I went to two small liberal arts colleges. One of them was prestigious, with professors who were highly respected in their fields and students who were the smartest peer group I’d ever had. The other was… prestigious for the midwest. The professors published less, but they taught more, and they cared about teaching. That’s the college I still care about having attended.*
Anyway, via citizenkerry, here’s a post from a PhD candidate about why, although tenure is the career goal for academics, she doesn’t want it:
What I LOVE is the teaching, both the being in the classroom part of it and the mentoring students part of it. And I love being in a higher education institution, the complex organizational change of it, the ways in which universities can be agents of social change, the process of diversifying and increasing access to higher education for students from traditionally underserved backgrounds.
And if that’s what I love, according to this article, then being a tenure track professor is DEFINITELY not for me.
It’s an interesting read, (although by “interesting” I might mean “reaffirms my prejudices”).
* What I value most from the other college is what I learned from the guy who came to town one day a week to teach jazz piano lessons and lead the big band. And the friends I made, of course, but I mostly haven’t kept them.
(via taleoftwobabies-deactivated2012)
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cupofchi said:
This is EXACTLY what I thought after reading that same link. I mean, I’ve known this for a while (I love teaching, and would rather be in the same place as Matt/have a life than chase tenure) but that really put things in perspective for me!
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