and then maybe try to talk to them about history — gently, in the course of normal conversation, as it should be done, rather than bludgeoning them over the head with things they don’t know. To me, this was putting my money where my mouth was, not only by attempting to show that (e.g.) Plato was useful to normal people but also by showing that my humanities-based problem solving abilities were broadly applicable (or “extensible” as we say in the trade), and so making an argument against the “narrow” interpretation of what humanities are good for.

The higher ed Titanic has already struck the iceberg.  It’s time to jump off the sinking ship and start a new colony, hopefully by doing something different. This does not mean whining about how unjust the world is, or blaming people for not caring, or throwing up hands about firing teachers. This is no longer news, and it’s really not helping anything.

So if you ask me what to do, yeah, I’d tell you to leave. I don’t think change will ever happen from within. Go find a job that doesn’t kill you and pays you enough not to worry all the time. You’ll be amazed at how much energy you have to think great thoughts. And if you miss letting other people know about Beowulf, make a damned webinar and distribute it on YouTube. You’ll reach more people that way — though you won’t get to pull that martyr, poor-a-holic crap, which often seems to me the thing that academics really thrive on.

Only when the humanities can earn their own keep will they be respected in modern America. And that will only happen when you convince the majority of people to be interested, of their own volition, rather than begging or guilting them into giving you that money to translate your obscure French poem on vague grounds of “caring about culture.” So either figure something out, or shut up and accept that the humanities are an inherently elite activity that will rely on feudal patronage. Just like they always have. (If you think of Maslow’s hierarchy, it’s obvious why the leisure class, which generally has money, sex, food, and security  taken care of, has been in charge of learning.)

You have no idea how much it pains me to say this, but speaking from experience I now believe that private industry is doing a better job of communicating, persuading, innovating, of everything the university has stopped doing. I do not take this as indicator of how well capitalism works, I take it as an indicator of how badly universities have failed, while still somehow aping the worst aspects of corporate capitalism. (And no, I sure as hell wouldn’t bail them out.)

For $40/month I retrained for a career that was actually in demand — how can I possibly tell people it’s worth paying tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars they don’t have, for a piece of paper that probably won’t get them a job? That would be hypocritical. Especially since the new, real-world hiring mantra is to hire people based on character/potential, then train them for the job at hand. Piece of paper? Increasingly irrelevant.

Real universities are, IMHO, not much better than the fake ones Obama’s trying to shut down. So if you must stay in higher ed, accept that you are a mere cog being used to make a profit. Look out for yourself first, because nobody cares about keeping you around. And maybe do something subversive. For example, I started telling my students outright how much research didn’t benefit them — actually they’d already figured this out, so I encouraged them to tell their parents, saying things like “why should anyone donate to already-wealthy institutions who can’t manage their money and retain their actual ‘talent’?”

As Peter Gibbons said in Office Space, make their stock go down.

Or adapt. Or leave.

Just do something. DO something, rather than just saying what’s already been said.