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Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education
"Profscam" reveals the direct and ultimate reason for the collapse of higher education in the United States--the selfish, wayward, and corrupt American university professor. In this fiercely argued, often infuriating book, investigative journalist Charles J. Sykes charges that college teaching has become a lucrative racket, where the most important responsibility--undergraduate teaching--has been abandoned in favor of trendy research, the pursuit of personal or political agendas, outside consulting contracts, and the drive for tenure.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 2, 2008
There's a lot of indignant sputtering to be found in this book, an extended cry of "J'accuse!" leveled at U.S. universities. The author's main thesis is that the intense focus on research acts as a corrupting influence throughout the system. Overvaluation of research in the triad of teaching, research and administrative duties that comprises a faculty member's job responsibilities has diverse and far-reaching consequences, most of which the author views as negative.
• It creates an unhealthy system of incentives, whose main casualty is the quality of undergraduate education.
• As the number of highly talented researchers in any given field is necessarily finite, competition among universities for the same few 'stars' results in major distortion of salaries.
• This competition has also completely warped more traditional views of the appropriate role of the university within the broader society, so that now even land grant colleges have lost sight of their formerly clear mission of education, and strive to compete as research institutions with universities twenty times as well-endowed, in a senseless game they cannot hope to win.
• The ‘publish or perish’ criterion forces junior faculty to prioritize research above all else, but the inflexibility of the tenure clock almost ensures that the research will be excruciatingly narrow in its scope, incremental, and of interest to only a handful of academics. It is the rare junior academic who will take the risk of branching out in a completely new direction, which might prove to be a dead end, knowing that the primary metric used by tenure committees is the number of publications (quality is supposed to play a role, but can be difficult to assess, so all too often a simple count is the major determinant).
• As for tenure, Sykes finds it to be just one more mechanism which allows faculty to avoid accountability, instead of being the much-vaunted ‘protector of academic freedom’ the professoriat would have us believe. Within certain disciplines, in fact, true freedom of expression often seems threatened by a particularly virulent type of political correctness.
With chapter titles like “The Crucifixion of Teaching”, “The Weird World of Academic Journals”, “The Pseudo-Scientists: the Social Sciences”, Sykes leaves little doubt where he stands in this excoriation of the ‘professoriat’. He makes the point repeatedly, and convincingly, that the real casualty in today’s university is the quality of undergraduate teaching, and that today’s undergraduates (and their parents) are being asked to shell out more and more for less and less. In the book’s final chapter, he outlines the key components necessary to improve matters: puncturing the research myth, abolishing tenure, requiring professors to teach, restoring the curriculum and the canon, and enforcing ‘truth in advertising’, i.e. forcing colleges to provide accurate statistics on such questions as the actual number of hours spent by tenured faculty in teaching undergraduates.
I first read this book fifteen years ago, and found it to be a depressingly accurate account of third-level education in the U.S. Upon re-reading it this past weekend, I was cheered again by the brisk common sense of Sykes’s arguments – his broadsides retain their pungent relevance. The depressing thing, of course, is how little things appear to have changed in the interim, making this book as relevant today as when it was first published twenty years ago.
• It creates an unhealthy system of incentives, whose main casualty is the quality of undergraduate education.
• As the number of highly talented researchers in any given field is necessarily finite, competition among universities for the same few 'stars' results in major distortion of salaries.
• This competition has also completely warped more traditional views of the appropriate role of the university within the broader society, so that now even land grant colleges have lost sight of their formerly clear mission of education, and strive to compete as research institutions with universities twenty times as well-endowed, in a senseless game they cannot hope to win.
• The ‘publish or perish’ criterion forces junior faculty to prioritize research above all else, but the inflexibility of the tenure clock almost ensures that the research will be excruciatingly narrow in its scope, incremental, and of interest to only a handful of academics. It is the rare junior academic who will take the risk of branching out in a completely new direction, which might prove to be a dead end, knowing that the primary metric used by tenure committees is the number of publications (quality is supposed to play a role, but can be difficult to assess, so all too often a simple count is the major determinant).
• As for tenure, Sykes finds it to be just one more mechanism which allows faculty to avoid accountability, instead of being the much-vaunted ‘protector of academic freedom’ the professoriat would have us believe. Within certain disciplines, in fact, true freedom of expression often seems threatened by a particularly virulent type of political correctness.
With chapter titles like “The Crucifixion of Teaching”, “The Weird World of Academic Journals”, “The Pseudo-Scientists: the Social Sciences”, Sykes leaves little doubt where he stands in this excoriation of the ‘professoriat’. He makes the point repeatedly, and convincingly, that the real casualty in today’s university is the quality of undergraduate teaching, and that today’s undergraduates (and their parents) are being asked to shell out more and more for less and less. In the book’s final chapter, he outlines the key components necessary to improve matters: puncturing the research myth, abolishing tenure, requiring professors to teach, restoring the curriculum and the canon, and enforcing ‘truth in advertising’, i.e. forcing colleges to provide accurate statistics on such questions as the actual number of hours spent by tenured faculty in teaching undergraduates.
I first read this book fifteen years ago, and found it to be a depressingly accurate account of third-level education in the U.S. Upon re-reading it this past weekend, I was cheered again by the brisk common sense of Sykes’s arguments – his broadsides retain their pungent relevance. The depressing thing, of course, is how little things appear to have changed in the interim, making this book as relevant today as when it was first published twenty years ago.
August 27, 2007
I came to understand why most of my university classes were not much more insightful and had similar format to those in high school. Although they were supposedly more "advanced" they disappointed, failed to delve into real world issues and usually taught what one was to learn instead of inspiring questions and motivating the desire to seek answers.
August 20, 2018
I read Profscam when it first was published. I have worked in education for over 30 years and a lot of what Mr. Sykes says is spot on. The one thing that has really struck me is that in college and universities, good teaching is not prized. Too often it's turned over to adjuncts and graduate students while the professors do scholarly writing, most of which is turgid and unreadable.
January 28, 2017
This is a sincere and creative book about how the honest job of University Professor has become a source of income for swindlers. Do you remember the glorious University Professors of 13th century America? Neither do I, but that is only a conspiracy to blind you from the truth. Back in the 18th century Harvard a medical professor had the precious abilities of reading and writing and the formative years of being a ship's barber/surgeon. Now, can you imagine the decadence? Now people expect the professors of the University of Medicine to actually have followed more than two years of med school. Sometimes they go as far as four years. And only frauds could pass all those exams. Oh, gone are the good ol' days of the life saving barbers!
May 10, 2012
Dated and right wing-y, but interesting nonetheless.
November 8, 2008
Very cynical view of the American professoriate.
April 24, 2009
Excellent book!
July 16, 2011
Excellent book about university corruption, fraud, and exploitation which is pervasive in the USA.
March 28, 2012
... review to come later.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews