New ad: "Capsizing in class 4 whitewater and getting back in the boat made for a great water-cooler chat on Monday"
Because you don't do your hobbies for intrinsic enjoyment, but to impress other people. I picture this dude (you know it's a guy) as Drew from Office Space bragging about how he "bagged some class 4" over the weekend while everyone else just waits for him to shut up.
Not buying Merrell products. Ever.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Should higher education be more concentrated?
I started to reply to a comment Jaya left the other day, but my response got out of control length-wise, and I figured it should be its own post. She wondered about the possibility that someday, colleges might relocate so that there would be more schools geographically proximate to each other, which would offer some obvious benefits.
I don't think so, for a few reasons.
One, of course, moving itself is enormously expensive. Long-term, a new location might be cheaper, but schools would have some difficulty getting the money together in the short term. Sufficient incentive may overcome this, but remember that after Katrina, the one thing none of the area colleges did was consider relocating, despite the virtual certainty the another flood will happen again someday. I do know of one school that is relocating in the near future, but from an urban area to a more suburban/rural one - getting farther from its neighbors, not closer. The cost barrier was overcome in this case because its present location is now primo real estate.
Two, most colleges are extremely regional. The best predictor of whether a student goes to college is how close he/she is to one, and the best predictor of which one a student goes to is again location. The subset of schools this is most true of are also the most penny-pinched. Elite schools with a national reach and the students that attend them are an unusual (and small) segment of the educational marketplace. Princeton, for example, is not tied to its region, but it also can afford to stay in New Jersey. Community colleges in particular exist to serve a particular community, not even an entire region. College-access advocates would have a fit if colleges were moved away from local constituents to where other schools already exist, leaving a pool of students without a nearby institution. Of course, one can easily debate the power your average educational pundit has!
Three, most politicians would be opposed to a college in their district relocating. State reps would object to moving their local colleges elsewhere, because they are a key producer of jobs and state revenue for the area. (Even those congressmen who aren't so keen on providing the funding.) Moreover, the cities that would receive the institutions wouldn't be happy, either. Cities that have a large concentration of nonprofits (including colleges) have been increasingly complaining about the reduction in property taxes that results. (PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, are becoming more common.) A city that already has several institutions of higher education isn't likely to think that one more will be a major engine of economic growth.
Now, note that I don't believe all these arguments are socially good ones. I think the access argument is, but the one about costs is not - it's just a reflection of the way things tend to work, not how they ought to. There are considerable benefits to informal synergy and formal consortia; the model of the Claremont colleges ought to be more widely replicated, I believe.
The overall tone of this post is a big "no, not gonna happen," but that's not because I don't believe there are benefits to co-location. (I'm definitely anti-sprawl when we're talking about things other than education, after all). I'm going to save the benefits for a separate post, however.
I don't think so, for a few reasons.
One, of course, moving itself is enormously expensive. Long-term, a new location might be cheaper, but schools would have some difficulty getting the money together in the short term. Sufficient incentive may overcome this, but remember that after Katrina, the one thing none of the area colleges did was consider relocating, despite the virtual certainty the another flood will happen again someday. I do know of one school that is relocating in the near future, but from an urban area to a more suburban/rural one - getting farther from its neighbors, not closer. The cost barrier was overcome in this case because its present location is now primo real estate.
Two, most colleges are extremely regional. The best predictor of whether a student goes to college is how close he/she is to one, and the best predictor of which one a student goes to is again location. The subset of schools this is most true of are also the most penny-pinched. Elite schools with a national reach and the students that attend them are an unusual (and small) segment of the educational marketplace. Princeton, for example, is not tied to its region, but it also can afford to stay in New Jersey. Community colleges in particular exist to serve a particular community, not even an entire region. College-access advocates would have a fit if colleges were moved away from local constituents to where other schools already exist, leaving a pool of students without a nearby institution. Of course, one can easily debate the power your average educational pundit has!
Three, most politicians would be opposed to a college in their district relocating. State reps would object to moving their local colleges elsewhere, because they are a key producer of jobs and state revenue for the area. (Even those congressmen who aren't so keen on providing the funding.) Moreover, the cities that would receive the institutions wouldn't be happy, either. Cities that have a large concentration of nonprofits (including colleges) have been increasingly complaining about the reduction in property taxes that results. (PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, are becoming more common.) A city that already has several institutions of higher education isn't likely to think that one more will be a major engine of economic growth.
Now, note that I don't believe all these arguments are socially good ones. I think the access argument is, but the one about costs is not - it's just a reflection of the way things tend to work, not how they ought to. There are considerable benefits to informal synergy and formal consortia; the model of the Claremont colleges ought to be more widely replicated, I believe.
The overall tone of this post is a big "no, not gonna happen," but that's not because I don't believe there are benefits to co-location. (I'm definitely anti-sprawl when we're talking about things other than education, after all). I'm going to save the benefits for a separate post, however.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Good news
The emails went out with ASHE acceptances and rejections, and one of my papers has been accepted. (I say "mine," but I'm the first of four authors.) I think it was the strongest of the three submissions. So thanks to Vanderbilt's generous travel policies, my trip to ASHE this fall will be paid for.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?
Yesterday morning I sat sleepily at my computer checking my email, until I sat up straight, startled, uttering mild oaths. The email that had occasioned this was a listserv that often includes job announcements, and on this occasion it included the very first job posting for an assistant-level, tenure-track faculty position starting in fall 2009. In other words, job season is now open.
