Tenured Blues: Last Thoughts

I have been slow in writing this last post. Apologies. I will start off a new subject in the next one which might also be a bit out of the ordinary. What I'd like to do here is quickly summarize the arguments I have been making to date and to suggest an overall perspective that allows us to move the conversation forward on the problems of post-secondary education.

I say "problems" because I don't want anyone to get me wrong. I am not defending the status quo. There are problems with universities and with university education; there are changes that need to be made. What we need to do, however, is to think concerted about what those changes should be with an end goal in mind. But, the changes that we need to engineer need to be considered with end goals in mind. Minor, piecemeal, economize, etc. changes will not necessarily do anything, in my view, but mild out the rough edges. I hasten to add that there are a lot of things I think universities are doing right. The data we have for Mount A suggests (whatever this means, and I confess that I am not 100% sure) that our students are, overall, quite happy with their experiences here.

I make this point -- in part by way of summary -- but also because we are, I think, at a bit of a crossroad in education at the post-secondary level. The strikes we have seen at Mount A, UNB, St FX, the near strike at CBU are, I think, signs of this crossroads. In what direction should we be moving? The strikes are about answering precisely this question. They have occurred for more than one reason, to be sure, but if you look at the issues involved in the strikes, you can see that pay levels is not a particularly important issue. The strikes are about other things -- staffing levels, modes of assessment, the arbitrary assignment of penalties to faculty by administrators, etc. The issues are complicated and, of course, there is more than one side (because, if there were not ... well ... there would not have been the strikes).

I think that what these strikes show us is that the system with which we have been working to organize, innovative, and develop post-secondary education is creating conflicts. These conflicts are not, in themselves, bad. Don't get me wrong: no one likes strikes (I was on strike and I did not like it). But, we need to find ways of addressing our concerns before they come to such a point. How can this be done? I'll offer one suggestion and then get back to the point at hand because it feeds in to what I have to say. It really does.

One of the problems we encountered at Mount A was communication. I credit our VP Student Affairs for this observation. It was not a problem of communication in this sense: the faculty did not understand what the administrators were saying (which leads to the belief that if administrators just communicated better, there would be no conflict). Indeed, having been on strike, I can say that the faculty fully understood what the administration was saying. They just disagreed with it and, it turns out, fundamentally. Communication is a two way street. As administrations have developed, they are less connected to faculty than they were in the past. To try to be objective: both sides view each other as not cut from the same clothe. In the past, there were many reasons why there were not strikes but one reason was that administrators and faculty tended to see things the same way because administrators were faculty (more or less).

There were a lot of problems with the way universities used to be run in Canada. This system of common views between administrators and faculty was sexist, racist, and carried with it elements of Christian religious conformity. We should not mythologize it. It was changed for the right reasons. The problem we have now, however, is that the shared community has given way to competing or different perspectives. Conflicts between these perspective can be vibrant and viewed as a sign of commitment. That is not a bad thing. A dialogue of competing perspectives can be a good thing. It is certainly democratic. But, what is clear is that faculty feel that this is not a dialogue. That they are being told things. Their views are not fully considered, rejected out of hand, minimized, or discarded. Left with no other way to make their voices heard and to resist policies that they feel will harm the university and its mandate, faculty elect to go on strike. For me and for my colleagues, this strike really was a last alternative.

What does this have to do with research? It has a great deal to do with it in the case of Mount A because one of the issues that has been causing conflict here is the balance between teaching and research. I have argued repeatedly that Mount Allison is not UoT writ small. It is a teaching institution. Research is necessary; it can and should be encouraged and supported, but we also need to bear in mind that teaching is of vital importance. It is the reason the vast majority of students come here. And, we need to bear this in mind. If we make changes to the university - say, make tenure dependent on winning major research grants, make promotion dependent on number of publications -- we need to consider, I have tried to argue, the outcome of this change. The natural outcomes is that the balance of teaching and research at Mount A will change. If tenure is more dependent on winning big grants than on  teaching ... faculty will change their own balance. They will devote less time to teaching and more time to writing grants. If publications are the mark of promotion, then faculty will devote more time to writing and less to teaching.

Time, economists tell us, is a scarce resource. This does not mean that is available in limited quantities. It means that if you use your time for one thing, you cannot use it for another. Earlier, I tried to explain how I spent my time and how most of it -- during the school year -- was devoted to the various elements of teaching (which included marking and preparation). It is not all I do, but the largest chunk of my time goes to this. I do this in the expectation that my superiors understand that this is the mission of the university -- to provide effective teaching -- and that I am, therefore, doing my job. In the summer, I can  turn to research and writing in a more concerted way. If, however, this balance changes, I need to change my balance. One simple example: we have small internal research grants at Mount A. I don't apply often, but you could get a few thousand dollars to help with research. Because my research in the recent past was local, this was all I needed. Now, however, internal grants might be tied not to one's research but to whether or not one were going to apply for a big grant, say, from the federal government. The result is that my research is either (a) harmed because I cannot get one of these internal grants if I chose not to apply for a big grant or (b) I have to devote more time to getting the big grant. Big grant applications can take just about forever to fill out. It is a very time consuming process. My point is that the drain on my time now becomes greater. Instead of researching in the summer and teaching in the winter, I now have to take part of my summer to apply for a research grant. This lives me in a deficit with regard to actual research (filling out the grant form, of course, is not research). And, imagine in this scenario, that the standards of promotion are increased so as to require more publications. Time being scarce ... where is the time for publication (of which I have to do more) going to come from?

You know the answer. It comes from the only place it can come from: teaching time. Everyone -- everyone I know of, anyway -- proclaims their commitment to teaching but proclaiming something and actually supporting it is not necessarily the same thing. I know a soccer coach who proclaims his love the game and yet discourages people from actually playing the game. It make it difficult to believe his proclamations of his love of the game if he is not interested in encouraging actually existing people to play it. Teaching is the same way. Simply asserting that we are committed to teaching is not evidence that we are actually committed to teaching if everything else we do contradicts that statement. These are the kinds of discussion that we need to have. If we are committed to teaching, we need to create a situation that does not detract from research and supports it but which also maintains the important balance between teaching and research.

Here is the point I want to make as a summary point. I originally began this series of blogs as reply to Richard Gwyn's critique of faculty at universities. I've tried to show that much of Gwyn's critique is empirically inaccurate. Faculty cannot be easily faulted for the cost of post-secondary education if they have no control over it and Gwyn would find that most faculty agree with his perspective: expenses are too high. Faculty are not monks living in cells doing arcane research to the exclusion of everything. Many faculty are remarkably active in the public sphere. Simply taking a look at what faculty actually do will illustrate this. Most faculty prize the balance between research and teaching and they are not the ones who are trying to change it. Indeed, they are in the case of Mount A trying to maintain that balance or at least force a wider discussion before it is changed. There are problems with the university system, but simply saying 'bad profs' will not address the problems. Those who think that it will, are misinformed. At least, that is the contention I have tried to sustain.

Faculty are not just altruistic. Don't get me wrong. Like other people, we want to paid for the job we do. If you have problems with that ... ask yourself whether or not you want to be paid for the job you do. Some faculty are not doing their jobs. But, the evidence we have at Mount indicates remarkable satisfaction from students, suggesting that most faculty are doing their jobs. We need a balance of teaching and research; changing that balance will have implications and will push faculty into doing more research. The result, however, because time is scarce, is that this means less time devoted to teaching.

Ultimately, these are choices that we make. What we need to know are the implications of those choices and not pretend that they do not exist.

Tenure Blues ... The Merits of Lecturing

In my last blog post, I tried to explain that lecturing is the font of much misunderstanding. Sure, some of it is really boring, but the fact that someone is in front of a lecture hall for an hour or an hour and a half does not mean that that is all there is to putting together a lecture. Moreover, I tried to argue that today's lectures are really quite different than the lectures many of us received when we were undergraduates a generation ago. They are complicated educational engagement that take a great deal of time to put together. There is no "teacher's text" book, out of which we crib notes (at least in the humanities and social sciences). My comments were in response to a comment made by Richard Gwyn to the effect that watching a video is more useful than lecturing.

Let us allow that I am right (not a big leap of faith for me but perhaps one you don't want to make so ... bear with me). Let's allow that the point I made in the previous blog are, more or less, accurate:

• Lectures are conceptualized as one part of an educational process that includes a range of media, discussion, student input, etc.
• That good lectures are time consuming to put together 
• That faculty would likely lecture even less if more resources were available to have smaller classes

I don't see these as radical perspectives, but you can check them out for yourself if you doubt me.  This said, these points do not exhaust what should be said about lectures. I have a number of other points to make, which I will try to keep briefer than my previous blogs relating to lecturing. These other points, I hope, go to the heart of any discussion of lecturing. 

1. Is everyone a good lecturer? Clearly, no. Some of my colleagues (as I said in my previous blog) seem superlative. Others are not. Much of that can be chocked up to personality, as opposed to preparation. Some people are just livelier in front of a room than others. Some subjects admit of a more lively presentation than others, as well. This goes, I will take it for granted, for any particular job. I am certain that there are more entertaining lecturers than I. But, that misses the point: should everything we do in the classroom be entertaining? Should the liveliest lecturer be considered the best?  Should we even compare education to watching videos? I watch videos periodically. I like youtube and watch Jon Stewart "best of" clips. Should we compare that ... to education? Would Stewart compare that to education? 

I think one of the problems with talking about the value of lecturing and comparing it to videos (even instructional videos) is that we run the risk of a false comparison. Sometimes, learning things is less than exciting. There, I said it. Some of my less lively lectures to my intro class involve matters that are remarkably important, say constitutionally guaranteed rights. This is tricky legalistic stuff. To understand it as something more than a sound bit ("I support the Charter!") can require care and deliberation. There are lectures that I give on other subject that are, frankly, far more entertaining or even far more user friendly, but this subject deserves a serious treatment in a way that allows student to fully engage the subject. It moves slow and, in my view, rightly so. There issue of whether or not someone is a good lecturer or not might be more complicated. I don't stack up well compared to a video (it can have high production values, a team of researchers, great camera work, interviews -- tracked down by the team of researchers or agreed to by public figures because of potential audience size -- and other "hooks."). But, is that the test of a good lecture? Moreover, as I said in my last blog, the specific lecture in question is, for the faculty member, never the last word on the subject. We design assignments for students to articulate their own views, have follow up or preliminary readings, discussion groups, etc. I am not at all convinced that we should castigate supposedly boring lectures simply because they appear to be boring because education is just not as much fun as comedy. But that is not the test. If it were ... well ... we would turn out post-secondary education systems over to Dane Cook. And, lest my point be lost, the lecture itself is just one part of an engagement with a subject and so comparing my lecture on the Charter to Cook's "atheist sneeze" (if you have not seen it, it is really funny, look it up) is comparing apples and oranges and we are sending the wrong message. Sometimes learning takes time and energy and is less exciting than the things we do for our past times. Does that make it not worthwhile?

