Paul’s Perambulations

My published comment (#253) in response to this article on an apparent spate of suicides at Cornell is attached as a Comment. Many of the other comments related to the rigor of academic programs and the time that faculty spend with students. My response to this is as follows:

No one is super-human; we all face limits on our time and abilities. Research requires a lot of faculty time, and where universities particularly reward research, there will be reduced time for personal contact with the typical student. When you hear otherwise, you are hearing self-serving hype. This is partially resolved by insuring that researchers have few and small classes, but this generates financial issues if your institution is primarily tuition supported.

There is a wide range of academic challenge among various programs at any institution. Generally, the degree of academic rigor corresponds to who has the power and also whether the discipline has a clearly defined and measurable corpus.  If you are faculty in a program with measurable content and more than enough students, you can afford rigor. If you have very few students and you keep with rigor, you will soon have almost no students, and soon no courses and no job.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/education/17cornell.html?th&emc=th

I have been asked Would You Do It Over Again? in conjunction with my retirement from a full-time faculty position at Villanova University. Would I follow the same path today? What would I change? Although it is strictly a theoretical exercise to pretend to reset the clock, some things may be learned from a review of my experience and what worked and what didn’t. On the other hand, my experience may be relevant only for me, and you may find this material to be egocentric.  In any case, I am attempting to respond to some personal questions I have been asked recently.

Would I go into University academics again? I would if it were still 1966, so I have no regrets for my life choice in this regard.  However I would not choose University academic life if I were starting now in 2009.  Intellectually, the high degree of specialization demanded in most academic careers does not accord with my personal academic and intellectual values. One of the nice things about teaching, despite student criticism that my class material is much too detailed and specialized for their interests, is that in fact classroom material is relatively generalist and flexible compared to research specialization. The classroom gets me out of my assigned field, and I appreciate this. Additionally, in 2009 my interest in being a “renaissance scholar” and polymath  (to the extent of my ability) would be treated as laughable and a serious impediment to any employment. Honestly, the academic lifestyle is generally just as respectably dull as it is reputed to be, but there is always the possibility of a rich personal life while maintaining a responsible academic career.

Would I go into Psychology again?  I have enjoyed the field of Psychology, and it was the right choice for me. Something I have learned (especially from teaching History of Psychology) is that many topics and issues of psychology that we claim are “new” in fact have considerable past precedent.  Things cycle and come and go, and I have experienced this in my lifetime.  The key advances in psychology as a science that occurred during my lifetime seem dependent on the discovery of new tools for the field, just as the discovery of the telescope and microscope revolutionized their respective fields. The nineteenth century was revolutionary in changing the zeitgeist for a new understanding of humans and how we study them (i.e., us).  It is somewhat disappointing that nothing of such magnitude has been accomplished during the half century of psychology that my career has encompassed. There have been some breakthroughs regarding the biology, physiology, and chemistry of the brain and nervous system, greatly aided by the advent of new tools and instruments.  Frankly, the rest of psychology has mostly been in the doldrums. I do not see traditional academics (that is, the liberal arts, and psychology in particular) as growth fields for the twenty-first century.  In 1966, an academic career represented an exciting and growing area in which significant contributions could be made.  For example, the vision of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society held the belief that behaviorally based programs such as Head Start could revolutionize the lives of citizens of this country. Things didn’t turn out that way (we got the Vietnam War tragedy instead), but the excitement and hope was there. I don’t sense that feeling today, except when it feels forced and artificial.

In a more general sense, what would I do differently in my life overall? Things are much too inter-connected to enable a person to change any particular aspect without it also changing many other things, and not necessarily for the better overall. I was certainly naïve by today’s standards. I can think of two periods in my life when things felt difficult and discouraging. I found that making major changes in my surroundings/situation was the key to improving my outlook on life. We must be open to what feels like radical change, while still retaining moral responsibility. I am inclined to a Jamesian pragmatism and acts of “will” by which one sets oneself to act as one wishes to feel.