I've been debating how to handle job searches in this blog. In general I am open about most things, but a certain amount of discretion is more appropriate in job-hunting. I've decided that I will post relevant job openings as I see them. Just because I have posted a job does not mean I have applied for it. In some cases, I may explain why I am not applying, just to give a better sense of the market. In other cases, you'll just have to wonder. Only after the entire search is done will I give any more specific account of it all.
So this
first position is at Miami University of Ohio. They're looking for an assistant or associate professor with a focus on student affairs. I will not be applying, because I have no expertise in that area, and I am not interested in developing it, either. However, seeing it is a definite prod!
Now, time to revamp my CV, get my references lined up, and whip out a little dissertation.
I've been debating how to handle job searches in this blog. In general I am open about most things, but a certain amount of discretion is more appropriate in job-hunting. I've decided that I will post relevant job openings as I see them. Just because I have posted a job does not mean I have applied for it. In some cases, I may explain why I am not applying, just to give a better sense of the market. In other cases, you'll just have to wonder. Only after the entire search is done will I give any more specific account of it all.
So this
first position is at Miami University of Ohio. They're looking for an assistant or associate professor with a focus on student affairs. I will not be applying, because I have no expertise in that area, and I am not interested in developing it, either. However, seeing it is a definite prod!
Now, time to revamp my CV, get my references lined up, and whip out a little dissertation.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Cost of gas in academia
The rising gas prices are affecting all sorts of parts of the American Way besides our love affair with the road. The latest issue I've seen is with adjunct professors. (I've included the link, but it won't work for most of you.) Adjunct professors are the pieceworkers of academia, hired to teach and paid by the class. Unlike full-time faculty jobs, these positions do not include committee service, student advising, research or publishing. There are adjuncts who just teach one class a semester for whatever reason and are not pursuing a life in academia, and gas prices aren't affecting most of them so much.
The ones who are feeling it are full-time adjuncts. These tend to be people who want to be hired as full-time, probably tenure-track, faculty, but haven't found a job yet. This is partially due to a restructuring of academia in the last few decades that has reduced the percent of tenure-track faculty in favor of more "contingent" faculty, as they are also called. So these folks teach one class here, two there, a third here, and cobble together enough money to live on, albeit without health insurance. Another name for these folks is "freeway fliers" because they spend a lot of time driving between schools.
Can you see where this is going? The cost of gas is making this lifestyle less tenable. Yet cutting back on the farthest gigs probably reduces one's income to the point of starvation, causing one to look for a new job altogether. Schools could raise the rates they pay, but at some point most of the efficiencies of using contingent labor are gone. (The flexibility to hire and fire at will remains.) Schools may have no choice but to hire more tenure-track faculty members - or to say they can't afford tenure at all any more but continue to hire full-timers. The costs to institutions go beyond salary and benefits; they likely include finding offices to put the new faculty in, since adjuncts are unhoused. The costs to low-cost community colleges in particular could be tremendous.*
I suppose this is good news to observers (including me) who look askance at the "adjunctification" of the job market, but it puts schools and administrators in a very difficult position, changing their costs in a way they have little control over at a time when budgets are already tight.
It's also one of those gas-price issues that takes some time to deal with after the problem arises. Let's say a very proactive administrator decides today to start hiring more tenure-track faculty member. The institutional permissions to do so could take a year to get. Meanwhile, the institution is still using adjuncts. It's like deciding to move closer to your job - you have to sell your house and buy another and actually move, and what about your kids' schools? At this point, a lot of people are just waiting it out, hoping prices go back down.
* If you're not in academia, you may be asking, why not just hire an adjunct at current rates to teach a full load at one place? Because at a certain point he or she would have to be considered a full-time employee, with benefits. And industry norms frown on hiring full-timers without official job searches, for one thing, and there are actually tenure implications, for another.
The ones who are feeling it are full-time adjuncts. These tend to be people who want to be hired as full-time, probably tenure-track, faculty, but haven't found a job yet. This is partially due to a restructuring of academia in the last few decades that has reduced the percent of tenure-track faculty in favor of more "contingent" faculty, as they are also called. So these folks teach one class here, two there, a third here, and cobble together enough money to live on, albeit without health insurance. Another name for these folks is "freeway fliers" because they spend a lot of time driving between schools.
Can you see where this is going? The cost of gas is making this lifestyle less tenable. Yet cutting back on the farthest gigs probably reduces one's income to the point of starvation, causing one to look for a new job altogether. Schools could raise the rates they pay, but at some point most of the efficiencies of using contingent labor are gone. (The flexibility to hire and fire at will remains.) Schools may have no choice but to hire more tenure-track faculty members - or to say they can't afford tenure at all any more but continue to hire full-timers. The costs to institutions go beyond salary and benefits; they likely include finding offices to put the new faculty in, since adjuncts are unhoused. The costs to low-cost community colleges in particular could be tremendous.*
I suppose this is good news to observers (including me) who look askance at the "adjunctification" of the job market, but it puts schools and administrators in a very difficult position, changing their costs in a way they have little control over at a time when budgets are already tight.
It's also one of those gas-price issues that takes some time to deal with after the problem arises. Let's say a very proactive administrator decides today to start hiring more tenure-track faculty member. The institutional permissions to do so could take a year to get. Meanwhile, the institution is still using adjuncts. It's like deciding to move closer to your job - you have to sell your house and buy another and actually move, and what about your kids' schools? At this point, a lot of people are just waiting it out, hoping prices go back down.
* If you're not in academia, you may be asking, why not just hire an adjunct at current rates to teach a full load at one place? Because at a certain point he or she would have to be considered a full-time employee, with benefits. And industry norms frown on hiring full-timers without official job searches, for one thing, and there are actually tenure implications, for another.
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