The snot report....

> > All bullshit since they did NOT talk about the applicant to job ratio and
> > they did NOT talk about the rise in graduates per year and did NOT talk
> > about no further expansion in slots once you're already getting most of
> > the HS graduateing class going on to college so the source of students is
> > peaked out.
>
> Back then I was aware of population demographic trends from keeping in
> contact with several old college friends who ended up becoming
> elementary or high school teachers. They all mentioned that the
> number of high school kids would peak sometime in the 1990's and start
> to fall off sometime around 2000. (ie. The "baby bounce" gen-Y'ers
> who were the children of boomers).

From the events that were happening back then (ie. collapse of
communist regimes), along with population demographic trends (ie.
lower future birthrates), I had a suspicion that universities and
colleges were most likely going to hire temporary term-to-term
instructors to teach the classes during the 1990's, instead of hiring
new professors on the tenure track. If the population of college kids
was going to level off sometime in the early 2000's, then most likely
they weren't going to be hiring a ton of new tenure track assistant
professors.

At the time I got the impression that hiring an assistant professor on
the tenure track, was typically a long term commitment. (ie. 25-30
years for somebody who eventually got tenure). I suppose back in the
Sputnik era (ie. late 1950's, 1960's), there was enough money going
into universities/colleges along with the baby boomers enrolling in
higher education, that the tenure track professors hired back then
were teaching enough students for 20-25 years before they started to
see a significant decline in student numbers.

From the college administrators' perspectives, there isn't much use in
hiring new tenure track assistant professors for the long term, if the
population of college age kids will decline after a decade.

(Or at least this is what I thought back then).
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, wrote:

>> Well, I gambled and got a good postdoc. Had luck getting pubs, and that
>> helped, along with more luck, to get my own lab for the next 15 years (but
>> at two sites) and funding for 10 of those years. There were people who did
>> better than I, and there were people who did worse. I've thought about it
>> all a thousand times. Fate, luck, trends.
>
> How different of a game was it, back when you were in graduate school?
>
> I remember when I was in grad school, there was constant talk about
> there being mass faculty retirements in the 1990's

All bullshit since they did NOT talk about the applicant to job ratio and
they did NOT talk about the rise in graduates per year and did NOT talk
about no further expansion in slots once you're already getting most of
the HS graduateing class going on to college so the source of students is
peaked out. And, they also did NOT talk about the fact that sometimes the
search committee doesn't like ANY of the applicants, thus perpetuating the
myth "we can't find people."

and that I was in
> the "perfect" place with the best opportunities. After I started
> doing research, I started to hang around more with the postdocs in my
> field, than other grad students. The postdocs knew a lot more about
> the climate of new tenure track assistant professor openings in our
> field, where I got the impression that the job market wasn't quite as
> rosy as the propaganda. (Some of these postdocs went to Harvard for
> grad school).

Well, I'd be pushing people to go talk with the older faculty who, if they
were not affraid of bursting the myth (or ruining the "cheap labor" pool
for their colleagues), could speak of decades of experience watching how
this scam worked. But just look at the IT field, now. Full of
certification programs and so, rafts of ignorant people go, hand over
money in the idea that its going to help them get a job or a better job.

> By the time the Berlin Wall came down with other communist regimes
> falling in eastern Europe, that's when I had suspicions that there
> would be possibly less funding for non-defense science. (By then I
> already knew that non-defense physics funding was largely
> "piggybacking" on defense funding, for many decades). Thinking that
> the Soviet Union would possibly be still around in foreseeable future
> at the time, I wrote up my thesis and got a job afterwards in the
> defense sector thinking that there would still be significant funding
> for defense type stuff. Things didn't happen that way, with the
> defense sector downsizing after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
> the first Persian Gulf war. By the time Bill Clinton was in the white
> house, I was out of a job and looking for another job outside of
> defense. (The younger lower ranked folks were laid off first at most
> defense firms). The "peace dividend" put a lot of defense scientists
> and engineers out of work.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend
>

Well, there are jobs in DoD, but, yes, its all dependent on what, what are
the budget trends, etc. And, DoD jobs can be either high security (civil
service) or temporary (contract dependent), and all in between. But, what
they also don't tell you is that most of those guys in those high job
security jobs know that they are not going to get a better deal and so
they never quit, and thus those jobs never open up.

