Universities try to hire people who have lots of publications in their field. The reasoning behind this is that an institution can attract more grants and more new students if it has famous, high-performing faculty members working and teaching there.

I think that this makes very little sense when applied to the humanities (arts, literature, and philosophy).

The thing about humanities taught as university subjects is that they tend to be "second-order." What this means is that most of the professors are just writing about things that other people have done, not actually doing much themselves; e.g. English professors produce not novels but analyses of novels. On the other hand, the physics professors are actually doing physics. A physics class is a way of preparing you to do physics. An English class, on the other hand, is not a preparation to write a novel, but a preparation to analyze a novel -- training you to comment on the work of somebody else.

There is a reason for this, which is that it's much easier to teach people how to make passably intelligent comments about art or philosophy done by somebody else than it is to teach them how to make good art or philosophy themselves; and generally most of the professors of arts and philosophy don't know how to make good art or philosophy in the first place, so they are in no position to train anyone to do it anyway.

And to come at it from another angle, the best "doers" are not always the best teachers. The fact that professor Billybob wrote an astounding analysis of gender in Shakespeare probably has little bearing on his ability to teach English; in fact, he may be less effective as a teacher the more time he devotes to his own publications.

The "publish or perish" mentality is silly when applied to the humanities. But this is not at all to say that humanities teachers are worthless. Good art and philosophy can be hard to grasp at first, and it can make all the difference if you have somebody there to guide you and to refer you to other books or authors that might interest you. This, not barfing up the five hundred and fifty-seventh Freudian-feminist-Marxist-poststructuralist analysis of James Joyce's Ulysses, should be the primary function of humanities professors.

How 'bout that local sports team?

Fair point.

The best teacher, in any discipline, is the one that has experienced what they are teaching. In other words, practicing what they preach.

Your comment about someone being great at what they do but not great at being a teacher is also true. The trick is to find those talented individuals who can do both.

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quote:

Originally posted by eRRaTiK The best teacher, in any discipline, is the one that has experienced what they are teaching. In other words, practicing what they preach.

I concur. My professors are all amazing and inspirational women (and a few men, heh).

Personally, I really dislike books about "someone else's work". Sometimes, the primary sources can give you an infinitely better insight at what it is all about. Encyclopedias, on the other hand, are great, as they're brief and straight to the point

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kinda sucks ass cause publishing is hard, and what happens is a lot more journals pop up, crappy journals and people get useless crap published anyways.


my profs told me I should have 6 pubs by the time i graduate. Im working on my 3rd one right now and am a bit behind :-/


also whenyou go for tenure, you should have about 10 - 15 more pubs using data collected at the uni you are getting tenured at. which is hard cause the dr just did a big dissertation and has tons o data from that which they will try to publish regardless.


right now though there is a trend to look for not so much publications (they still are very important) but to look just for grants obtained. Harvard is doing that and others will catch on. They will judge you based on just how many grants you get, not necessarily if it gets published and where, but the fact that you bring in that big money (schools get a bunch o cash straight from the grant, which also sucks cause you have to ask for so much more money just to cover the schools want).



the business world is lookin tasty.

publish or perish --> that's what doing a PhD in engineering is all about.

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quote:

Originally posted by Lira Personally, I really dislike books about "someone else's work". Sometimes, the primary sources can give you an infinitely better insight at what it is all about. Encyclopedias, on the other hand, are great, as they're brief and straight to the point

lol - i hope you're joking. if not, then maybe it isn't the byzantine machinations of third parties that are keeping you from reaching the academic heights you seek...

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the phd is a research degree, not a teaching degree so it's not surprising that many top scholars are piss-poor teachers.

the rule used to be that the 'publish or perish' axiom was less stringent at smaller universities and liberal arts colleges where the primary focus was on undergraduate teaching rather than original research. as the job market for phds has continued to go down the shitter however, this is no longer the case.

c0r version: go to law school.

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I assume you're restricting your analysis to the humanities because you happen to be in a humanities field, but I see no difference between the sciences (or engineering) and the humanities when it comes to publishing.

The publish or perish mentality makes no sense in either, and is ruining the academic system. You're under so much pressure to publish, that you have no time to think anymore. Whether this is in the humanities or in the sciences (or engineering) is irrelevant; the result is a bunch of crap that gets published.

The trend is always the same. You have a few academics with brilliant insights that make seminal contributions to a field, and a bunch of sheep that tag along for the ride and publish small variations of the original work because they simply have to publish something. What you then have is a ridiculous amount of unoriginal, boring and uncreative work saturating every field of knowledge, whether it be in the humanities or in the sciences (or engineering).

Gone are the days when you could publish one or two truly original manuscripts in your field and keep your academic job. Truly, a shame. You should read some of Freeman Dyson's critique of the PhD system here. Quite sobering.

my university is beggining to do this as its moving more into research... from what i have noticed the quality of the professors has gone down.

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Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On OOKA-OOKA ME NACHOS ME PRESS KEYS ON COMPUTER GOOD

actually, i think it makes the most sense with humanities. there's always some changing zeitgeist to get people writing about it. unless you're at the cutting edge of physics, physics has remained largely unchanged for a very long time.

and really, these lazy fucks teach 12ish hours a week, and have the longest holidays known to man. they should be forced to publish to show they're actually worth a damn.

let's take politics for example. there is always something new to analyse, or a new shift in opinion or a political pandora's box being opened. less so in traditional political philosophy of course, but i also found it comforting to see my lecturers/tutors having their work published. if their work couldn't stand up to the rigours of peer review, what right did they have to be teaching me about it?

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were you banned from pdd or something?

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