Sean Farrell Moran wrote:
>I resented the patronizing
>reassurances and sympathies of the tenured and often unproductive
>overlords who paid me the equivalent of a good sales clerk's pay. While
>I doubt anyone in the full-time ranks agrees to this system, their tacit
>acceptance of it, at some benefit to themselves, used to grind me up. If
If some one told you that a tenure track position was waiting for
anyone who completed a Ph.D., that person has something to answer
to you for. But I don't believe that you can extend that to the
whole of the profession. With the exception of a brief period in the
1960's the market for academic historians has seldom been equal to
the supply. Our predecessors in the 1940's and 1950's regularly taught
large classes and heavy loads at pay that seldom equalled that of a
factory worker. Even those of us who found jobs in the 60's found
large classes, administrations with little sympathy for research (forget
funds for research--you could not get time off from classes to attend
conferences), and salaries increases that seldom kept up with cost of
living. Since the early seventies reduction of the size of staff has
replaced the concept of filling vacancies.
The belief that those who have tenured positions could some how create
better jobs for others indicates little understanding of the current
mode of academic administrative structures. That the current full-
time staff benefit from the use of part-time, adjunct, and non-tenure
expediencies suggests that you have not paid much attention to what
goes on in your work place. As the size of most departments declines,
the distribution of advising, committee, and course loads are being
complicated a growing fascination among academic administrators for
portfolios, planning documents, and other vita building activities
that they dump on an increasingly less influential faculty.
I sympathize with those individuals who have a sincere desire to
teach history at the University level and can not find a secure
position. I can not think of any thing my department needs more
than a few young and energetic colleagues. But what has been, is,
and, I suspect, will continue to be true of our profession is that
nothing comes as easily as we would like for it to.
Martin Needels
Southeast Missouri State University