Dr. Socrates P. Aristotle
Provost
Stellar University
Dear Dr. Aristotle,
After 30 years of recruiting high tech scientists for corporate positions, I have sold my company and retiring. This has all been made possible by the role your university has played in this occupation. I want to thank you for your help.
Let me explain. When I first became a headhunter I believed that all I had to do is to look at the graduating classes get names and resumes and shop them to needy companies. I quickly discovered that I was in error.
Not that companies don't hire recent graduates, they do. They reluctantly, involve themselves on campus because they fear that their competitors might find the gem among the rubbish being graduated. They endure the cost of training out of this fear. Despite the fact that they can't expect a new graduate to be productive for three or four years, they trundle up to your campus and interview your students just to keep ahead of their peers.
A fellow headhunter told me that the real opportunity is to recruit the graduate three years after they graduate. Find them when their training is over and are ready to cash in on the free education that their first employer has given them. He said that employers are eager to pay massive fees to hire the employee that has been vetted by their competition.
Dr. Aristotle the fact that you ably train graduates to do nothing practicle, to not be thinkers and grind the creativity out of them has made my life wonderful. I have been able to earn high six figures, have two homes and retire at 50. Without your university none of this would have been possible.
On another note, I flunked out of Stellar, am I still on academic probation? I would like to finish my degree.
Regards,
Ed Hunter
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 8
We are told in Ohio that teacher shortages will eventually happen, but that we'll have very slim pickings when we graduate in March.
I know this isn't the underlying meaning to your article. But it did make me wonder.
It is my opinion that young educators take their first position close to home, if they can find them. After they get 2 or 3 years under their belt, (and don't get married) they will tend to get restless. It is at this point that a decision is made to stay in education or move on to some other , more lucrative, occupation. This attrition rate is massive.
The fact remains, that after the learning curve experienced in the first few years, that training and maturity is taken elsewhere.
It is also at this point where many teachers learn that the benefits are in administration and go back to graduate school for certification in administration.
I am dismayed at the letter's cynical tone. However I watch my students graduate without creativity (when they arrived with lots of it), and take jobs in cubicles where they earn twice my professor's salary their first year. They believe they're lucky; they think college professors are dupes.
But I also believe that the US belief in "public education" has always been ridiculously idealistic, at best. At its worst it is disingenuous: How can you teach every child, at all levels?
That we even try is considered laughable. The alternative? Test them as children; isolate those who test low (according to tests that are created by the upper class in order to sustain their status, and enable the maintenance of class strata), a send those low-scoring children to trade school so they can learn professions that we (the test-making class) can underpay, undervalue, and then export somewhere else.
My point:
Cynicism happens to all educators. But cynicism doesn't have to be the rule. When it becomes the rule, we should leave the profession so that bright-eyed, naive, missionary student teachers can take our place. Students from the lower levels of our class strata need optimism, even if we ignore their need for good homes, free health care, and good jobs for their parents.
This was supposed to be my attempt at humor. However it is also based on my experiences as a headhunter. Almost every sentiment is based on actual experience.
What I said about corporate relationships to campus is right on target. I have been involved with the hiring and training of thousands of engineers and scientists - Not one of them came from a campus!
Reid
I suppose the job-description of "head-hunter" involves no small engagement with the literal (and historical) images invoked. I apologize for moving past such a tantalizing, metaphorical image for this corporate work, but it's so enticing (esp. for someone whose work and research examines every aspect of language).
Which is to say:
I'm glad you aren't hunting heads anymore. And the fact that no heads were hunted at the university is actually somewhat heartening . . . maybe intellectual's heads aren't so delectable for consumption by the corporate machines.
~L
My career has been circular. I started as a public education teacher, went to higher education, corporate recruiting and now back to educational consulting.
I am actually motivated by the experience in corporate America to address education. As we speak thousands of high tech jobs are unfilled. Many recent technical graduates are looking for jobs. Why?
The education system K-20 fails to educate students to the new realities of the work-place.
You are almost correct in that "intellectual's" heads are not so huntable. I would put it another way. Academic's are not so huntable. I would distinguish between the two.
An intellectual is first and formost a person who thinks and reasons. In the classic sense they are multi-disciplinary in their reach. They place equal value in arts and science.
