Whatever life is still left in the idea of universities as hotbeds of radicalism, it might soon be moving into the retirement village along with hundreds of thousands of former college Professors.
This article from the New York Times paints a fascinating portrait of the generation gap in academia: between that of a tenured, formerly radical and idealistic generation and that of the sessional, moderate and empiricist young Turks poised to take over.
If you can suspend for a moment your disbelief at the poetic license the reporter took in framing such generational stereotypes, the raw statistics from the report are a highlight in themselves:
- 54% of America’s 675,000 (count them!) college Professors are eligible for retirement in the next decade.
- Since 1969, the proportion of academics under 35 years of age dropped from over 30% to 10%.
- More than half of academic staff below 50 years of age self-identify as “moderate”. This rises to almost two-thirds of those aged under 35 (and yes, in the Humanities!).
- Across all departments and all age groups, the self-described “moderates” are the biggest single group - more than either liberals or conservatives.
The article is worth a read for the 40-year perspective it brings to changes in academic styles and traditions in America, with some obvious parallels here.
Could this be the last we’ll hear of the Long March of leftists through the institutions? Can the RWDBs find another group to villify, now that their preferred narrative has worn threadbare against the demographic reality? And, most pressing of all, what does all this mean for the elbow-patch and cardigan industries?
The right will always decry universities as strongholds of the left simply because they’re cut off from the “real world” and therefore “out of touch”. The charge will never go away, there’s too much mileage in it.
It is interesting that so many academics are retiring; it spells trouble for tertiary education sectors both overseas and at home because we may not have enough lecturers of a sufficiently high quality to take over. This is what happens when you bleed a sector dry, it becomes unable to sustain itself. Skilled Migration Visas for Indian Engineering lecturers and Russian Maths teachers?
I like the idea of empiricist young Turks taking over and, like, I’m kinda little tired of crusty old Marxists crapping on at me about their experiences in Paris in ‘68 or Haight fucking Ashbury. I haven’t even seen anyone like this in 15 years and I’m still grouchy.
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And in the Arts academy anyway there’s been heaps of theory. There’s not much profit in theory unless it’s tested in the field and it will inevitably alter it into something better. C’est la vie says I.
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Fuck Theory: You know you always wanted to.
Did they self-identify as rich and beautiful too?
Sam modern online teaching tools allow a lecturer to reach thousands of students simultaneously. Nay, tens of thousands. What’s more, they can use whizz-bang audio-visual tools that classroom teachers never even dreamt of.
Assessment can be done online using self-paced computer-marked tasks or for those who cling to old-fashioned methods, marking of assignments can be outsourced to PhDs in India. It’s already available and being aggressively marketed.
Technology is about to cut a swathe through higher education similar to the one that traumatised manufacturing 30 years ago.
“it spells trouble for tertiary education sectors both overseas and at home because we may not have enough lecturers of a sufficiently high quality to take over”
Sam, in Australia in the humanities (I can’t speak for other areas), there are loads of talented people ready to take over. They’ve been on sessional contracts for more than a decade in some cases, and they are the people making ends meet in the current arrangement.
I would actually like for there to be a mini-crisis with retirements, because it might spur some correction of the ridiculous labour arrangements that actually allow tertiary teaching to get done. More likely there’ll be a bunch of people who’ve been treading water for years suddenly moving into permanency while the system as it stands is more or less maintained. Another possibility is that retirements will mean some restructuring and less higher-level permanent positions. They’ll then make all of those former sessionals do roughly what they’ve been doing already: working out of all proportion to what they’re actually being paid.
It’s a time-honoured tradition laddie. I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered and now… it’s yer turn.
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Mark these laddie! Research this and nay ye dinnae git paid feranyo’it! You’ll see. There will be differences of course.
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Baby Boomer Lecturer: Let me tell you about 1967
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Gen X Student: Oh fer fuck’s sake! I’m gonna go Columbine on the next bleeding ponytail that tells me ’bout the first time he dropped acid and listened to The Blessed Filthy Toes! Aaarrrrggggghhhh!!!!
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Gen Y Student: Tell us about the 80s man, we think the 80s is really cool dude. Wow like Jon Bovi and Bryan Adams and cool stuff like that. It musta been like really cool.
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Gen X Lecturer: Oh you poor thing. Anybody have a gun? Anybody?
“It’s a time-honoured tradition laddie. I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered and I’ve suffered and now… it’s yer turn.”
Yes, except those now retiring haven’t really ’suffered’ under comparable conditions, unless we’re talking about ’suffering’ under Howard - ie six-figure suffering.
At this point, where I begin to seem bitter, I should probably declare my disinterestedness. While I have done sessional work while writing my thesis, I’m not planning on having an academic career. Watching my elders (and betters) wrestle with that particular institution has soured me on the whole deal. So my bitterness is purely of the sympathetic variety, if that’s possible.
Some people “self-identified” as “moderates”. And this finding is supposed to settle the matter? OMG.
Hahahaha….. hahahahaha….. hahahaha… hahahaha…
Is this post what comes of non-scholars posting about matters scholarly?
Steve at the pub, it’s always funny to hear people proclaim things like “the end of ideology” and describe themselves as moderates. There are genuine moderates, then there are those who don’t feel like either of the major parties of the time and place don’t represent them, then there are those who refuse to take a stance on issues.
Yes Klaus this is the story of the Baby Boomers. They have a right to a cushy life. Bastards! But wait. There’s more.
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Can anyone say: innovative new approaches to Aged Care? Does the phrase Soylent Green mean anything to anybody?
Sam - those who proclaim the end of ideology are usually those on the back foot. The Right did it in the era post-War. The Left do it more these days. Unfortunately we won’t be rid of ideology until people learn to think entirely for themselves which will be, um, in the year..
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Aw hell. There ain’t enough space here for that many digits.
Yeah, but what does moderate mean? I know many people who would self describe as moderate, but who I would describe as blatantly left wing.
I would argue that the centre has moved left.
I’m sure you would, countingcats - but what is your evidence for that, outside your own skull?
Union membership is at historic lows, a NSW Labor government is about to privatise electricity generation, toll roads have replaced public transport, healthcare is going user-pays, private education has gone from under 10% to one-third in a generation, the workforce is massively casualised and unable to obtain predicatable income one week to the next, the part of the workforce that isn’t casualised is working longer hours than ever, the two U.S. Presidential Candidates are having a guns and abortion auction in the early campaign…
You think that’s a leftist utopia I just described?
“You think that’s a leftist utopia I just described?”
HA!!! What about all the pictures of naked kids everywhere? Teh Collective Left is running out of control!!!
“HA!!! What about all the pictures of naked kids everywhere? Teh Collective Left is running out of control!!!”
Running around looking at pictures of naked kids is a left wing trait?
I really really hope that isn’t an example of ‘many a true word being spoken in jest’.
Sam, Klaus is right. Universities are inextricably linked to the real world and this will continue. Baby boomers who hung around uni because they couldn’t be arsed wearing a tie are frightened by focused, determined postgrads half their age who are twice as smart, ten times harder-working but with a fraction of the opportunities.
The conservatives have made a rod for their own back in bagging academics so heavily: no young rightwinger wants to go into a profession that is so despised. There is no point whingeing about the decline of the Canon when those who value it sneer at those who would plough through it. Never mind Tony Abbott writing a silly book about the Constitution - support someone though a LL.D. to show us what your promised land might look like, you silly selfish man.
The most virulent attacks on universities come from those conservatives who came from the left. They have seen leftism up close because they were part of it, but they’re now so out of touch they can’t accept things have changed.