By Professor
Doom
Although there is a Ph.D. glut for much of higher education, there
is one field where there’s something of a shortage: computer science. A recent article on Inside Higher Ed
highlights the immense cluelessness of the “leaders” which led to this situation,
although the author of the article seems to miss this detail:
Computer science students on a number
of campuses complain that their departments can't meet demand.
Many campuses have responded to this shortage
by simply closing down their computer science departments, or greatly reducing course
offerings so they can’t meet student demand. It’s a strange response,
considering our schools otherwise bend over backwards to satisfy student
demands, whether it be installing crying closets, building climbing walls and lazy
rivers, providing puppies and Play Doh for stressed students…or a host of other
silly things.
But those things all merely require
spending a bit of money, as opposed to providing job skills. Doing the actual
work of building and keeping a department full of computer science scholars? No
way, better to just close it all down, student and job market demands are
irrelevant next to the idea of our admins doing work.
Students at Harvey
Mudd and Pomona Collegesalso
recently have expressed public frustration with what they describe
as inadequate administrative responses to the growth of their computer
science departments.
Keep in mind, this shortage has been around for years, and the shortage,
such as it is, is simply student demand has risen sharply for this field, while
faculty positions have remained flat. The only things that have increased are
administrative positions, but none of these very highly paid leaders could see
this coming, could make any decisions to change things twenty years ago when it
started happening, so that we wouldn’t be at this point today.
Then there is relatively low entry into academe among those
computer scientists who do obtain doctorates: just 29 percent, including
nonteaching jobs, due to their ability to earn up to five times more in
industry on average, according to some estimates.
So…let’s take a look at this problem. The
current advertisement for this faculty position is the following:
“We’ll pay you 20% of the market salary, and
give you a job where you’ll report to a dozen bosses making 5 times as much as
you but knowing 5% as much as you, at best. When class sizes get larger
increasing your work load, they’ll make even more, but your pay will not
change, ever. You’ll have minimal job security, and we’ll replace you just as
soon as you train someone who will work for less, or simply fire you without
recourse for any number of ridiculous reasons that have nothing to do with your
job. Also, there will be mandatory ideological indoctrination.”
Could this job description be a factor in why
Ph.D.’s in this field tend to flee academia? How is it that our leaders in
higher ed complain about the shortage rather than actually address why there’s
a shortage?
Ok, I grant that the ideological
indoctrination happens in the tech world often enough (Hi Google! Say, does
anyone else worry about their tag line of “Don’t be evil”? If I saw a guy
walking around mumbling “don’t rape children,” I’d rather worry he’d done
something bad to a child. But Google goes around reminding itself to not be
evil…), but the above is the job description for a computer science faculty
member on most campuses today, and is almost certainly a reason they’ve
avoiding campus.
Now, money is a great equalizer, so if
higher ed wanted to fix the shortage, they could just, you know, offer
appropriate pay. Too bad faculty pay hasn’t risen anywhere near as much as
tuition or administrative pay. To judge by the endless multimillion dollar
golden parachutes being awarded in higher ed, the money really is there for an
extra $100,000 a year. That’s still much less money than you’ll
spend on yet another Vice President of Diversity.
Stanford…the department has lost twice as many faculty
members to other opportunities in the last decade as it has in the
previous 40 years.
Even when people come in to serve as faculty, they take a good look at
the job situation and say “no.” They leave, and you can bet they don’t come
back if they have any choice in the matter. If a job at a top school like
Stanford isn’t good enough, maybe admin could ask themselves some questions
about what they’ve done to make working conditions in higher ed so vile?
A computer science professor involved in hiring at a liberal
arts college who did not want to be identified by name or institution…
Speaking of working conditions, maybe the culture of fear could be a
factor here? I’ve cited dozens of faculty in higher ed who are willing to point
out problems in higher ed, provided they’re anonymous—they’re afraid of
retaliation from our out-of-control administrative caste. Here we have a
computer science professor, and despite the situation in computer science, he’s still terrified to speak openly.
Really, maybe the working conditions in higher ed right now are a
factor.
“In years past, we’ve had hundreds of applications; now it’s
tens of applications for a tenure-track job,”
Wait. “Tens” of applications? So they can fill the positions, they just
don’t have the massive glut like for other subjects. The issue isn’t really
lack of supply, then, it’s that our administration of higher ed has simply
failed to account for the growth, failed to use their highly self-touted and
even more highly self-rewarded “leadership” to open up new faculty positions.
Toss in working conditions which cause prospective faculty to eagerly leave
even our top schools in favor of anything else, and yes, we have a bit of a
problem.
Ten faculty are enough for a decent department, so any school getting
“tens” of applications could fill a department in short order. Trouble is,
they’ll come in, realize the working conditions are ridiculous, and leave, and
then admin would have to hire a new crew all over again. Admin have no time for
that, it would cut into shopping for more lakefront property for themselves.
The real shortage we have here? We don’t have enough (more likely, any)
“leaders” in higher ed willing to do the work of building a department, or
creating a less hostile work environment so that people with a choice would
stay on campus as opposed to any other job option.
No comments:
Post a Comment