I’ve got a few things I want to draw to the attention of Leaving Academia readers, so it’s a link-roundup kinda Friday.
- Canadians: are you aware that the federal government has re-opened their post-secondary recruitment campaign? Most job ads close October 8th, so you’ve got a week to whip your application together.
- Thanks to @jovanevery’s introduction on Twitter, I’ve found out about the very busy Raul Pacheco-Vega (that’s @raulpacheco in Twitter-speak). I haven’t had a chance to talk much with Raul, but I thought you should know about him because he has managed to bridge the divide between scholarly research and consulting. And no, he’s not a computer guy. Water is his thing.
- I’ve also been thinking about this piece over here at The Ladders which claims that “men have stronger professional networks than women.” This is based on research by two American sociologists who found that
“both men and women tend to build networks comprising people of their own gender — a process known scientifically as homophily and colloquially as “birds of a feather flock together.” But women tend to recognize the tendency and try to overcome it — building networks made up of about 50 percent men — while men’s networks included very few women, Torres said.
“According to Torres’ and Huffman’s theory of social networking: Because men hold 80 percent of the jobs in senior management (a figure that has been steadily declining), they are more likely to hear about job openings at the senior-management level. Men pass the news on to their mostly male social networks, and it is likely that news about the job opening reaches women only after it has reached and passed several men.”
And sociologist William Bielby adds:
“Women have tended to be better connected overall, but they and many of their female contacts tend to work in more female-dominated jobs,” Bielby said. “So their networks may be wider but not reach to as high a level as men’s, who tend to be better connected, particularly in getting professional news, to more high-status people.”
Hmmm. Something to think about when you’re cultivating your networks. The advice the article supplies in response to this problem?
“If women want to equal the effectiveness of male social networks, they need to emulate the men in those networks, said Torres. If male-dominated professional networks are passing jobs leads to other men before women, women should put themselves in the path of those leads, Bielby said. Women must add more men — especially high-status men — to their professional networks. Furthermore, they need to make their interests and competencies as clear as possible, he said.”
Tagged as:
consulting,
jobs,
networking,
roundup
It seems last week was a bit of a break from blogging for me, so I’m back this week with a fresh round of post ideas. And there will only be one link roundup post this week–this one! Make the clickety-click below if you want to…
…lend some support to a tenured faculty who’s blogging about his departure.
…read some MORE about management consulting for PhDs.
…see my latest post at Inside Higher Ed (in case you didn’t catch it the first time here).
And don’t forget: the Toronto & area Leaving Academia meetup is happening this Thursday at the Toronto Reference Library at 2:30 pm. Please email me (sabine at leavingacademia dot com) if you’re planning on attending.
Tagged as:
roundup
The only thing that sucks about going away for a long weekend is returning to a chock-a-block email inbox. The only thing that’s delightful about that overstuffed inbox is gleaning some golden nuggets from it, which is what I have for you today.
- Over here is an incredible resource for those of you thinking of going the consulting route. I know we’ve already talked about Management Consulted. But Shawn Lankton is ABD (looks set to finish by the end of the year), and has landed a job at a consulting firm with the start date commencing with the completion of his degree. He has kindly sketched out a three-part series called A PhD’s Guide to Getting Consulting Jobs. From my brief glance, it looks super useful for those considering that path.
- For those who are struggling to finish the PhD, the ever-helpful Jo Van Every has this post for you.
- We have a Montreal connection! Leaving Academia was able to link up a couple of Montreal-based post-academics–would you like to join them? Let me know. [UPDATE: Those intrepid Montrealers have set up a Meetup.com listing! Check it!] And don’t forget about the Toronto-based meetup August 20. And I saw on WRK4US that there’s a Chicago meetup on August 13th at 7pm at Julius Meinl (3601 N. Southport).
- On a slightly more bummed out note (but still worthy of giving it attention): over at WRK4US, someone had posted a link to the Society of American Archivists career centre (oops, it’s American: center). I went to check it out (you know, always looking for stuff to pass on to you guys). When you click on “Browse Jobs,” though, it is revealed that there are exactly 2 jobs in California, 2 in Illinois, and exactly one each in Montana, Ohio, DC, Minnesota and New York. I say your odds are still on networking.
