ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education [Paperback]

Charles J. Sykes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1989

For anyone who has wondered about the declining quality of American education, here is a fiercely argued, often infuriating, book that goes to the heart of the modern university's problem: the professors. He charges that teaching has become a lucrative racket, where persistent corruption runs rampant.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312039166
• ISBN-13: 978-0312039165
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,595,885 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles J. Sykes is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host at WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has written forThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today and is the author of six previous books: A Nation of Victims, Dumbing Down Our Kids, Profscam, The Hollow Men, The End of Privacy, and 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Genuine issues undermined by sensationalist generalizations, July 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Paperback)

I read Profscam because I so enjoyed and agreed with two of Charles Sykes's other books: Dumbing Down Our Kids and A Nation Of Victims. However, I was bothered by the sweeping generalizations that he makes in Profscam. What most concerned me was his blanket statements about all faculty in higher education. Based on the examples/data he uses throughout his book he clearly is targeting the behavior of full professors in the top 10 "Research I" institutions, but then tries to generalize this behavior to all faculty members, of all ranks, at all (private and public) institutions of higher education. Although we've all heard of "hot shots" in various fields who teach little, make more than $100K/year, and have all of the perks associated with such positions, those individuals are the exception, not the norm. Salaries among educators are notoriously low. The average faculty member in higher education makes less money than the average lawyer, physician, or middle-level manager, even though the number of years spent in school in order to obtain his/her Ph.D. degree is higher than that for the other occupations. A disturbing comment Sykes makes is that faculty only work the 8-16 hours a week that they're in the classroom teaching. This is as distorted as believing that lawyers only work when they're in court or physicians only work while operating on someone. Perhaps the "hot shots" in Research I institutions teach the same courses using old notes or can obtain teaching waivers if they have important grants, as Sykes implies, but the average academic easily spends 50-70 hours/week on teaching, course preparation and grading, advising/mentoring, writing, research, and university committee and community work. Even if we look only at Research I institutions, Sykes's accusation that students are not being taught by faculty is misplaced. Students who apply to such Research I institutions do so because of their reputation. However, few students ponder where that reputation originates. Quite simply, it comes from the research that the faculty conduct. Prospective students and parents are deluding themselves if they expect to find a lot of one-on-one attention from such faculty members. A quick look at these institutions' mission statements, the existence of doctoral graduate programs, and the student:teacher ratios should provide a clear indication that these institutions' goals are research-oriented not teaching-oriented. To go there expecting them to be teaching-oriented seems naïve and Sykes's accusation places blame on the wrong shoulders. The counter argument here might be, if these Research I institutions are not taking their teaching duties seriously then why should be they be paid to "exist" in the first place? But to that objection must be framed a counter-question: "who is to conduct `pure' research if not the faculty members in higher education?" I agree with Sykes that sometimes this research is trivial and not applicable to larger social problems but the hallmark of such research is that it is (comparatively) less-biased than the politically-determined governmental research or the for-profit research conducted in industry because the sponsors are not as explicitly after particular results that will enhance their positions/status (or pockets). As a result, polemical areas can be studied without concern for reprisals (one of the key reasons for the need for tenure). In addition, research also benefits teaching, both invigorating those who produce the scholarship and aiding those who use the textbooks which frequently result from it. Sykes's assertion that tenured faculty go unpunished is simply false. There are many subtle and not so subtle ways of punishing the tenured, from taking away laboratory space, switching offices, not giving raises, pressuring them to teach "service" courses, blackballing their grants, to administrative pressure to resign or accept a buyout or the simple elimination of a position and the professor along with it. On a more positive note, I do agree with Sykes's overall assertion that students are not getting as good an undergraduate education as they could/deserve. This may be partially because of the emphasis on research and lack of contact with faculty members that he describes but I also believe it is because of the desire for applied pre-professional education demanded by students today. As Sykes points out, the original ideal of an intellectual background of shared knowledge that would make all individuals "learned" is fading. That is a pity. While he blames the early German, research-centered model of higher education, he neglects to mention the overpowering effect of the Progressive era in this country and its appeal to application and utility. He is also quite on target in bemoaning the trendy focus on "theory" in the humanities, and the profspeak which, although he attributes to all academics, is more rampant among the poststructuralists. His complaint about offering narrow, specialized, and esoteric courses at the expense of broad core curriculum courses that would allow for a shared body of knowledge couldn't be more accurate. In today's highly politicized and overly sensitive academic environment, diversity and rejection of a purported elitism tend to be explanations or excuses provided for this. But Sykes's argument that it is less work to deconstruct than to construct seems more adequate, particularly in the areas where poststructuralism is most prevalent (literature and literary theory, communication, semiotics, english, history, philosophy). It is hard to contribute something original to the literature when you're using texts that have already been studied for centuries. It is easier to create a career out of deconstructing them. Overall, although I enjoyed this book, I think it's unfortunate that the genuine issues Sykes is trying to highlight ended up undermined by his sensationalistic, journalistic style of writing.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars hatchet job but has some good points also, January 9, 2003

