Why I'm walking away from one of the best jobs in academia

He's leaving a well paid job that gives him considerable influence because there are serious problems in academia that cant be solved easily. I find it difficult to imagine that he will find a alternate career path without that issue. Every profession/industry has serious systemic problems. I think the author needs to either search his heart more deeply to find out the real reason why he's leaving his job, or reconsider his decision to leave it if it's not too late.

I&#x27;m not quite as demoralized as the OP author; but I can say that now that I have seen how the sausage is made, I have a lot less respect for the institution and the process. These places are stuffed with lazy, unmotivated (or perhaps demoralized) risk-averse people[1]. Crab mentality? Check. There is also every kind of greedy shameful opportunist charlatan on the campus; they can smell money from a mile away, and they will soak it up like a sponge while they produce nothing (I&#x27;m talking mostly about gratuitous mid-level administration). Industry is just as bad, companies will engage in so-called &quot;partnerships&quot; which are mainly a way for the legislature to give tax money to profitable businesses, using colleges to launder it. I&#x27;m embarrassed to admit that I have seen it first hand, and could do nothing (nothing reasonable) to stop it. I can also say that it will not help your career if you refuse to participate. I can&#x27;t wait for some of these people to retire or succumb to entropy, of even better if some of them are jailed. I suppose it is naive to hope that their replacements will be better.<p>I have a couple of words of advice for the guy though. Don&#x27;t worry about the jerk who watched breaking bad in class as long as he isn&#x27;t bothering anyone else. Also don&#x27;t worry about the ones who sit behind and watch along. It&#x27;s their prerogative if they want to pay $50 bucks to have a place to check their social media and watch reruns. They&#x27;re doing a public service, subsidizing the other students&#x27; education.<p>Re: Online Ed. Even though it currently sucks, it&#x27;s here to stay. It&#x27;s in beta right now, and it may change a lot before some college actually gets it right, but it isn&#x27;t going away and that&#x27;s a good thing. Colleges that are followers, (ie: Blackboard customers) are going to lose big. The winners will be the ones who continue to innovate until they nail it, the rest will be decimated and or become testing centers.<p>As in every profession, there is a cohort who associate one&#x27;s ability to find dark trousers and a collared shirt with &quot;professionalism&quot;. Whoever thought that there was no conservatism at the Uni was wrong. Ignore them if you can, placate them if you must. Spend your energy where it does the most good.<p>[1] - And also some very fine people.

&gt; Online education isn&#x27;t the solution<p>Eh, speak for yourself, it is the solution for millions of people who want to <i>learn</i> something, not only have the degree as an end goal...

&gt; When I started out, I believed that government regulation could solve every problem with relatively simple intervention.<p>You don&#x27;t have to be a tea-partying libertarian to see that such an idea is shockingly naive.

&quot;<i>The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college.</i>&quot;<p>I suddenly think I agree. But I don&#x27;t expect it to happen.<p>The major downside, of course, is that a significant fraction of young Americans <i>won&#x27;t be able to go to college</i>. (The corollary, that they won&#x27;t be able to find jobs, is pretty much taking care of itself: they won&#x27;t be able to find jobs anyway.) By and large, going to college is a good thing in itself: being exposed to challenging ideas and different people is good for an individual and for a democratic populace, even if <i>I</i> (or you) don&#x27;t agree with the opinions someone ends up having. But in an environment like this, <i>that</i> isn&#x27;t really going to happen.<p>The other downside is that some people (a small minority?) with limited financial means won&#x27;t be able to reach their full potential. Take someone who could have gone to MIT and invented brilliant new things after being exposed to the full range of difficult ideas. Instead, they go into a job training program and come out excellent at a limited range of very marketable skills. (In the article&#x27;s situation, essentially all computer science, software engineering, information systems, and so on <i>are</i> job training programs, so....) Perhaps that&#x27;s actually a positive, as far as the individual is concerned, but it&#x27;s certainly an opportunity cost overall.

Education today puts way too much emphasis on the education as the end instead of it being a means to an end. Students are, understandably, so caught up in achieving a grade to &quot;level up&quot; instead of a) really learning the material and&#x2F;or b) reflecting on whether the material is interesting enough to spend their life pursuing.

Well, I wonder what he plans to do next. My mother always said &quot;It&#x27;s easy to criticize (or destroy) something. It&#x27;s hard to create.&quot;<p>I agree there is a lot wrong with the world currently. But I also wonder at the wisdom of his decision. I walked away from a job at a Fortune 500 company for health reasons. This seems like someone who is extremely privileged, doesn&#x27;t really appreciate how privileged they are, and is throwing away a position not easily gotten back if the decision to go turns out to be one he regrets. Perhaps he won&#x27;t. He has been published in various venues and done a lot of different things. Perhaps he will readily land on his feet. But I wonder if he will discover that it isn&#x27;t any better anywhere else and regret this choice.

