THE SANCTION OF THE VICTIM. That's Atlas Shrugged language for "achievers have to consent to be looted and mooched in order for the looters and moochers to exert their power." It leads to a curious form of vanguardism in which the emergent order of a self-organizing society has to be organized by John Galt. The analogous argument in cultural studies is "false consciousness" in which people go along with existing systems of oppression until the vanguard does some consciousness-raising. The problem with both visions is that people subject to mooching, or to oppression, as you wish, do have the option of finding something else to do.

Where I go to graduate school, the senior faculty members have an abysmal publishing record, yet advise the graduate students to ‘publish or perish.’ They take a year’s worth of sabbaticals, while graduate students teach three first year composition classes and attempt to write a dissertation in their ‘sparetime.’ My alcoholic dissertation advisor lives in another state, and I've been left without any sort of faculty mentorship.

In previous posts, I've suggested that faculty members are complicit in the erosion of higher education. The graduate student lament suggests the complicity doesn't end there. I could start with "why enroll in a graduate program where the senior faculty aren't keeping current?"

The reality is this: perhaps at other Universities, graduate students are brought in to actually be trained as scholars. However, my people (the defeated, the disillusioned) know that we are cheap labor, period, doing the jobs no one else wants to do. I’d be far less defeated if I felt I received an actual education: just one-quarter of what I give to my students.

So opt out.

Graduate school, at least in my experience, is not about the quality of one’s research: it’s about efficiency. I was even advised, in one of those rare moments in which I received something that vaguely approximated mentorship, that I should switch my dissertation to multicultural studies because it’s 'hot right now.'

That's probably the best reason to opt out. I've spent many a day in the interview suite, speaking with aspiring colleagues, and I'm not alone in thinking that too many of the job candidates look the same (perhaps it's "representative agents" or "unit roots and cointegration" rather than multicultural studies) and their willingness to investigate the latest academic fad signals something other than the inquisitiveness and initiative of a successful scholar.

We are defeated because we came in the door, with the love of our discipline fully intact. We are then told to ‘give up the individuality thing and package yourself, because it’s a corporate world, baby.’ It’s the corporate world and we graduate students are the bottom feeders. In my discipline, there are very few jobs available and in all likelihood, I will be working at Sears next year. I’m defeated, because I’m a devoted, good teacher. I’m defeated because I see faculty members with twenty-times my income spend a year on sabbatical, while I write countless letters of recommendation on behalf of my students. I ask one student, “why aren’t you asking an actual PhD for this recommendation to law school,” to which he responds: “I don’t know them, they don’t know my name, they’re never around.

So yes, the faculty are complicit in abandoning the students, but I don't see the point in pursuing a meaningless degree in a field (is it one of the evergreen disciplines) with no job prospects, especially where the faculty have apparently given up on their Ph.D. students.