2. Why lecture? If there are other options available ... why give lectures? First, because other options are not always available, at least in the form of videos. We would want our post-secondary educational system bound, as it were, to youtube? Videos, to be sure, can be very helpful as part of an overall educational programme. No one is shooting them down or saying "don't use them." But, if one were to just use videos ... would that not make educational a prisoner to what videos existed? What if the video that does exist is out of date? Or, what if is it is wrong? I actually liked the old The Valour and the Horror videos about World War II, but are they all there is about World War II?

I lecture for a number of reasons but one of the reasons that I do lecture is that I can convey information effectively. Among the things that I tell my students is this: you can get the information I obtained to give this lecture; you can read the books I have read. Over the years, I've read ... dozens of books on the Charter and rights, court cases, scholarly articles, public opinion polls, newspaper articles, watched dozens and dozens of interviews ... in addition to the constitution. And my students could replicate this work; there is no doubt about it. But, why should they? If they find the subject important, they can and should research it themselves and, perhaps, write a paper on it. They can and should build up their own expertise and I say this as well. But, for the students who are really being introduced to the subject for what is really the first time ... I can save them a lot of time. I can synthesize all the different sources of information for them, explain the history, draw in comparative perspectives, indicate areas where lawyers or scholars or politicians disagree; flag the key arguments, clear away myths, etc. In other words, my lecture can save them a lot of time. That being the case ... why not make use of it?

What is more, I can use the lecture to set our discussion of the Charter in a broader framework. I can refer back to subject we have already discussed (say, national identity) and forward to subjects we will address (say, diversity issues). In addition to saving the students a bunch of time, I can also contextual information for them and show who it is connected to other aspects of Canada. A lecture, in other words, as one part of a multifaceted educational engagement can be a very effective way to bring students up to speed on important issues relating to their subject matter, while providing background information, facts, and context.

3. A lecture can do something else as well. It can provide students with a model of argumentation that they themselves can use to (a) develop their own ideas or (b) contest the ideas that I am setting before them. In other words, one can use a lecture to show students what a good argument entails. Lectures convey information but, as anyone who has attended a lecture recently knows, they do more than that. They engage important issues and suggest ways of addressing problems. For instance, imagine we were talking about the "democratic deficit." My lecture might provide important information for students -- trajectories of voting, party memberships, key attitudes toward democracy on the part of Canada, the institutional matrix that supposedly realizes democracy in Canada, etc. -- but I will try to include a specific argument in that information. My argument might address this question: why are Canadians opting out of voting? In mobilizing history, polling data, discussions of institutions, etc., I strive to answer that question. Ultimately, I might be wrong but what I am trying to show students is how one puts together a good argument that addressing this issue. In Canadian Studies we, then, take this a step further (not everyone does; it depends on  the discipline). We ask: what can be done. By showing the constituents of a good argument and the moving to another forum (say, class discussion or brainstorming) we can start to apply the same model of good argument to discard weak argument, understand complexity, and -- ideally -- the students will arrive at both a better understanding (something more than, say, youth don't vote) and a potentially better solution.

4. Do students like lectures? The assumption behind Gwyn's comments is that they really don't. But is that the case? I can understand why some people don't like lectures. They are not for everyone. Different people do learn in different ways (some people learn very well independently and like correspondence courses because of that. I don't. It is just a matter of personality and skills). My general sense is that as students go along in their education, they like lectures less and less and rightly so. Having mastered the background information (or, know how to get the background information), they are now looking for ways to articulate their own views (this is why we move from lecture/discussion to seminar courses).

But, not all students dislike lectures. A number of years ago, I raised the idea of video-taking my lectures for a class and then posting the videos on the web (this was one of the academic issues I periodically raise  with classes to get student views). What surprised me was the general rejection of the idea. There were a bunch of reasons students rejected this idea and it still would have been a lecture through a different medium. What surprised me was that students had a lot of good things to say about lectures. Some might have been patting me on the back to win brownie points but I doubt it, and if you knew our students, you would doubt it too. What they liked, they said, was the ability to get information in a concise way and that a video did not "do it" for them the way a live person did. They also said that they liked the ability to stop a lecture by asking a question for clarification or interrupting the lecture before it got going to ask for further information on something I had said in a previous lecture. A live human being and interaction, in other words, were, for them, important components of a lecture.

Each year I lecture to a large intro class. This class has students in it who will major or minor in Canadian Studies but it also has students in it to take electives or distribution credits. When I ask them about lecturing, I get an interesting response. Since this is not their major or minor, they tell me, they are quite content to let me do the work (that is, lecture). They learn from it (or, don't, as they want). But, they tell me, they have more than enough work to do in their other classes and are looking for a way to approach a subject that interests them (which is why they take my course as opposed to someone else's), but in a way that allows them to keep their focus on their major. Lectures, they tell me, do this form them more than, say, a discussion-based format.

This jives with my own experience in discussion-based educational fora. In my intro course, as I've noted, we have both a lecture and a discussion component. As instructors, we are frequently told that students want to articulate their own views. I can understand that. It also important for education and self development. But, what I have also noticed is that not all students want to articulate their own views on all subjects. In other words, when provided with a discussion format, some students opt-in and participate; others opt-out and sit their quietly.