An academic is narrowly trained, disciplinary in their approach and very often pretentious in their self assesment and interactions.
Corporate America loves the former and disdains the latter.
Intellectuals wish to expand and share knowledge; academics want to horde knowledge.
The difference is striking between the two worlds and the two categories of people.
In industry you are rewarded for sharing with your colleagues; in Academia you are rewarded for secular and narrow publication and research. If the primary purpose of Universities are to teach why is so much preference given to research and people who want to teach given so little recognition.
In industry you are rewarded for advancing the team; in academia ......... you make the call.
My sister is a feminist and a leader in that endeavor. I was raised by my mother, grandmother, and sisters. (my father was away alot)
When they accuse me of being a male chauvinist pig, I tell them well you raised me. I am what you created.
Schools of education that engage in bad praxis create teachers that do the same.
Educational reform first and foremost must start in Universities.
Regarding your final comment, there is no doubt that educational reform must include teacher training in universities. However I disagree with a couple of your other observations.
You say that "in industry you are rewarded for sharing with your colleagues." On the contrary: This "sharing" can't occur if it will affect the bottom line. Corporate secrets are legion, especially insofar as secrecy protects potential profits. Yet university research is not valued if it is kept secret: We must publish (i.e., "go public with") our research or leave.
Along the same lines, the "academic" may be rewarded for "narrow research," yet at the same time, she is trained to believe that such knowledge is her "human capital" in an economy that is sustainable primarily by the production and distribution of the same. I say "sustainable," but rarely profitable.
Whereas physical labor is the capital of those without higher learning, knowledge is the capital of the academic. We trade our knowledge for cash, recognition, etc. It's all we have. We've sat on our butts so long that few of us have the energy or ability to exchange hard labor for the cash to pay a mortgage.
Further, we may be "pretentious . . . in our interactions," but this reveals our social deprivation more than any malicious intent. Even so, corporate culture embraces the academic when, in his lonely lab hours, he discovers a breakthrough: Corporate culture siezes his ideas and spins them into cash so quickly that consumers never know the hours he spent in lonely thinking, poring over failed experiments, just to produce the glue that binds a broken coffee mug.
The comparison between academic communities and coporate cultures is, at least, problematic. I would pull back from corporate culture and values as models for the academic environment. Too many corporate values have become the standards for academe already.
Corporate culture is motivated more often by raw greed and the exploitation of labor than it is by a desire to know, share, or produce new ideas. Universities have already embraced the same values when they exploit (underpay, overwork, undervalue) teachers, and then profit from scholarly production (e.g., patents, etc.); these profits rarely trickle down from the lofty salaries of the administrators. Yet these profitable products of the academic are precisely where corporate culture engages the academic intellectual. Where corporations and universities agree, you see exploitation of labor and capitalized intellectual work. To my mind, this is not an ideal relationship.
Corporate culture does not invest in ideas that cannot prove they will advance the profitability of a business. And this is, of course, a necessity: Without profit the corporation would not thrive within such a fiercely competitive climate.
And that is why so many business types come back to teaching. There aren't a lot of them, but they do: They come back so they can share with students; they return to the classrooms as teachers so that they can have time to think, imagine, or perhaps create something new that is without a profit potential.
I concede one critical point, which is embedded in your comments: Not all academics are intellectual, and not all intellectuals are academics. However I contend that one can't be a successful (i.e., tenured) academic without some intellectual commitment. However one can certainly thrive in the corporate world without any concern for intellectual work, values, or production.
Finally, I think you put too much responsibility on universities for educational reform: When American culture begins to value intellectual work as much as they value new cars, then educational reform can't be far behind. We have a larger culture that sees intellectuals and academics as eggheaded knowitalls whose value is pitifully far behind that of, say, a good electrician. That is, until he invents something that can make money.
After the university purloins his ideas, he can slink back into his office, his classroom, or his the dimly lit lab and get back to work.
Until "educational reform" proves its profitability, there is little of interest for a larger, capital-driven corporate culture. But educational reform will require the best penny-pinching academics, and eggheaded intellectuals to get off the ground.
