Friday, April 30, 2004

Critical Mass heads for the exit 

At least from her academic post at Penn. She has found that her Ph.D. in the humanities is attractive to private schools (but not for writing standards, eh, M?) and allows those who've gone to teach in independent schools to do what they thought they'd do in the university.
The schools themselves have been as different from one another as people are--but at all of them, the refugees say, entirely independent of one another, that the work they have found in the world of independent school teaching far surpasses the academic life. All say they are able to do the sort of intensive, personalized teaching they dreamed of doing as college teachers, but could not do in a higher ed setting; all say they feel more intellectually alive than they did in academe; and all say, too, that they have a much greater sense of purpose and of professional satisfaction than they did in academe. They are palpably happy, and the differences they are making in kids' lives are real and meaningful. They also have summers off and, having jumped the assembly-line production schedule of the academic track, can follow the far more ethical and constructive course of pursuing their own research and writing projects when and as the spirit moves them. The pay ain't bad, either.
No word yet if Critical Mass will follow Invisible Adjunct off the blogosphere.

This is significant insofar as Erin has been one of the most popular writers about the leftist cant that permeates academia. There are others to read, including Cold Spring Shops and the sheepshead deck, University Diaries (we need to sing Janice's praises more often here), and Academistics and the groupbloggers like Crescat or CT, but it is beginning to feel like the world of higher ed bloggers is getting smaller.


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