neandertals among us

This is seriously cool - a full draft sequence of the Neandertal genome. The best part is evidence for 1-4% admixture of archaic genes into the modern populations outside of Africa. I'm certainly not qualified to comment, but check out John Hawks' incredible post on the subject.

I'm beginning to think Science has read my syllabus. First, A. sediba is published the very week that I'm discussing the evolution of the genus Homo. Then, the Neandertal genome is published the day after I gave my "evaluating the models" talk to my Intro class. I'm very happy to say that this article fits nicely with everything I said in class. Human evolution isn't my field, so it's always nice to have some confirmation that I'm sufficiently up to date and knowledgeable.

Now that the semester is nearly over, and everyone in my family is over their colds, I hope to return to more regular posting, including more substantive posting about environmental archaeology. Until then, may your patience with student writing be long, and your red pen never run out of ink.

scheduling score

For our sins, the faculty at Tiny Liberal Arts College are organized into a direct democracy. Yes, four times a year, every single one of us - all 120-some faculty members - is expected to find his or her way to the only auditorium on campus large enough to fit us all in. There, we are each allowed to cast our individual shards of pottery for whatever issue, candidate, or proposal takes our fancy.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, you've never sat in an uncomfortable folding chair while 100+ faculty members debate the merits of preposition placement in the institutional mission statement. OMFG. I have never truly appreciated the glory of representative forms of government until I came here.

This year, I accidentally found the perfect solution to the Faculty Governance Blues: I scheduled my BioAnth labs during the faculty meetings. Not only can I not make it to the meetings, but I have such a good excuse that nobody can fault me for not coming. Additionally, the fact that I've scheduled late labs means that I'm teaching outside of the "prime time", so I'm seen as a good team player, allowing other faculty to teach in more convenient slots. Hat trick!

ten things I love about my students

I've been a bit of a downer recently, with all this talk about the job market. I thought I'd remind myself of how much I really do love my job, with a post on the things I love about my students at this liberal arts college.

1) engagement. Good God, these students are engaged in their learning! They are a self-selected bunch, willing to come out here to the middle of nowhere for an intimate college experience. Even the worst students in my class will e-mail me a link to some article they saw on-line about primate tool use, or will mention the Discovery Channel documentary on human evolution they saw the night before.

2) attitude. In general, they have a wonderful, responsible attitude toward their own education. They own their mistakes, and if they have a tendency to think confession is sufficient to make up for them, at least they acknowledge their own failings and don't just blame everyone around them, especially the professor.

3) sense of community. No surprise, since it's such a small school, but the students really have a great sense of community and commitment to each other.

4) involvement. It seems like all of my students are involved in something, whether internal (theater, student radio, etc.), or external (one of the environmental or labor rights clubs, etc.). This can be a problem, academically, when their grades suffer because they spend so much time doing other things, but they are remarkably committed to making the university and the world a better place.

5) diversity (sort-of). OK, generally this place is as white as Wonderbread. Still, for particular historic and geographic reasons, we're a Native American serving institution, with a very high Native enrollment. Considering the long and sometimes sordid history of Native American/anthropologist relationships, it's a privilege to help shape the on-going dialog between the two groups in this area.

6) lack of entitlement. Many colleagues complain about the sense of entitlement their students have, and this seems particularly the case at liberal arts colleges. Again, for particular historic and geographic reasons, that's lacking here. Many of our students are small-town kids, and first-generation college attendees. They're friendly, respectful (not in a creepy, down-trodden way), and genuinely happy to be where they are.

7) idealism. Both in and out of the classroom, they think they can make a difference in the world.

8) preparedness. On average, these are just much better students (in terms of SAT scores, class rank, etc.) than those I taught at some major state universities. Add in that these are self-selected for a liberal arts education, and you've got an excellent teaching environment.

9) education majors. This may seem strange, but at other institutions where I've taught, the education majors are often, well, awful. Students who could barely pass an intro class were hoping to teach my kids social sciences at the elementary and secondary level. Horrors! In contrast, the education majors here are often the best and brightest of the lot. I find that an encouraging sign for our future. (I'll leave out my continuing unease that most of these bestest and brightest tend to be young women who seem to be gravitating toward education as a more "feminine" pursuit than, say, medicine or law.)

