The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy

by Maggie Berg, Barbara Seeber

If there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship.

In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on the individual faculty member and his or her own professional practice, Berg and Seeber present both an analysis of the culture of speed in the academy and ways of alleviating stress while improving teaching, research, and collegiality. The Slow Professor will be a must-read for anyone in academia concerned about the frantic pace of contemporary university life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Academia, Education, Teaching, Academic, Self Help, Writing

136 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2013

About the author

Maggie Berg nació en Portsmouth, Inglaterra, y se crio en Hayling Island. Posteriormente, se trasladó a Canadá, donde desarrolló su carrera académica. Fue profesora de Literatura Inglesa en la Queen’s University, ubicada en Kingston, Ontario, hasta su jubilación en 2021. Su investigación se centró en la literatura victoriana, la teoría literaria, el género y la pedagogía. Entre sus obras se encuentran Jane Eyre: Portrait of a Life (1987) y Wuthering Heights: The Writing in the Margin (1996). Además, recibió varios premios por su excelencia en la enseñanza, incluyendo la Cátedra de Enseñanza y Aprendizaje de Queen’s University entre 2009 y 2012 .

Reviews

[Christy Hammer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book of truisms was written by two women, both full professors, who admirably wanted to bring the “Slow movement” (like with cooking!) to academia. They argue convincingly that while academia should be modeling the reflective and deliberate processes that produce deep learning, we have instead allowed the “corporatization” of the university to focus us on efficiency instead of quality and on productivity instead of critical thinking. The factory- or business-like focus on productivity created a culture where assessment is all that matters, and where faculty members joke that they are spending more time evaluating and assessment themselves and their peers they have no time to teach! The “speed up at the plant” type of evaluations focus us on the folly of “time management” when we actually should not be responding to endless meetings and surveys and attending required focus groups, but instead we should get back to reading (ah!) and keeping up with our scholarly areas of interest, spending time talking with students, and improving our teaching.

Higher education is stocked with administrators that increasingly uses “speed up at the plant” evaluation tactics with poorly-conceived and administered qualitative measures of productivity which are valued more than the quality scholarship and teaching that takes time to do well. (Too often the burgeoning layer of mid-level deans and dean-lettes are “failed academics” who were either poor teachers or with poor scholarship that move Peter Principle-like up into high paid administration.) The author’s argument that academia has modeled business-like productivity and assessment measures that are antithetical to a culture of deep and have traded reflective time for evaluation time are correct and well documented.

Problem is – it’s too late! This book’s argument should have been made 20 years ago, and as a call to refuse to transform public education into a business concern instead of a human concern. My own view (involved in K-16 levels) is that privatization of public education started in K-12, but higher education “leaped frog” over the kiddie schools, and now run quite strictly as businesses. The corporatization of the university is nearly complete, even as all public educators can plead is that we’re doing something different than a simple concern about return on investment, aren’t we? I find people that are shocked to learn that today public university professors are expected to teach enough students to more than cover their own salary and benefit packages, and ideally contribute significantly to overhead and “profit”. My own university system of Maine has close to $500 million in unrestricted reserves, and a retiring union official said he wondered why schools think they need to run like the big banks, and horde cash instead of giving scholarships to needy students and not fighting to dismantle tenure (occurring in my lifetime, for better and for worse.)

[Davide · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si legge molto rapidamente

[David Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every administrator should read this book; while great for faculty and for graduate students, it should be essential reading for administrators who have the power to change the institutions and culture. While Berg and Seeber offer advice as to how we can individually make changes and our own approach/relationship with university culture (and of course as Cindy Wu pointed out elsewhere, no everyone has the ability to choose to "slow down," to say no; race, gender, institutional status.... all mater here, they highlight what needs to be done with respect to our institutions. TO me, the book is indictment on the culture of academia and those who are writing tenure guidelines, making decisions, and administering the culture. Individual change will have limited impact

There are so much wisdom and important quotes, let me give just a few

"Academic culture celebrates overworks, but it is imperative that we question the value of busyness. We need to interrogate what we re modeling for each other and for our students" Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber (21)

