An intriguing proposition. Of course it begs the quesiton in the oppose are some conditioned to think they are worth more than they actually are? aljazeera/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134119156459616.html It is easy to make people work for less than they are worth when they are conditioned to feel worthless. Thomas A Benton wrote in 2004, before tackling the title question, Is Graduate School a Cult?: Although I am currently a tenure-track professor of English, I realise that nothing but luck distinguishes me from thousands of other highly-qualified PhDs in the humanities who will never have full-time academic jobs and, as a result, are symbolically dead to the academy. Bentons answer is yes, and he offers a list of behaviour controls used by cults - no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate, access to non-cult sources of information minimised or discouraged - that mirror the practices of graduate school. The author lived as he wrote: it was later revealed that Thomas A Benton was a pseudonym used by academic William Pannapacker when he wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education - a publication said to employ more pseudonyms than any other American newspaper. The life of the mind is born of fear. Some may wonder why adjuncts do not get a well-paying non-academic job while they search for a tenure-track position. The answer lies in the cult-like practices Pannapacker describes. To work outside of academia, even temporarily, signals you are not serious or dedicated to scholarship. It does not matter if you are simply too poor to stay: in academia, perseverance is redefined as the ability to suffer silently or to survive on family wealth. As a result, scholars adjunct in order to retain an institutional affiliation, while the institution offers them no respect in return.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 03:23:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015