Any Academics Here?

Hey everyone.

I have been thinking of going to Academia and become a Political Science PhD with a vision to someday become a professor. I have read that this path is quite difficult as research takes a lot of time, you as a professor are burdened with a lot of paper work and teaching students (as well as preparing for the lectures and grading students' work) often become secondary. Having that in mind, I have a couple of questions regarding it:

1. Is this what I was saying that the process of teaching eventually becomes a secondary priority after research work and bureaucracy?

2. What are the job prospects for Political Science professors now? Is it hard to actually get a tenure, or at least assistant job? I mean in European context.

3. What other thoughts you have in your mind regarding this topic? Tell everything.


Thanks for your answers, guys!

What do you mean by "European context"? Academic jobs in Europe or a focus on European political science?

I think you'll find your best preliminary answers by Googling. And also by knowing yourself and your motivations. Are you interested primarily in research and publication? Not interested in teaching? Teaching only grad students?

I don't think you need to be a current professor to know teaching is not a priority for them. You want to each? I would go into K-12 and try to make a diff in the formative years.

Most profs try to make sure their lectures are at least decent, so as not to embarrass themselves and risk their future (ratemyprofs.com etc). However, they tend to fail utterly at spending any one on one time with undergrads or even making sure to enter non-scantron grades correctly.

Even working as an RA with 3 profs, directly proofreading and coding their 3 years of interviews to facilitate their publications, they could not have cared less about my life or post grad goals, or even saw to it i was doing a good job (they had a grad student do that). If you actually become a tenured prof, it seems like delegating responsibility to others becomes your biggest concern.

1) yes, but what bureaucracy? Here, they get the class approved and that's it, very little oversight and there's profs who've been here 40+ years.

2) there's about 300 applications for every 1 tenure track position here. If you want to do a PhD, keep other options in mind. Don't have such a narrowly focused goal, especially when all those who do get hired as profs will have other accomplishments first. You need to get published (this right here should tip you off that teaching is secondary to the colleges) and become well respected by those already in academia.

ThePolitJunkie said:

Hey everyone.

I have been thinking of going to Academia and become a Political Science PhD with a vision to someday become a professor. I have read that this path is quite difficult as research takes a lot of time, you as a professor are burdened with a lot of paper work and teaching students (as well as preparing for the lectures and grading students' work) often become secondary. Having that in mind, I have a couple of questions regarding it:

1. Is this what I was saying that the process of teaching eventually becomes a secondary priority after research work and bureaucracy?

2. What are the job prospects for Political Science professors now? Is it hard to actually get a tenure, or at least assistant job? I mean in European context.

3. What other thoughts you have in your mind regarding this topic? Tell everything.


Thanks for your answers, guys!

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Seems like in this particular field, most universities would prefer that you have a lot of real life experience working in politics to bring to the table beyond a Phd in the discipline. Just something to consider.

chromium said:

I don't think you need to be a current professor to know teaching is not a priority for them. You want to each? I would go into K-12 and try to make a diff in the formative years.

Most profs try to make sure their lectures are at least decent, so as not to embarrass themselves and risk their future (ratemyprofs.com etc). However, they tend to fail utterly at spending any one on one time with undergrads or even making sure to enter non-scantron grades correctly.

Even working as an RA with 3 profs, directly proofreading and coding their 3 years of interviews to facilitate their publications, they could not have cared less about my life or post grad goals, or even saw to it i was doing a good job (they had a grad student do that). If you actually become a tenured prof, it seems like delegating responsibility to others becomes your biggest concern.

1) yes, but what bureaucracy? Here, they get the class approved and that's it, very little oversight and there's profs who've been here 40+ years.

2) there's about 300 applications for every 1 tenure track position here. If you want to do a PhD, keep other options in mind. Don't have such a narrowly focused goal, especially when all those who do get hired as profs will have other accomplishments first. You need to get published (this right here should tip you off that teaching is secondary to the colleges) and become well respected by those already in academia.

