TBers,

Bracketing the whole methodological issues of the study, I would like to see this discussion move in a different direction.  While I have admitted that I am one of those who comes in early and leaves late, and have put in many days over the weekends, I am also troubled by my behavior and the culture that praises work alcoholics.  This concern leaves me reluctant to be overly critical of those who work differently than myself, or have a different, and possibly more enlightened, value system.  I am not convinced that others do not serve their students well, or even better, because they do not spend day and night in touch with their students or conducting their research, or every daylight hour in their office, or engaged in some other aspect of what we do as academics 24/7.

Being that we are a well-educated lot, and thus maybe more enlightened than some, and have the potential to be more progressive in how we create an ethical workplace, a critical look at the culture that praises the single-mindedness of our work habits is needed.  There is something very one-dimensional about our being when we devote ourselves to a single thing; in many cases to work to the exclusion of other interests.  What makes us a whole person includes our relationships with family and friends, and those activities that feed our soul.  What much of the discussion about academics and work ethics lacks is a serious consideration of place, duration, and boundaries in the context of what makes a person whole, human, and ethical.  Many complain that academia has embraced the corporate model in which we have turned education into a commodity and our students into consumers.  But might I also suggest that the corporate mindset goes deeper and has infiltrated our work habits and workplace values.  And if I can be even more controversially, we have adopted a masculinist ethics.  We seem to have uncritically succumbed to the corporate culture in a most thorough manner.  Measuring productivity and commitment in hours is more easily quantifiable than measuring the less tangible values that we might utilize in creating an ethical workplace.  Any discussion of how many hours an academic should be expected to work each week and on what task, and where they ought to conduct that work, needs to be put into the context of what does an ethical workplace look like.  Maybe I am being overly idealistic, but I think that as a philosopher and social scientist I need to consider more than tangible inputs and outputs when evaluating the work ethics of academics in academia.

My two cents.

Best,

Janet

Janet E. Day, Ph.D,

Assistant Professor and Chair

Department of Political Science

SUNY-Oneonta

412 Fitzelle Hall

(607) 436-2754

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From: Teaching Breakfast List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Greenberg, James ([log in to unmask]edu)
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 7:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Younger Faculty and Work Hours

TBers,

Since we just talked about this issue at a TB meeting, I thought many of you would be interested in this article form the Chronicle concerning younger faculty and their thoughts on work hours.   I’m not sure an N of 12 is enough to consider it serious research, but it does jive with what we talked about .

See http://chronicle.com/article/Younger-Professors-Say-a/64475/

Jim G.