The geek’s March Madness, revisited
Since we’re gearing up to watch the Elite Eight games to see who makes it to the Final Four, I wanted to revisit how our geek’s March Madness picks panned out. Obviously enough, our choices aren’t going to help anyone win their pool–Kansas, BYU, Wake Forest, and Duke (the lone remaining contender)–though this group didn’t fare any worse than my actual picks. And I still can’t figure out how Kansas let us down!
To make our picks, we used numbers from this poll conducted by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, which accounted for graduation rates (GSR) and something called “Academic Progress Rate” (APR), along with a more subjective sense of academic reputation. For all the details on our how we came up with our semi-academic measure for making our picks, go here; to see bracket-by-bracket analysis, go here and here, too.)
Here are how the Elite Eight fare, according to our academic power poll (listed alphabetically). Note that the graduation rates among the eight teams is not stellar, though some of the programs are probably impacted by early entry by underclassmen in the NBA draft. Also, an Academic Progress Rate (APR) of 925 or lower could put a program at risk of losing scholarships:
Baylor: 989 (out of 1000) APR / 36% GSR
Butler: 964 APR / 90% GSR
Duke: 989 APR / 92% GSR
Kansas State: 900 APR / 62% GSR
Kentucky: 979 APR / 31% GSR
Michigan State: 985 APR / 58% GSR
Tennessee: 924 APR / 30% GSR
West Virginia: 960 APR / 44% GSR
Have a good weekend watching the games!
“U.S. President Barack Obama picks his winners for the 2009 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament” by Pete Souza from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, public domain
Tame the Teaching Workload First
When pondering an escape from the ivory tower, you probably think about becoming a lecturer or a classroom teacher. This reaction is natural since teaching is a valuable, concrete skill. You might even be able to make good part-time money at it if you get a job teaching the SAT or the LSAT.
But don’t make the leap just yet, especially if you want to leave academia because you had trouble managing your classroom time. Kerry Ann Rockquemore describes the impact of the “Teaching Trap” over at insidehighered.com, and it’s clear that teaching is one of the classic tasks that expands to fill the time available.
If you thought teaching took up too much time when you were in academia, a change of scenery won’t help you. Whether you’re teaching the SAT at Kaplan or teaching a class at a public high school, teaching will continue to take up all of your time unless you improve your time management skills. Visit my tips on how to tame your paperwork, and try these four tips, all after the jump:
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To whom it may concern: Rejection letter do’s and don’t's, part 2
As I mentioned the other day in this post, I have received a late spate of rejection letters this week. I’m assuming it must have to do with HR compliance or something, so maybe a few more will be on their way soon. Yesterday, I received a new kind of bureaucratic B.S. rejection, one that is actually sent from HR but masked as if it’s from the (unnamed) “Search Committee Chair.” (OK, at least it’s not as brutal as the prom rejection pictured to the left! Ouch!)
In this follow-up post, I’m dealing with some of my personal pet peeves when it comes to application correspondence, along with some of the nicer touches I’ve experienced in the past. Let us know in the comments if you have anything to add to the list or if you have your own stories you’d like to tell.
Transfer Your Skills: Turning Your CV Into a Resume
Many academics work on building a CV, not a resume. However, you’ll need a resume for the hamster world, and CVs and resumes are two different animals.
For starters, the resume is much shorter. You can list your experience in reverse chronological order, but if you have a long work history or you are a career-changer, then you may wish to list your experience into several groups:
Relevant Experience: Here you list the jobs you performed that are similar to the job to which you are applying. For example, if you are applying to work as a copy editor, you may want to list the fact that you worked on your department’s grad student newsletter or you had a side gig as an editor.
Other Work Experience: Even if some of your jobs weren’t relevant, you still need to list them to convince a potential employer that you are not prone to sitting on the sofa eating bonbons and watching paternity test results on Maury Povitch. Even if you are prone to Povitch’s paternity test shows, you don’t want your employer to know.
