This week the Chronicle published a fascinating essay about academic ghosting. I am quoted in it. The author and I spoke at great length and had a great conversation.
What I find interesting, however, is what she did NOT use from our long talk: all the things I said about the ECONOMICS of ghosting specifically in the context of academic hiring.
Ie, that catastrophic systemic defunding means we no longer have sufficient administrative staff to send the emails to candidates when they are no longer under consideration.
Because it was the administrative staff who sent them back in the day! And now those staff are gone, or overwhelmed with other work.
I said this over and over.
But she wanted the problem to be about morals. Which it absolutely is! Faculty should behave better and ghosting is outrageous and immoral. And it occurs all over the place, as she describes, not just in hiring. And it’s bad.
But. Morals are also a by-product of economics.
Because accountable hiring systems require money, money in the form of administrative staff, and reasonable work demands. IS IT A COINCIDENCE that the Academic Jobs Wiki started the same year as the Great Recession??
Late capitalism wants to pretend otherwise but the collapse of actual human accountability is rampant across all sectors of our economy now because of budget cut after budget cut. Cuts have consequences. Yes it hurts more in academia because of our peculiar structures of intimacy, but in the end, like everything else, it comes down to adequate or inadequate funding.
To say otherwise is to keep participating in academic exceptionalism, that academia owes “more” to the world because it “should be” finer or better. That academics are special people who operate outside the demands of capitalism. Which is the same logic that fuels adjunctification and the imperative to work for free or for peanuts in pursuit of some myth of “higher calling.”
She ends the essay with this: “But some scholars, especially those who are early career, women, and people of color, are trying to deal with these conditions. We are desperately trying to renovate — to make the whole place safer, more welcoming. We are trying to add rooms, to guide guests through the various mazes, to build a more stable foundation. We take on this labor because renovating is the professional thing to do; building an academy where structures encourage us to be accountable to one another, to set and communicate boundaries, and to show up as best we can — that’s the work.
We owe each other more.”
And what is this, but yet another call for “special” academics — the young, women, and people of color — to work for free? To sacrifice themselves, without compensation, in the service of some higher moral imperative of academia? More exploitation in the service of the myth.
Will this never change? Has this myth not done enough damage? Do people never learn? Learn that academia will never love you back? That individual effort CANNOT alter structural failure?
That rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is also its own form of unpaid labor, even as the ship sinks?
So this essay as written is both brilliant and necessary, and completely wrong, at least about ghosting in hiring. It requires money to create and sustain the infrastructure for humane hiring practices. Let’s not gaslight about (the causes of) our gaslighting.
Lol, that Kelsky grifter being salty about not getting free publicity
I did get free publicity? I’m in the Chronicle? Did you not notice? (But you Grifterguys (TM) are not really known for your logic skills – or reading skill – after all).
Brilliant. I was just in a “faculty retreat” – A five hour meeting on our supposed break in the semester, on campus- and the subject of service burdens and pay equity came up. And the highest paid associate professor in the department, said “ we’re clearly not in it for the money.”
Well, I am. This is my job, not my life calling. I bought into the myth, the religious calling -and was fortunate to get it tenure-track job. But how fortunate is it that I’m underpaid, overworked, and that we keep losing more and more administrative assistance. Meanwhile, the stars, rise, through nepotistic networks, and extract more and more of the limited resources that we do have. Does it sound bleak? sure. Are other academics and colleagues talking about this? No. They largely perpetuating the myth- or if they do talk about it it’s in hushed tones.
Thank you Karen (and ignore the haters). it takes courage to say these things out loud, thank you
Thank you, Melissa! <3
Yes, thanks for this post, Karen!
I’m chairing a search committee as an untenured, second-year assistant professor (!!) in a tiny department with no admin support. I still need to send emails letting applicants know they are no longer under consideration. I’m also swamped with my 4/4 teaching load, running an academic support center, and trying to keep momentum going on 3 separate DEI research projects that are supposed to lead into curriculum changes for next academic year.
I hate that I haven’t had a chance to send out the hundred-ish emails yet, but it unfortunately keeps getting bumped to the bottom of my to-do list and most likely won’t be resolved until spring break. It absolutely takes more funding and infrastructural support to change the culture around academic hiring.
It only takes about 60 seconds to compose a form email (“Thank you for interest in Northwest Directional State University. I write to inform you that the position has been filled. We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.”) That email won’t make candidates feel warm and fuzzy, but it lets them know that the search is over. Even if you have a hundred or so applicants, it only takes a few minutes to send out a batch of emails like this.
If the department chair’s administrative assistant doesn’t have time for that, the chair should do it. Or the dean’s admin assistant. Or some HR drone. There are plenty of people involved in academic hiring who can do this work.
I’m old enough to remember when departments sent these notifications out via the USPS. That was actually costly since there was printing and postage involved. Email is nearly free by comparison.
Hey, if it’s not that important to you to follow up with candidates, don’t bother. I’ve been on the losing end of lots of job searches and it never upset me not to be informed. I figured it out after a few months of nobody calling to offer me a job. But if you really see it as a moral imperative, it’s easy to find time for it.