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Introduction: After posting on David Rubinstein’s remarks on his “cushy life” as a sociology professor at a public university, I read these remarks by some of Rubinstein’s colleagues at the University of Illinois, along with a response from Rubinstein. Before getting to the policy issues, let me first say that I think it must have been so satisfying, first for Rubinstein and then for his colleagues (Barbara Risman, William Bridges, and Anthony Orum) to publish these notes. We all have people we know and hate, but we rarely have a good excuse for blaring our feelings in public. (I remember when I was up for tenure, I was able to read the outside letters on my case (it’s a public university and they have rules), and one of the letter writers really hated my guts. I was surprised–I didn’t know the guy well (the letters were anonymized but it was clear from context who the letter writer was) but the few times we’d met, he’d been cordial enough–but there you have it. He must have been thrilled t
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1 After posting on David Rubinstein’s remarks on his “cushy life” as a sociology professor at a public university, I read these remarks by some of Rubinstein’s colleagues at the University of Illinois, along with a response from Rubinstein. [sent-1, score-0.375]
2 (I remember when I was up for tenure, I was able to read the outside letters on my case (it’s a public university and they have rules), and one of the letter writers really hated my guts. [sent-4, score-0.264]
3 Looking for a purpose in life To me, the underlying issue in Rubinstein’s article was his failure to find a purpose to his life at work. [sent-10, score-0.362]
4 To go into the office, year after year, doing the very minimum to stay afloat in your classes, to be teaching Wittgenstein to a bunch of 18-year-olds who just don’t care, to write that “my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation”–that’s got to feel pretty empty. [sent-11, score-0.676]
5 ’s: at some point they get a feeling that their research has no real point and they can’t really motivate themselves to go further. [sent-22, score-0.241]
6 For example, if your field is cosmic ray physics, you keep chugging along, putting experiments into space to estimate the cosmic ray spectrum. [sent-27, score-0.314]
7 The key economic point was identified in this column from atheist-hating pundit Charlotte Allen: The article was a hoot and a half. [sent-55, score-0.323]
8 The point of Rubinstein’s Weekly Standard piece was to ask whether states and their taxpayers ought to be in the business of funding expensive research universities and equally expensive research-university culture. [sent-63, score-0.433]
9 I think Allen overstated Rubinstein’s hoot level–I’d rate his article as half a hoot at best–but she zeroes in on the same point that I had emphasized: the question of whether public universities should compete for top scholars. [sent-79, score-0.788]
10 ” On one hand, public universities educate millions of students, many of whom could benefit from being exposed to top researchers. [sent-81, score-0.349]
11 Take away top researchers from all these universities and you’re limiting the exposure of students to the best ideas. [sent-91, score-0.376]
12 ) If you give up on top research at public universities, you’re removing a major channel for education, research, and technological progress. [sent-92, score-0.296]
13 I have colleagues in European universities (where professorships are much less cushy than in the U. [sent-94, score-0.425]
14 ; I think David Rubinstein would largely approve of the European university system), and they really do get less done. [sent-96, score-0.239]
15 On the other hand, budgets are tight, and funding for universities competes with other priorities, such as new highways, bigger prisons, and all the other good stuff that goes into our state budgets. [sent-98, score-0.275]
16 The easy answer would be to continue to compete for the top researchers but to peg retirement benefits at a more reasonable level–but I assume that for legal reasons this can’t really be done. [sent-100, score-0.334]
17 So I agree with Charlotte Allen that it’s not so easy–but, from that perspective, I’m surprised she’s so supportive of Rubinstein’s article, where he seems to argue that it is so easy, that states should simply make university professor jobs less desirable. [sent-101, score-0.369]
18 I think part of the motivation is hidden in Rubinstein’s striking remark that “my main task as a university professor was self-cultivation. [sent-104, score-0.469]
19 ” In his original article he wrote that his “main task as a university professor was self-cultivation” and that he spent very little time on teaching. [sent-119, score-0.462]
20 The system has allowed people like him, who do the minimum possible level of teaching and service, to slack off once they get tired of doing research. [sent-123, score-0.308]
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