THE SECRET IS OUT:

Exactly how much free time did I have while working in academia? I know I did a lot of work while there, but everything was so flexible that I could not work just about whenever I wanted, only to catch up on the weekend or into the early morning hours. Now things are a little different. The people I'm encountering in my everyday business are different, too. They work. Hard. I'm starting to think that academia isn't just an ivory tower; it's an ivory tower with a big feather bed right in the middle of it. Am I the only ex-academic to notice that?

It's not just the former academicians that are on to the Academic Game. Some years ago an anonymous professor penned This beats working for a living; the dark secrets of a college professor, which is out of print although copies turn up from time to time. There are two aspects of academic work that are particularly annoying: the time devoted to committee meetings, and the inevitable wrangle that arises attempting to schedule extra committee meetings, when some individual who lives at a distance from campus rules out meetings on days he's not committed to teaching. Why are the research days of people who live closer to campus and set up to work from home less valuable?