Class in Academia

[Pickman's model]

Steeley is made from?

That sort of thing might go down well in the canteen, where it may be upheld as an example of fine wit, but it doesn't cut the mustard here

 

[steeplejack]

I've been in academia all my life. My background is lower middle class, with working class parents determined to "better themselves", in that very mid-late twentieth century way; the type that hated Heath and Wilson and the whole 1970s, and voted enthusiastically for Thatcher until 1987.

I feel honestly as though academia is a kind of virtual reality. Symbolically, it embodies the values of a chimerical liberal, metropolitan middle class; on paper tolerant of and welcoming of everyone, "celebrating diversity", with robust policies on bullying, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, & co. But as in every workplace there is a gap between what is said and what is done, and the multiple bad behaviours of academia fall into that gap. Classism is one of those.

I'm lucky to have come through in the last decade when some notional funding was still available for postgraduate students- without it I'd never have got through a Masters (paid for on tick) and a PhD (funded). If I was at that stage now, then I couldn't even contemplate an academic career. Even if by some miracle your studies are funded by some mysterious landed benefactor from a Jane Austen novel, there are vanishingly small numbers of viable jobs at the end of it. People face miserable, insecure, itinerant, precarious lives at entry level now, at least in the humanities. And our situation is nothing compared to some of the horror stories from the USA.

Academia is like parliamentary politics and print journalism in that each instituion is a negotiated compromise between groups of people who loathe one another. Feuds in academia last decades and often long beyond anyone can remember the origin or the motivation of the vendetta. Petty dislikes and resentments require daily management and it is wearing, attritional and pointless. My PhD supervisor was complaining of "creeping managerialism" in the early 90s; managerialism and the unconscious imbibing of neoliberal indivdualism are academia now. In that sense it doesn't help to separate it out from other 'professions'. In keeping with them, work life balance has vanished since 2008- it's now just work- and many academics are lonely, bitter, unhappy and subject to multiple compulsive and addicitive behaviours as a result. Others- somehow- remain perversely cheerful and seem to be able to cope by not taking anything too seriously, at least other than their own career.

What of working class folk and their place in academia? There are great networks of working class academics easily findable on twitter, there are networks studying things such as Anarchism with their own journals and conferences, there are fascinating discussions and practical work going on on class. Academia lacks much agency though and as university numbers have rocketed since the late 90s the former kudos / cachet that went with higher degrees or an academic job has pretty much gone. In that sense it's no different to secondary or primary education.

To quote dear old William of Walworth- more later

 

[equationgirl]

I think it's only something like 20% of people who get phds get jobs as academics. So there's great over-production of people who can lecture in comparison to the number of people who will lecture

Certainly at taught pg level and possibly up at pgr level there's great over-representation of international students. But without the international students and the vast fees they pay he would fall apart

While there was a massive expansion in the numbers of PhD places available across the sector, research council funds for postdoc places was not increased, so competition for these places - the crucial next step in an academic career - became ridiculous.

You're right about international students.

 

[A380]

That sort of thing might go down well in the canteen, where it may be upheld as an example of fine wit, but it doesn't cut the mustard here

All the canteens shut years ago, cuts.

 

[equationgirl]

When I was doing my undergraduate degree (late 90s), several of the lecturers had been offered tenured positions after completing a masters. There were more working class people in engineering especially after the steel and coal industries were decimated in Scotland. There were two lecturers that I remember that were not working class, and even then they were out of their depth.

There's no way that would happen today.

 

[Idris2002]

There should be three streams for a ademics - lecturing, research and admin. Asking a single person to all three types of work is causing a mental health crisis across the sector.

I think at this point, the best we can do is stop as many young people as possible from signing their lives away.

 

[A380]

I must admit, in my one brief foray into academia - when I got my masters - I was shocked by the middle class whiteness of the (London) faculty members. And this was attached to department mostly serving medics / nurses of different stripes.

Everyone I worked with were lovely people, but there was almost complete denial of any structural race or class issues ( of course as a middle class white bloke I am perfectly placed to highlight these…) This was less than 15 years ago.

