The Discordant Dash for Doctoral Degrees

Let’s start with the premise that the pursuit and award of a doctoral degree equals economic privilege. Add in a dash of consideration for J. Elspeth Stuckey’s idea that by the time mainstream students reach the ninth grade, they have already achieved an elite academic status (The Violence of Literacy). Now take a quick glance at table #283 (page 23) in the Census Bureau’s updated 2004-2005 Statistical Abstract of the American Indian and Alaska Native Population: http://www.census.gov/statab/www/sa04aian.pdf.

This should be disturbing to more people than myself. I am just one short week away from taking my comprehensive exams (for my doctoral degree), so am trying to concentrate on reviewing, but find my attention sidelined by details such as this. Once again, as with my prior post on economic disparity within my home academic institution, I find myself distracted and upset and wondering what the hell is the answer to this problem?

Look specifically at the “Doctor’s degrees” section of Table 283 “Degrees Earned by Level and Race/Ethnicity: 1981-2002.” Notice anything strange?

The number of doctoral degrees conferred to Blacks, Hispanics, Asian or Pacific Islanders (which, by the way, is a misnomer since many Pacific Islanders consider themselves more “indigenous” than “Asian”), and Nonresident Aliens (whatever the hell that means) ALL increased in the number of degrees earned from 1981 to 2002. The number of degrees to whites went down 18%, but I honestly don’t think that’s a problem, considering whites still outnumber all other groups by a considerable sum. The only group that stayed the same was American Indian/Alaska Native - .4% in 1981 and .4% in 2002. The real number difference shows a total increase of 50 degrees, but with a severe drop in 1990 to 98 (a drop shared during that same time only with Black/Non-Hispanics…have to wonder if U.S. economic policies of the 1980s had anything to do with that), which means that unlike Hispanics, Asians, and Nonresident Aliens that made consistent upward progress in this category, American Indians and Alaska Natives somehow found themselves fighting an uphill battle for elite academic (and ostensibly economic) status.

But wait. This uphill battle is a pretty consistent problem for Native peoples – from challenges with literacy to continued treaty and land disputes with the U.S. federal government, tribes are certainly striving in their own, self-defined ways to overcome considerable obstacles, but this doctoral degree disparity seems especially problematic. Why? Well, for one thing, remember that I started with the premise that we can all agree, regardless of racial or economic background, that obtaining a PhD equates to economic privilege and status…and flat out more money. Anyone with a doctorate is generally going to make more than someone without a doctorate – regardless of field or industry and irrespective of how and where that degree is used (whether in a university or in the government or in the private sector). The fact that American Indians are essentially earning almost the same number of doctorates in 2002 as in 1981 while all other non-white groups saw some kind of positive change indicates that perhaps Native communities don’t value this highest degree as much as other groups? Or perhaps not enough Native undergraduates matriculate and continue on into graduate school? Or perhaps a lack of funding opportunities, despite an abundant focus on diversity initiatives and affirmative action-esque quotas on college campuses?

I don’t have an answer to this frustrating and easily identified problem, but it seems pretty clear that there is a problem related to higher education in our Native American communities. Of course, I know that the problems run much deeper than this. However, education and economic opportunity have always been tightly bound together, especially in the U.S. and especially now in modern (or “postmodern”) times. Looking at these numbers is like looking at a fence…the barrier is clear. The disparity shown by this formal statistical table relates to thousands of Native people living in less-than-desirable economic situations. Think about it. If more Native students went on to graduate school, chances are pretty good that they would make more money for their families…if we can look at other groups and our own situations as comparable examples.

If we, as a people in this nation, claim to believe that education is the “answer” to economic problems…why aren’t we doing more to help this particular group solve its own problems through higher educational achievement? At the very least, more non-Native people should be aware of this problem. And more people should give a damn about it - maybe then our leaders would also pay attention to disparities such as this.

Interesting that no politician currently running for President has meaningfully addressed Native communities and their concerns thusfar, beyond some lip service. Telling. Very telling.

(Edit: The Dems allowed this one tribal college president to speak: http://www.reznetnews.org/article/united-tribes-technical-college/tribal-college-president-decries-poverty-indian-country
...wonder if the Repubs have a similar plan?)

The fallacy of "Academic Community"

One of the persistent underlying themes of my comprehensive exam readings is the concept of community. And because I prefer to concretely connect abstract concepts to my sense of reality, this now has me thinking about my communities. Most disturbingly, I have discovered that the idea of an “academic community” is a fallacy.