Let me summarize. No one is arguing that lectures are the be-all-and-end-all of education. They are part of a multifaceted approach to learning geared to adults that extends over a number of different courses and over a number of years. Lectures are one part of that process. To argue otherwise is to demonstrate a lack of knowledge of that process. There are good reasons for including lectures in that process. They concisely convey important information, model argumentation for students, and are appreciated -- indeed liked and favoured -- by some students. Education is not a "one size fits all." What is more, to easily reject lectures, or compare them to videos, is to make a false comparison. Sure, a lecture is not as entertaining as a video but is this the message we want to send our students: do it only if it entertains you? 

Tenured Blues or ... Lecturing

Over a series of blogs, I've tried to ask a series of questions for which there are not ready answers. In this blog I want to begin to address lecturing ... one of the concerns that people seem to have with faculty is their supposed reliance on lecturing which is viewed as an outdated, low energy, boring way of teaching. I'll do that but in order to keep this blog reasonable in length, I'll cut off and write a part II another day. I'd like to begin, however, before I get to lecturing, by recapping what this series of blogs is about.

It is about questions I have relating to what we might think of as some individuals' perceptions of what I do in my job. My questions are inspired by critiques of the professoriate that have been circulating in the popular press, largely in editorials. There critiques are not large in number and some of them can be dismissed out of hand and simply ill-informed and hence inaccurate. That is what I have done in the past. Why bother to write about -- or argue or discuss with -- someone who represents a tiny informed minority view? I elected to write a response to comments made by Richard Gwyn, a man I met years ago and for whom I have a lot of respect in large measure because I have a lot of respect for him.  In an op ed he wrote (linked in an earlier blog), Gwyn offered a series of harsh critiques of the work of professors. These don't amount to a logically coherent or consistent argument, unfortunately, but rather seemed more to recycle complaints that float about from time to time. In short order, some of his criticism included:

• Professors don't engage public issues
• Professors spend too much time researching and devote no time to their teaching 
• Student costs are too high and students have too much debt
• Lectures are a bad way of teaching and students get more out of videos

What I tried to show in my previous posts were that professors were, in fact, pretty ordinary people doing an ordinary job that took most of their work week. In other words, rather than shirking responsibilities to students, most of the faculty I know spend the majority of their time on educational matters (preparing for class, evaluating student work, meeting with students to offer supervision). It is not high profile work, but is is necessary. Papers don't mark themselves. I also tried to show that professors are not shrinking violets. A great number do engage public issues (weather with regard to literacy issues, immigrant settlement, tax matters, public history, environmental policy, etc.). Exactly how Gwyn missed all this engagement is a bit confusing to me and does not, in fact, bode well for his research, but ... the fact is that faculty are all over the place doing all kinds of things. Again, many of them might not be limelight things ... but so what? Moreover, engaging the public sphere takes time. The very research that Gwyn condemns, in fact, is precisely what makes for effective public engagement. I don't know about your or about Gwyn but I when I listen to someone ... I prefer to listen to an informed view; not an off the top or even passably "I watched the news last night" view. Informed views based on solid research don't necessarily make for good TV, but they also are what public policy needs. 

The other thing I intimated that we need to recognize is that faculty respect democratic processes. They are not looking to set themselves up as the font of all wisdom. They prefer to provide options and let the democratic processes of the country work. This amounts to a form of engagement that is based around providing information. My colleagues do it all the time. The fact that Gwyn or other commentators don't bother to read their views, however, does not mean that they are not doing it. 

I also suggested that the debt issue was a red herring. Most faculty think that student debt is too high.  In other words, they agree with Gwyn so exactly why he should fault them for agreeing with him ... is another matter that I find a bit  confusing. 

But, let's address another point: videos are more useful then lectures. I don't want to go overboard on this. Lectures are one method and one method only of teaching. Some faculty are quite good at it -- a colleague of mine who  teaches here in the Classics Department draws "rave reviews" and students contend that his lectures really are wonderfully educational. But, this does not mean that videos are not important to education; or that education is an either/or type of thing. I personally ask my students to watch videos (usually feature films but occasionally short documentaries). My students use them in presentations. But, no one that I know sees the options as watch a video or attend a class. And, this is my key point: the problem with Gwyn's argument on this point is that he has set up a false opposition. No one that I know of sees lectures as some sort of ordinary, boring, guy stands in front of the room and talks in monotone all year and students parrot back what they heard-type of thing. 

Let me lay my cards on the table and tell you what I tell the students in my intro class each year: lectures are useful but they are not the end of education. An effective approach to education combines a variety of instructional techniques that is aimed to move students above and beyond simply being passive recipients of messages that come from a central location (be it a lecture of a video). In my academic unit, we work together to design a range of assignment, to make use of a range of media, to organize discussion exercises, and find ways to have students contributing to their own and their colleagues education. We lecture. But, we don't stop there and to suggest --or, rather imply -- that we do is only to demonstrate a lack of knowledge of what actually goes on in the classroom. In my intro class -- where there is a bit of lecturing -- we devote about 50% (give or take depending on the year) of our time to student-led discussion. I'm not looking for a prize ... virtually all of my colleagues do the same thing. Some can't get to the 50% mark to which we in Canadian Studies are close but that is not because they *prefer* to lecture. It is a question of resources and time. Virtually everyone I know who is lecturing extensively would prefer a different combination of educational approaches, but need to work within the available resources. 

The first key point I want to make them with regard to lecturing is that the image of the professor as lecturer and that is it is out-dated. It is a sign of someone who actually has had little experience with post-secondary education today and has not bothered to ask either students or faculty about what actually goes on in the classroom. 

