Great post. Missed one glaring area: Administrative leadership. Presidents in the pst have been as young as 35. Not any more. They age discriminate to keep deans, procosts, Presidents in the geriatric lane that boxes out real energy and modern leadership insights from thise who used to be given it. And, the institutions suffer greatly for it. Too many at the top beleive they paid their dues and that there is a line they have been waiting in the front of for the next spot available. Search committees suffer the same. So, it ends up in a circlular spiral downwards. The younger faculty are routinely fed up and just move on to other things, further emptying oit the brain drain thatbhas happened for the past 2 decades.
I have two conflicting responses to this. First, the deficits caused by aging are real, especially in an era of rapidly advancing technological change so it's flat wrong to expect that a 55 year old can on average deliver the performance of a 28 year old.
On the other hand, the university's position is disgusting. It's an adjunct position. The university is not making any commitments to the new hire that it cannot immediately revoke at the end of the current semester or academic year. All the risk is on the shoulders of the new hire struggling to demonstrate their capacity to teach well in a new environment. If they don't then the university we'll have to do nothing more burdensome than hire another a replacement in a market with plenty of candidates. It's really sad to see the university stressing these type of decisions when they have all the control and all the power.
This really is a shame. Some of my favorite professors in college were quite old. They were more than subject matter experts. They had wisdom and an infinite amount of patience.
Many of the younger professors were trying to be cool and trying to be our friends and it was honestly kind of weird.
The older generation held us to a higher standard and didn’t put up with nonsense. I respected that. I had to work much harder to get good grades in their classes, but it meant something.
I’m sure that doesn’t apply across the board, but that was my experience.
Wow. Some of the comments here make assumptions about age that are pretty ageist. I didn’t even start teaching until my mid forties and out published everyone in my dept. w one exception. As an adjunct taught more than any tenure track prof. Frankly, all the “geriatric” adjuncts out taught the meeting-attending tenured.
This is such a key observation: “A faculty member hired at 50 has, in expectation, 15 to 20 more years of productive academic life. That is a longer runway than most newly minted PhDs will spend at the institution that initially hires them.”
Look, few people have sympathy for this problem because we currently have Boomers over 65 who refuse to leave their positions, won't let go, and are creating stagnation for everyone younger. These are also people who enjoyed the best fruits of the market and pulled the ladder up behind them as academia moved gradually into a part-time, no benefits business. It's not right to discriminate based on age, but I would argue the elders among us haven't given us a lot to put faith in.
Folks, this is a wonderful website, but... A lot of this post sure does read as AI-generated. In fact, I pasted a section into the checker at Pangram.com, and what do you know... "100% AI-generated" according to the checker. [That was the section beginning with "The “too old at 50” rule is built on assumptions about career arc" and ending with "It is making a status decision dressed up as a staffing decision."]. Those of us who are fated to use LLMs regularly can "smell" the AI-generated text a mile away. Please don't do this!
This is stated in the blog's "About" section: there's AI-assisted refinement, but the reporting and facts are mine. There's no paywall, no ads — it's done for free. Engage the substance if you've got an issue with it.
Great post. Missed one glaring area: Administrative leadership. Presidents in the pst have been as young as 35. Not any more. They age discriminate to keep deans, procosts, Presidents in the geriatric lane that boxes out real energy and modern leadership insights from thise who used to be given it. And, the institutions suffer greatly for it. Too many at the top beleive they paid their dues and that there is a line they have been waiting in the front of for the next spot available. Search committees suffer the same. So, it ends up in a circlular spiral downwards. The younger faculty are routinely fed up and just move on to other things, further emptying oit the brain drain thatbhas happened for the past 2 decades.
I have two conflicting responses to this. First, the deficits caused by aging are real, especially in an era of rapidly advancing technological change so it's flat wrong to expect that a 55 year old can on average deliver the performance of a 28 year old.
On the other hand, the university's position is disgusting. It's an adjunct position. The university is not making any commitments to the new hire that it cannot immediately revoke at the end of the current semester or academic year. All the risk is on the shoulders of the new hire struggling to demonstrate their capacity to teach well in a new environment. If they don't then the university we'll have to do nothing more burdensome than hire another a replacement in a market with plenty of candidates. It's really sad to see the university stressing these type of decisions when they have all the control and all the power.
This really is a shame. Some of my favorite professors in college were quite old. They were more than subject matter experts. They had wisdom and an infinite amount of patience.
Many of the younger professors were trying to be cool and trying to be our friends and it was honestly kind of weird.
The older generation held us to a higher standard and didn’t put up with nonsense. I respected that. I had to work much harder to get good grades in their classes, but it meant something.
I’m sure that doesn’t apply across the board, but that was my experience.
Wow. Some of the comments here make assumptions about age that are pretty ageist. I didn’t even start teaching until my mid forties and out published everyone in my dept. w one exception. As an adjunct taught more than any tenure track prof. Frankly, all the “geriatric” adjuncts out taught the meeting-attending tenured.
This is such a key observation: “A faculty member hired at 50 has, in expectation, 15 to 20 more years of productive academic life. That is a longer runway than most newly minted PhDs will spend at the institution that initially hires them.”
Look, few people have sympathy for this problem because we currently have Boomers over 65 who refuse to leave their positions, won't let go, and are creating stagnation for everyone younger. These are also people who enjoyed the best fruits of the market and pulled the ladder up behind them as academia moved gradually into a part-time, no benefits business. It's not right to discriminate based on age, but I would argue the elders among us haven't given us a lot to put faith in.
Folks, this is a wonderful website, but... A lot of this post sure does read as AI-generated. In fact, I pasted a section into the checker at Pangram.com, and what do you know... "100% AI-generated" according to the checker. [That was the section beginning with "The “too old at 50” rule is built on assumptions about career arc" and ending with "It is making a status decision dressed up as a staffing decision."]. Those of us who are fated to use LLMs regularly can "smell" the AI-generated text a mile away. Please don't do this!
This is stated in the blog's "About" section: there's AI-assisted refinement, but the reporting and facts are mine. There's no paywall, no ads — it's done for free. Engage the substance if you've got an issue with it.