The cost (he’s being paid $150K) and the bullshit factor of David Petreaus’ CUNY seminar are getting some attention. Here’s the course description:
In this interdisciplinary seminar, students will examine in depth and then synthesize the history and trends in diverse public policy topics with a view towards recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy.
It sure sounds like a horseshit class, and it is pretty disgusting that Fallen Saint David is being paid the salary of multiple full-time adjuncts to shovel that shit. That said, am I the only one who figures that all politico-celebrity teaching works this way? I’ve always assumed that a course taught by a politician, retired CEO, or some other successful luminary is generally a set of gaseous platitudes, prepared by some underling, that has little relation to how the celebrity lecturer actually succeeded in life. And I also assumed that these celeb-scholars were paid an obscene amount of money for a small amount of prep and a couple of hours of “teaching” (read: yakking about whatever strikes their fancy) every week.
Probably the reason that these gigs persist is that everyone perceives some kind of benefit. The school gets publicity. Donors who give money targeted to pay the celebrity’s obscene salary get some face time and attention, and perhaps a favor down the road. And students, many of whom are probably gagging to get into the seminar, hope to make a connection with a powerful person that will launch them in a career after graduation. My guess is that most of these benefits are perceived rather than real, and I wonder if Petraeus has ruined this scam for the rest of his ilk.
(via Atrios)
Schlemizel
I’d only differ on one point – I assumed they didn’t get a bushel of money but did it to raise their cred. I bet the addition of a fat paycheck is a more recent addition to the scam. When you run in that crowd “why not both?” is a guide star
Derelict
Two things:
First, “synthesizing” history means “making it up.” So, students will be paying to both listen to fairy tales and to write their own versions of them. Marvelous.
Second, you ask if Petraeus has ruined the genre for everyone else. No. He’s actually just doing whatever every other conman who’s cashed in has done. I’d bet CUNY’s board looked at the chance to get a celeb who’s still popular with both the left and the right (and the neo-cons) and said, “YES!!!! We can make some future fundraising hay with this!”
Just One More Canuck
So how much would the students pay to get into this?
Suffern ACE
The MBA attitude is slowly catching up with our military types. The strategy masters used to be proud of looking forward into future scenarios that played out over a centuriy. And now, they just want to look at the next decade. Next up “will there be an American year?” Followed by “maybe there will be an American quarter”
Comrade Scrutinizer
What is this “full-time adjunct” of which you speak? All the adjuncts I know (including me) are getting teaching hours cut unmercifully, since educational institutions are in mortal fear of having to pay a dime in ACA benefits.
What has not stopped is the shameless expansion of deans, assistant deans, associate deans, and other middle-management drones which are the current bane of higher edumacation.
Woody
This reminds me of all the suits who, upon learning I’m a public school teacher, congratulate me and then tell me that they just might teach when they retire.
raven
@Suffern ACE: Slowly my ass.
Cambridge Chuck
Corey Robin has some details on the funding.
ericblair
Petraeus has a PhD from Princeton in international relations and is apparently a pretty smart guy above the waist, so the course may actually have value and probably won’t be BoBo’s Humility course. However, I agree that this is your basic celebrity lecture that reinforces everything that’s wrong with current academia; you’ve got a few megastars to drive in traffic, a cadre of old-school tenured faculty that are happily plugging along more or less, and a large slave class of adjunct faculty eating ramen and beans who stupidly got themselves born too late to be treated like actual human beings. Check out lawyersgunsmoneyblog for news from the belly of the beast.
ChrisNYC
@Just One More Canuck: CUNY is incredibly cheap. $5700 per YEAR for undergrad for NYS residents. Which is why I have no real problem if they want to throw this money at DP.
Bruuuuce
I would say you’re probably right about 99.9999% of celebrity teachers. Every so often, though, one comes along with both a good idea, and the ability to teach it. In this case, I’m thinking about Alan Alda teaching scientists to communicate more clearly.
raven
@ericblair: I thought his dissertation sucked.
Schlemizel
#8 Cambridge Chuck:
Somehow the reply button is broken and hitting it takes me to the link in your comment!