Freelance Experience: You may or may not want to list this separately. If you’re applying for a writing gig, and you’ve written as a freelancer, then you should list this section under relevant experience. But if you did freelance work to build up other skill sets that are important but not directly relevant to the job, then list it in this section.
An Important Note: Resumes are much shorter than CVs. You may have heard that all resumes must be under one page. This is not true. My resume is just under a page and a half, and no one has ever told me I didn’t get a job because my resume was too long. I usually didn’t get the job because my skills and experience didn’t match their needs.
A resume’s goal is to let future employers know what you can do for them in as short a space as possible. If you have a long work history that will benefit the employer, then don’t leave anything out just because of some obscure rule you may have heard in a high-school typing class. That said, you don’t want to go on and on, either.
Any more questions about resumes? I’m happy to answer. Also, if you’re not sure how to word certain aspects of your resume, join LinkedIn, and read what your contacts have posted.
Image of “human computers” in the NACA High Speed Flight Station “Computer Room”, Dryden Flight Research Center Facilities, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
What to look for: Perspectives for prospectives’ campus visits
Prospective grad students get to be jetsetters this time of year, visiting programs all around the country that have accepted them. Congratulations to them–you really deserve to be wined-and-dined a bit, after all the hard work and anxiety of the last few months! With the benefit of hindsight and experience (both as the woo-ed and the woo-ers), we wanted to provide a few (hopefully) helpful pieces of unsolicited advice on what to look out for when you prospectives are trying to make sense of your visits, since the whole process can be wearying and daunting.
Please jump in with any questions, prospectives! And, for those of us on the other side, feel free to offer more unsolicited advice–as well as any funny stories you have, in the comments section below.
1. Don’t feel intimidated: There are a bunch of scary and scary smart people you’ll be meeting in the few but very action-packed days of your campus visit, from (obviously) the faculty to the grad students to your fellow prospectives. You’ll naturally be in awe of the faculty, particularly the big names who probably got you to apply to the school in the first place, and you’ll probably stay that way through a good part of grad school. But you’ll also come to realize that they’re living, breathing people behind the voluminous CVs, important books, and glamour-shot dept website JPEGs. The sooner you come to this realization, the easier your grad school future will be, since these are the folks you’ll be taking your classes with and asking for advice.
Broke-Ass Schools: The University of Maine
Lest you think this site is California-centric, never fear. The Broke-Ass School virus has spread to the East Coast, specifically to the University of Maine. A working group has recommended eliminating 16 majors, including public administration, theater, foreign languages, women’s studies and music.
The cut to foreign languages is drastic: “… the memo recommended the elimination of the majors offered by the MLC [Modern Languages and Classics] department, including German, French, Latin and Spanish.”
Not to focus on one scholarly area in particular, but what is with the urge to cut foreign languages? If the argument is that the foreign languages cannot be “monetized,” that’s ridiculous. Any business major with a lick of sense should at least minor in a foreign language to help open up potential markets abroad. This working group is showing a little pity by suggesting that the university should continue to offer a minor.
The real wake-up call that should apply to Post Academic readers is that the proposed plan will “eliminate 80 faculty positions across the five colleges by 2014.” As if humanities grad students didn’t have enough to worry about.
Plan would eliminate 16 majors, 80 faculty [The Maine Campus via HuffPo]
Languages students react to proposed cuts in majors [The Maine Campus]
Resources: LinkedIn
Networking is one of the most painful parts about building a career, especially if you are a shy person who prefers to have a nose in a book. I consider myself one of those shy people. I also liked to believe that I could let my merit speak for me and that I didn’t have to be “fake” and schmooze my way up the ladder.
However, I discovered that networking is really just making acquaintances—and possibly terrific friends—who happen to have the same career interests you do. Think of how you make friends after moving to a new town or starting a new stage in life. You probably ask friends you currently have if they know anyone in that area or that school. Then you spend time with those people, and your circle of friends expands. And that’s all networking is, except you might talk about career trends more, and you can’t drink as much, lest you embarrass yourself in front of a potential employer.
