The Mushy Carrot

On Saturday, HippieHusband and I went out for dinner with an old friend of his, Dr.Rappa, a t-t faculty (up for tenure this year) at a "teaching" university. Dr.Rappa looks like he is the hybrid offspring of Mr.Rogers and Frank Zappa. Funny and charming, there is something in his behavior that suggests he is not entirely happy. You know like when Mr.Rogers goes to his closet full of perfectly hung and aligned sweaters and he exchanges the green cardigan for a yellow one. All the while singing in a creepy happy psychokiller qu'est que c'est voice, "It's a wonderful day in the neighbourhood."

I put teaching in quotes because the university, where Dr.Rappa is a faculty member, is moving into the research game. As with many of these "teaching" universities the faculty are expected to get external funding with no reduction in the 3/3 teaching load, supervise both undergraduates and Masters students, and serve on committees. And at some of these places, they are pushing to get doctoral programs.

Luckily for Dr.Rappa his tenure package just has to include evidence that he has tried to get external funding even if he doesn't succeed. Unfortunately, this is not true for more recent hires. They will have to teach 3/3, AND get external funding in order to secure tenure. During our dinner conversation, Dr.Rappa was trying to sell us on the university and the town because as it turns out they are hiring 5 new tt faculty.

This wasn't the first time we were approached.

At a conference recently, HippieHusband and I were both individually asked by an assistant prof at one of these "teaching universities" to apply for a t-t position. The deal was the same. You teach 3/3, apply for external funding, and supervise undergraduates (this university didn't even have Masters students). And even if by some miracle you were able to get external funding, teaching relief was a pipe dream.

What's strange to me is that these two assistant profs thought the fact that the university was encouraging research, made the t-t position a more attractive carrot.

The burning question that HippieHusband and I wanted to know the answer to - was how does a faculty member at a 3/3 teaching school find the time to gather enough preliminary data to even think of applying for external funding? And how are the faculty at these schools supposed to compete with the big research universities for the ever shrinking research dollar?

For the record Dr.Rappa had not been able to secure funding in the 4 years that he was at this school. But before coming to the university, he had a total of 20 publications in medium journals from 3 different postdocs spanning 6 years.

Dr.Rappa's response, "Well some people are willing to do anything for a t-t job. You have to be willing to sacrifice your life."

And you know he's not the only one who's said this. While we were still at SmallUniversity, GuruofSmallThings said to us over lunch, that if you wanted a tt position you needed to ask yourself what you're willing to sacrifice to get it. She felt it would mean being a superproductive postdoc for up to 10 years.

Ridiculous. This is just fucked up. I get that academia is not easy and that you have to work hard. But sacrifice my life? Are you fucking nuts?

This academic attitude is a recently evolved trait, driven by the fact that there are too many postdocs and Phds to fill the few and far between t-t positions. As with any extreme selective event, there will be weeding out and ultimately it will mean fewer new PhDs graduating and taking academic postdocs that would lead to an academic job. And when that happens then the pool of applicants will fit the number of new tt positions that come available and academia will return to a stable equlibrium.

Of course this won't happen in my time.

I've written about this endlessly here and here and here.

As with any severe reduction in population size, there will be a major loss in diversity. By diversity, I mean those that are underrepresented in the STEM sciences - women and minorities. But it's not like it really mattered in the first place. This same university that Dr.Rappa works at has a very strong old boys network. So strong that when they had an excellent applicant, who happened to be Asian, for a recent hire, one of the senior faculty said, "Well, we don't want to be going down that road."

When it comes down to it, I'm not willing to just settle for carrot puree.