But the part I ‘enjoyed’ the most was how easy it is to lie by telling the truth if nobody bothers to understand what that truth really means. That is one of the biggest failures of modern reportage. Second best is the NYT whining about Spitzers $4500 but silent on the god-generals $150,000. Damn librule media
Eric U.
every time the Young Americans for Freedom have some republican grifter talk for an hour it costs the student fund $50K, so this doesn’t seem that bad. As mentioned upthread, the thing that is killing universities is all the administrators sitting down at Starbucks having “meetings”
raven
Prof. Chartier notes Mr. Turse’s comment toward the end:
There’s a moment in Petraeus’s dissertation when he pauses to take stock of the “impact of America’s longest war” and its fallout. He devotes not a word to Vietnamese civilians. There’s no mention of women with shrapnel still lurking beneath their skin, or the men with faces melted years ago by incendiary weapons, or the inconsolable people still grieving for mothers, fathers, siblings and children gunned down decades ago. Instead, Petraeus wrote, without apparent irony, that “the psychic scars of the war may be deepest among the Army and Marine Corps leadership.”
http://littlealexinwonderland.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/petraeus-princeton-dissertation-on-lessons-from-vietnam/
ericblair
@raven:
Could very well be: not my area of expertise at all. Anyway, “celebrity” anythings tend to fuck everything up around them due to the gravitational pull (celebrity chefs, doctors, lawyers, whatever), so it would be nice if they didn’t make an even bigger mess of academia than it already is.
Capri
As funding is being axed, “state” universities have had to become more politically savvy and commercial to survive. When my father was a research scientist at an academic institution in the sixties and seventies, taking any money from a corporate source was suspect. Today, it’s all green and many large universities actively court partnerships with corporate entities. In these, the corporations pay, and the universities, in turn, do research on topics they are most interested in and then give them first peek at the results.
Linking to powerful people is similar. Purdue’s hiring of an ex-gov is the most recent dramatic example, but many if not most retired pol.s are an adjunct somewhere. It makes them appear “smart” and gives the institution a little political capital. Richard Lugar is an adjunct professor at Indiana U, which means in practice he gives 2 lectures a year in the law school.
carbon dated
Petraeus was also recently handed a cush “job” at global investment firm KKR.
Compare the CUNY course description, “a view towards recommendations for America’s leadership role in the emerging global economy,” to the way KKR describes the Li’l General’s role at his other new job: “General Petraeus will also support KKR’s investment teams in the diligence process, especially when the Firm is considering investments in new geographies.”
It’s the military-industrial-academic complex !
Barry
@ericblair: “Petraeus has a PhD from Princeton in international relations and is apparently a pretty smart guy above the waist, so the course may actually have value and probably won’t be BoBo’s Humility course. ”
A Ph.D. in International Relations from Princeton is worth precisely what for people who aren’t 4-star generals?
raven
@ericblair: Her wasn’t a celebrity when he wrote it.
Comrade Jake
People are making a big deal out of this, but this is the sort of thing that happens all the time. Institutions bring in high-profile people, sometimes only to teach a single course. $150k really isn’t all that much compared to some of the salaries I’ve seen shelled out.
Lavocat
Excellent post. You nailed it. And, no, he hasn’t ruined it for his ilk. He’s a feature, not a bug.
raven
@Barry: As much as any other PhD in any other field.
Comrade Jake
@raven:
Ahem. Allow me to object as someone who holds a doctorate in engineering and who has mentored a number of doctoral students. My last two students (both from India) have just taken positions at a national laboratory and an engineering software company. Neither of them would have been able to obtain those positions without the degree, and even more so, the training they received over the past five years.
I submit to you, good sir, that not all doctorates are created equal.
raven
ok
schrodinger's cat
And husband cat cannot land a job in academia despite having a multidisciplinary background (physics, biophysics and chemistry), multiple post-docs and several publications in top notch journals like PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
NotMax
My, oh my, what a vivid demonstration of adamant small-mindedness and knee-jerk parochialism.
Shakezula
Does knowing the house always win keep gamblers from casinos?
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: If only he had become an engineer.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Speaking from personal experience, I can state that dean bloat is rife in California’s UC system. If you’re a participant in UC’s pernicious buddy system and you can make up a position then you’re good to go. The result is that people who couldn’t competently clerk in a 7-11 are routinely log-rolled into positions commanding six figure salaries. What do all of these deans do? Well, they go to lots of meetings with other deans because the actual work of running the place goes to staffers who are paid around one-fourth of what the dean is paid. That plethora of meetings requires each dean to have an assistant who arranges their schedule. The other seven hours of the assistant’s day are spent in surfing the internet and running the occasional minor errand.