Yeah, NASA is going to have a lot of retirements (like the article said)
in the near future and what do you want to bet that --just like everything
else--they are all going to be outsourced via contracts to "body shops" or
contractors, and don't get the idea the pay is going to be great and the
bennies are probably going to be cut back, too.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, wrote:

>>> All bullshit since they did NOT talk about the applicant to job ratio and
>>> they did NOT talk about the rise in graduates per year and did NOT talk
>>> about no further expansion in slots once you're already getting most of
>>> the HS graduateing class going on to college so the source of students is
>>> peaked out.
>>
>> Back then I was aware of population demographic trends from keeping in
>> contact with several old college friends who ended up becoming
>> elementary or high school teachers. They all mentioned that the
>> number of high school kids would peak sometime in the 1990's and start
>> to fall off sometime around 2000. (ie. The "baby bounce" gen-Y'ers
>> who were the children of boomers).
>
> From the events that were happening back then (ie. collapse of
> communist regimes), along with population demographic trends (ie.
> lower future birthrates), I had a suspicion that universities and
> colleges were most likely going to hire temporary term-to-term
> instructors to teach the classes during the 1990's, instead of hiring
> new professors on the tenure track. If the population of college kids
> was going to level off sometime in the early 2000's, then most likely
> they weren't going to be hiring a ton of new tenure track assistant
> professors.
>
> At the time I got the impression that hiring an assistant professor on
> the tenure track, was typically a long term commitment. (ie. 25-30
> years for somebody who eventually got tenure). I suppose back in the
> Sputnik era (ie. late 1950's, 1960's), there was enough money going
> into universities/colleges along with the baby boomers enrolling in
> higher education, that the tenure track professors hired back then
> were teaching enough students for 20-25 years before they started to
> see a significant decline in student numbers.
>
> From the college administrators' perspectives, there isn't much use in
> hiring new tenure track assistant professors for the long term, if the
> population of college age kids will decline after a decade.
>
> (Or at least this is what I thought back then).
>

Just at the time I left UMAB they put a new policy into effect: no more
tenure track appointments. Period. A couple of years earlier they put into
effect a new polcy that all subsequent tenured appointments became one
year contracts. Similar to tenure review. They did make all new
appointments what they called "tenure eligible" meaning that the chair and
the dean could recommend someone for tenure but I am sure that would be in
cases where there was someone with something like $20-30 mil in
transferable contracts/grants and they wanted to keep the guy. Otherwise,
everyone is kleenex to the administrators.

And, I actually did see a grant proposal (from a Harvard affiliate) where
seven co-PIs actually were in charge of $17 mil per year in direct costs
among all the grants they had. I think that's all they did was write
proposals all year long and have the underlings do all the real science.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

> Just at the time I left UMAB they put a new policy into effect: no more
> tenure track appointments. Period. A couple of years earlier they put into
> effect a new polcy that all subsequent tenured appointments became one
> year contracts. Similar to tenure review. They did make all new
> appointments what they called "tenure eligible" meaning that the chair and
> the dean could recommend someone for tenure but I am sure that would be in
> cases where there was someone with something like $20-30 mil in
> transferable contracts/grants and they wanted to keep the guy. Otherwise,
> everyone is kleenex to the administrators.

Some departments still have traditional tenure track appointments,
like math and physics departments at some universities. No idea what
they do in other departments.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

On Wed, 30 Jan 2008, wrote:

>> Just at the time I left UMAB they put a new policy into effect: no more
>> tenure track appointments. Period. A couple of years earlier they put into
>> effect a new polcy that all subsequent tenured appointments became one
>> year contracts. Similar to tenure review. They did make all new
>> appointments what they called "tenure eligible" meaning that the chair and
>> the dean could recommend someone for tenure but I am sure that would be in
>> cases where there was someone with something like $20-30 mil in
>> transferable contracts/grants and they wanted to keep the guy. Otherwise,
>> everyone is kleenex to the administrators.
>
> Some departments still have traditional tenure track appointments,
> like math and physics departments at some universities. No idea what
> they do in other departments.
>

1. You have to ask what tenure means in those departments, and it can vary
from department to department, too, and it can also vary depending on
_when_ tenure was granted, offered, or not denied (all three of those have
different meanings), and ask what about the fine print.

