Publish or perish has been a time-honoured rule of the game at America's elite universities by which quality work is rewarded with tenure and a professorship. How come, then, so many productive scholars of international distinction now find themselves publishing and perishing? What changes in academic governance, politics, and ethos over the past fifty years have altered the rules of the game? How does one get caught out on the firnge of normal advancement even as one strives to gamble up? Why does productivity in some ...
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Publish or perish has been a time-honoured rule of the game at America's elite universities by which quality work is rewarded with tenure and a professorship. How come, then, so many productive scholars of international distinction now find themselves publishing and perishing? What changes in academic governance, politics, and ethos over the past fifty years have altered the rules of the game? How does one get caught out on the firnge of normal advancement even as one strives to gamble up? Why does productivity in some fields spell success, while in others it is a "Catch 22" (the more one produces, the less employable one becomes)? Tracing developments from the Vietnam era to the near present at Harvard and elsewhere, this book helps to answer those questions and many more. It is also a tale of the "journeyman-scholar" in the new market-model university: those who work and produce on foundation support with little more than a prestigious letterhead to assist them with few benefits and no security whilst paying overhead to the university for the offices they occupy. For anyone contemplating ana academic career, especially in the arts and humanities, this is required reading.
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