This in a system where tuition hikes and preferences for out of state students (Who pay full price) have put a UC degree out of reach for many California residents.
Redshirt
Can I get some grease?
Or do I have to go through the effort of setting up a shell company for “security related consulting services” first?
Let’s just cut out the middleman and write me a check for a couple hundred mil.
TIA.
rikyrah
why is a PUBLIC COLLEGE paying this clown 150k?
RSA
@ericblair:
Next year the CUNY political science department will be able to say that they pay adjuncts an average of, say, $20,000 per seminar course.
:-(
Comrade Scrutinizer
@schrodinger’s cat: Since the adjunct business is drying up, I’m taking my publications and degrees in physics and trying out for the snack bar at the local bowling alley. The hourly money’s about the same, and I can get a discount on bowling. Win-fucking-win.
RaflW
To your last comment, mr. mix, no, I do not think a bit of notice of Petraeus’ fee for talking pony show will change a damn thing in academia.
Why should it? We’ve been noticing that the 1% has been pulling away rapidly from the rest of society and done f-all about it. What’s one outrageous academic grift gonna do??
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Scrutinizer: 30 years of Reaganomics FTW.
Richard
I’m a research professor, but occasionally teach a course to add to my salary. Petraus is making roughly 23 times the amount of money that I would receive for teaching a class.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I liked the old system, where the faculty ran the university, and the deans answered to the faculty senate. Inefficient as hell, I grant you, but the current setup is so much worse for academia and education.
Woodrowfan
@Woody:
Reminds me of a joke I heard some time ago. A doctor and a historian met at a bar and were talking. When the doctor found out what the historian did for a living he said, “That’s great. Can you give me some pointers? I thought I might start writing history when I retire.” The historian answered , “Sure. Can you give me some pointers too? I thought when I retire I might take up surgery.”
Same thing with teaching. You can’t just walk into a room and start doing it, at least not doing it right.
schrodinger's cat
OT is Google going to get rid of Picasa Web? Every time I click on photos, Google says I need to join GooglePlus. Any recommendations for photo sharing site people like?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@schrodinger’s cat: Flickr, but Yahoo is trying to make it “better”, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be messing with it.
scav
@Redshirt: Speaking of security firms and outsourcing, over in the UK, there are private security firms apparently overbilling for tracking dead and otherwise incarcerated people. SFO investigates G4S for ‘overcharging millions on government contracts.
Can the meticulous preparation for the zombie apocalypse defense be far behind?
Woodrowfan
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
When I was an undergrad 35 years ago my school had 900-1,000 students. We had 1 Vice-President, 1 Registrar and 2 Deans. Plus there were some secretaries. The school where I teach now has three times the students, but I can’t count how many more Deans and Vice-Presidents we have.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I tried Flickr, way back when and did not much like its interface, I should probably look at it again.
Woodrowfan
@schrodinger’s cat: Photo Bucket is OK.
schrodinger's cat
@Woodrowfan: Graduate students, post-docs and adjuncts are the worker bees of the academia and now they toil without any hope of promotion. Where is this STEM shortage everyone is talking about. If there is a shortage why are people being paid so poorly?
Woody
@Woodrowfan:
Exactly – these folks have given PLENTY of seminars to RAPT audiences over the course of their career. They’re inundated with praise from lower level stiffs ALL THE TIME.
How could teaching younger people be any different?
mistermix
@schrodinger’s cat: Flickr now gives you a terabyte or some such giant amount of free space.
The Dude Abides
A few years ago I wanted to bone up on my analytical skilz and got a gig teaching a night MBA class in quantitative analysis at a local private university. I got paid 2K, which I thought was fair.
Across town, Former Rep and recently failed candidate for Governor, Jim Talent, was in the paper pulling down over 200K to teach some class in losing elections or something at Wash U in St Louis.
I thought it was kind of them to see to his financial needs as he prepared for his Senate run.
This stuff has been SOP for Republicans for years. I just chalk it up to liberal academia.
