Really, it's not usually this bad

This story from The State is so wildly inaccurate, so galactically distant from the truth, it left me dumbstruck—but only after the I picked myself off the floor where I had been rolling in a fit of uncontrollable laughter for a solid hour and a half.

Education "reporter"—and former Inez campaign hack—James T. Hammond takes one factoid, deprives it completely of context, and draws a conclusion that is 180 degrees at odds with the truth. The factoid is that there will be wave of retirements in the state's public university system.

From this, Hammond spins out the laughable assertion that there will be a shortage of faculty to replace them. He even uses the phrase "seller's market!"

As anyone who knows anything about the academic job market knows, most university departments in the liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences have hundreds of well-qualified applicants for every open position. The indignities suffered by the job searchers often cross the line from merely farcical to genuinely pitiable. While certain areas in hard sciences and technical areas are less overtly competitive, the idea that it will be difficult to hire is sure to cause gales of shrieking laughter to overtake the land.

Comments: Post a Comment