Professors, Food Stamps, and Stories

I read an article recently about a number of professors who are receiving food stamps. My first reaction: Them damn liberal professors are at it again, feeding at the public trough. Then I thought, no, what this means is, like some of our military folks, there is another group of people who cannot make a living at their chosen profession. The proof is that their salaries are low enough for them to quality for the stamps.

While I’m appalled at both situations, it’s the professorial one that I’m wondering about right now. And this started me thinking about professors I have known.

At the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth I served as dean of Continuing Education for a spell. One evening I noticed a forty-something-year-old man sort of wandering around the reception area and looking uncomfortable. I struck up a conversation and found that he was a successful businessman in Southern New England. The man wanted to prove something to himself. Years ago, he had started college but never finished, and now wondered if he really had what it took to do college-level work. I recognized him as we talked, and knew him to be politically conservative with a strong sense of self-confidence, and a sense of humor. He ran a right-leaning morning talk show out of his diner—one of my favorite diners in the area. So, I suggested that he just take one course and see how it went. I suggested a rigorous course taught by a professor who was respected by students. He took my suggestion, and agreed to check back with me on the progress of the course.

A month later, the businessman walked into my office with a big smile on his face. “The professor is out of his mind, the course is great, I learned a lot, and thank you,” he said. Although he decided not to pursue a degree, the decision was made with confidence and for the right reasons; he knew he could handle whatever the University had to offer.

To me, this story epitomizes the best of what a professor can do. This professor, a left-leaning friend of mine, was a practicing Irishman, president of the American Federation of Teachers union at UMassD,  who took me on several Irish drinking tours of Fall River, Massachusetts—wonderful experiences by the way; he was a master story teller and politician in the best sense of that word. He was witty, engaging, and loved to challenge his students. His long career provided for a marginal retirement income.

There are lots of these people out there. A friend of mine grew up in South Boston, the son of factory workers. I watched him engage freshman English students, students who had difficulty reading and writing, students who had not survived in college elsewhere, students for whom this college experience was their last hope. This professor could relate. They learned. He is now Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, still teaching, now at Goddard College. His income has never been anywhere near commensurate with his status, but he is a professional who does what he loves.

Two friends retired from a major pharmaceutical company and now are professors at a large community college, he teaching mathematics, she English. Both teach at what used to be called a “remedial” level, and although the adjective has changed the reality has not. The students come to the school with serious issues of all kinds—physical, professional, personal—and professors charged with helping them do not stop at the mathematical and reading/writing concerns. It’s impossible. So, these professionals from the “other real world” of corporate America now are professionals dealing with the “real world” of  higher education and changing peoples’ lives. They do not dare calculate how much money they earn per hour, but they are professionals who love what they do.

Lots of stories. Not every professor is on food stamps, but I've never known a wealthy professor. Of course, I've never been allowed to know ivied professors--wonder if they are rich. Not every professor will take you on an Irish drinking tour of Fall River, either, and that's too bad indeed. 

But they all have stories to tell. 

I’m wondering if there is a need to start a new blog, something along the lines of “Fears, Tears, and Beers: Professors’ Stories” to chronicle these stories. Friend John LaNear and I are planning to do so soon, and will be looking for real stories from real, underpaid, overworked professionals who love what they do and want to share some stories from their “real worlds”.

Stay tuned.

Professors and Students

There was a time in which societies put teachers on a par with warriors, philosophers and mathematicians. All were highly respected by the societies in which they practiced their arts.

In the society in which I practice my art, only the warriors seem to have survived with their virtue intact. I wonder if this is because, in the case of teachers anyway, at one recent point in our history, persons like me, from outside the walls of ivy were allowed, thanks to GI Bills and the like, to become initiated into this once-sacrosanct ground?

I worry about the future of this business we call higher education. Professors are not viewed as professionals by most people, in the U.S. at least. We are viewed with suspicion as being left-leaning slackers who do not add value to society. Colleges and universities are viewed as providing tickets for employment at best, and as extensions of high school at worst. University and college administrators are grasping at business fads and metrics to try to save their institutions. Entrepreneurs, believing there is money to be made (and there is), are swarming like flies over the weaker of the colleges, buying, revamping, dumbing down when necessary, and focusing on next quarter’s bottom line.

