by danah boyd
Last Updated: December 3, 2024
So... you want to be an academic? First things first, "you must be of your goddamned mind." This is the most masochistic professional choice you could make. But since crazy sees crazy, let me offer some perspective on academia that ?might? be useful. And if not, feel free to ignore it.
One of my mentors used to have me repeat the idea that "academia is the making of status" as a mantra. She had two PhDs and had attended some of the most elite universities in the United States, but she wasn't American. This led her to want to understand the currencies that made academia what it is. And what she learned disgusted her. Academia is all about brokering relationships that lead to success and power. Academia isn't just a representation of elitism, it makes elites. That's why people want to go to these universities. That's how these universities manage to raise money. And because that's the cultural currency of the university project, academics themselves get caught up in the status-making project too. There's a hierarchy of schools generally - and within each discipline. The field of economics might be the most blatant about its approach to status, but it's and undercurrent everywhere.
I find social networks fascinating. I am also intrigued by fame, power, and status. But just as celebrities can lose their marbles when they become famous, so too can academics get caught up in the allure of status. To become an academic means reckoning with your relationship to status. In a world where status is a precious currency, will you take the path of Gollum?
My heart aches whenever someone tells me that they want to go into academia because capitalism is so corrosive. The voice inside my head screams, "Oh, honey... you can't escape that." When you're a student, you don't think much about the economic structures that configure universities to be what they are. There are very few universities who are able to function solely based on tuition. (And needless to say, most of those who believe in academia don't want to live in a world where only those who can pay full freight can attend university anyhow.) So where does the money come from?
If you're at an elite school whose alums played the capitalism game and won, perhaps you have an endowment that spits out significant money each year. You almost certainly have an entire office dedicated to "advancement" which is a nice way of saying "we offer chicken dinners with a side of guilt so that people will donate to us." Perhaps your school has famous sports teams that make alums feel proud so that they'll donate more money (all the while charging enthusiasts hundreds of dollars per ticket). Perhaps you are actually employed by a real estate company who pretends to be a university for tax benefits (I see you NYU). Your institution might make significant dollars through gold-plated professional programs, ranging from executive education to med schools. If you're at a "public" university, you might get some peanuts from the state coffers, but those have been drying up for years. While US states have reduced the spicket on government money, foreign governments and rich foreigners have come along offering full freight and more so that their students are educated abroad. You might complain about the ridiculous overhead to your grants, but that too helps make the wheels turn. Have you ever wondered why campus catering costs an arm and a leg? A little bit here, a little bit there.
Someone is in charge of making the budget add up - and I really don't envy that person. It's easy to be angry about the problems with financial aid, the ridiculously low graduate student stipends, and the horrors of adjunct pay. It's especially infuriating when you know that the famous football coach is making serious duckets. It doesn't seem fair. Isn't academia supposed to be about the pursuit of knowledge? Bwahahaahah.
Academic institutions are companies. They may not provide the rate of return expected by venture capitalists, but they produce both cash and prestige. After all, academia is the making of status. And while academics like to see themselves as the heart and soul of a university, we aren't. We aren't even really employees in the traditional sense; administrators are. I think it's better to understand ourselves as products being sold to potential buyers (students, parents, alums, financiers). This is why academia gets ugly when the economics go haywire.
As products, we need to be shiny to have value to the university. We need to be desirable because our desirability attracts those with money. We are encouraged to do things that make us shiny and we are rewarded for being shiny. Of course, none of us want to see ourselves as products. And even though we all know that meritocracy is a farse, it's so much more palatable to pretend like we could be a meritocracy. Alas.
Although universities mean that academia is entangled with and dependent on capitalism, one of the features that I've always adored about academia was that scholars enacted a different form of exchange among themselves. Oddly, I've found that the more universities have squeezed academics, the more that my peers have turned away from the gift economy and towards capitalist logics.
If you understand yourself as an employee of a university, you might focus on the contract that you are offered. How many hours you are expected to work and what exactly you are expected to do. Yes, "service" to the university is baked into there somewhere, but it's far less likely that your contract includes "service to the profession" as a core commitment. And so you might feel screwed when you're expected to write reviews, attend conferences, and do work for the discipline withought being compensated.
If you understand yourself as a shiny object, the equation starts to change. There are many ways to be shiny, but all too often, faculty think that becoming a shiny object is done purely through the fame of one's intellectual contributions. In practice, many people become shiny through the development of strong networks. And most strong networks are built through service.