"Perfectionist comparisons ... are always invalid. This is because we will always come out on the losing end of any comparison - because the point of a perfectionist comparison is not to yield useful insight, but to serve as yet another club to bash yourself over the head with to try to coerce yourself into more productivity.... Instead of measuring yourself against an impossible or exceptional productivity standardm measure yourself against a reasonable one while meanwhile working to encore, and duplicate, the reasons for your occasionally higher productivity" (Rettig) -22

"Just read it. WE need to take the time to read things that we don't 'have to' read. Just because reading cannot be easily quantified does not undermine its worth" (67)

"And as many say, keep calm and write on. For the sake of our happiness and the quality of our scholarship, we need to resit the temptation to measure our 'output' against that of others and we need to embrace the variety of scholarly trajectories. We have to think of ways to counter what Pennee describes as the 'morale deficit in an already demoralized workplace' (68) created in part by a 'cult of celebrity," faculty of an earlier generation who have secured serial research grants or the more recent large research grants, particularly of the kind that show multiple partners, quantifiable results, and immediate media opportunities' and who 'work under a halo of entitlement in the administrative firmament of reward" (69)

Universities should model social excellence as well as personal achievement - teaching, by the very way they conduct their own internal business, something about our dependence upon and need for one another, something about how to achieve the feelings of acceptance and encouragement that community life affords, the sense of self-worth and belonging that keeps us all going on the inside" (Tompkins) - 71

"'Self-care is not an indulgence. It is an essential component of prevention of distress, burnout, and impairment. It should not be considered as something 'extra' or 'nice to do if you have the time' but as essential part of our professional identities" (Barnett) - 71

"Workplace loneliness is real. This in itself is an act of courage, as Franklin puts its, loneliness 'would rather not speak its name'" (82)

"Academic shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we aren't as smart or capable as our colleagues, that our scholarships and teaching isn't as good as that of our colleagues, that our comments in a meeting or at a speaker event aren't as rigorous as that of our colleagues, and therefore we are unworthy of belonging to the community of great minds" (87)

"Slow professors act with purpose, cultivating emotional and intellectual resilience to the effects of the corporatization of higher education" (90)

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book: a beautiful articulation of why it matters to take time with our writing and thinking, to be generous with ourselves when our daily patterns of creativity and yearly patterns of productivity don't fit the corporate model, to embrace joy in teaching because interactions in the classroom are affective as well as intellectual, and to seek out energizing connections with our colleagues that are not about networking but about community. (Imagine the university if we embraced these principles! "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...") It's particularly satisfying that Berg and Seeber begin the book by quoting and picking apart the kind of managerial literatures that have come to dominate accounts of writing--and successful writing--in the academy. I was a bit shamefaced that I assigned such reading to my Introduction to Graduate Studies class this fall. Berg and Seeber convinced me that a lot of this material works to inculcate a feeling of scarcity and time panic and to underplay the structural problems in the corporate university: "Time management does not take into full account the changes to the university system: rather, it focuses on the individual, often in a punitive manner (my habits need to be pushed into shape). The real time issues are the increasing workloads, the sped-up pace, and the instrumentalism that pervades the corporate university" (25).

I was moved as well as instructed by this slim, stylish volume that takes an ample, sentimental (in a good way) approach to the potential of the professorial life, the reason we got in this business to begin with.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe this is my new bible. I am ready to re-read it and think about it and act according to its principles in every facet of my work and life. I am ready to spread its word.

A small twinge if anxiety remains.What if slowing down means losing your job? Is slowing down only possible from a place of security and success? Part of their message is that slowing down does not really equate with doing less, more it's a message about how we do our work (and how to make it sustainable) but I do sometimes fear the faster, stronger will overshadow or crush the space available for the rest of us.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great way to start off the semester: this book should be required reading for all academics though it is only the start of larger and longer, one hopes, thinking about the issues. A strong grasp on some aspects of the profession with some basic but helpful reminders gives the reader some useful tips along with that lovely sense of collegiality one gets from a "Ms Mentor" column. But the ending of the book is weakened significantly by some level of denial about a workplace which can involve dangerous emotions and activities (it would appear that school shootings are a myth for the authors) as well as the substance abuse and / or depression / anxiety that may inflect relationships and climate, still, this is a strong start to a more realistic view of the profession, and may signal or even hold open a space for positive change.