Just Some Fuckhead
I liked it better when disgraced public figures did a porn movie.
schrodinger's cat
@mistermix: But are they trying to push you into joining some kind FaceBook lite, like Google is?
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m sorry to hear that. Did he at least get some interviews at places?
Comrade Jake
@raven: Nice cheap shot.
robert
I can’t mention names but I used to work for professors at a large university and one semester, they brought a former politician to teach. He was the worst ranked faculty member in all the years I worked there. He thought he’d just get up in front of the class and spout his platitudes with the students just basking in his brilliance. He was unprepared for graduate students who actually had work experience in the field under discussion and who challenged his arguments all the time.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Woodrowfan: The uni I went to in 72-74 was the same: 1200 students, a chancellor, two deans, a treasurer, registrar, librarian, public safety, and physical plant. Enrollment is now ~6000 students, and a minimum of 60 chancellors, vice chancellors, deans, assistant deans, special assistant deans, treasurer and assistants, bursar and assistants, project officers (who are not faculty), and assorted partridges in pear trees. The librarian, campus police chief, and physical plant are also represented. I do not count the bloat in the athletic department—that is a rant for a different day.
Steve M.
I’m sure his hourly pay is a small fraction of the hourly rate being paid to the parasite Wall Streeters a few miles south of CUNY.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Comrade Jake: But, sadly, true.
smintheus
Anybody ever see an account of how badly Alberto Gonzales fared in his celeb teaching gig in Texas?
Comrade Jake
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
What’s true?
Academic positions are, without question, tough to come by. I never suggested otherwise. That’s why raven’s comment was a cheap shot.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: Mostly phone interviews. Apparently hundreds of applicants for one position, he is not as prolific, he is meticulous and has some OCD tendencies, so does not have elebenty publications. He actually interviewed at some places in India too, since they are expanding their staffs. However living in India is not as appealing to me.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Comrade Jake: I would have thought it was triggered more by your “not all doctorates are created equal” claptrap than a cheap shot at Mr. Cat’s situation.
raven
@Comrade Jake:Baloney. My initial response was about the “worth” of a specific doctorate in a given field. What is a PhD in engineering “worth” in marine biology?
raven
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Thank you, thank you very much.
Omnes Omnibus
My undergrad has an endowed one year visiting gig. They have brought in people like McGeorge Bundy, William Sloan Coffin, and, most recently, Russ Feingold. FWIW, I believe it pays far, far less than Petraeus is getting, but it does come with the use of a nice big Victorian house for the year. I am not opposed to the idea of exposing students, particularly government and history majors, to people who have significant real world experience.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: I don’t know about engineering, but in science there is physics, everything else is stamp collecting.
*I think Rutherford, who discovered the structure of the atom, said this.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: I love it! My puny EdD is “worthless”! Shit I have two degrees in Leisure Studies. Bet that will send the scientists into a tailpsin!
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Physicists tend to have somewhat bloated egos but at least they deal with reality unlike the aerie fairy theories of economists.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: I think it’s swell.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I’m actually being paid pretty well in my very first teaching gig; it’ll probably end up being about $6,000 for two five week classes. Of course, I had to fly 8,000 miles to do it and I’m kind of homesick.
I’m finding, not really to my surprise, that I enjoy teaching. I recognize that what I really mean is that I enjoy teaching these particular students. Whatever the problems with Chinese students at American schools are (and I tend to think that they are partially real, somewhat overrated and somewhat exacerbated by American students and instructors who don’t really think through what being a student in a foreign country is like), they sure as hell aren’t disruptive in class. They’re attentive; they’re smart; and they are very friendly if you take the time to sit and talk with them.
Am I any good at teaching? I dunno. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see how they do when I start grading exams to see if I’ve managed to explain things to them well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I am glad you are enjoying it.
Mudge
@schrodinger’s cat: Ask a mathematician about physicists. Now that you have insulted chemists, biologists and economists, I breathless await the next victim?..*g*
Comrade Jake
@raven:
Let me back up here for a second, because I think we’re talking past one another.