 

[redcogs]

Didn't Marx suggest that society was divided between those who have no alternative other than to sell their labour to those who would benefit from exploiting that labour? If so academics are proletarians. Just as dockers and miners and steelworkers were, when the UK had such things. Things seemed so much clearer in the olden days

 

[Brainaddict]

Since I present as pretty middle class I don't have much to say on this except clearly academia is one of the snobbiest, most hierarchical places on earth, but that you can find pockets of decent-ness if you are lucky.

However, I would say that the middle-class-ness of academia contributes to a rot that is much deeper: I don't believe much exciting intellectual work is being done in most social and humanities fields. The environment isn't conducive to it at all, ranging from the strong conformism you need to succeed to the death grip of the journals and ranking systems. If you want to do really original work you'll always be going against the flow, struggling to find anyone who wants to engage with arguments that aren't aligned with what's fashionable.

 

[A380]

Didn't Marx suggest that society was divided between those who have no alternative other than to sell their labour to those who would benefit from exploiting that labour? If so academics are proletarians. Just as dockers and miners and steelworkers were, when the UK had such things. Things seemed so much clearer in the olden days

That on whether or not the academic being referred to owns a bucket or not...

 

[Brainaddict]

It should be said that I am not personally very suited to academia. If I want to call Habermas (or some other canon writer) out for writing gibberish I just do it. Apparently what you're meant to do is spend two years researching exactly why the bullshit argument is bullshit and then another two years getting it published in a journal. Seems like a waste of time to me when something is clearly bullshit

I am 'middle class' by many definitions but I cannot 'play the game', because usually the game is wank.

 

[Pickman's model]

Since I present as pretty middle class I don't have much to say on this except clearly academia is one of the snobbiest, most hierarchical places on earth, but that you can find pockets of decent-ness if you are lucky.

However, I would say that the middle-class-ness of academia contributes to a rot that is much deeper: I don't believe much exciting intellectual work is being done in most social and humanities fields. The environment isn't conducive to it at all, ranging from the strong conformism you need to succeed to the death grip of the journals and ranking systems. If you want to do really original work you'll always be going against the flow, struggling to find anyone who wants to engage with arguments that aren't aligned with what's fashionable.

Some years back I was very interested in surveillance studies and went to a series of workshops aimed at doctoral students and a couple of conferences. I've been to conferences about decadence. And one about Irish history, one about magic and a couple at the Warburg institute about things like Maltese history. There's a lot of interesting and exciting work being done. But conferences are academics and research students talking to other academics and research students and few outsiders attend. People were very surprised I'd come when I wasn't presenting, that I was simply interested.

 

[Pickman's model]

It should be said that I am not personally very suited to academia. If I want to call Habermas (or some other canon writer) out for writing gibberish I just do it. Apparently what you're meant to do is spend two years researching exactly why the bullshit argument is bullshit and then another two years getting it published in a journal. Seems like a waste of time to me when something is clearly bullshit

I am 'middle class' by many definitions but I cannot 'play the game', because usually the game is wank.

If you want to say habermas is wank you're not being either exciting, interesting or original

 

[A380]

If you want to say habermas is wank you're not being either exciting, interesting or original

Jerg on.

 

[Aladdin]

After I finished my masters (by research) I took on some hours lecturing at a university. I was working in my own job still and doing 6hours a week lecturing. The job itself was great. I loved that nobody screamed at me or threatened to punch my lights out. But the internal politics of the place made me think twice about taking it on permanently. I stopped lecturing there after a year.

 

[8ball]

The job itself was great. I loved that nobody screamed at me or threatened to punch my lights out.

Many people would consider this a pretty low bar.

 

[Aladdin]

Many people would consider this a pretty low bar.

I agree.
But many people think teachers have it easy ..yet the threats happen.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

It should be said that I am not personally very suited to academia. If I want to call Habermas (or some other canon writer) out for writing gibberish I just do it. Apparently what you're meant to do is spend two years researching exactly why the bullshit argument is bullshit and then another two years getting it published in a journal. Seems like a waste of time to me when something is clearly bullshit

I am 'middle class' by many definitions but I cannot 'play the game', because usually the game is wank.

Saying something is bullshit is fine but I'm not sure why anyone would get paid for it. The whole of Urban will do it for free for starters.

