Customer Reviews

ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

Some professors still revere scholarship and take seriously their professional responsibility to pass their knowledge to succeeding generations. This book is not about them. It is about the growing number who degrade the scholarly tradition, abuse their positions, and cheat their students. I spent 15 years on university faculties. If anything, Mr. Sykes is too kind.

This book was written in 1988. At the time is was written, it was a very accurate portrayal of what was happening to undergraduates in America's large universities. I attended one of the schools he mentioned back then and I can tell you from first hand experience that it was very accurate. However, I believe that in the years since then, the situation has improved, possibly because of books like this, the efficiencies brought about by computers, and also because of the pressure brought to bear by ranking reports such as that done by US News.

If you are criticising this book yet you attended a nice, small, expensive elite liberal arts college, you should seriously ask yourself if you really know what the heck you are talking about. Many of the privately educated graduate students at my university thought that things were just hunky-dory for us undergraduates. They underestimated the importance of all the attention and quality teaching they had received at their private school and figured we would be fine without it (or if we weren't fine, we must be stupid). I find that people who got what they needed at that age tend to have a blind spot for the incredible importance of quality, concientous teaching.

As former faculty member myself, I can appreciate Charles' views, as I saw a few colleagues provide little support for the students. This was not out of malice, but simply a realization that the system does not reward dedication to teaching and effective advising. For example, a colleague of mine got ripped in his student evaluations twice, so what does the department head do? He removes him from teaching undergraduate courses altogether, leaving him with two independent-study graduate courses. My colleague also got promoted the same year. What a deal! All this while I am teaching 30% above capacity and getting nothing but jealousy from a few of my colleagues. My research and publication output was not compromised (any more than others), but department politics were not kind to me. Later, I took a faculty position in the College of Engineering where students WERE first. So, problems vary with the culture of the department. The author does generalize a bit, but faculty should only be offended if he/she is the offender. All of us have seen instances of what Charles has described in academia. My advice to a new faculty member...if it smells bad, change the scenery, QUICK!

This book exposes the myths of undergraduate, graduate and doctoral education in America. From my own experience, and from what I have read in this book, a college education at a community college may be superior to that of an Ivy League college like Harvard or Yale, especially if you end up in a classroom filled with an auditorium of hundreds of students, and in the professor's place is a graduate student teaching assistant who may have no experience in teaching the class you are taking. The professor is not in class because teaching is not what counts, it is meaningless reasearch for publication that allows a college professor to keep his job, and line his pockets with money from corporations who hire him as a consultant away from the college campus. Students deserve better than this! If what is written in this book is true, you just might be better off going to the public library to educate yourself. You won't have a degree, but at least you won't be an uneducated college graduate.

Here are the review excerpts included on the first page:

The New York Times Book Review: "Mr. Sykes' vivid and vocationally eloquent exposé is sure to provoke howls of indignant rage in the academy.... But as a report from the front, ProfScam is an incisive and convincing indictment that deserves to be read by anyone concerned about the future of American higher education."

The Detroit News: "A pugnacious, absorbing, funny, informative book.... Could Charles Sykes be the Ralph Nader of a coming academic reform movement? To the professors, such a movement will probably look like a horde of barbarians storming the gates of the Temple of Knowledge. But the mass of evidence chronicled by Sykes suggests that the barbarians are on the other side of the gates."

The Wall Street Journal: "... a lively indictment.... ProfScam is uncomfortably on the mark in its depiction of the ills of the academy."

The California Review: "Sykes demonstrates both his skill as an investigative reporter and as an essayist. His thesis -- that the professoriate is responsible for inflicting terrible damage to our system of higher education -- is well documented and delineated in a clear, engaging and often humorous style... ProfScam is a stunning and disturbing piece of work. One can only hope that it will be an influential one as well."

National Review: "... an extraordinary book about higher education in America... The thrill of Mr. Sykes's book resides in its relentless specificity."

Chronicles: "This man is a truth teller, therefore he is shrill, obnoxious, abusive, aggressive, offensive, and absolutely right.... A first-rate analysis of a major national calamity -- the end of the university as a suitable medium for educating young people."

Robert Nisbet, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University: "Sykes goes beyond the ivied walls and yields us a view of the university that combines wit with serious and important criticism."

Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post: "Stupendously provocative and important... ProfScam is an immensely important document, one that cuts to the heart of America's academic darkness, and it deserves to be taken seriously by anyone who cares about our universities and worries about the future."

Thomas Sowell, Syndicated Columnist: "Any parent who is planning to spend big bucks to send a son or daughter to a big-name university should especially read ProfScam.... It should be required reading for anyone who wants to think or talk seriously about universities..."

Martin Anderson's, "Imposters in the Temple" is another one.
The people who have slamed this aren't being objective, or
haven't sat through 40 classes at their Institutions like the undergraduates do. I suggest they take a few of the extra hours they don't work and sit through a bunch of classes. But they won't because they have tenure and don't really have to care. Real scholars will come away aghast at what they see, but will have no power to change anything. Syckes has called it like it is.