Click to expand...

Sorry that your experiences have made you so cynical, but you have an extremely limited perspective. I can't imagine why you'd think that a prof would necessarily care about an RA anyway, but if you think that RMP and other crowdsourced sites are part of a faculty member's evals, you're mistaken. Student evals are a component of retention and promotion. I almost fell out of my chair when I read what you posted.

ThePolitJunkie said:

1. Is this what I was saying that the process of teaching eventually becomes a secondary priority after research work and bureaucracy?

2. What are the job prospects for Political Science professors now? Is it hard to actually get a tenure, or at least assistant job? I mean in European context.

3. What other thoughts you have in your mind regarding this topic? Tell everything.


Thanks for your answers, guys!

Click to expand...

Here's how it works at a major university in the US:
1. Research will be your focus in grad school. You will eat, sleep, and poop research. You'll take classes, but they're probably easier than you're used to, and grades don't matter a whole lot. Actual teaching experience is likely minimal, ranging from just a lecture or two as part of your one prep course, to maybe teaching an intro class for a semester or two. This varies quite a bit.

As an assistant professor, you suddenly find yourself with a bunch of classes to teach, but your primary focus (if you hope to get tenure and remain a professor) is still research. You need to establish a line of research and get some publications under your belt all within a fairly short amount of time (on top of departmental responsibilities, mentoring, office hours, etc.). There is no "teaching eventually becomes a secondary priority" because it never was your first priority.

If you survive and earn tenure, you have a bit more flexibility. As a professor, you're basically running your own business. You might have a huge research program, a dozen or more grad students, and "buy out" of having to teach as much as possible, or, you might have a relatively tiny research program, have a hard time holding on to a single grad student, but really embrace teaching. Though in the latter case, you're not bringing in a lot of money and are much more dependent on the department if you're going to survive.

At major universities, often the only professors that really spend the bulk of their time teaching are those who are reaching retirement, or who have already retired, but maintain an office, teach, and serve on committees.

ThePolitJunkie said:

Hey everyone.

I have been thinking of going to Academia and become a Political Science PhD with a vision to someday become a professor. I have read that this path is quite difficult as research takes a lot of time, you as a professor are burdened with a lot of paper work and teaching students (as well as preparing for the lectures and grading students' work) often become secondary. Having that in mind, I have a couple of questions regarding it:

1. Is this what I was saying that the process of teaching eventually becomes a secondary priority after research work and bureaucracy?

2. What are the job prospects for Political Science professors now? Is it hard to actually get a tenure, or at least assistant job? I mean in European context.

3. What other thoughts you have in your mind regarding this topic? Tell everything.


Thanks for your answers, guys!

Click to expand...

Not to be a downer, but just letting you know straight up that the PhD market is pretty crappy. Basically no one is on the tenure-track anymore, instead they are adjunct professors getting crap hours and making crap pay. Hell, there are PhDs on food stamps. So I would think long and hard about it before I jumped in and make sure that I have several backup plans.

I think the doctoral demand depends on the degree.

ThePolitJunkie said:

Hey everyone.

Click to expand...

Hello.

Political Science is nonsense. It's not Science. It's an attempt to formulate human behavior in political matters, which is not interesting by definition.

to the OP, although it's admittedly late.


Can't speak to PolSci (ugh, what a misnomer), can't speak to Europe,

but yes it is a demanding job for someone of ethics who views the role as a ~50/50 balance to teaching and research (obviously you could pursue a teaching-heavy school...) You have to think of it as your own small business and be willing to devote at least 70-80 hours a week during the semester, and if you are ambitious enough to seek summer support, etc, basically the same load in the summers (as that's when you'll REALLY get research done). But then when you go to a restaurant or party, and someone says what do you mean you work hard, all you do is teach T/R, have your polite-verbal-canned-slap-response ready.