Academia is not a meritocracy…and other lessons I’ve learned as a scholar abandoned by the academy

Rebecca Bodenheimer
14 min readMay 11, 2018

Someone (probably on Twitter) once said that academia is like a bad relationship where the aspiring academic gives and gives and never gets anything in return. Countless PhD holders sacrifice everything to “succeed” in academia, with success defined as attaining a tenure-track job, a position that guarantees you at least seven years of job security, good benefits, and institutional support to conduct research. (No matter that you might be a wonderful teacher or have published a whole book — if you don’t have a TT job, you’re a failure.)

Then, of course, there’s the question of securing tenure, a rigorous process conducted around the sixth year of employment for which you have to submit a record of your publications, letters of support by colleagues, and evidence of being a good teacher (as determined largely by highly subjective student evaluations that often display not only gender bias, but may even constitute legal discrimination!) and of providing service to your department, institution, and professional society. Institutions vary widely in their rates of tenure, with the University of California system known for supporting their faculty so that the majority of them gain tenure, and the Ivy Leagues notorious for not tenuring junior faculty. If you don’t get tenure, your academic career is all but over, as any other institution at which you might apply for a job will know you’ve been denied tenure and likely view you as damaged goods.

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Rebecca Bodenheimer
Rebecca Bodenheimer

Written by Rebecca Bodenheimer

Writer. Editor. Independent scholar. I write about pop culture (music/TV/film), Cuba, higher education, and identity. https://rebeccabodenheimer.contently.com/

Responses (9)

What are your thoughts?

Great essay. We’re in a crisis in academia, beyond what we can see. I know several tenured professors who actively discourage students from pursuing PhDs. Meanwhile, parents of high school students are faced with whether or not they should pay for…...

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Thank you for this, Rebecca. As a long time adjunct, I was nodding along with every thoughtful, eloquent sentence.
If I could clap 5000 times for this, I would.

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This is simply a great essay and I can only applaud! I am also an “independent scholar”, meaning that I am a highly dependent, poor person who cannot enjoy all possible benefits (travel grants, secure working space, collaboration with colleagues) of…...

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