If I want to find someone who is thinking deeply and critically about art and values, what's possible (but not necessarily profitable), then I'd knock on the door of a community college before I'd ask an executive at IBM.
I am going to take each point in kind.
Teacher education is more than Education classes. The praxis in all the other departments in the University provide models to the young educators. When a math professor does not give back a mid-term exam until a week before the final they have modeled bad behavior and in some measure give affirmation to the practice. Universities train teachers. If they are atavistic in the praxis then they corrupt downward.
Of course their are secretes in industry, like all social groups, but the "bottom line" represent the welfare of the company and teamwork is prime. If the comapny is healthy the individual will, in most cases, benefit.
In the university the individual is prime. As you point out they become a type of entrepreneur finance by public money and without the risk. They compete for tenure, recognition, authority, etc. but it is not for the good of the whole. Tenure alone provides the most fierce competition. Tenure is a game of individual political achievement, research grants, and publications.
You are correct that the individual academic is trained that narrow research is the "human capital." However, every RFP that I have seen lately has contained requirements for transdisciplinary (teamwork) approaches. NIH actually has an online explanation for what they define as "transdisciplinary."
The Ph.D is about individual effort. The Ph.D. mentality says to achieve I must not share my work. Have you ever seen a group dissertation. If it exists I am unaware of one.
Little value is placed on teaching in Universities. It is, as you point out, "publish or perish." If you are able to garner grants for research you can opt out of teaching all together. The most experienced scientist and scholars never teach freshmen classes.
I hear your distress about the recognition issue. The example you give about a "coffee cup" is not on point but it does demonstrate another point.
Super Glue was inventented in an applications lab at Tennessee Eastman. It was discovered by a summer work study student and was an accident derived from some basic research in organic chemistry.
Most of the revolutionary discoveries of the last half century have come from industrial labs. They are driven by application and if basic discoveries emerge, so the better. I recommend that you read "The New Production Of Knowledge" by Gibbons et al.
The pretentions I refer to is an arrogance that emerges from thinking that the fount of knowledge is on a college campus and that a Ph.D. appoints you to the priesthood.
Absent his money, could Bill Gates get hired at a University? Could Michael Faraday get hired? Neither would get past the resume screen. Both do not qualify for any Academic position in the U.S.; yet they have changed the world.
You write, "Corporate culture is motivated more often by raw greed and the exploitation of labor." I won't argue the point just you choice of words. Corporations are motivated by profits. With profits they are able to do research. Hopefully with research they get more profit.
Universities are run by tax revenues, endowments and research grants. University of Richmond rebuilt itself with profits from A.H. Robbins Pharmaceuticals.
You are completely in error when you say that companies do not invest in ideas that don't advance the profitability.
Teflon is a prime example. Dupont developed it in a lab that was devoted to basic material science. It was 30 years before someone found a use for it. Dupont's Chesnut Run labs have been involved in basic science for over 100 years. We probablely would not have a chemical industry in this country without it. Dupont supplied gunpowder to George Washinton. (look it up)
I can not speak about "so many business types." My success has given me the time and the money to do something I love. I suspect that many simply want to give something back.
Why does academia largely reject so many business types?" The Provost at Denver University told me that the experience of the University is troubled when it comes to business ex-pats. They don't like to hire them. I personally have experienced out-right hostility and at best dismissivveness.
I treasure my electrician and he probably earns more than an industrial chemist. Intellectuals have earned the sentiments of the general public. It is precisely the "we / they" mentality that fosters it.
I don't know about you, but I have chosen my occupations out of love for the task. If I didn't like something I quit doing it. Oddly, money or recognition was never part of it. I like to have fun.
I know teachers who chose education for the long vacation and are miserable 9 months of the year. They also do a very poor job of teaching.
I don't know the executive at IBM, but I do know several CEOs at other companies. I have peripheral experience with a hundred more. I have observed this. There are bad actors in every occupation but the vast majority of people who reach the top of their professions are very good people. Why? Because they need the help of a lot of people to get there.
If the corporate mavens are so bad get your University to give up the money derived from the corporate benefactors. Tell Bill Gates and Warren Buffet take you money back, it is corrupted by a profit motive. Do that and we would have the most educated homeless people in the history of mankind.