By 

Donald C. Wunsch II (Rolla, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Paperback)

I'm a prof but was a student, when this book was written. I seldom had a class taught by a TA. When I did, it was excellent. I had close interactions with famous profs throughout my education. But Sykes's anecdotes are real stories during the same period as my education. Many of his observations, of how the academic game is played, are also true. The take-home message is: let the buyer beware. It's a gross error of the book to do a hatchet job on profs -- you can find good ones all over. But if you don't do your homework, you could spend megabucks on higher education and get ripped off. I'm thankful to have had the opposite experience. I started by choosing to attend Seattle University, where it was obvious they actually read my required essay from the application, unlike several top-ranked schools that had accepted me. From there, I was mostly lucky. It's still possible to get an excellent value for your higher education dollar. This book throws the baby out with the bath water, but it does tell you what to watch out for.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An addictibly readable reality check!, March 3, 2004

By 

Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (Paperback)

I am currently finishing my masters degree and am researching doctoral degress. Unfortunately, I not only enjoyed this book, but recognized many things in it as so true that they were funny (and sad).

Point: Universities are much less concerned with teaching students as they are with plumping out research that is trivial, abstruse, and to all but maybe 10 peers who will read the resulting article, irrelevent (and those ten are reading it to cite it in the next essay). Point: The humanities have done away with virtually all standards, are interested in theory that poorly reflects the real world, and consist mostly of 'guts' courses that are called that because they are so easy one can pass the tests on gut instincts. Point: tenure is partially destroying education. Once designed as a bastion of academic freedom, now it serves to insulate already detached professors even more from the real world, and destroy any notion of accountability.

Here's the books downfall: it is so eager to point out these things (even though the book is for the most part right on) that it ends up sounding paranoid and overly combative. Every example of a poor professor is accompanied by an adjective like "assinine" or "abysmal". There was even one section where the author points out that "one study says..." in order to show how bad social science education is. I was left wondering....what the other studies said. In other words, the book leaves us with a feeling that while largely correct, the author may have been a.) selective and b.) a little overeager to rip on all things academic for the meer sake the it feels good.

But the main messages is that education is overpriced while quality declines. The proffesoriate cares infinitely more about themselves (and their obscure research) then their students. Graduate students do the teaching while professors 'play at' writing important things. This is all, unfortunately, true. But I do want to write that while the author is quite pessimistic, I am not. I am currently finishing graduate work at a small liberal arts college in Richmond, VA (if you'd like you can figure out which one as there is only one). There, the teachers teach, there is no such thing as a teachers assistant, class comes before research, and classes are small enough where students even have the teachers home phone. Anyone contemplating colleges I urge you to read this book and consider the smaller liberal arts schools (and the one I'm at is top notch).

Good book!