The Web site LinkedIn.com is a way for you to get accustomed to networking. If you’re already on Facebook, then there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t open an account on LinkedIn, which is like Facebook, only with more resume info and fewer embarrassing photos.
By signing up on LinkedIn, you can find friends of yours, and you can also search for specific companies. When you perform a company search, you can find out if you know anyone who works at one of those companies. A connection can work behind the scenes to help you get hired at a job. It isn’t fair, but, as Arnold writes about the myth of pure merit, networking can get you a job, especially if a company can choose only one applicant from a pool of equally worthy individuals.
**As always, this post isn’t intended to be an ad, but if we come across a site that will save you time or get you a new job, then we’re plenty happy to spread the word.
The latest from the MLA: Worst. Job Market. Ever. (Or in 35 years)
Unfortunately, the title of this post is no exaggeration, unless there’s some fishy accounting to explain otherwise. This little nugget from the MLA via an Inside Higher Ed news blurb (forwarded to me by Caroline) all but confirms what many of us have known empirically or surmised: that the current manifestation of the job market is the worst ever — or at least since almost all current first-time job seekers were born. According to a MLA midyear report, advertised job openings dropped from 1,380 English positions in 2008-09 to a projected 1,000 positions in 2009-10; for foreign languages, the drop went from 1,227 to a projected 900. Most startlingly, the raw numbers indicate that this the fewest number of job openings in at least 35 years (see Figure 1 from the MLA report). For job seekers looking for their first tenure-track position, the stats may even be worse, with only 165(!) T/T Assistant Prof positions in English and 97(!!) in Foreign Languages advertised in the “big” October 2009 Job Information List (see Figure 5 and Figure 6, respectively).
Check out how quickly this decline has hit the profession:
Year: Total Job Openings (English numbers/Foreign Language numbers) and Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Openings in Oct 2009 (E/FL)
2005-06: 1,687 E/ 1,381 FL total and 412 E/ 231 FL Asst Prof
2006-07: 1,793 E/ 1,591 FL total and 474 E/ 267 FL Asst Prof
2007-08: 1,826 E/ 1,680 FL (The highest number of openings since 1999-2000) and 384 E/ 244 FL Asst Prof
2008-09: 1,380 E/ 1,227 FL and 299E / 236 FL Asst Prof (Keep in mind that many, many openings were cut after they were advertised in Fall 2008, at various stages of the process)
2009-10: 1,000 E/ 900 FL total (projection) and 165 E/ 97 FL Asst Prof
Broke-Ass Schools: So Goes the UC, So Goes the Nation?
The University of California has released suggestions for easing its budget crisis. Some of the suggestions seem genuinely reasonable, but they raise legitimate questions. Here’s a list of the suggestions, followed by Post Academic comments:
1. Establishing three-year degrees: Many students graduate in three years to save money, so the university is changing to fit student habits. However, the three-year plan all depends on the major. For example, since engineers are so vital to everyone’s safety, perhaps they should stay in a little longer.
2. More online courses: Uh, since when did the UC become the University of Phoenix? Then again, other states, such as Massachusetts, have incorporated more online courses. They should probably be an option for juniors and seniors, though, as students need to develop the discipline to see online courses through. Someone who has just entered college and who isn’t being monitored by parents and teachers is more likely to blow off a course.
3. More out-of-state students: This one seems inevitable. But what about all the students from California who are applying to UCs?
4. Making Berkeley and UCLA more expensive: What are the other schools, chopped liver? Option No. 3 would be preferable to this, as it would punish students who got into Berkeley or UCLA and happened to live nearby. They shouldn’t have to go a long distance and pay the dorm fees if they don’t want to.
What suggestions would you offer? What is the UC overlooking, and is there anything that other systems can learn from these choices?
UC panel proposes three-year bachelor’s degrees, other big changes [Los Angeles Times]
