Cover Story

Passing Houdini-like Through the Eye of the Needle: Entering the Academy Through Administration

by Chris Cumo

We’ve all heard the myth about the talented young idealist who applied for an assistant professorship at Northwestern Trans Mississippi Valley State University in Idaho only to receive a rejection letter six months later stating that she had been among 300 applicants. If the search committee had considered all candidates of roughly equal merit, our applicant had had just one chance in 300 of landing the job. The odds of contracting yellow fever from a mosquito bite while on vacation in Bangladesh are probably more favorable.

But like a camel passing Houdini-like through the eye of a needle, one might enter the academy by another route. Consider administration. Ronald H. Heck, Chair of the Department of Educational Administration, has served on search committees at the University of Hawaii-Manoa in Honolulu for administrators at several ranks. The typical job advertisement attracts 50 applications, two-thirds of which “just don’t meet the minimum or desired qualifications,” says Heck. This leaves roughly 16 candidates for, say, Assistant Director of Paleolithic Studies in the Department of Anthropology. You’re in the hunt because you meet the minimum requirements; otherwise you wouldn’t have applied. You’re odds are not one in 300 but one in 16 (six percent), still low but 20 times better than your chances of teaching at that university in Idaho. Even if the same dynamics apply for both jobs, you’re chances of becoming Assistant Director are still six times better than those of becoming assistant professor.

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A Review of Steal This University

by Vicki Urquhart

History professors Benjamin Johnson and Kevin Mattson, and union representative Patrick Kavanagh, provide an insider’s look at the academic labor movement in Steal This University. Labor activists all, they speak with one voice to warn of the imminent demise of the professoriate and the simultaneous rise of the corporate university. “The use of part-time hires, including graduate student teachers and postdocs, has grown and grown for the last several decades,” writes Johnson. “A majority of those who now teach in the nation’s colleges and universities are paid poorly, have little or no job security, few or no retirement or health benefits, only the weakest of free-speech protections, and no long-term relationship or commitment to a university community” (p. 61).

If you’ve ever wondered how higher education has changed since you were a student, you’ll be interested in the essays anthologized here, but stakeholders in the academic labor movement, adjunct faculty, labor activists, and university leadership, are the primary audience. Personal accounts from current and former adjuncts, graduate students, and professors reveal more than moderate discontent with low wages and lack of benefits; they speak of the dehumanizing affects of a system that exploits academic labor and shortchanges students. Their stories are serious business, and there is no doubt that Johnson, Mattson, and Kavanagh have a pro-union bias. Nonetheless, each essay is presented with respect for the reader’s position, whatever that might be, and the contributor’s personal experience.

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The Union Army

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Posted: January 6th, 2010

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