{"id":2385,"date":"2017-12-04T11:30:05","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T16:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=2385"},"modified":"2020-01-18T09:39:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:39:47","slug":"universities-can-be-minefields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/universities-can-be-minefields\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shocking Truth About Universities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When I was in graduate school, my wonderful dissertation advisor told me that he was determined to do a good, humane job getting me through without delays.\u00a0 Why? Because his own advisor had been a hyper-critical nightmare.\u00a0 My advisor kept his word: thanks to him, I finished writing my dissertation and defended it successfully in under a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Horror stories about abusive dissertation advisors and feuding dissertation committees are common in graduate schools across the country–you don’t have to look hard to find them.\u00a0 Even casual cruelty makes the life of graduate students miserable.\u00a0 Because I write an academic mysteries series, people share these stories with me from around the country.<\/p>\n

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Just recently I heard of a PhD candidate whose rigid advisor refused to let the student show ongoing work to anyone else on the dissertation committee.\u00a0 That left this student feeling isolated and extremely anxious.\u00a0 Talking about\u00a0 mistreatment to other graduate students in the program felt impossible–that’s how strong the professor’s grip was.<\/p>\n

Then there are the adjuncts or “contingent faculty”: overworked, underpaid, uninsured, and treated at some schools almost like pariahs.\u00a0 Sometimes they don’t even have office space, or too many of them share a tiny office.\u00a0 Tenure-track faculty belittle them unconsciously or even openly, no matter what they might have accomplished in their field.\u00a0 Department chairs treats them like cannon fodder.<\/p>\n

I know of one university where an adjunct who had the same degrees and had published far more than tenure-track peers was shut out of teaching upper level courses because of faculty jealousy.\u00a0 Qualifications and experience didn’t matter–it was all about people protecting their tiny fiefdoms.<\/p>\n

And students probably suffer more than anyone.\u00a0 Stories reach me about how they’re bullied and put down publicly by their tenured professors.\u00a0 I’ve been told about students reduced to trembling and even tears in the classroom.\u00a0 Sometimes the mistreatment is more subtle: a professor will only call on favorite students, or might ignore something one student says but praise another student for making the identical observation.\u00a0 Do students complain?\u00a0 Rarely, because they’re afraid to, despite flashy news stories about campus protests.<\/p>\n

None of this brutality is like the sexual violence on campus we read about, or the bigotry targeting various minorities–but it’s part of the atmosphere all the same. No matter how scenic the campus, colleges and universities can be surprisingly toxic for more people than outsiders imagine.\u00a0 So when people at my book readings ask me, “Aren’t you exaggerating?\u00a0 Are colleges really that bad?”\u00a0 I don’t hesitate saying “No.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books including Little Miss Evil<\/a> and seven other Nick Hoffman mysteries set in the dangerous world of academia.<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in graduate school, my wonderful dissertation advisor told me that he was determined to do a good, humane job getting me through without delays.\u00a0 Why? Because his own advisor had been a hyper-critical nightmare.\u00a0 My advisor kept his word: thanks to him, I finished writing my dissertation and defended it successfully in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[778,792,585,649,878,776,782,791,781,276,779,780,793,583,879,880,245],"class_list":["post-2385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colleges-and-universities","tag-academic-inequity","tag-academic-mysteries","tag-academic-satires","tag-academics","tag-adjunct-professors","tag-adjuncts","tag-bad-labor-practices","tag-bullying","tag-cheap-labor","tag-colleges","tag-colleges-and-universiites","tag-higher-education","tag-little-miss-evil-by-lev-raphael","tag-nick-hoffman-mysteries","tag-tenure","tag-tenure-track-professors","tag-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2385"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5508,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2385\/revisions\/5508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}