Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Lives of the tenured.

Just this week, I've seen 3 very negative posts on social media by people around my age or just a little older who are tenured in academia.

One is a guy I know vaguely from college, who was saying on Facebook that he's never worked so hard as he has this past year, and he would like to leave, but he doesn't have the money.

 (He has a spouse and children, so my hunch is that that's a big factor, too.)

And, this other prof who's a bit older and who's apparently tenured at a flagship state university replied and said something like, "I want to take early retirement as early as possible, but I won't have the money to do that, either."

And, like a day or two later, some prof I follow on Twitter said he got tenure a few months ago, but was leaving academia for a job in another sector, and was thinking of writing a tell-all article about his institution.

 (His Twitter account was closed to the public, so I assume that I started following him for some reason, and then at some point he closed down his account and started saying what he really thinks.)

Anyhow, it's honestly like so many people are honestly done or just bailing.

Just not a healthy sector.

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