10) energy and enthusiasm. The students continuously regenerate my batteries with their over-all enthusiasm for pretty much everything. Enough said.

talking to students about grad school

My recent posts on the academic job market, as well as on-going debates over articles on the Chronicle of Higher Education by Thomas H. Benton (aka William Pannapacker), have made me think about talking to undergraduate students about graduate school. Benton's advice, simply, is to tell students "don't go", and I have a lot of respect for that. On the other hand, as I've mentioned in earlier blogs, I'm under some pressure to send students on to graduate school. My colleagues feel it makes our program and our university look good. So, when I'm talking to students about their future plans, I try to be ethical and honest, without being overly harsh or pessimistic. I also have to recognize that my own experiences, good and bad, have shaped my attitudes toward graduate school and the academic job market.

I tell all students three things about grad school:

1) Don't go to graduate school because you don't know what else to do. Honestly, if that's even a part of the reason they want to go, they should run - not walk - in the opposite direction. Students think that they'd be better off delaying "real life" for a while, if they can't find a perfect job straight out of undegrad (or much of any job, given the current economy), but if they're worried about their financial situation, they're better off getting a minimum wage job while trying to break into some other career. Graduate school will actually take away major wealth-building years, without much compensatory financial reward at the end, even for the most successful. If they are just scared of leaving college, well, push them toward a job at a library or someplace equally dusty and book-filled. If they really want to stay in school, suggest a professional degree. Fear and lack of other options will not be sufficient motivation to get a student through a PhD program.

2) Be prepared to pay the price. Students do not realize that graduate school is a much greater commitment than their undergraduate education, and significantly different in its structure and demands. They do not realize that by the time they finish their PhD, they will be much older, often much more in debt, and likely far more neurotic and in poorer health, than they planned. That's not to say that grad school can't be fun, socially and intellectually, but there is a significant price paid for dedicating a decade (give or take) to getting a PhD. Their college friends will get married, buy houses and cars, have kids, and be established in careers, before they even get their first job. They will have fewer resources for retirement than their college friends. They will live like students for a lot longer. Tragically, too many people will be unable to start the families they want, because their most productive years - even their health - were sacrificed to graduate school. I'm not saying there are no compensations. If the student is willing to pay the price in order to continue in a field they love, then it is worthwhile. Too often, though, students don't know how steep the price will be, or they have a vision of their future life that is completely incompatible with the realities of academia.

3) There is absolutely nothing you can do that will guarantee you a job. This is the hardest point to get across to students. The myth of meritocracy is strong in the U.S. In generally, I believe it is true that the best and brightest are more likely to get jobs. The problem is, a significant number of the best and brightest won't. I know archaeologists who graduated about the same time I did, who have weaker publications records than mine, who are now tenured in top anthropology programs. I know archaeologists with publications records that put mine to shame who have finally dropped out of academia all-together, unable to find a job. There is no check-list you can follow that will guarantee you a job, as long as you have crossed off every item. You can certainly make your chances of getting a job better, but there is too much luck involved for any guarantees.

I try to tell this to students, but they don't believe me. I think there are two problems:

a) their other professors are telling them something different. After all, they're talking to the lottery winners - those of us who actually got jobs. We all like to think that we're in our current positions due to our own hard work, clean living, and right thinking. And, of course, we are. But too many professors fail to realize that there were others - just as hard working, clean living, and right thinking - who were passed over, despite being just as qualified. When I first started my dissertation, one of my graduate advisers told me I would have no trouble getting a job "as long as you're the best at what you do." At the time, I was intimidated by the idea of having to be "the best". I now know he was wrong anyway. I'm arguably "the best" at my specific method in my specific region, but nobody's hiring in that field, so it does me no good. Students think these job market problems could never happen to them. They'll be so good, so smart, so accomplished, that they'll waltz right into a job. Their professors often feed that idea, either because it feeds their own egos, or because they can't see beyond their own experiences.

b) students, like most people, are incredibly bad at assessing risks. Just as people tends to have more fear of (their one in 3,748,067 chance of) dying from a shark attack, than of dying in a car accident (actually the number-one non-illness killer in the country), students tend to have a hard time understanding the risks they take in graduate school. Even if they've heard how bad the numbers are, they don't seem to understand what they mean. Case in point: I recently read the comments section for a Chronicle of Higher Education article on the English job market. One of the commenters posted that more than 50% of English PhDs have tenure-track jobs, so he couldn't understand why the author of the article was discouraging students from grad school. Really? The commenter honestly feels that, after dedicating almost a decade of your life toward a PhD, it's acceptable to have the same odds of getting a job as you do of tossing a coin and getting heads? Would you bet ten years of your life - ten years of earnings, ten years of marriage, ten years of raising a family, ten years of gaining equity in a house, ten years of building a career - on the result of a coin toss? I tell students, if a tenure-track job is the only outcome you'll find acceptable, then graduate school's not worth the gamble.