Let me lay down some groundwork for this conclusion. Between my readings and my own developing beliefs, my loose definition of community entails interaction, communication, and understanding among the members. Easy, right? Well…no. Consider this scenario. I am a member of the “academic community.” What does that mean, exactly? That I am participating in the academic, university environment? Ok, but based on my aforementioned definition, that’s not enough. Let’s consider interactivity – who do I interact with in the broader “academic community”? Professors, instructors, and graduate students in my department. A couple of grad students outside my department (thanks to my service on the Graduate Student Council last year). The librarians. That’s about it. So maybe that qualifies. How about communication?

Yes, I definitely communicate with all of the above mentioned folks. Check. And understanding? Ummm. Ok, I think this is where things fall apart. Let’s take just one common question: “What are you getting your PhD in?”

I get this one all the time. In fact, it is one of the unwritten and unspoken rules of grad school that this must be one of the first questions you ask upon meeting a fellow grad student for the first time. Here is how that interaction usually goes when the question is directed at me from a fellow grad student outside the English department:

“What are you getting your PhD in?”

“Composition and Rhetoric with a focus on Native American rhetoric and literacy”

Response range: Half-smile/half-recognition of terms to glazed eyes/raised eyebrows

I try again: “Writing”

Full on smile/recognition: “oh!”

Usually the conversation then veers onto something else, like the temperature and flavor of the free pizza, but on the off chance that the poor soul attempts to continue, which has happened a handful of times, this is how that conversation usually progresses:

“Really? What’s Native American rhetoric? Who are the theorists?”

“The way Native scholars past and present use language in various situations to make a point. Some of the big names are Vine Deloria, Robert Warrior, Jace Weaver, Joy Harjo…”

At this point, recognition is so far away that I usually throw in “Leslie Marmon Silko,” at which point the proverbial light bulb goes on and out comes another, “ooohhh! I read Ceremony as an undergrad!”

Le sigh.

Back to the concept of community. Very often, when this conversation plays out in my own department among myself and professors, instructors, or fellow English grad students, I get similar reactions because the “academy” is very good at partitioning itself into insular, disconnected compartments that seldom, if ever, interact. So “Native American rhetoric” is a foreign concept to many in the English department as much as “Composition and Rhetoric” is a foreign designation to anyone outside the English department.

(And by the way, all of this magnifies once I step outside the academic environment and try to interact with friends and family “on the outside,” so to speak. They really glaze over and lack understanding about what exactly it is that I do. And not only do they not understand, they also aren’t interested in learning, so conversation always shifts to other topics.)

I’m questioning whether there is such a thing as an “academic community” at all. Who exactly is in the community who can interact, communicate, and understand the fields I’m studying and discussing? Let’s see, that would be my three-member professorial committee, a handful of instructors and all of my grad student friends who took my director’s Native American theory class with me last spring. (I know I’m selfishly presenting myself and my situation, but I imagine the same argument could be made for someone in the Biology Department, or Family Services, or Poultry Science, etc.)

Certainly my little cohort of folks who can interact and communicate with, and understand me in discussions of Native American theorists and rhetoric qualifies as a sub-community within the larger English department community, which is part of the Humanities community within the Auburn University structure, which is part of the broader “university” or “academic community” in the U.S. and the world. So many levels of community, but can we really call those broader categories communities, considering the lack of interaction, communication, and understanding between the internal members of the sub-genres and sub-communities that make up the larger versions?

Instead of “community,” which puts a positive spin and gloss over what the superstructure really is – and I see this term in academic journals as well as my own writing -- we should be honest and stop pretending to be a community. We should call the broader groupings by a more honest and less happy term: an institution. Seems to me in recent years, people have been trying to get away from the term “institution” because of its negative connotations. Well. Yeah. An institution can operate, function, and even flourish without its members interacting, communicating, or even feigning understanding across boundaries. As long as the work gets done and everyone gets paid, the “institution” is just fine.

The institution is really a machine. Not a community that functionally relies on the interconnectivity and interdependence of its participants.

And as far as re-casting the institutional machinery of the academy into the frame of a community as I envision it, well, I just don’t know if that’s really possible. It would require members of the compartmentalized units to truly care about what’s going on in other units – enough to at least learn some fundamentals or even just basic concepts and terminology. But honestly, who has time for that? The pressures of “publish or perish” – which is ridiculous and a problem to tackle another day – in addition to administrative and service requirements that come with working in academe restrict members to focusing on their own compartments (for job survival) while engaged in academic business. Outside time is usually devoted to hobbies and interests that have very little or nothing to do with that institutional machinery…and perhaps that is where our best chance for “academic” community resides – in the external interactions of academic professionals engaged in non-academic activities, like Niffer’s trivia on Mondays and Project Runway Appreciation Nights. ;)

Privilege and impotence

I am being paid to read, study, think, synthesize, regurgitate others’ ideas, and contribute to an academic conversation that may never have any practical application in the real world. If that isn’t the ultimate position of privilege, I don’t know what is. And people who complain about being busy and how hard this work is just boggles my mind.