The second key point I want to make is that lectures are time consuming to create. They are not -- or, should not be -- a person standing at the front of the room using worn notes from a decade ago to repeat the same thing that they said last year and the year before and the year before. That does happen. Most of the people I know who lectured that way (particularly in History and Political Science, the disciplines that Gwyn, ironically, likes) retired some time ago. That was one of the ways I was taught when I was an undergraduate student in the 1980s. I found it boring. I think the guy at the front of the room lecturing found it boring. It was what happened them. It is not -- by and large -- any more. 

Again, I can use myself as an example but any of my colleagues will support what I am saying. Lectures are some of the craft. They often involve multi-media (I use maps, stats, cartoons and artwork as well as occasional video clips).  They don't just begin, but rather begin with objectives: "here is what we are going to talk about." They include periodic breaks for brainstorming or discussion (I do try to limit this to one time per lecture because I don't want it to get old). They might also include key words or concepts, alternative perspectives on issues under discussion (so that students don't have to copy what I am saying), extra readings so that students can follow up issues in which they are interested, and conclusions that hit the highlights and key points for students so they can review notes to know if they have "got it." 

A good lecture can take a long time to put together.  My intro lectures take a few hours because they are subjects about which I have been teaching for a long time and because I know my subject. The time is usually taken up review my notes, thinking through communicative problems I might have had last year, and looking for current examples from the news with which students might be familiar (for instance, if I am talking about environmental policy, I might talk about ... say, the tar sands where I used to use the cod crisis).  You can, however, do the math. Imagine that I need to give, say three lectures per week during the school year. I have now already used up nine hours time just getting these three lectures (on subjects I know well) and I have not even gone in the classroom. 

Occasionally, however, a lecture can take a very long time to put together. Every once in a while -- usually once or twice a semester -- one needs to teach a subject with which one is less than familiar. How could this happen? Well ... that is a good question. I teach at Mount Allison University and the truth of the matter (as I noted above) is that there is only so much money that can be put into education. I don't make the decisions about staffing. They are made by someone else who is at a higher pay grade than me and I live with me. What this means is that those of us who run academic units don't always have the instructors we would like to have -- the expert who would be Grade A in the class on that particular subject. There is nothing horrible about this. It happens (sometimes people are on sabbatical, for instance or ill.) And, the general subject might be one with which I (or, some other faculty member) am familiar. The problem is the details. And, there are other obligations. Sometime a course needs to be taught because it is important to what students are learning in their major. A couple of years ago, I had to teach a course that I had never taught before: Regionalism. Clearly an important course in Canadian Studies. It needed to be taught; there was no one else to teach it ... I taught it. 

The result was that the lecture took longer to put together than they do for, say, my intro course. That is fair enough, too. Instead of three hours, I might have been spending six, checking facts, looking over scholarship that I had read but not thought of in terms of a course, reading over census data, or looking up information on regional cultural traditions that I knew existed but now needed to be able to explain to others. One lecture, however, was, for me, a real show-stopped. It was on a subject that was important to regionalism and involved some scholarship I'd read in passing over the years but my reading was enough to know that it was important and I needed to teach it so that the course addressed an important subject. It took my 19 hours to put that lecture together. And, to be honest, I was quite proud of it. You can, I am sure, see my point. Even if one is lecturing ... lectures are not just standing up and talking off the top of your head. They are serious modes of educational engagement that use diverse media and, when taken seriously, are remarkably time consuming. The students who go this lecture got a 1.5 hour lecture; disguised in that were the 19 hours that I had put in to get ready for it.

Why tell this story ... in part so that people know what a lecture is all about. If the lectures you have received seem more like the old-fashioned ones I got in the 1980s ... I am sorry about that. In my classes and among my colleagues, however, I can assure you that we work to set a high bar. We  strive to be accurate and current (both in terms of information and scholarship) to provide data to students, and to raise important issues even if we need to devote considerable time to them. Lecturing, in other words, is about much more than what happens in front of the classroom for an hour or an hour and a half. 

Life of a Prof, or Tenured Blues ... Part II

In a previous blog, I began what will be a series that addresses issues relating to tenure an academics working on post-secondary institutions. The impetus to this discussion is a column by Richard Gwyn that decries tenure as part of a more general critique of academics. In my last blog, I tried to suggest that Gwyn's critique is important not because everyone believes it but because it might be a growing position: tenure is a problem that stands at the root of a broader series of problems with post-secondary education. His argument is that academics are no longer participating in national debates, focused too much on their research, are paid too much, and are devoting too much time to arcane research as opposed to teaching (and participating in national debates). In my last blog, I tried to suggest that part of Gwyn's problem is that he simply does not understand that work day of the average prof. Most of us, I argued using myself as an example, are pretty ordinary people doing an ordinary job to the best of our abilities. I have a middle-class lifestyle and spend most of my time on matters that are directly related to my job. Most of these -- to hammer a point likely into the ground -- are shockingly ordinary but that is what we are paid to do. Most of what we do doesn't show up on a cost/benefit analysis conducted on a macro level of universities. It involves things like providing feedback on student work, preparing for class, and meeting with students.  But, I also think Gwyn's comments are valuable (even while I disagree with them) because they allow us to have a more open discussion of the merits of tenure and what profs do for a living. This blog, the last one, and others in this series are intended as offerings in that discussion. What I'd like to do is go through Gwyn's argument and look at different parts of it to suggest where he "got things wrong" but also open an avenue of discussion for how things might be improved.

