This is a really good find. Do you have a strong opinion on the matter?

You know, that last comment really reads like a spam comment. Damn friendly spam.

I cannot say that I have seen these professors who supposedly make this case for a “life of the mind.” However I have seen that some students even in technical fields, for example Engineering grad students at VT who are not US Citizens, have been misled by myths of grand opportunities. At VT, the majority of technical recruiting is from DC (so usually, defense-related), meaning US Citizens only. We are doing a disservice to students who travel across the world to have opportunities here, to then not help them in finding internships when they have what should be highly marketable skills.

While I have not heard any profs trying to make some life of the mind argument, I do see a large number of grad students in non-technical fields. The problem here is that there are few arenas outside of academia that value higher ed in non-tech fields. And then there are so few academic positions, and as this article states adjunct and other non-tenure track positions are on the rise (although Dean DePauw says that while the percentage of adjuncts and etc is increasing, the number of tenure track positions is still increasing).

I think it is important for any one who is aiming for a career to do their best to learn all about it before getting there, the problem with many professions (e.g. academia, medicine) is that you have to do so much work before you can really get into the position to see what the profession is like. So while I think that maybe some of this arises from an ignorance on the part of the disillusioned, I think that some careers make it more difficult to know what they’re all about than others.

For this reason I think VT is being responsible in offering both Preparing the Future Professoriate and Preparing the Future Professional classes, which are primarily discussion-based. Also, VT(’s College of Engineering) has a Graduate Teaching Fellowship which might enable people to be a course instructor as a grad student which would also help them understand the professor position a little better prior to taking a position.

I think that at UNC and here again at VT I feel that the people (and maybe the ridiculously expensive equipment [e.g. The GigaPixel Display, 3D-Printer]) are the most valuable asset which appealed to me. In my professors I have found so many opportunities and learned many things about being a professor. While I realize that different people might interact with their professors differently, I would hope that people could find their own way to have discussion about things like being a professor. If I just wanted to learn things about Computer Science (or some particular subject) I wouldn’t need to be in school.

I was enjoying the article right up to the last paragraph. Why he made the HUGE leap from the justifiably dissapointing scenarios so many humanities PhD’s find themselves in to the “and it was created that way on purpose mwa haa haa” kind of POV is itselve very dissapointing. His statement that:

It is designed that way. It is structurally based on limiting the options of students and socializing them into believing that it is shameful to abandon “the life of the mind.”

is just plain hooey. He needs to go talk, IN PERSON, to some comparative literature professors and find out why they care about comparative literature. No doubt he will find an arrogant bastard in the bunch but I’m positive he is going to find mostly people who are really passionate about comparative literature and who think honestly that passing along that passion and the knowledge that goes with it is the most important job there is.