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Academia blues- I have never been closer to leaving academia, & it breaks my heart.
I was raised in a right wing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic, misogynistic environment. My parents didn't see the point of education past secondary school, which none of my 3 brothers finished.
I was raised in a right wing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic, misogynistic environment. My parents didn't see the point of education past secondary school, which none of my 3 brothers finished.
But I saw higher education as my only exit from the small, petty, restricted, angry world I was trapped in, the only path to a better, bigger, healthier future, the most certain way to add beauty, knowledge and pride to my life.
And for a while, it fulfilled all my wishes.
And for a while, it fulfilled all my wishes.
I met people I would have never met, travelled the world, not as a tourist, but to share knowledge and, hopefully useful, skills. I spent years on my own "betterment" and on that of my students, in whom I could see the hunger that was mine at their age. I felt truly privileged.
While my students are still a great source of joy and energy, the newest generation is sadly turning into customers, entitled customers. Some of them are anxious customers, because if they can't purchase the best diplomas, they'll be in debt for the decades to come.
And that's what I have become: a purveyor of expensive diplomas. I don't blame the students. I blame the businessification of academia.
Increasingly it is not about engaging in scholarship, it's about buying a future, a job. Lucky the kids who can afford the best one.
Increasingly it is not about engaging in scholarship, it's about buying a future, a job. Lucky the kids who can afford the best one.
Obviously, the money doesn't go to me or my fellow lecturers (not that I would want it), it goes to the managerial class, fresh from their little MBAs where they've learnt to apply half baked business ideas born in McDonald's & Apple brainstorming meetings to research and
higher education, two areas they know nothing about.
But the last straw really is coming from academia itself, and to my horror, from the left of it. The queering of science, the decolonisation of STEM, for all their egalitarian pretence marks the bankruptcy of ademia & science.
But the last straw really is coming from academia itself, and to my horror, from the left of it. The queering of science, the decolonisation of STEM, for all their egalitarian pretence marks the bankruptcy of ademia & science.
And I can not bear it.
I honestly don't know how long I can hang on for, how much lower I can watch the Institition I cherished so dearly fall before I go.
Something has to change but today it all feels really insurmountable.
I honestly don't know how long I can hang on for, how much lower I can watch the Institition I cherished so dearly fall before I go.
Something has to change but today it all feels really insurmountable.