My worries are offset by almost 40 years of experience with students, that entity that defines the industry. I still teach. I have not seen a substantial change in skills levels, motivation, or abilities in my students over these years. When I hear that “they don’t make students like they used to” comments, I smile a bit, cringe a bit, and think of a freshman English class I took in 1963. Dr. Obojski was intent on making us ignorant hillbillies less ignorant, not only about English, but about the world in general. One day he gave a current events quiz. At the next class, he strode into the room, put down his pipe, took out his pocket watch and threw it on the desk (it broke), and yelled at the top of his voice, “Pablo Picasso is not a god-damned tennis player” (professors could smoke and cuss back then when it served to make a point—it did with me since I may very well have been one of the folks who said this on the quiz).

Some students do in fact see their first year in college as grade 13; some did when I started school in 1962. Some students do in fact see undergraduate and graduate education as providing employment tickets; some also did in 1962. What actually happens to the students, after they enter college is the crucial issue, and one upon which professors have the most impact. I reflect with pride on my former students, watching their eyes light up, being present for “aha” experiences, and watching these bright students excel, not only academically, but professionally and personally. Most professors have these same reflections.

If professors behave as though students are cogs in the machine that produce the professors’ paychecks; if we get so caught up in our own stories that we forget why we exist professionally; or if we are depressed because we never became professors at one of those ivied institutions, to the point of ignoring the students we serve, everyone loses.

Most professors don’t. Students are why professors exist. They—the students and professors—provide me with an optimism about the future that offsets my pessimism related to the business of higher education in general, with its social engineers, managers, and bevies of fools.

Professors as President: Wondering Skeptic

Wondering if my education and experience as a professor prepared me, Professor Dorris, to become president of the United States.

Here’s what I learned and experienced in the land of the professoriate.

First, there is the education and training aspect of professorial qualifications.

I earned a Ph.D. degree, and in the process learned how to critically think, but more importantly, how to think critically. I learned to criticize others’ ideas, harshly when to my advantage, coyly when it suited me, and on any side of an argument that caught my fancy. 

As my favorite university president used to say, with some pride, “A professor is one who thinks otherwise.”

I learned that the degree was not designed to prepare me to be a team player. For example, professors are rewarded less for publications in which there are multiple authors than those single-authored papers. There can be no "team" in I.

The most accurate advice I received prior to entering a Ph.D. degree experience was, “If you want to be happy in as a professor, choose a very small focused area of research in which you are passionate, focus on that, and stay away from committees, administration, and students.” I did not follow the advice, but it was sound advice nonetheless.

Successful professors as scholars also greet communication from others with an attitude that automatically questions the legitimacy of the message and its sender.  In other words, “I can think of 12 reasons to treat you and your message as unworthy of my attention” whether or not I know you or the content of your message.

Professors as scholars are rewarded for focusing on narrowly-focused research rather than broadly- focused research. For example, a great friend of mine earned his Ph.D. in bird lice; the degree was in biology; the degree was in entomology; but the degree was really in bird lice--that's where he became THE specialist. People with Ph.D.s in history are generally not “big picture” historians; rather, they have spent their professorial lives focused on one small aspect of one particular segment of history related to one particular part of the world. This reality results in university students studying “U.S. History to 1865” followed by “U.S. History From 1865”, etc. It is frequently the case that a professor who is deemed qualified to teach the former is not so deemed to teach the latter.

Scholarly journals are weighted as to their importance; the more important a journal is the narrower its focus, generally. In most universities, the importance of  the journals in which one publishes are synonymous with the importance of the professor as scholar.

Secondly, there is the professor in the classroom.

Traditional university classrooms are generally laid out physically like those classrooms we remember fondly from high school. Students are put in rows facing the professor. Behaviors are similar as well. Students raise their hands to speak, give the professors their best attempts to look interested, if not raptly attentive, and take notes. I used to train my Intro to Business students (300 in an auditorium) how to look me in the eyes, look down at their papers, and make me believe they were interested. Told them this was an important business skill. They believed me, because Professor Dorris was always correct.

Professors profess and students listen, write papers, and take exams which professors grade. Professors thereby have captive audiences over whom they very considerable power, viz. a viz. their grades.  The presence of captive audiences is addictive to most professors. Professors become accustomed to the complete attention (feigned or not) of a captive audience dependent them for their success or failure.

Professors are trained to be disagreeable, trained to disagree, are used to having captive audiences, and are not experienced with dealing with people who disagree with us.

Wondering why professorial credentials make any candidate viable to become president.

Magical Left-Wing Professors

Wondering about those professors who are brainwashing your youth? Here’s a snapshot of one.