These books are the most accurate and honest description of
what my undergraduate experience was like. They are also quite
applicable to what I experienced ten years later in graduate school, which was quite recent. Nothing has changed folks. And nothing will change, untill you get involved.

Check out ProfessorWatch.com . This web site claims it was inspired by these books, and they've developed a workable plan to change all this degeneracy.

Everyone who has worked in academia has their collection of horror stories: those anecdotal observations of conduct that are somewhat disturbing to those who have not been initiated in the rites of passage that are unique to the university. Here are some of the many that were witnessed/experienced by this reviewer:
1. At a university in Missouri, a PhD staff member gave some very modest suggestions to an otherwise mediocre undergraduate laboratory manual. The authors of this manual, insulted by these suggestions, retaliated with a vengeance that lasted for years, with the result that the staff member was finally dismissed.
2. At a university in Texas, a professor copied a well-known copyrighted textbook word-for-word and sold the copies to his class. So how did he think he could get around the copyright restrictions? He copied it longhand.
3. At a university in Missouri, one professor volunteered to take part in a teacher's preparation workshop, something that he felt was beneath him as his prior dialog readily indicated. So why did he participate? To obtain the grant that was attached to the attendance, monies of which he used to pay for a vacation overseas.
4. At a university in South Dakota, a faculty member was promised that as of being hired, he would have full authority in choosing the textbook. When he began his employment, he quickly learned that the vice-president of the university approved all selections of textbooks, which he did without reservation.

There are many more such stories, but they are merely anecdotes, and it would be wrong to conclude that they reflect the moods and ethics of people in American universities. To understand these would take a time-consuming, exhaustive effort, more than most would be willing to undertake. This book is not one of these studies, but is only a hurried diatribe that lashes out at American higher education, which at the time of publication was a practice that was just beginning. It currently seems to be the rage, and shows no sign of going away. It is popular to smear the university, and the evidence used to do so is frequently weak and insufficiently researched. This book does however have some value in the sense that it can be read by anyone interested in how pundits and self-professed journalists have criticized the university, and the degree to which they have instigated a large following or engaged public sympathies.

At various places in the book the author blasts research projects that he thinks are trivial or unnecessary, and clearly believes that it is these projects that are representative and proof that the university is a racket, producing junk that nobody cares anything about. As an example of this, he refers to a paper entitled "A Functional Approach to Interruptions in Conversation, a Mathematical Analysis" which as part of its analysis included the counting of the "ers" and "uhs" in conversation. He seems to think that this research is completely irrelevant, but actually it is of great interest to groups such as "The Toastmasters" who grade speaking ability on the number of these kinds of annoying pauses when their members practice their speeches. It is also of interest to neuroscientists who are studying language disorders, since such interruptions, if excessive, may point to neuronal maladies in the speech areas of the brain. It is also of interest to the military as even slight exposure to powerful neurotoxins can cause excessive interruptions in the flow of speech.

The author does not mention a few of the more deplorable and unethical features of the research university, such as the wide practice in research papers on designating an "author to whom correspondence should be addressed". This allows one author to control the feedback process and actually take more (or complete) credit for the paper. He also only makes passing reference to the anonymous review system, which encourages recklessness in criticism and an excess of vituperation. Such a practice should stop, with reviewers signing their name to the review just like they would if they were in fact the authors. The anonymous reviewing system makes no sense at all and has no place in rational discourse. Also not mentioned in the book is the deplorable practice of placing phony employment advertisements in academic journals so as to make it appear to satisfy an Affirmative Action requirement. Candidates are interviewed, and ethnic or gender identification carried out, but the departments involved do not even have the necessary funds to hire anyone, minority or not.

The author offers solutions to the "problems" (as he sees it) of the university. His first suggestion is to change its research emphasis, and focus more on teaching, but in this regard he gives no evidence, and does not present a metric, that would allow him to classify only one in ten academics as producing original research of any "value". This is a statistical claim, but he offers zero evidence for it, and if he attempted to he would find it to be a formidable project, due to the subjective nature of assigning "value" to a research project or manuscript. One can be sympathetic to the author's suggestion to abolish tenure, but another option may be to limit it to a maximum block of time, say twenty years, with no possibility of renewal. Candidates who enter the university under tenure track contracts would undergo tenure review after five years, and if granted, would be allowed fifteen more years to conduct research or engage in teaching.

But it is difficult, if not impossible, to legislate against stupidity, cowardice, incompetence, or arrogance. The faculty, staff, and students of a university have their own biases and aspirations, and they will continue to have these despite legislation to the contrary. It is easy to complain about the current makeup of the university, but it is quite another thing to construct a sound, scientific analysis, backed up by hard evidence, of the workings of the same. Again, the author does not do this, and only now are there studies appearing that are more scholarly and coherent. And technological advances may force the universities to change, due mostly to the increase in the availability of free information and automated learning and tutoring tools. This technology may in fact make the university research professor a white elephant, or even an extinct species after this century has ended.