[Tamara]

I read this mostly while half-heartedly on the treadmill, leaving me unsure if I was a proud exemplar of taking time for self-care, exploratory reading and holistic regeneration for my passion-driven research, thereby constituting a site of resistance to the corporatization of the neoliberal university; or if I was a stressed out shill miserably practicing performative multitasking while policing my body in a patriarchal disciplinary regime in order to maintain peak productivity for my subpar, inauthentically thoughtful, and competitively motivated labour . Mainly I was trying to decide whether to get a gin and tonic after, which is about where I'm at as a grad student.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book. Every academic should read it. I think it will actually be a life saver for me, in trying to reconcile my values with contemporary university imperatives. I'm taking their manifesto as inspiration.

[Yuliya Yurchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Все, що ви думали про академію, але боялися сказати! Книжка вселяє надію, що не одна я так безнадійно вірю, що з академії ще можна чекати щось хороше... якщо призупинитися ганятися за всіма вимогами і почати думати, писати, читати, бо саме це є наша робота, а не біганина за регаліями, проектами, рапортами, комітетами, і т.д.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard not to spend time in and around higher education and not be overwhelmed by something between a sense of nostalgia and one of loss, as I look back at how I remember a life working in the sector nearly 30 years ago. But like most nostalgia, this loss is misplaced. All those years ago I also spent my days wrangling time to ensure I was available for my students, got all my preparation and marking done, juggled committee and school meetings and countless other unseen tasks that in being hidden meant that they were of the kind that led my relatives to assume I had several months of ‘holiday’ a year and spent most of my time reclining in my office thinking big thoughts and wasting their taxes on my unproductive thinking and teaching.

Over the years, as I have moved in and out of higher education I have watched it become more pressured and over-managed, as not only every moment of our working day became measured – but we became told, often by people who had no engagement with the processes of teaching and research, how long aspects of that work was allowed (and I use that word carefully) to take as well as what we are supposed to produce in that time. Alongside this, management burdens have grown as a language of ‘accountability’ has been taken to mean micro-managed regulation and control, and crude measures of performance and student satisfaction (often measured by instruments that lack validity, in the technical meaning of the term, and should be used to demonstrate to students how not to design surveys and similar instruments) mean that surveillance has increased. It’s not surprising then that amid all of this both students and staff are increasingly dissatisfied with their HE experiences, stress levels are rising well above averages, and it feels to many that higher education is in a state of crisis. In short, like much of the rest of the world, higher education is ‘speeding up’, and the effect is detrimental.

It is also not surprising that into this world of increasing speed, we see the beginning of a politics of slowness – in this case as a call for “deliberation over acceleration…. time to think, …. for reflection and open-ended inquiry” (p xviii). Berg and Seeber make a compelling case in this short, exciting, invigorating book for slowness in higher education, paradoxically also making the point that there is a very good chance that being slower will make our work better (paradoxical because this ‘better’ is different to the ‘better’ that for many managers means more). Much of what we do as academics is based in problem-solving: as researchers it is fundamental to our work, to our generation of new knowledge and to our refinement of existing knowledge; less obviously it is fundamental to our teaching as we work to build new ways to encourage our students to engage with ideas, knowledge and their application to build new understandings of the world around them, their place in it and their work. Sure, there are approaches that aren’t based in this idea – the pedagogy Paulo Friere called the ‘banking’ model for instance, where teaching is about dumping information on student and assessment is them parroting this information back at us; but that is bad teaching and involves no learning of any note, other than by accident. Problem solving approaches take time, require thought, reflection, musing, deliberation and so forth – exactly the things Berg and Seeber, and many of the rest of us, see as being driven out of higher education by the demands of speed.

They build their case around four major strands; time management, the pleasures of pedagogy, the processes of research and understanding and the fundamental relations of collegiality and community that this kind of intellectual work relies on. Through each of these aspects of work Berg and Seeber build an analysis but also frame much of the discussion around practical ways to deal with the problems in each field, which they admit gives the book, in places, a bit of a feel of a self-help text, a genre that is often marked by the obvious…. so the discussion of time includes sensible advice such as spending less time on-line (one of the things I don’t miss, not being in HE at the moment, is the incessant email messages, often sent by people who have copied us into things so we see they think their issue matters or that they are doing something: I have gone from 80-100 to 5-10 – it is bliss, that won’t last as I look to return to HE), and the simple observation that we should all remember that time management is not about how to fit everything in, but what to take out so we can do the things that matter. That said, sometimes the obvious needs to be restated, given that it gets lost in the speed.