There are many kinds of potential service in academia. There are committees inside and external to the university. There are reviews for journals, conferences, book publishers, grant-makers, and other people's tenure/promotion cases. There is letter-writing and serving on students' committees. There's running conferences, overseeing professional associations, and serving as an editor on a journal. In some cases, universities reward faculty for these kinds of service, but sadly, often not.
The thing about service is that it primarily operates through a gift economy. I do you a favor and you return the favor down the line when I need it. Think about the amount of labor that goes into a tenure letter or a review. OOof. And yet, so many people who benefit from this opt out of reviewing themselves because it's extra work. Scholars develop reputations based on their willingness to contribute to the gift economy as much as through the reputation of their work. And when they're young, they can get away with not participating as much in the gift economy - and aiming to be shiny based soley on their work. But as they get older, the expectations of service start to mount.
The problem with a gift economy, of course, is that it's fundamentally unfair. Some people do more work than others. And there's not a lot of formal sanctioning for those who do not hold their weight. The worst dynamics emerge when someone becomes a notorious flake to peers while being seen as shiny by both elders and youngins. A gift economy is fundamentally precarious, but it is also one that's built around the idea of longevity. What you do now echoes in eternity.
What makes a gift economy so much more powerful than one built on financial exchange is that it builds social networks as a meaningful byproduct of getting the work done. Relationships form. Status is developed. Of course, it presumes that you can get into the room to be of service and build those relationships. So there are all sorts of problems with the gift economy. But I would argue that there are just as many - if not more - with operating in a neoliberal capitalist-centric model. And yet, I do fear that this is where academia is going. And it makes sense given that many academics think that they're workers instead of shiny objects.
TBH, I'm kinda petrified of this shift. What makes academia resilient to attack is a strong social network among scholars. Breaking that down is a great way to aid and abet dismantlement, which so many anti-academia people want. Le sigh.
Every sector and every organization is shaped by a range of cultural logics, some of which are painfully invisible. In academia, there is an assumption that you are to be socialized into the norms and practices of a field by your advisor. You think you're joining a discipline, but you're actually being disciplined. Unfortunately, most people aren't truly socialized into academic logics by their advisors - and this is especially true for non-white-men in non-traditional disciplines. So folks feel lost, duped, and frustrated.
There is a game to be played in academia, but you need to discover the rules. Think of it like an Escape Room where your prize on the other side is to move to a bigger room in the dungeon where you get to torment the newcomers with extra challenges. Did I mention before that academia is masochistic? It's also sadistic.
Finding mentors is key. It's not just about your advisor or your committee - it's about building a robust network of peer mentors and senior mentors who can help you see how the game functions. This is what makes conferences so important. It's also the reason to invest in relationship building.
One of my favorite books for wanna-be academics is "Beamtimes and Lifetimes" by Sharon Traweek.
This is a beautiful ethnography about how high-end particle physicists become physicists. (Hint: it has little to do with physics!) Through a comparison of this physics community in the US and Japan in the 1980s, we get to see how scholars learn to play the game. And it's a great opportunity to reflect on the game in our own disciplines.But the first step is to see it as a game, a game to be played. It can be a cooperative game as well as a competitive game. How you play the game shapes how the game operates going forward. Unfortunately, it can be a psychologically costly game. Indeed, people can get very bitter because they don't like the rules, don't see the rules, and feel trapped. So how you play the game, shape the game, and share the game with others matters.
Professors are paid to teach and do various types of university service (e.g., committee work, mentoring students), but they are evaluated based on their ability to do research (and often to fundraise). And much of this is dependent on broader relationships in the field, which requires a lot of other field-based service (e.g., reviewing papers, helping run conferences). In order to succeed, you both have to do it all and find a way to keep sane.
Needless to say, many professors cut corners. Some invest nothing into teaching. Others flake on their service work or refuse to give back to the field. This makes sense because the system is rigged. The worst part is that those who excel as high-impact, high-fundraising, or very public scholars tend to get away with being dreadful colleagues. This often makes for toxic departments where people grow bitter because they feel like they're stuck holding the bag for crappy colleagues.
As a scholar, you have to make decisions about how to best allocate your time and energy - and how to live up to the values that you hold dear. This configuration is dreadful - and we should all be working to change it. But the worst thing you can do as a scholar is add to the bitterness or become cruel to those around you.