Professor X - This Beats Working for a Living: The Dark Secrets of a College Professor
Here's another book for y'all. School is back in session here in the United States of America so perhaps this will be educational.
This paperback gives an insider's expose of the world of the college/university professor by a professor. This came out in 1973, but I suspect that most of the behaviors, habits, foibles and personality traits of professors depicted in this book are still the same today as well as the daily conditions of the academic world. An example told by Professor X is that professors generally lead dull lives, so to make their lives more exciting they start feuds with other professors usually over minor things. For instance, during a committee meeting, a professor became enraged and started an argument with a fellow professor over a $79 chair.
Another example of the behaviors of professors is that although they strongly emphasize to students not to plagarize, professors crib (or steal) material from several textbooks and use the material in their lectures and research.
The author wrote this book anonymously as he would have made a bunch of enemies and possibly would have had to seek employment in the "real world". The reader learns that most professors couldn't make it outside the confines of the academic institution and that professors tend to be rejects from industry and government.
It has somehow been revealed that Professor X is Odie B. Faulk, professor and head of the department of history at Oklahoma State University (located in Stillwater) at the time he wrote and published this book. Most of Professor X's personal anecdotes take place at Oklahoma State University. Odie has a page on the Texas Tech University's library of his donated manuscripts and other materials. One of those manuscripts include this book.
From the back cover:
AN UNCONVENTIONAL TOUR OF THE IVY-COVERED WALLS
Professor X asserts: "The Ph.D. has become a license to steal! The position of college instructor demands little work, less intelligence and no courage."
SALARIES: "Considering their work load, professors are amazingly well paid. A college instructor with a twelve-hour load is in the classroom just twelve hours each week."
ACADEMIC COMMITTEES: "The one committee on most campuses that actually does some work is the one dealing with salaries and fringe benefits. Here the professor members seem inspired, even possessed; they would make old-time labor leaders proud."
Students will read this book with glee, the profession will fume, and the hapless taxpayer will discover why he has to hock his future to pay for his children's college education.
Table of Contents:
page 9 - FOREWORD, PREFACE, AND INTRODUCTION
page 15 - I. ACADEMIC DUTIES
page 15 - Workload
page 20 - Selection of Textbooks
page 23 - The Lecture
page 31 - Educational Television
page 34 - Discipline in the Classroom
page 39 - Tests
page 45 - Grades
page 48 - Committee Work
page 52 - II. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
page 52 - Academic Conventions
page 57 - Writing
page 64 - The Book Review
page 75 - The After-Dinner Speech
page 80 - III. PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDES
page 80 - The Tendency to Anarchy
page 84 - The Professor and His Administration
page 88 - Elitism
page 92 - Pomposity
page 96 - Fads
page 101 - Feelings of Superiority and Inferiority
page 107 - The Educationists
page 111 - Lady Professors
page 115 - IV. PERPETUATING THE BREED
page 115 - Recruiting Graduate Students
page 120 - The Training of Professors
page 127 - Understanding the Profession
page 129 - The End Product
page 132 - V. INDIVIDUAL SURVIVAL
page 132 - Academic Quarrels
page 135 - Office Politics
page 138 - Defense Mechanisms
page 142 - The Route to Power
page 145 - Town and Crown
page 150 - Faculty Wives
page 152 - Faculty Entertainments
page 156 - CONCLUSION, EPILOGUE, AND AFTERWORD
part1, part 2 (links will be back soon)
You're an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I'm not a prof. I'm a student.
He didn't write the book you moron. And why is the professor who did? I don't even think idiots like yourself even deserve a response, but I'm in a bad mood.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify... the professor who wrote the book is an idiot. (Or to be more precise, someone who probably got passed over for promotion and blamed academia for his hurt ego. Whole lotta hurt egos in academia, that's for sure.)
ReplyDeleteI wonder what his problem with "lady professors" were? Maybe they got angry when he called them ladies...
Great post, great blog!