Académie Confidential

In his inspiring book Kitchen Confidential, author and chef Anthony Bourdain crafted a text that deftly described various personalities in the restaurant business. While names were changed—or so he claimed—archetypes were blatantly and often rudely described. While most of us are not in the restaurant business, the vicariant view of his vision in the industry he knew so well was intriguing and shocking.

This project takes a similar task, but I will pull the blanket back on archetypes instead of the restaurant industry as I see them in US Academia. I am a tenured faculty member—and Full Professor—at a mid-tier state University in the United States.

You can be well known in your intellectual circle, or you can be well known at your institution, but not both.

Archetypes

1. Academia — A Perverse Incentive Structure for Any Business
2. More for Less — Economics of Students & Tuition
3. What does it take to get ‘into’ academia
4. Education in the US is a great thing until it isn’t (white ivory tower when > MS)
5. How a tenure track route defines your sense of self-worth?
6. Always working on paper/grant 
7. Stepping on everyone’s necks on their way up 
8. Deadwood from the previous generation
9. What now. Tales from actually getting tenure 
10. Differential standards — 1 pub every few years vs many each.
11. Not getting tenure, over and over 
12. But I work on humans 
13. Falling Upwards 
14. Administration is still an ‘old boys’ club.
15. The ‘Tailhook Pilots’ of Academia — Racist texts, misappropriating funds, Deans as Theranos.
16. Not my job — Support staff in Academia
17. Not willing to put my name on anything 
18. Tasked for all the committees 
19. Incompetence Means We All Suffer—Nigerian Contractors & Mandatory Training
20. Shared Governance—Let’s All Pretend You Have Input.
21. Full Professor — What now?