I strongly push archaeology students toward an MA, particularly from one of the strong MA-only programs. Northern Arizona and the University of Tulsa spring to mind as good examples of MA-only programs with strong faculty who work closely with their graduate students. If a student loves field archaeology, and wants to work in CRM, this is an excellent solution. MAs haven't priced themselves out of the job market, and they can always choose to go back for the PhD, once they really understand how the system works. They can find lucrative employment in the field they love, without the same level of sacrifice demanded for a PhD.

more on the job market

I thought this post over at Sociological Images fit well into the information about hiring data in my last post.

"top schoolers" and hiring (in which I take blogging to new heights of procrastination)

I'm not a cultural anthropologist, but I like the Savage Minds blog, just to keep up with our socio-cultural brethren. I wasn't thrilled by this post by Rex, though, "Who needs alumni from 'top schools'", which essentially argued that PhDs from top schools aren't taught how to teach, know nothing about methodology, and can't conduct relevant research. Personally, I think that's painting a whole bunch of diverse schools (only one of which is actually named in the post) with a pretty broad brush, but then I attended two of the top anthropology programs, so maybe I'm biased. That said, I consider myself a very good teacher, I'm fully trained in methods, and one of my research interests is the application of environmental archaeology to environmental policy.

What really got me thinking was the post's contention that "top schoolers", therefore, are not well positioned to get jobs in today's education climate, which tends to value undergraduate education, methodology, and applied research. Is this really the case? The Savage Minds post had no data, so I decided to crunch a few numbers. The University of Michigan was the only institution actually mentioned in the post as belonging to the category of "top schools", so I looked at the web pages for all of the departments of anthropology in the state of Michigan, and where it was possible, I noted down where each faculty member got their PhD, and what year. (I intended to do this for several states, to look at regional variation, but this just takes too much time. Even I have limits to my procrastination.)

In the state of Michigan, there are 16 institutions with departments of anthropology (or departments with anthropology in the title). There may be some random anthropologists floating about at the other schools, but they aren't included in this sample. Michigan has one "top school" (the University of Michigan), and two less-prestigious PhD granting institutions (Michigan State and Wayne State). Two programs offer MAs (Western Michigan and Michigan Tech), while the remainder offer bachelors degrees alone. These institutions employee 151 faculty, 141 of which had information about their PhD granting department on their webpages. 116 faculty members also had information about the year in which they got their degree.

The 141 faculty members represent 54 different PhD granting institutions. Of those institutions, I choose 8 that I considered to be truly "top schools": Arizona, UC Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Yale.* These 8 schools are 15% of the total number of PhD granting institutions represented, but their alums hold 35% of the jobs. I can't say whether this is an over-representation, since I don't know the relative size of the graduating cohorts from each of these universities. Nonetheless, more people from "top schools", overall, have jobs in Michigan.

There are some interesting trends, though, in who is hiring these "top schoolers". The only "top school" in the state, the University of Michigan, hired 66% (n=29) of its faculty from PhD programs at other "top schools". The other institutions represented on the faculty are all very strong, and most are arguably "top schools" themselves, at least in certain fields. The second-tier PhD programs, however, only hired 28% (n=11) "top schooler" faculty. The number is similar in MA programs, at 29% (n=5). Those programs that offer only bachelor's degrees have an even lower percentage of faculty from "top schools", only 13% (n=5). Of those, four of the five are graduates from the U of Michigan who obtained local jobs. So, "top schools" are hiring "top schoolers", but that is not necessarily the case at less prestigious institutions, particularly the least prestigious schools, although they occasionally snap up a local graduate from their flagship institution.

I wondered if this trend has changed through time. Since the early 90s, there has been an increasing focus on undergraduate education. If, as the Savage Minds post contends, "top schoolers" can't teach their way out of a paper bag, has there been a trend toward hiring faculty members with PhDs from less prestigious programs?