The initial trend of the convo was that a doctorate in international relations was pretty useless, except for perhaps military generals. I can’t speak to the veracity of that statement, but you followed up by stating that it’s worth as much as a doctorate in any other field. Honestly, I just don’t think that’s accurate. In some fields a doctorate really is just a decoration, in others it represents quite a bit more.
smintheus
The only seminar-like talk I’ve seen by Petraeus was his first Iraq surge blabfest to Congress. It involved him showing a handful of slides and synthesizing the history and trends of violence in Baghdad. The slides were dishonest, and proved to be cleverly manipulated versions of accurate slides that the DoD had earlier created.
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat:
We tend to receive 200+ applications for an opening. Folks tend to have between 6 and 10 pubs, depending on how many post-docs they completed. It’s pretty brutal.
schrodinger's cat
@Mudge: I was quoting Rutherford, those are not my views. However I do stand by what I say about many (not all) economists.
ETA: Mathematicians think that proofs in physics lack mathematical rigor, which is true. I have nothing but respect for mathematicians, I was a math major before I changed to physics.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: He definitely has more than 10 publications. Harder in pure sciences, I think.
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat:
It’s funny because I remember a joke a few years back.
What does a physics PhD say to a truck driver? “Would you like fries with that?”
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat: Could be.
liberal
@raven:
Who cares about a million or two dead civilians anyway? It’s their fault, somehow, so why feel bad about it?
Mudge
@Comrade Jake: I’ll say. When I was in academia, way back when, I had 7 publications coming out of my (technical) Ph.D., got a few interviews and got a job. I never had a post-doc, but worked in industry for a short time (no publications from that). When the department had openings we might have 30 applicants, easily reducible to maybe 5 of real interest. The change to 200+ applicants is appalling. It says many things, but one thing that is clear is that there is a vast pool of potential adjuncts, even in engineering.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: I think 3 are in PNAS, which is sort of a big deal since your paper has to be nominated by someone from NAS and it is an interdisciplinary journal right behind Nature and Science.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
You mean people, who individually might do OK work, but belong to a profession which in aggregate couldn’t see and appropriately react to a f*cking multi-trillion dollar housing bubble? LOL.
I’ve heard the retort, “Yeah, well, geophysicists can’t predict earthquakes.” The appropriate analogy is that a geophysicist who was similar to an economist would be in a building swinging wildly and someone asks him, “Are we having an earthquake?” and he responds, “Probably not.”
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: What can I say, the free market values stamp collecting more.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
Actually, I always thought PNAS (at least traditionally, I think they have more submission tracks now) was questionable because the “referral” process isn’t necessarily meritocratic.
Looking upthread, and being an ex-academic myself, being multidisciplinary isn’t (sadly enough) necessarily a good thing. Academia is rife with people doing super narrow stuff and publishing tons of papers of questionable tastes. Oftentimes generalists are not welcome.
schrodinger's cat
@liberal: I have had a finance prof. comparing theories in econ to Newton’s laws. In your dreams, idiot, I said to myself.
Mudge
@schrodinger’s cat: I am a chemist. I published 3 papers with a mathematician once upon a time. He was amazing. We took half a dozen seemingly disparate papers published by various physicists and reduced them to one unified equation that produced all of the results (minus the various mistakes). I know of what you speak about rigor.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think most mathematicians and physicists respect each other.
The questionable field is economics. Best take I know of is that econs think they have physics envy, but they actually have math envy—physicists laugh at how economists don’t really listen to their data, but rather their models.
Woodrowfan
@schrodinger’s cat: tell me about it. I was an adjunct for four years, then a term, and finally made TT. I was a GS 13 in my previous career. You know what the difference in pay is between a GS 13 and an adjunct making $3,000 a class for 6 classes a year??
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
Actually, I think there really is such a think as a true “positive” science of economics.
The problem is that it’s totally corrupted. Look at the line of intellectual history that created a monstrosity like real business cycle theory.
The irony, to me, is that the corruption of economics is actually a vindication of economics. Economists stress that “incentives matter”. If you’re an economist, it’s pretty clear that you’re going to be incentivized to produce work pleasing to the rich and powerful, reality be damned.
Of course, there are economists here and there doing good work, but the field as a whole is one big brothel.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Comrade Jake: Which puts me back working the snack bar at the bowling alley.