I hear the guy, but it rings hollow. His life has been nothing but success, reading through his piece does not reveal any true failures career-wise. I fear this decision is going to be taken back in a few years and he will become faculty again as he realizes that he really was that one very lucky person, an afford not given in other circles. Best of luck to the guy as he figures out life in not roses and that taking a stand can be very stupid and not nobel, something I think he thinks he is doing here.

The author is completely spot-on that the problem arises with the funding system. It&#x27;s a classic case of policymakers confusing correlation and causation, and subsequently cause and effect: They have assumed, and continue to assume, that getting a college degree _causes_ higher employability&#x2F;earnings&#x2F;etc., even though the data only indicates _correlation_; consequently they said &quot;more must be better&quot; and tried to push as many people into college as possible in a misguided attempt to cause higher wages.<p>The truth is more along the lines that high employability for abstract (and disproportionately high-paying) professions is highly correlated with academic ability, and it is the latter that accounts for more of the overall success than the degree itself. In other words, many high-earning people would have some of those higher earnings even if they didn&#x27;t go to college at all. The fact that many of those people choose to go to college is an _effect_ of that ability, not a cause.

I have always believe we didn&#x27;t have a student loan debt problem but a student loan loaning problem. Not everyone deserves let alone needs to go to college.<p>The idea that the government will loan money to people regardless of major is just wrong. Worse, since the government is paying a schools are accepting of such federally guaranteed money then why cannot the government dictate costs as it does with medical care? Why cannot it state, in your area one hour credit is worth X. We will not loan more than that. Textbooks cost Y.<p>Schools, both public and private, are mills to take in effectively free money to pay out in seriously overpaid positions as football coaches and administrators (college Presidents and such) all the while many rest of very fat endowments.

The Vox article lists his name as Oliver Lee. From his bio at the bottom plus an Atlantic article [1], it appears his full name might be Oliver Lee Bateman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington [2].<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;education&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-case-for-grade-inflation&#x2F;373251&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;education&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2014&#x2F;06&#x2F;the-cas...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;oliverleebateman" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;in&#x2F;oliverleebateman</a>

&gt;The quickest and most painful solution to the crisis would involve greatly reducing the amount of money that students can borrow to attend college.<p>Ya that won&#x27;t happen. The fed wants their share of the pie as well, and since you can&#x27;t get out of your student loan, even through bankruptcy, the government will eventually get their money back plus interest. There&#x27;s no incentive for the government to reduce it. If anything they&#x27;ll increase the funding so they&#x27;ll get more interest out of future generations. Also college being the de facto next step after high school it&#x27;ll be like this for at least decades to come.<p>You&#x27;ll have to be like the Japanese tsunami stone markers: &quot;beware of tsunami and don&#x27;t build below this point&quot;, and tell your kids &quot;beware of easy money and make sure it&#x27;s worthwhile&quot; but it&#x27;s gonna be pretty hard to go against the government system.

A great quote (that I&#x27;ve said a few times myself, but I&#x27;m humble and don&#x27;t need my name associated with it) from an article[1] linked by an article[2] linked by the post:<p>&quot;<i>I bring up my own experiences as a reminder that if the plural of anecdote isn&#x27;t data, the singular of it sure as hell isn&#x27;t, either.</i>&quot;<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;5&#x2F;8736591&#x2F;liberal-professor-identity" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;5&#x2F;8736591&#x2F;liberal-professor-identi...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;6&#x2F;3&#x2F;8706323&#x2F;college-professor-afraid</a>

Seems like there should have been 100 footnotes: *in the university I worked at, not all of academia.

&gt; I was a cultural historian, in command of critical theory and immersed in the latest and best work on gender and sexuality...<p>So is the real reason you&#x27;re giving it up because you&#x27;ve realized that critical theory is a load of crap? No? It&#x27;s &quot;the institution&quot;&#x27;s fault? Suuure it is.

&gt; Finally, I realized not even students were too invested. When my best friend visited my campus to give a talk, he observed one of my lectures. I&#x27;ve got many shortcomings as an academic, but lecturing isn&#x27;t one of them. I&#x27;ve been on TV, radio, podcasts — you name it. By professor standards, which admittedly aren&#x27;t that high, I could rock the mic. But while my friend sat there, semi-engrossed in the lecture, he found himself increasingly distracted by the student in front of him. That student, who like all in-state students was paying $50 per lecture to hear me talk, was watching season one of Breaking Bad.<p>Well, a lack of investment by students is a plausible interpretation. Another is that the OP isn&#x27;t as good at lecturing as he likes to think.