 

[equationgirl]

I've been at conferences where nobody wanted to talk to me after they found out I was a postgrad studen, because I couldn't be a collaborator on grants or was otherwise a useful contact.

I left academia after my PhD, I didn't possess the temperament for academic work and my supervisor wasn't that helpful in supporting any of my job applications in research. Given that it would have been around 10 years on fixed term contracts with no guarantee of a tenured position at the end of it, it made better sense for me to go back to corporate life.

There was inherent snobbery at the last place I worked because 'they' were a red brick university. They liked to think they were part of that elite circle of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh etc but in reality they spent more time being dismissive of the 1960s and post-92 universities than anything , with their own reputation suffering instead.

 

[steeplejack]

Yes snobbery between institutions is rife. You even find some at the ancients who look down their noses at places that became unis in 1967 ("redbrick"), let alone the post-92 places. Snobbery also linked to greed of course. There's a contempt for research done beyond the Russell Group, and those unis seem to think they have the right to the lion's share of research money.

I was part of a consortia that offered up to fifty funded PhD studentships across my subject area; 49/50 studentships went to the "ancients", but they still lobbied hard for all fifty and were visibly irritated when one whole studentship was allocated elsewhere. Sheer greed and contempt for the diffusion of excellence across the sector.

It gladdens my heart when a place like Lincoln which only got uni status thirty years ago now has one of the best art & design schools in the UK and has become a real player through sustained investment & strategic vision. One in the eye for the priveliged minority who think they have the right to dictate terms and take money whenever they want.

E2A: I did know people, during my PhD, some who went onto become senior academics, who didn't need much more than a thimble of cheap wine before they started opining that "one hadn't really been to university" unless you went to Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Edinburgh or St. Andrews. In some cases, only the first three on that list.

 

[A380]

… The job itself was great. I loved that nobody screamed at me or threatened to punch my lights out….

Not in the philosophy department then?

 

[equationgirl]

I've recently been applying for a few jobs with universities and have gotten nowhere. It's depressing but perhaps a lucky escape.

 

[Idris2002]

Since I present as pretty middle class I don't have much to say on this except clearly academia is one of the snobbiest, most hierarchical places on earth, but that you can find pockets of decent-ness if you are lucky.

However, I would say that the middle-class-ness of academia contributes to a rot that is much deeper: I don't believe much exciting intellectual work is being done in most social and humanities fields. The environment isn't conducive to it at all, ranging from the strong conformism you need to succeed to the death grip of the journals and ranking systems. If you want to do really original work you'll always be going against the flow, struggling to find anyone who wants to engage with arguments that aren't aligned with what's fashionable.

I'd have to agree with your second paragraph. Look at who gets cited: Foucault, Bourdieu, people active back in the 1970s or earlier. Post-war British sociology and cultural studies produced a lot of original work, some of which is still relevant today . . . I say "some" because the game has changed a lot since 1979. Reading about post-1945 British welfare society is like reading science fiction now ("NHS"? "Unions"? "National Insurance"? Jesse, WTF are you talking about?").

You'd think the post-79 slide to catastrophe should have inspired a similar flowering of the collective academic mind, and its analytical skills. . . but apparently not.

(This is a very UK-centric post, and I've not worked there since 2018. But I think it's got some cross-border potential, all the same).

 

[Idris2002]

Yes snobbery between institutions is rife. You even find some at the ancients who look down their noses at places that became unis in 1967 ("redbrick"), let alone the post-92 places. Snobbery also linked to greed of course. There's a contempt for research done beyond the Russell Group, and those unis seem to think they have the right to the lion's share of research money.

I was part of a consortia that offered up to fifty funded PhD studentships across my subject area; 49/50 studentships went to the "ancients", but they still lobbied hard for all fifty and were visibly irritated when one whole studentship was allocated elsewhere. Sheer greed and contempt for the diffusion of excellence across the sector.

It gladdens my heart when a place like Lincoln which only got uni status thirty years ago now has one of the best art & design schools in the UK and has become a real player through sustained investment & strategic vision. One in the eye for the priveliged minority who think they have the right to dictate terms and take money whenever they want.

