What we talk about when we talk about academia

I had planned on posting something during the week itself, but I was just too tired from daily student traffic to make a post that would have made much sense. The weekend brings coherence! What I would like to recommend to everyone is something OSU gives you access to daily. And that is the website for The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.chronicle.com on OSU computers is free for you and me. You can find the paper version over in the Edmond Low library. The Chronicle covers the academia beat and can give you a better idea of the issues colleges and universities are dealing with. Why should you care? Well, OSU is dealing with many of those same issues and concerns. Plus, if you think you would want to work in academia, especially as a professor, then The Chronicle will be very useful to you as you will learn more about how academia functions, what various hurdles have to be jumped, and generally what life is like on the other side of the lectern. More immediately, I recommend that if you want to be a professor you start talking to your professors about what that life is like. It is easy to get the idea that they just come to class and teach and then have the rest of the week off. Actually, a lot more goes on behind the scenes. A skill that an academic has to have is the ability to do work when there is not a set 8-5 schedule with a boss watching over his or her shoulders. In other words, they have to be their own best task-masters who define for themselves when they are truly off the job.
One other website I think worth recommending is http://www.adjunctnation.com/ . This website takes a look at academia through the lens of adjunct faculty, i.e. faculty who are not on the tenure track and are just paid per course taught. As there are more Ph.D's in most disciplines than there are full-time positions, colleges and universities often rely upon paying a surplus of adjunct instructors to teach their courses for a much reduced wage. I guess you could say this is more of an anti-establishment website than The Chronicle. But if you are thinking about working in academia, you should make yourself aware of the status of adjuncts in academia, for you could be one yourself someday. Guys, it is a buyer's market out there when it comes to Ph.D's, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The reality is that people have jumped all the hurdles to get a Ph.D. and then find themselves teaching at a salary rate not too much better than what a fast food worker makes. I don't mention that in order to try to scare you away from wanting to be a college professor if that is what you want to be. But I do think you should go into it with your eyes open as wide as possible.