I’m reading Richard Rodriguez, Victor Villanueva, and other “academics of color” on issues of education, literacy, language, power, and class. Much of their experiences are relatable to me only in terms of the privileged position I share with them in the academy and in a middle class background with all its opportunities and benefits.

What do I mean by this in a country where being “middle class” now seems to be a political distinction for “struggle.” (Seriously?)

Here’s what I mean.

In 2005, I decided to work in Yellowstone National Park for three months in the summer. The jobs I held were “hard” in comparison to what I do now – grill cook and dormitory manager. The day-to-day responsibilities of grill cook entailed standing for three to four hours at a time twice a day on a concrete floor in front of a superheated slab of metal, slinging burgers, chicken breasts, and gardenburgers (no separation between them on the grill, by the way), and listening to privileged tourists from home and abroad abuse the serving staff (*snap snap* go the fingers, “No ice!”, “Where’s my tuna fish?!”). Hard. The second job for the second half of the summer as the dorm manager entailed coping with privileged college students who were confused and angered by the tourists and older store employees who expected to sleep each night instead of listening to their loud and drunken parties, in addition to cleaning toilets, urinals, shower stalls, emptying garbage, and vacuuming/Windexing the public spaces of the dorm every day. Hard.

But all of this I did by CHOICE. You will see no one working at Yellowstone who isn’t there by choice. Who can’t afford to make $7/hour and not worry about paying the bills at home. Who isn’t from a privileged, middle class, well-educated, articulate background. Working physically demanding jobs for a few months in a stunning national park is a choice. Just as going to graduate school and getting a PhD is a choice. But there are custodians at my university who clean toilets, urinals, floors, and take out the residents’ garbage (with a smile and a friendly ‘hi’) every day for a salary of $16,100 per year. Is this a choice? I doubt it.

The salary information for any public state university is available to the public. A friend of mine shared this page of data about our university with me yesterday and I was stunned at the economic disparity laid out in those cold, black and white numbers. I agree with him – no one who works for this wealthy, privileged university that dumps MILLIONS into its athletic program – should make less than $20,000 a year. Not the custodians. Not campus security. Not lab technicians. To be working a hard job for less than $20,000 a year seems criminal. This is where a union would be beneficial.

I know this attitude opens me up to all sorts of attacks – Marxist! Communist! Re-distributing wealth is bad! Unions bad! And I’m not a huge fan of unions – I think generally they take money from the people they purport to help and represent, but then don’t necessarily deliver. And I also think unionization can allow for lax work ethics – hey, I’m making $25 an hour whether I break a sweat or not, so why break a sweat? (Sounds like tenure, doesn’t it?) We’ve all heard the arguments. But the more I read and the more I think and the more I realize what a privileged position of choice I am in now and have always been in and will always BE in…the more appalled I am at this economic disparity within one institutional structure.

What’s the answer? The old stand-by answer is that the system has to change. Ok. But how?

Well, would the professor making $165,000 a year really miss $500? No. And if the answer is yes, then this person is living far beyond his means and needs to cut back. And how about the argument that it is not the responsibility of the person raking in $165,000 for reading and thinking all day? He did SOMETHING to achieve that privileged position…why make HIM pay for the institutional disparity? Well, I suppose this is my inner-liberal-academic coming out, but perhaps it IS our responsibility. If not to contribute to the increase of salaries, but to put pressure on those who make those decisions to change the cruelly disparate work-to-money value ratio…yes, even in a year of budget cuts.

Frankly, if this (or any) university can afford to pay its coaching staff all six-figure salaries, then the least it can do is value its custodial and other hard-working employees who may not have a choice with “upward mobility” enough to provide an equitable salary for a more comfortable life. And for most of us, let’s be honest, $20,000 don’t come close to providing “a comfortable life.” When’s the last time you made $20 grand a year? My last time was as a freelance journalist in the last decade…but that was BY CHOICE.

This is not a new question. It is not a new problem. But having seen that sheet of paper with those numbers, I find myself truly disturbed at my own privileged place in this society and my utter impotence to change anything about it.