Who wants to be an academic?

I have never considered being an academic as a 9-to-5 job. It is not about collective-bargaining for wages and working conditions. It is simply a way of life. Being an academic is not that different from the older historical traditions of a teacher/guru whose life was quite monastic. Dan Drezner has an interesting three-question "sorting hat" test for this:

For those academic wannabes out there, here's a simple three-question survey to help guide you through this very important choice:

A) You are happiest when you see your name:

1. Mentioned on television.
2. Tagged on Facebook.
3. Listed in the acknowledgments of an obscure article written by a former professor for whom you were an RA.

B) It is 2 AM on Saturday morning. You are:

1. Asleep.
2. Still out partying.
3. Feeling an odd compulsion to catch up on Arts & Letters Daily.

C) Which of the following phrases gets you the most excited?

1. "This job offer comes with a 401(k)."
2. "I scored two tickets to the Red Sox game."
3. "Your paper has been accepted without revision."

If your answer to all of the above was (3), then yeah, you're pretty much doomed fated to trying out academia.

Of course, Drezner is looking at an academic at a research university. But, hey, I am there with the compulsion to catch up on A&L Daily. I am used to A&L for so many years now .... In fact, even the link to Drezner's comments was thanks to A&L Daily :-)

One reason for the crisis: MBAs

MBAs are haunted by the thought that the tag really stands for Mediocre But Arrogant, Mighty Big Attitude, Me Before Anyone and Management By Accident. For today’s purposes, perhaps it should be Masters of the Business Apocalypse.

Harvard Business School alumni include Stan O’Neal and John Thain, the last two heads of Merrill Lynch, plus Andy Hornby, former chief executive of HBOS, who graduated top of his class. And then of course, there’s George W Bush, Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury secretary, and Christopher Cox, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a remarkable trinity who more than fulfilled the mission of their alma mater: “To educate leaders who make a difference in the world.”....

Given the present chaos, shouldn’t we be asking if business education is not just a waste of time, but actually damaging to our economic health?

If doctors or lawyers wreaked such havoc in their own professions, we would certainly reconsider what is being taught at medical and law schools.

Amen!
Read the entire piece in the Times (London). BTW, the author of that commentary, Philip Delves Broughton, is a class of 2006 Harvard MBA, and the author of What They Teach You at Harvard Business School, published by Viking

Thanks to my favorite site: A&L Daily