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 naďve 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.
