Comments for Just Higher-ed!

Comment on What interview panels are looking for by Erica

Erica — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:45:47 +0000

I haven’t gotten a job yet, but the advice of my UK friends is that the prestige hierarchy is less important in the UK, and the focus will be on the quality of the research papers. In the US there is a large problem of people “cascading down the prestige hierarchy” meaning that you are likely to go from the level of your program to one slightly lower (or sometimes significantly lower) when getting tenure track employment. Because teaching obligations increase as you go down the food chain, one is not able to spend as much time on research and so gets locked in to this level of university.

Single class adjuncts have the worst lot, because they are only paid on a low, per-class basis, and so must cobble together a living wage out of several teaching gigs, which makes it impossible to spend enough time on research. In my opinion, a person is actually better off taking a different 9-5 job for a while, especially if you can get higher pay, rather than doing this freeway flyer routine, because then you may actually be able to have time to do some research on the weekend. And then maybe adjunct one course to get a university affiliation. So much the better if you can find a day job in a research center, nonprofit or other related area. (Also note that US student loans will begin to come due 6 mos after finishing, rather than being based on income levels as in the UK.)

Whereas I hear a common story of people in the UK who take a less than desirable first job and are able to work their way up more easily. This is anecdotal evidence, but seems possible, given a few people I know.

Comment on Commuting: make the most of your time by Commuting time « Sara Batts – Research project progress

Commuting time « Sara Batts – Research project progress — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:53:38 +0000

[...] 28, 2010 in Uncategorized I read this post recently about making best use of commuting [...]

Comment on Social networking: a new idea! by Jonathan Jarrett

Jonathan Jarrett — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:35:32 +0000

I think that academia.edu may be more of a professional networking site than this, although it's difficult to tell because so far little has been filled in. It's not clear that anyone is policing content or that it couldn't easily be dragged away from its supposed mission by saturating it with non-academic material, games, music, etc. At the moment, however, it seems to largely be a world-accessible WebCT and so, while it may serve for teachers who would like to use that but whose institutions don't support it, that hardly seems like a growth market and such institutions will presumably be difficult about recognising such work as credit-worthy. So I wonder, really, whether there is a niche for this service. It seems to rely on people not being aware of its rivals...

Comment on Poor attendance: academics and students! by Jonathan Jarrett

Jonathan Jarrett — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:47:31 +0000

I think that it is also too easy to forget that the students are the paying customers. Although we may not be paid for the hours we put in or many of the tasks of teaching, that isn’t their problem; they’re paying for a service and should be able to expect to receive it. For this reason I never exercise the technical liberty I have to throw people out of a seminar if they haven’t prepared. That was a stupid choice on their part but the choice is theirs, and not really mine. This may weaken my classroom discipline however. What do you think?

Comment on What interview panels are looking for by Catherine Armstrong

Catherine Armstrong — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:37:48 +0000

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your comment. I think that’s a really valid point. I think that your first class degree and your subsequent MA will be what interests interviewers, and not the so-called ‘weaker’ university which you attended because of personal circumstances. And the author of the American article did point out that the candidate’s university would be the very last point considered by interview panels all other factors being equal. Does anyone else have any personal experience on this point?

Catherine