This is easier said that done because there are some conflicting claims in Gwyn's piece. For instance, he faults professors for being too involved in their research but then chides the same profs for not participating in national debates to which their research might be applicable. How can, one might ask, someone participate seriously and effectively in the public forum is one does not do good research? Do we want people participating in public debates who are uninformed, particular if they are profs? In other words, good research, I'd argue, is a prerequisite for participating in public debates yet it seems to be one of the things Gwyn does not like.

I will leave this level of analysis for another day. In this blog, my objective is not address the issue of participating in national debates. Gwyn's argument, as he present it, runs as follows: "In the fields of history and politics, where I can claim some knowledge, academics willing and able to take part in national debates have just about dwindled down to two retired historians, Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein, and to political scientists such as Tom Flanagan and Donald Savoie. Most of the rest act like medieval monks secure in their cells."

Its a pithy argument, replete with colourful imagery. But, is it accurate? There is no doubt that Bliss and Granatstein, Flanagan and Savoir are "out there." It is would be difficult to watch CBC TV and not see them. But, are they it? Is there no one else? And, more importantly, I am not at all sure what "willing and able to take part in national debates" means. I'm not trying to play semantic games here. I am honestly confused because participating in "national debates" is actually not part of my job and, as I pause to think about it, I am not sure how I might actually go about doing it. In seriousness, what am I supposed to do: call up CBC and "put my on the air," and say  "I'm a prof and I want to comment on X." How would you, if you were a journalist, respond to that kind of invocation? The odd thing is that as a regular columnist Gwyn has more control over whether I become involved in that kind of national venue than I do. He could interview me, for instance, or convince the folks at the Toronto Star to run my blog as a regular column. 

I don't want to use myself as an example for everything and so I'll refer to the work some of my colleagues do below but I will use some of the things I've done over the years as examples. It seems to me that Gwyn's contention can be subjected to several levels of argument. First, do only four profs in Canada actually participate in national debates? Second, what does "able" mean? Third, what role should profs play in national public policy issues? I'll suggest that on each of these levels, Gwyn's argument is inaccurate. Moreover, this inaccuracy is odd because it highlights not the problems of profs but the failure of Gwyn's own research. More on this below because I don't want to make this a just a critique of Gwyn. Instead, I want to use it to illustrate a broader issue I have with the "profs are bad" argument he is making. 

First, do only four profs (an exaggeration to prove a point, to be sure so we obviously would not hold Gwyn to precisely that number) participate in national debates? Well, I'm not one of those people that CBC calls for an interview on a regular basis. I will be honest. I don't like being on the news. I don't think I'm good at it and the type of slow moving, "perhaps we should think about issue X, here are some other ways to look at this matter, we live in a democratic society and so the finale result debates on what Canadians might actually want," responses I give make for good media. I participate but my participation is often to correct (in a professor-like way) misconceptions or misreporting, raise other avenues for people to consider in a democratic society, suggest (as I am doing here) that we subject statements to  analysis to see if they hold water. Is that participation? 

I have been "on the news" a number of times. I've done a few interviews for radio and print journalism (in areas about which I can speak with some knowledge), spoken to a provincial Green Party AGM, I've tried to keep up this blog over the years and now send out tweets on what strike me as important public issues. I've written a few pieces over the years for non-academic audiences. But, I've also done a few other things. For instance, myself and my colleagues organized a conference (supported by Enterprise NB and ACOA) on regional development in Atlantic Canada; Gwyn actually spoke at a conference I helped organize a fair number of years ago now (and, he did a great job) on citizenship and national identity. This past year, my colleagues and I organized a conference on place and culture and, again, a number of years ago, I was part of a multi-university team that organized a conference on rural economic development. I've also done some work for the Treaty and Aboriginal Rights Research Centre in Nova Scotia, organized a workshop on Specific Land Claims, and participated in an Atlantic Policy Congress focus group session on treaty education. Over the years, at Mount A, we've brought in a range of speakers to talk to our students (usually to a packed auditorium) including a former Canadian ambassador to the UN, a Commission of Official Languages, and high ups in the PCO, former minister, among others. 

In short, when I sat down to look at this list, it did not seem to me to be so bad. Sure, I was not on TV regularly, but since I'm not good at that ... why would I do it? It would be a waste of time for the audience, and for journalists, and detract from national debates. Instead, I've done what I could and worked to engage national issues of importance. I've just not done so in a very public way. Instead, I've tried to bring different communities together (civil servants, business people, labour activists, and academics, in the case of regional development). Is this a failure on my part? When I looked at it, I ended up deciding that it wasn't. 

OK, someone might say, Nurse, you're not Bliss or Foucault but I can concede that you've done some things. They might not be high profile but they are time consuming and publicly oriented, addressing a range of issues from treaty rights to the character of democracy to economic development. Fair enough. You, our rhetorical "someone" might continue to say, are not usual. In fact, a university administrator said precisely this to me two weeks ago as he was articulating concerns similar to those offered by Gwyn. The fact that you do things, he said, does not let those people who are not doing them "off the hook."

And, that is a fair statement but the question of its accuracy is still not demonstrated. Indeed, the way in which Gwyn -- and this administrator (whose a good guy) -- put this issue assumed that faculty were not participating in the public sphere. Why should we make that assumption? In fact, making that assumption might say more about those who make it than it does about professors. One of my colleagues spoke on the radio once per week over the last year, usually on historical issues (I might note an area where Gwyn thinks profs could make a contribution). He had, as it were, a regular gig with a regional radio station. Another colleague who works in the economics department has written a fair amount in local media on tax issues. He's also been invited -- and accepted -- to conduct work for a provincial royal commission and a federation of municipalities. I can concede -- and I think my colleague would -- that tax policy might not be the most exciting issue, but that is beside the point here. He is engaging the public forum in the ways he can. A former colleagues of mine -- who unfortunately moved on to another institution for reasons that I won't get into here -- has produced a number of acclaimed and internationally screened documentary films on climate change, among other things. Does his work count? A final example, a good friend with whom I work regularly here at Mount A has been extensively involved in public education curricular reform and the use of technology in the classroom.