I had retired from a small state university on the East Coast, and was looking for adventures in corporate America. In order to get my first corporate university job, I had to take a personality test and a drug test. Unlike most true academics from the sixties, I passed the urine exam, even though I found myself strangely paranoid about taking it and uneasy about having to take it.

The personality test was fun. I’ve taken these all my adult life (to get jobs selling fruitcakes, to see if I could be a good military officer, etc.) find them fascinating, and had fun taking this one. In the last interview, the academic vice president asked me what I do when I don’t get my own way. I responded with “OK, so tell me how I did on the personality test.” The vice president responded that “it seems like you have a strong will.” I concurred with the findings.

When I asked if they did random drug tests, she looked at me funny.

I sat in my cube in a corporate environment, far from the ivy-covered walls of my imagination, far from the esoteric debates of a faculty senate wrestling over some grammatical issue relating to governance. My desk was clean; one coffee cup adorned it. And I drank decaf by myself. It was quiet, still, business-like. There was no ivy; there was no tradition; there were no students physically present, no hacky sack, no skateboards, no kids smoking —it was an online university.

The faculty members who taught the courses (“adjuncts”) were lesser mortals, just like those in the more traditional universities, who taught online courses filled with 30 to 40 students, for which they were not paid much, and certainly not what they were worth. I was their leader.

I smiled at memos, emailed from the president, urging me not to talk about recent downsizing decisions, indicating that it would not be consistent with good “organizational behavior” practices. I smiled at the president’s consternation with me when I challenged issues/decisions in meetings. I was the only one who did challenge. There were others who had in the past; they were no longer employees of the university.

Professors in traditional universities are required to teach, publish, and serve the university and larger communities in a variety of ways. A day in the life of a professor, as I experienced it for some 25 years, began around 8:00 A.M. Formal meetings of one sort or another—curriculum meetings, space committee meetings, committee on committees meetings, department meetings, senate meetings, etc.—took a piece of the day, sandwiched between courses (one to five courses with 30 to 300 students in each), and involved ritual coffee consumption. Lunch was an important time for meeting colleagues to discuss politics, the university, teaching, and research ideas. By 3:00 P.M. I generally went home, to return by 6:00 P.M. to teach a course or work on projects. By 9:30 P.M. I was home again, sometimes reading or working until the wee hours. There were some days when I spent most of my time at home working on courses or research or training projects, but most days I was at the university. Many days it was exhilarating. Every day was interesting.

Funny, we never discussed how to turn students into left-wing ideologues. I must have missed the memo instructing us to do so. Maybe we should have had a committee on this.

During an interview for my first corporate university professor/administrator job, I was told that I was entering a corporate environment in which I “would not be allowed to behave as a traditional academic”, and would be required to be in my cubicle by 8:00 A.M., take an hour for lunch, and leave the building by 5:00 P.M. The only exception to this rule was when management decided that I needed to work extra hours, for which I would not be paid, because I was in an exempt position. When I told the vice president in the interview that this would be a reduction in hours for me from my usual traditional academic leader role, she looked at me funny.

Are there differences between professorial life in traditional universities and life in corporate universities? Professors in traditional universities still like to believe we run the universities, but most don’t actually believe we do. Corporate universities intentionally communicate that faculty are employees-at-will with invisible time clocks to monitor our face time. Otherwise it’s more or less the same.

We never discussed turning students into lefties in this environment, either. We did discuss students as a part of our revenue-enhancing metrics, however. Free enterprise ruled.

I believe that most people choose to become professors, whether in traditional or corporate universities, because of dreams and ideals. We believe that exploring truths is important. We believe that stimulating other people to explore is also important. We believe that democracies demand that people be educated; i.e., willing and equipped to question conventional wisdom, to go beyond oneself to thinking about other folks in the past, present, and future, about God and evolution, about things seen and unseen, about important issues. We believe that colleges and universities provide people with a relatively safe haven in which to conduct important personal, spiritual, and interpersonal exploration. Universities were not designed, we believe, to ensure employment afterward, but to provide a climate of free expression and exploration the result of which is to ensure that people better contribute to the world, spiritually, politically, fiscally, and in terms of stewardship of the resources we use and manage.

These ideals, dreams, and values are hard to hold onto in the real world of academia, traditional or corporate, and I have watched their erosion in my colleagues and myself over the years. The U.S. has always seemed to be anti-intellectual, but in my lifetime I’ve witnessed a cynical acceleration of this attitude.

And with this cynicism comes the paranoia that results in the belief that somehow professors have the magical power to convert students into non-God-fearing leftist robots. I would laugh but I’m too tired.