E2A: I did know people, during my PhD, some who went onto become senior academics, who didn't need much more than a thimble of cheap wine before they started opining that "one hadn't really been to university" unless you went to Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Bristol, Edinburgh or St. Andrews. In some cases, only the first three on that list.

I had a job interview at St. Andrews just before the lockdown. They were very insistent to me that "our students aren't all poshoes anymore".

E2A: "Methinks they doth protest too much".

 

[steeplejack]

I had a job interview at St. Andrews just before the lockdown. They were very insistent to me that "our students aren't all poshoes anymore".

Hm. Don't believe the hype...

 

[Idris2002]

Hm. Don't believe the hype...

Hence my edit.

 

[Brainaddict]

Saying something is bullshit is fine but I'm not sure why anyone would get paid for it. The whole of Urban will do it for free for starters.

I can see I'm going to have to explain the particular example I was thinking of. Habermas has said lots of things that are of interest and worth discussing, even if he is wrong about most of them. He has also made the claim that 'public space' first emerged in the coffeehouses of 18th century Europe. To anyone with a passing knowledge of history or culture, this is a bizarre claim, and to top it off he knew nothing about coffeehouses really, 18C history not being his area of expertise, even if 'public speech' is. Rather than just saying 'This otherwise intelligent man has pulled something out his arse', this claim is taught in classes, along with all the people who have critiqued it over the years. But the critique is all of the polite academic kind, talking about how women weren't included etc, but without ever pointing out that Habermas just said something was true because he wanted it to be. It is not a claim worthy of being a foundational claim of a whole bunch of academic discourse, it was just the fantasy of a European white man who wanted it to be true. It's the equivalent of Dave down the pub claiming that Lord Lucan lives on his street and everyone spending decades seriously debating the claim, dissecting it and putting forward counter-claims. No-one seems able to say 'Whatever else of worth Habermas has said, this claim was just nonsense, it's not worth our time, let's not waste any more words on it.' Like, in a certain way I feel academics can be quite gullible - if an authority figure in the discipline says something they feel they have to take it seriously.

 

[Brainaddict]

I'd have to agree with your second paragraph. Look at who gets cited: Foucault, Bourdieu, people active back in the 1970s or earlier. Post-war British sociology and cultural studies produced a lot of original work, some of which is still relevant today . . . I say "some" because the game has changed a lot since 1979. Reading about post-1945 British welfare society is like reading science fiction now ("NHS"? "Unions"? "National Insurance"? Jesse, WTF are you talking about?").

You'd think the post-79 slide to catastrophe should have inspired a similar flowering of the collective academic mind, and its analytical skills. . . but apparently not.

(This is a very UK-centric post, and I've not worked there since 2018. But I think it's got some cross-border potential, all the same).

Yep, since the culture studies boom of Stuart Hall etc, I would struggle to name social science or humanities intellectuals of any great heft. And most of the fashions are ephemeral - one year we're talking about 'mobilities', the next year we're talking about 'bordering'. You can actually say the same thing in both of those 'paradigms' and just rephrase them for the new language and it gets seen as an important intellectual contribution. So much output is just pissing about with the latest buzzword of the day. And if you invent the latest buzzword you are an Important Academic, even if nothing you said is of any real import. It's all so weak.

E2a Sorry for going off-topic. But it is vaguely relevant in that working class people will struggle to break into something and will either be disappointed about what they broke into, or will have to accept the framings of the often weak middle class intellectuals who dominate the disciplines.

 

[steeplejack]

Yep, since the culture studies boom of Stuart Hall etc, I would struggle to name social science or humanities intellectuals of any great heft.

Hm.

Judith Butler

Donna Harraway

TJ Demos

Yuval Noah Harari (snobbishly referred to as a "popular intellectual" elsewhere but did much work on the Anthropocene / post-human)

Mark Fisher

not to mention lots of other colleagues who don't have the profile of the above but who are still doing really great / interesting things in individual humanities disciplines.

It's a bit reactionary to just write off these people as "weak" because they're not Stuart Hall. Not really sure what "heft" means, either, or why we should care about it.

 

[Idris2002]

Yuval Hariri. The "Hitler was a humanist" Hariri? That Yuval Hariri?