This is not intended to be a definitive list but it is designed to illustrate my point. None of these people (I've left their names off because I did not want to draw attention to them) showed up on Gwyn's list and all are intensely involved in public issues and trying to make a difference by using their expertise. In short, on the basis of my sample, I'd say Gwyn's argument -- that faculty are not willing or able -- to participate in public policy issues is not correct. They might not be on The National every night but they are doing things on a regular basis. If we were to conduct a more extensive search -- say for professors who have been on CBC radio in the last year -- my bet is that we'd get a very long list. 

The question, then, actually much different from how it was phrased by Gwyn and my friend in administration. The issue is not "why are faculty not involved?" But, why do people assume that faculty are not involved? Why does someone like Gwyn -- an intelligent, respected and generally good journalist -- assume that faculty are holed away in monastic cells? 

I honestly don't have an answer to this question. It is, to be sure, a failure of research. After all, I am not all that difficult to find, nor are my colleagues. If someone wants to know what I do in the way of public engagement, all they need to do is ask. So, why didn't Gwyn ask (I obviously don't mean precisely me here since there is no particular reason he would ask me)? I'd actually like to hear what other people think on this question. Why assume that faculty are behaving a more than a bit like a-social recluses who ignore the "real world" when it does not appear to be true? 

Part of the problem, and likely only part, is that most people don't know what profs do. They make assumptions and those assumptions are there confirmed by the people in their circles. We all do this. I complain about the Jays management all the time to my friends who share my views; hence we end up confirming our own views. But my complaining about the Jays is not a public issue or debate or even in the least important. Making a public statement about the failure of post-secondary education if one has a platform and is a respected public commentator is. Some level of accuracy and some level of research might be expected. It seems to me that this is, partly, the real problem. Those complaining about what profs do -- or, don't do -- are so certain they are right that they don't bother to check their facts. 

Which ... brings me back to research, its importance, and why we should not castigate research too quickly. If we actually do the research ... we might find out that our views need to be modified. We might find that profs are making contributions all the time in different but often little-seen ways as befit their skills and abilities. And, if we did the research, we might find a way to avoid a fruitless debate (that is, one that begins from an error in assumption) and have a more productive one. I think Gwyn wants to have a productive debate. In future blogs ... I'll try to intuit what that is.  

Tenure ... or, why don't people like it? Part I: The Life of a Prof

Some people, it appears, don't like tenure. This op ed from respected journalist Richard Gwyn captures the basics: 

University Teaching

I will be frank: this is not a particularly good piece of journalism or even a particularly good op-ed.  If I were using it in class, it is a model of how to *not* make arguments. For instance: it assumes that tuition increases are driven by faculty salary increases (but does not actually look at the ratio of university spending on faculty salaries versus other elements of university budgets), its evidence provides links to links (for example: "As is little known, Canadian professors are the highest-paid in the world, even, astoundingly, 28 per cent better paid than those at public universities in the U.S., no matter all the Nobel Laureates there" ... if you thought that link would take you to table to demonstrate the point ... you would be wrong, it takes to another link that takes you to another link that requires you to buy a book to get the information), and its makes use of sweeping generalization on the basis of a single case study. In other words, one thing we might learn about the jobs faculty do is that journalists might fail our intro courses if they submitted some of the things they write as term papers because they don't meet the minimum levels of documentation or argumentation. 

But, that is snide and catty of me. The critique of tenure is not widespread, but it might be growing. It used to be confined a few voices on the lunatic fringe and faculty could count on their administrators to defend it as a fundamental aspect of the occupations to which they had devoted their lives. The U of S case suggests that tenure and its importance is still recognized but that some administrators (including the outgoing president of U of A) are interested in finding ways to disregard its basic provisions. Their objectives in so doing sound crass when I state them clearly: they were looking to silence or remove potential critics. The crassness, however, is not my restatement but the fact that their objectives were crass and don't have a place in institutions of higher learning. 

This said, I do think we should avoid being snide or catty about this issue. Tenure is important and its importance requires that those of us who support it explain what it is and its importance. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with talking about this issue. Questions (even if misinformed) and discussion are a natural part of a democratic society. So, lets talk a bit about tenure, what people think is wrong with it, and what might be done to address their concerns. I'd like to do this in several parts. First, I'd like to talk a bit about who profs are -- I'll use myself as an example and explain why I think this is important to a consideration of tenure below. In future blogs I'll look at the demands of research and its relationship to teaching at the post-secondary level. Finally, I'll look at what tenure is supposed to do and what it actually does do. My overall conclusion is that a bit of education on this issue transforms concerns about tenure into a non-issue. Reading Gwyn's piece one might get the impression that there is much "sound and fury" here. Their should not be. Tenure is not the problem with post-secondary education in Canada and taking its "off the table" will allow us to focus on what is the problem. 

