A friend of mine who is a department chair is irritated at one of her assistant professors because he teaches extra courses, sometimes at night and sometimes in summer. This is to finance his professional travel and equipment, which are not provided by the university, and which cannot be financed through grants because granting agencies do not feel they exist to fulfill universities’ responsibilities to provide basic items necessary to work. His chair feels he should “show commitment to the profession” by taking out private loans so that he can devote the time he spends teaching these extra courses on research.
This is one of the standard pieces of professional advice I have heard more than once over the years. Being in debt does not make me particularly nervous and I am not risk-averse, financially or otherwise. I have taken out loans for many different reasons without batting an eye. However I think this assistant professor is right, and that there is such a thing as being too credit happy. I think he is showing very great commitment to the profession to be teaching extra courses so as to finance the research he will do in the time he has left over. I do not think he would be at all wise to take on debt to subsidize the purchase of what the university – as the granting agencies correctly point out – ought to provide. My friend’s theory is that by taking on this debt he will be able to get tenure and a raise, or a better paid job. But that is about five years away, by which time who knows what the economy will be like. My friend’s assumptions are that everything is all right, and the general structure of things is all right; that it is the individual’s responsibility to make his or her way, and that if s/he is deserving and hard working, s/he will do so. These are American illusions.
More generally, the problem I have with most standard advice for academics – whether it paints the situation in overly grim or overly rosy terms – is that it tends to place the advisee in an overly dependent position. It is a jungle out there – be paranoid! and Everything is fine – have faith! are both exhortations to trust other people and systems more than one trusts oneself. It seems to me that this assistant professor who apparently only takes out loans for houses, cars, and major emergencies is in fact behaving as an adult and taking care of himself, and that this insufficiently dependent attitude is why he is considered to “lack commitment to the profession.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I’ve just read this in Marechera’s THE BLACK INSIDER:
“I had been beaten up before for not behaving like people wanted me to, especially not expressing appreciation or gratitude and had sat there, eyes open, seeing nothing.
At last he called the other and they sat in a circle around me to discuss democratically what was wrong with me. Soon it was my turn to speak. But even as Ibegan to say, “There is nothing inside me wrong with me” their faces lengthened in disgust until finally he spat out his cigarette shouting: “Can’t you see you can’t reject everything and everybody?” Once more the blows and kicks, and the chair smashing my shoulders were all helping them into a frenzy upon me who had never asked help of them.” p 74
Anyway, the above is concerning the social imperative of accepting a dependent condition.
I see that – and the quotation is a very good representation of it.
Aren’t professors actually supposed to do a good amount of teaching? What is so wrong with taking on a good-sized course load if one can handle it? Seems the assistant prof. is able to handle it precisely because he has a foreseeable goal to work towards, which is a much more independent position from which he can finance his research. Financial resources in terms of loans and grants are dwindling for academics, anyhow.
This is a person who ought to be applauded for his forward thinking rather than put down for not toeing an (imaginary) line. Don’t rock the boat, o young, untenured persons!
Too bad these people can’t recognize that the assistants are, in many cases, turning the boat into a submarine. There’s more than one way to teach and learn…
Teaching is not #1, research is, which means visible research, which means publications in, ideally, first tier journals.
The theory goes that teaching is hard, research is harder, writing is harder yet, and placing your work is harder than that, so you should free up as much time as possible for the hardest tasks.
That is all well and fine except when to do so means that you cannot afford to do your research, or that you cannot concentrate because you know your electricity may be cut off tomorrow, or you might not have lunch money for the kids the last two weeks of the month, and so on.
At that point, I would say, it is more efficient to teach the extra classes – spend the time and energy which would go to nerves on fixing the problem. And I think the idea of having people take out bank loans to cover for low salary, and then calling that “commitment to the profession,” is an enormous capitalist manipulation!
“It is a jungle out there – be paranoid! and Everything is fine – have faith! ”
Good summary of career advice I’ve heard too. And again on the anti-career path, when I was talking myself out of a job, I felt I was getting signals that I was being both too naive and too cynical, at the same time.
Isn’t it weird? You are not supposed to understand it well enough to be cynical (that would mean you wouldn’t be scared, and would be able to see through things). You are also supposed to understand how throroughly it is a mere game and play along with it (and thus not be too idealistic / expect too much).
If you are idealistic enough to actually believe in the stated goals, and yet clear headed enough to see through the B.S., you are then scary to the organization men. And oddly – and this is the kicker – the people who really move, shake and do well *are* both utterly idealistic, keeping their eyes on the prize, and utterly cynical, and thus able to see the B.S. and step around it. I think you are not supposed to show these things, though, until you have already made it to the top. Or maybe you are supposed to keep them, even then, as semi-secret weapons.
I have heard that advice before (go into debt), too, although those giving it never have any advice for paying it off.
My only concern for your friend would be to take care that the department chair’s irritation doesn’t spill over into comments like “he’s not around enough” or “he’s not putting enough time into his teaching for us since he’s off teaching for X university” or “he’s not serious about his scholarship.” You’re right to point out that without adequate support, your friend can’t do the research in the first place, but this logic seems to escape administrators.
Undine – yes, those are the things people say, except when they say the opposite, “what a hero!” It all depends on what he actually publishes.
My friend is the one who’s the chair, I don’t know the guy, so I don’t know in this case what’s viable. What I find interesting about the whole line of reasoning is, of course, how “this logic seems to escape administrators.”