- And then there is this:
Anthology on the Corporate Academy Seeks Short Story, Non Fiction and Poetry Submissions
In his recent article “The Last Professor” (NY Times, Jan 09), Stanley Fish outlines the current state of affairs in the Academy. Drawing on the recently published The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (Fordham UP, 2008) by Frank Donoghue, Fish writes of the promotion of corporate values in learning, the shrinking number of tenure-stream positions within the Academy (currently 35% in the US), and the expendability of professors who, within the model of the for-profit university, are simple “delivery people” rather than individuals who, after many years of study and research, inspire students and foster insight. Hidden Academics: Contract Faculty in Canadian Universities (University of Toronto Press, 2002) by Indhu Rajagopal paints a similar picture within the Canadian context. “Room Without A View”, the working title for an anthology exploring the experience of working on contract within Academia in the current historical moment, seeks creative submissions in the forms of short stories, poetry, or creative essay. This collection of creative writing documenting and describing the current social and historical moment of the Academy will be accompanied by a critical introduction which analytically frames the collection.
Submission Guidelines:
Short stories and creative essays: 3000-5000 words
Poems: any length
Format: word file with the genre of your submission in the entry line
Please submit by September 15 to Rita Gagliano and Lisa Fiorindi at r_gagliano@earthlink.net and lisa_fiorindi@yahoo.ca
Tagged as:
roundup
It’s Monday! Last week’s aborted podcast is going to go up tomorrow (barring any more software smackdowns that SoundtrackPro throws my way). In the meantime, here is a li’l link roundup of goodness that made me think of you.
- I came across the Swiss recruiter Stamford Consultants because of this article on a postdoc in science who got a job offer in government, academia and industry (the pharmaceutical industry, that is). The piece reads a bit like an apologia for big pharma, but I decided to give you guys the heads up about it because it is a nice snapshot of a case study of someone who used her academic skills in her first post-academic job. Plus there are more and more people with a science background coming to this site, and I want you to know I’ve got my eye out for you, too!
- I felt torn about whether this piece at the Chronicle was highlighting just another way contract/adjunct faculty are exploited, or actually a great way for people to discover the skills they already have.
- As reported in Inside Higher Ed, four American colleges have been censured by the American Association of University Professors for ridiculously exploiting some adjunct faculty. The individual case stories are awful. But it strikes me: do we have any mechanism like this in Canada? I really can’t picture Canadian universities being subject to a single overarching body in quite this way.
- Piss Poor Prof, aka Burnt-Out Adjunct, has a piece at IHE on whether you can actually afford to be an adjunct teacher.
Tagged as:
roundup
Here’s a sampling of academic-related stuff from around the web I picked up last weekend:
- As if you didn’t know: Leslie Madsen Brooks asks, “Are Universities Abusive Employers?” and answers with a resounding yes.
- Whoa. I knew things were bad at Queen’s, but it’s actually rougher than I had imagined: details on the penny-pinching budget are here.
- And wow. If you’re ever feeling shy, underqualified and too nervous to apply for a job, go read this and get inspired.
- Did you know that the Canadian Federation of Students has a Graduate Student Caucus? Neither did I.
- This may not be immediately relevant to you if you’re at the “should I or shouldn’t I?” stage, but if you’re heading into the non-academic labour market, there are insights and belly laughs to be gained at Punk Rock HR.
- And here’s the winning paragraph of the weekend. It’s from Naomi Schaefer Reilly’s op-ed in the Washington Post from two weeks ago (sorry! Haven’t been keeping up on my Washington Post browsing!):
In an article called “Contingent Faculty and the New Academic Labor System” (2004), Gwen Bradley notes that an academic job shortage is rarely the result of some surprising lurch in supply-and-demand curves, since “the same institutions both manufacture and consume the Ph.D. product.” In other words, universities know very well that they are producing far more Ph.D.s than they need. Compare this situation with the medical profession. Even if medical residents are made to work long hours under difficult conditions, the vast majority of them will get jobs as doctors. The vast majority of, say, Ph.D.s in English literature will not. Given that the typical doctoral degree takes six or seven years to complete (during prime job-training and family-forming years), there is a moral problem here. It is no great exaggeration to say, as Mr. Berkowitz does: “Many lives are ruined this way.”
Tagged as:
roundup