Before I get to these, however, let me begin by saying that I am a university prof (if you did not know) and I've been one for about 15 years. I don't know what other people think professors do but you might be surprised by its banality. I go to work like everyone else. My office might look a bit different than others. I have more books, for instance, but these are the tools of my trade. Other than that, however, my office is shockingly ordinary. I pride myself on being at work. I leave for work when my daughter leaves for high school. I get in around 8:15 and say until 4:30, when I stroll home (I live in Sackville) to make supper. I spend my evenings doing other shockingly normal things: I watch my kids play minor sports, take them to music lessons, do the laundry, pay the bills, watch the Jays game. From what I can tell, my day is not unusual. 

I get the feeling from reading Gwyn's piece that his image of a professor is that I spend my days trying to avoid teaching so I can do my research. My research is important to me and to my employer (Mount Allison University). They pay me to do it. I like it (most of my research is on different aspects of Canadian cultural history) but it is also my job. If I don't do it, I would not be doing what I am paid to do and my employer would (rightly) have problems with that.

But, during the school year, it is pretty far from all I do. Gwyn does not like lecturing and sees videos as a useful substitute. Perhaps, but lecturing is not all I do. In fact, it is only a small part. I lecture to the large intro class once a week, but most of my colleagues work to make their teaching interactive. I do too. I run small discussion groups for the intro, seminars, meet one-on-one with independent topic or directed reading or thesis students. Moreover, lecturing, or another other form of effective post-secondary teaching, is not just going in to a room and talking off the top of your head. A good lecture communicates important information, it is interactive, logical and responds to student questions. All of this takes time. I teach Canadian Studies and teaching students about Canada requires that I am informed about the things I am teaching. In other words, making up a course takes a long time and requires a lot of work. I like that work, but it takes time because I want to be more than a video. 

Outside of teaching, I do other things. My university requires something called "community service" from me. Again, I am paid to do this. It is not a choice, but an obligation. Generally, again, I like it but it also takes time. It can involve university  governance but it also involve programme advising, reading materials on which students have appealed grades, meeting with students to work through their problems (whatever these might be). Just one example to illustrate my point: one day this past semester I met with a student for three straight hours. She had problems that needed to be addressed. They were and it took that length of time to address them. She was happy when we were done and so was I but I then had the next student meeting, which last almost two hours. So, five hours of my day were taken up addressing the concerns of two students. I don't want anyone to say "what a great guy" but just notice the pattern. These are extreme cases and I should not be congratulated for doing my job but that is my point. I was doing my job. I also have a range of other routine paperwork that needs to be done. I did not make this paper; it is a university rule that I have to "sign off" on pay forms for interns and student TAs. I don't mind doing it but if I don't ... someone is not paid. 

You put this all together and what do you get? Well, you get a pretty ordinary job that takes a lot of time. When we talk about hours teaching, we don't talk about how long it takes to prepare to teach, to meet with students afterward, doing the routine paperwork that needs to be done. And ... you will notice that I have not even gotten to marking. Marking is an amazingly time consuming thing if you want to do it right. Ask yourself this: how would you want your work to be evaluated? Bubble sheets and fill-in-the-blank? That would save a tonne of time, but would it provide a meaningful post-secondary education in the humanities? Would you want commentary? Would you want to know how to improve your work? 

What about the sciences? Well, in addition to everything I do, my colleagues in the sciences run their labs, which is fundamental to both their research and the education of their students. That, too, takes time. My colleagues in music spend evening after evening going to recitals and working with their students. My colleagues in drama devote countless evenings to working with student actors and stage managers. 

My point is this: none of this stuff shows up on the "time cards". The meetings I had with the five students who took directed readings classes from me last semester never showed up as work I did because they are not officially counted toward my contact hours. Thus, someone might say "Nurse was only in class 200 hours last academic year" (I don't know, I have not counted) but that would not touch the surface of how much time I spent with students or preparing to spend with students (for instance, if you are taking a directed readings course ... do you think the prof should have done the readings you are discussing? If you said "not needed" ... how meaningful would you think his or her commentary on your work might be?) or marking student work. In the summers, I work forty hours per week, give or take. During the school year, this figure naturally goes up because there is more work to do. 

Am I well paid? Well ... come look at how I live. I am wary of generalized stats because they don't account for variations and are prone to be thrown off by outliers. For instance, imagine a situation where we have four salaries: #1 is paid $1000.00; #2, #3, and #4 are paid $100. What is the average salary? $325, but 3/4ths of our same made considerably less than the average making the average meaningless from a statistical perspective. (There is also an ethical problem with the "X is paid too much" argument that I will get into another blog.) The better test, for those who want one, is to look at how I live. I have a nice house, a car that is almost paid off, my son has a car but he's 21 and works in the next town. I have a flat screen TV that I bought at Walmart for $325; an iMac in my basement, and a two dogs. I have a nice yard on which my wife has worked tireless for the last 12 years because gardening is one of her passions. But, like others I have a mortgage and my house is pretty ordinary, even if I like it. I'd describe my lifestyle as comfortable and middle class. I don't want for anything but, like a great many other people, I have to think before I make a purchase or go on vacation (this summer we are thinking about whether or not we can afford a brief trip and pay for some needed repairs on the house). There is nothing wrong with that  and that is my point. My lifestyle is roughly the same as my brothers (neither of whom is a prof) or my parents (who were not profs). 

I'll end this Part I here and reiterate my point. Before we demonize profs ... we might want to think about who they are and what they do. The ordinariness of our lives, the regularity of our work, the way in which we try to respond to others needs might strike people as ... well ... ordinary. Knowing this helps up, I think, to proceed to an assessment of the merits of tenure with a clear head. Perhaps I have too stereotyped a view of what others think of profs. The vast majority of us are just trying to do the job for which we are paid and live -- however banal -- a middle class life.