The answer is yes and no. I don't know when people were hired, but I can look at the year that faculty members got their PhDs. Of the 42 people whose PhDs were from 2000 or more recent, only 10 of them come from "top schools", or 24%, a lower percentage than for the overall sample. If you look more closely at the data, however, you'll find that previously noted trends in hiring are actually intensifying. The University of Michigan has 10 faculty members with recent PhDs, and 80% (n=8) come from "top schools" - actually an increase over previous years. In contrast, less prestigious schools seem to be hiring many fewer "top schoolers". None of the 16 faculty members with post-2000 PhDs at MSU and WSU have degrees from "top schools". Only one of the five newer faculty members at the MA-granting institutions has a "top school" PhD (20%), and out of the 11 more recent hires at bachelor's institutions, only one (9%) is from a "top school". So, in recent years, the "top school" is actually focusing more and more on hiring "top schoolers", while the less prestigious schools seem less willing to do so.

I can't say these trends will continue, or even that they apply outside of the state of Michigan, but there are still some interesting patterns that emerge. What concerns me is that this is largely a game of perception. If lots of search committee members, like Rex at Savage Minds, just assume that "top schoolers" can't teach, then some excellent teachers, researchers, mentors, etc., will never find an academic job because there is a perception that only "top schools" should hire them, and there aren't enough jobs at top schools to go around. I'm convinced that I only have my tenure-track job because this school is so small that nobody on the search committee had the background to accurately evaluate my C.V. My colleagues have very little idea of what I do, no clue how strong my research record is relative to the average for this institution, etc., etc. As a result, I was judged on my teaching talk and the research talk where I highlighted my applied research. I got the job, but if this school had more anthropologists to serve on the search committee, would I have been passed over on the assumption that no "top schooler" would be appropriate for a job here?

BTW - sorry for the dense text. Someday maybe I'll figure out how to make tables in this blog.

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*Yes, I know this is arguable. Obviously, reasonable people could disagree on whether Yale belongs on the list, and whether Wisconsin, UCL, and Stanford should have been left off. The Savage Minds post didn't define which schools were "top schools", and clearly this is all based on perception, so I figure my biases are as valid as anyone elses.

not drinking the kool-aid

I never attended a liberal arts college. I received at BA, MA, PhD, and two post-docs from major state universities. Before I came here, I had no personal familiarity with SLACs.

I really like the teaching environment here, and I think we provide an exceptional education. I understand why the faculty are proud of what they have accomplished, and of their students. Still, I'm frequently annoyed by the attitude that many of my colleagues have, basically, that no other form of education is worth-while.

I think this school has many advantages - small class size, undergraduate-focused education, strong community spirit, focus on extracurricular and interdisciplinary education, etc., etc. If a student just wants a degree, any degree, in order to get a middle management job, or because having a BA is a prereq for being middle class these days, I think they can't do better than this college. There's no skating through with the minimum level of effort here; faculty hold students to a very high standard, and the classes are so small you can't just hide in the back row. Students are pushed into doing their best, and they are more engaged in the learning process than students at big state schools.

That said, this isn't the perfect education for everyone. It certainly wouldn't have been a very good environment for me. If a student is interested in pursuing a research career, this school doesn't have sufficient depth or breadth of opportunity, in or out of the classroom; you won't make the right kinds of connections, and you won't have the right kind of intellectual pedigree. Even for students whose interests are more professional than academic, there are limits to the programs were are able to offer. When a student tells me they're really interested in veterinary medicine, or forensics, or linguistics, or going to a seminary, I wonder why in God's name they came here, where we don't offer majors/courses to fully support those interests.

Do not try to tell most of the faculty here that a Liberal Arts education is not for everyone. Not unless you want to be crushed by the giant chips on their shoulders. In their view, state schools are full of professors who can't teach their way out of a paper bag, and automaton students with no real interest in education.

I was reminded of this today, when Crazy Colleague sent out an e-mail supporting a student's petition to transfer a Theory class from an R1 university to stand in for the course that CC herself teaches here. CC spent a full page assuring us that no lecture course could ever compare to "the Freirian pedagogy of horizontal communication among a community of learners sharing their ideas that undergirds [her] course". (I kid you not, that's a direct quote.) She complained that the professor did not require enough writing, discouraged open debate, and did not spend enough time on feminist theory. Still, she finally admitted that a well-established anthropologist at a major research institution might possibly be capable of teaching basic theory well enough that his course was acceptable for our students.

Is it fine to be pro-SLAC? Of course. Should we be blind to the fact that research universities do actually provide a good education for some students, depending on their interests and abilities? Of course not.