Woodrowfan
@Woody: that made me laugh out loud. thank you. (grin)
Comrade Jake
@Mudge:
The adjunct question is an interesting one. We have not, as yet, really gone that route. We have a few adjuncts but mostly they teach courses that we don’t have the expertise to cover amongst the primary faculty. And they are people who have other, full-time jobs, so they offer their courses in the evening.
liberal
The whole problem with the tenure/professor model is that your typical “good” research prof churns out quite a few PhDs in his/her career. In the steady state, where population isn’t growing much, unless you assume the ratio of faculty jobs/pop increases without limit, only a little more than one of his/her PhDs will get a faculty job and keep it.
We’re all spoiled by the previous generation, when they were not only expanding public universities, they were essentially creating them from scratch. Ain’t gonna be like that again.
schrodinger's cat
@liberal: They do have math envy and they do not listen to their data, you are right. Look at most game theoretic proofs. Their math envy makes their models have no predictive power, mathematically elegant but practically useless.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat: Snapfish
Woodrowfan
I think we can find common ground here. All PhDs demonstrate the ability to do hard mental labor and the ability to think about difficult subjects in a sophisticated way.
Except economists from Chicago. They suck.
Comrade Jake
@liberal: You’re right, to an extent. If you’re churning out PhDs and they’re having real difficulties finding positions they want… it might be time for some introspection.
schrodinger's cat
@Woodrowfan: Most B-schools and economics departments follow the Chicago School. You can count the exceptions to the neo-liberal economic thinking on the fingers of your hand.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: Some state schools admit 100 grad students per year in some departments, that is way too much.
ericblair
@liberal:
This adds another level of suckitude to the whole matter: most technical fields are quickly moving, and subfields can appear and (more importantly) disappear in a few years. Add the lack of stable long term funding, and devoting yourself for over a decade to a narrow subspecialty that could disappear the minute you “graduate” makes the whole situation worse. We have an academic and industrial environment that recognizes that adaptation and change to new direction is constant, expected, and demanded, and a hiring system that flatly rejects all of that.
Mudge
@Comrade Jake: All very true, but Ph.D. graduate students (and those post-docs) do all the work for the professor. To graduate fewer Ph.Ds is to subvert the professor’s ego to reality. Can’t have that. Besides in many universities, graduate students are needed to teach, run recitations and oversee labs. They are a necessary work force. The fact that they may be unemployable afterwards is not considered.
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat:
There are, without question, too many people obtaining advanced degrees.
100 doctoral students a year is a lot. In my department, the number is closer to 12.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: They may not all be doctoral, it was total number of grad students admitted to a Chem Dept in a state school on the east coast.
Chris
@liberal:
I always thought the reason economics was corrupted was because it had so many political and social implications that Very Serious People invested millions in making sure that the “science” said what they wanted it to.
The field of mathematics, for example, doesn’t have so many political implications, so politicians and businessmen don’t care about it and don’t try to corrupt it.
(I’d be interested to compare economics with climate science, a field which historically no one gives a shit about but which lately has become a target for people with political agendas).
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh then I’d be interested to see the breakdown between MS and PhD. A lot of these schools have substantial MS programs. That’s a different animal entirely.
RSA
@liberal:
You also don’t have contingents of geophysicists arguing against regulations for the foundations of buildings in earthquake zones.
Tone in DC
that “the psychic scars of the war may be deepest among the Army and Marine Corps leadership.”
Uhhh… what?
I may be out of line here, as I am not a service member, or a vet. Don’t claim to be. Plenty of folks on B-J who are.
But didn’t the NCOs, the grunts, have the hardest time in Vietnam?
Chris
@Tone in DC:
I didn’t even notice that, read over it too quickly and missed the “leadership” part. Fucking fuck, that’s EGREGIOUS.
Tone in DC
@Chris:
What I find semi-appalling is this: I am certain General Dave actually meant it.
ericblair
@Comrade Jake:
Historically, engineering had a relief valve for PhDs that made the hiring model more similar to MSc/MEng: there were enough government, government-funded, and corporate research labs to absorb the PhD production that pure sciences and humanities didn’t have. Now the government side is still there (although under serious funding pressure even on the defense side), but the corporate research labs have cut funding and become a lot more focused in their research. So if you’ve got something Sandia or Google wants right now you’re probably good, but otherwise you’re in the same boat with the rest of the academics. However, there’s no real overqualification issue that I’ve seen in the higher-end IT-related fields, so if you’ve got a PhD in a computer related field you’re generally good to go for a MSc-level position as long as you know you’re bailing on a research career.
ericblair
@Tone in DC:
He’s very likely a sociopathic asshole. Which makes him a fine fit for many academic positions.