2. The really insidious thing came down administrative channels at UMAB in
'95 when a memo was summarized: "In the future, departments will play a
progressively diminishing role; in the place of large departments will be
'centers of excellence' which will come into existence, grow to some
equilibrium, then be terminated after 10-12 years and the space turned
over to a new 'center of excellence'" and thus the idea of _a_ career
being something that lasts until you reach retirement age, or
voluntarily decide to retire, is thus preempted. i.e. You're kleenex,
again.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

> The traditional way to prevent this from happening includes provisions in
> the tenure contract that include requirements to carry out teaching
> duties, avoiding problems involving moral turpitude, and that the
> tenure can be removed if it is in the best interests of the institution.
>
> In the department I was in, there was one guy who came close to what you
> described. I heard both sides of the story, too. And, I think there was
> fault on both sides, too.

This particular prof in question was hired back in the early-mid
1960's. I don't know what exactly happened, but I wouldn't be
surprised if hiring standards were more lax back then, flush with all
the Sputnik era money being thrown around.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

On Feb 1, 9:33 am, Straydog wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, wrote:
> >> The traditional way to prevent this from happening includes provisions in
> >> the tenure contract that include requirements to carry out teaching
> >> duties, avoiding problems involving moral turpitude, and that the
> >> tenure can be removed if it is in the best interests of the institution.
>
> >> In the department I was in, there was one guy who came close to what you
> >> described. I heard both sides of the story, too. And, I think there was
> >> fault on both sides, too.
>
> > This particular prof in question was hired back in the early-mid
> > 1960's. I don't know what exactly happened, but I wouldn't be
> > surprised if hiring standards were more lax back then, flush with all
> > the Sputnik era money being thrown around.
>
> At the opposite end of the scale are all the examples where people are
> competant, are hard-working, are productive, are established and
> recognized...and still get the lies, double-crosses, and backstabs.
>
> Carley Fiorina gets a couple years to run HP and what comes out: i) 20,000
> guys get laid off like used kleenex, ii) mediocre net earnings, iii)
> Carley gets her ass fired and her purse stuffed with $20 mil+ as they
> bounce her ass into the dumpster, iv) she writes a "payback" book on the
> dysfunctional board at HP, and we discover there is no justice/fairness
> in the world, which is being run, basically, by mostly idiots.
>
> HP is just one of dozens to hundreds of corporations which pulled off
> similar stunts.

Wonder why she was hired in the first place?
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report.... 

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, wrote:

>> The traditional way to prevent this from happening includes provisions in
>> the tenure contract that include requirements to carry out teaching
>> duties, avoiding problems involving moral turpitude, and that the
>> tenure can be removed if it is in the best interests of the institution.
>>
>> In the department I was in, there was one guy who came close to what you
>> described. I heard both sides of the story, too. And, I think there was
>> fault on both sides, too.
>
> This particular prof in question was hired back in the early-mid
> 1960's. I don't know what exactly happened, but I wouldn't be
> surprised if hiring standards were more lax back then, flush with all
> the Sputnik era money being thrown around.
>

At the opposite end of the scale are all the examples where people are
competant, are hard-working, are productive, are established and
recognized...and still get the lies, double-crosses, and backstabs.

Carley Fiorina gets a couple years to run HP and what comes out: i) 20,000
guys get laid off like used kleenex, ii) mediocre net earnings, iii)
Carley gets her ass fired and her purse stuffed with $20 mil+ as they
bounce her ass into the dumpster, iv) she writes a "payback" book on the
dysfunctional board at HP, and we discover there is no justice/fairness
in the world, which is being run, basically, by mostly idiots.

HP is just one of dozens to hundreds of corporations which pulled off
similar stunts.
 >> Stay informed about: The snot report....