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August 3, 2009
Kenneth Mostern, in an interesting article entitled On Being Postacademic, says that at every level of the academic institution, a variety of individuals find that the best or easiest way to keep themselves going is by staying out of the way of department life. He adds:
The scariest thing a young faculty member experiences is not, as is conventionally supposed, the “need to produce” and therefore her/his experience is not aided by the “mentorship” of an experienced scholar. Rather, the young scholar’s fear stems from the fact that no one in the department is talking to each other about scholarship. Faculty are socializing, going out, schmoozing all the time, and the ideas that supposedly drive the work they do are not being discussed. The mentor, if assigned, will try to teach the young faculty member how to navigate the minefield of the department, but that is exactly what is alienating. . The mentor, especially when well-intentioned, may be the model for what is wrong, not an aid in coping. ...The one conversation everyone is having incessantly is the one about the micropolitical maneuvers within the department. This conversation is, of course always done with armor on, with an eye toward alliances and enemies already made, with everyone watching to find out which camp the new faculty member will join.
They are very unhappy places where:
no one is talking about substance, only alliances, and because alienation is general, a vacuum exists at the center of institutional power which is not filled by talent or argument, but by those who feel most comfortable or justified taking advantage of it.
Happiness is doing the Ph.D. and then going off and doing something besides academia with one's life.
This kind of career change does cause fear, uncertainty, regret, self-recrimination and, in some cases, being regarded as a failure, by oneself or others within academia. But not outside. The sense of failure is an impediment to people leaving academia. Sabine Hikel at Leaving Academia says that the leaving academia = failure syndrome comes in large part from the fact that, within academe, there is so little acknowledgement of other careers as viable options.
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