Comrade Jake
@ericblair: That’s consistent with what I’ve observed. I work in computational science so my students don’t have any issues finding jobs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Comrade Jake: This may not be your intent, but this smacks of something I seem to see quite often from math and hard science folks aimed at social sciences and humanities folks – a denigration of non-quant academics. Maybe I misinterpreted.
Lurking Canadian
@Comrade Jake: We are expected, like you will get a stern talking to from the Dean if you do not, supervise on average three PhD candidates at a time, at all times. If each faculty member supervises 3 at a time, and an average PhD takes five years, then unless I have done my sums wrong, over a thirty year research career, each professor should generate eighteen PhD graduates. As pointed out above, this is roughly seventeen more than are required to replace the professor upon retirement.
And, remember, that’s the *minimum* expectation, to keep out of the Dean’s bad books. People with actual flourishing research careers will produce many more than that.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Tone in DC:
As some of you already know, I am a Vietnam vet. One time we all had to turn out and reinforce the perimeter of our tiny base because some big shot general was coming down from headquarters in (Then) Saigon to look us over. Around mid day we had three choppers inbound and sure enough, one of them had three fucking stars stenciled on the nose. Our adversaries found that irresistible and gave him a scattering of ground fire. The three choppers churned and burned back toward Saigon.
Comrade Jake
@Omnes Omnibus: It wasn’t my intent, but it seems clear now that some took it that way.
Obtaining a doctorate in any field is a great deal of work. But when it comes to the practical question of what that degree is worth, there are vast differences between fields.
Comrade Jake
@Lurking Canadian: Well our Dean is somewhat more benevolent but that hasn’t always been the case. I am familiar with this kind of pressure being applied to faculty.
But I just don’t agree with the notion that the objective is to replace yourself. That may have been the story at some point and may still be in some areas, but it really isn’t in the field I’m in.
Lurking Canadian
@Comrade Jake: It depends on the field. In some areas (mostly those covered by the infernal acronym STEM) there are other things PhDs can do, as you have already observed. In other fields, I’m not so sure that there are.
But in any event, I think it is a virtual guarantee that there will be an oversupply of candidates for open faculty positions, unless university enrollments are expanding overall. At that point, the dismal science predicts adequately well what will happen.
catclub
@Omnes Omnibus: I was going to respond: Ask Samantha Power. I bet she has a PhD in International Relations.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I feel like that about economics, because they have the pretensions of being rigorous but don’t have the track record to back up their claims.
ETA: I have no beef with other humanities disciplines but I will say this that difficulty of course work in hard sciences is magnitudes higher than their equivalents in humanities.
Comrade Jake
@catclub: In fact it seems she does not hold any doctorate.
Mortimer
For what it’s worth, I took a seminar as an undergrad at the University of Michigan from Douglas Fraser, and he routinely donated his salary (I know he also taught at Wayne State) to whatever university he was at’s pension fund.
The class was amazing, even for us cocky little shites. He routinely told amazing stories about the early days of organizing, and about the Chrysler negotiations.
gene108
@Lurking Canadian:
I don’t know what percentage of Canadian kids go to college, but in the U.S. enrollments are skyrocketing, versus prior generations. Lack of enrollment isn’t an issue in the U.S., the willingness to continue funding colleges and universities as the same levels as before is.
John M. Burt
@Derelict: “First, ‘synthesizing’ history means ‘making it up.’”
Nah, nah, “synthesizing” means you take one thesis of history and combine it with its antithesis to form a new view of history.
Oh, wait, this is David Petraeus we’re talking about here. In that case, it really is about making shit up.
Perhaps a better term would be “manufacturing a substitute for history”. Like replacing butter with petroleum-jelly margarine.
Adam
@carbon dated:
Honestly, I can see the use in having the Director of the CIA advise you when making international investments. He should theoretically know when a government is about to collapse or something before the average finance geek.