Most of the book is co-written, but two chapters (on pedagogy and research) are written by one of the two authors. This gives the text a balance between a sense of collective advice and insight and individual experience. This richness is important, bringing the text to life and allowing us as readers to get a closer sense of the issues and their relevant and impacts in these cases. It also allows a little more depth in these areas, as each author can develop cases to allow us to engage with more specific evidence; if anything, the shortness of the text means that it is a little general in paces – which might be part of the plan. We’re encouraged to read slowly, and part of the effectiveness of that is that we can take the time to reflect on what the more general observations mean in our individual cases: in places I found the book a helpfully unsettling challenge to much that has become the taken for granted of practice. That said, the individually authored chapters also have the benefit of introducing differences in voice, furthering the sense that reading this is a dialogue – with Berg and Seeber and with a more reflective me.

Much of the case turns ways to encourage a sense of pleasure in learning, teaching and research, and of conviviality in our work. In doing so Berg & Seeber do not shy away from sharp political critique, of the neo-liberal drives underpinning the managerialism and instrumentalism of higher education or of the ways in which those approaches are put into practice in management, regulation and surveillance in our work, to the detriment of that work.

For any of us in higher education, our presence is a choice, an opting in to a vocation with all that comes with that in terms of service and a sense of altruism; it is little wonder then that there is much in this excellent book that encourages pleasure and conviviality and that resonates with so many of us – it is also a fine source and reminder of things we can do to get a hold of the things that make our work worthwhile. Highly recommended: it will merit multiple visits.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed immensely the premise of this book and I appreciate the reflections it inspired. The descriptions of the current state of the academy were spot on, however I'm less convinced that it is entirely recoverable. There were not as many implementable suggestions as I hoped, particularly for younger academics. Ironically, I also felt that not enough time was taken to fully develop the ideas in the book into a more compelling narrative, many sections felt stitched together.

[Mary Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for our times--not just for academics, though the focus is on how to reclaim the deep thinking space we need for intellectual activity. It interrogates the common advice on 'time management' to critique the neoliberal university's unquestioning adoption of efficiency and productivity. Some gems here that I will return to and looking forward to continuing to develop collegiality with my wonderful Warner School colleagues who will be discussing the book at my house over a leisurely cup of coffee next week-before the madness of the semester kicks in!

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I lose my mind when it comes to good writing. While reading The Slow Professor by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber, I lost my mind. Finally, tenure-track professors claim with superb evidence that the university culture that focuses on high speed, high production, and low interaction eerily mirrors fast-food culture. The authors build an argument with the Slow Food movement at its roots that university educators (notice how inclusive the language here is!) have a responsibility to themselves and their students to slow down and counter the corporate hustle. Reading this book helped me realize the improvements I’ve made in my workload that have directly and positively impacted my connection with students in the classroom, but it showed me the work I have left to do.

I am a high functioning intellectual who likes working. However, what I need to learn is slowing down and choosing the projects that nourish me and my students, not those that serve generate empty work in the hopes I keep my job, outdo my colleagues, and look productive. Berg and Seeber share the misconceptions that university folk have cushy jobs and provide pertinent stats that faculty have stress-levels similar to CEO’s. From there with great precision (it’s only 100 pages long!) and relatable diction (throw in a few f-bombs, and you would think I wrote it!), they examine the why and how of slowing down when it comes to pedagogy, research, and collegiality. Full disclosure: I am skeptical anyone writing about “self-care” and “slowing down” because I have read so much garbage, be it academic or trade, but this book is special.

Berg and Seeber perfectly captured the burnout, the loneliness, the jealousy, and the rage those who are passionate about their intellectual work (please note that there is no distinction between scholarly and creative work in my being) and their relationship with students. They also provided hope in the form of suggestions, not how-to’s, rightfully asserting that we all have different needs and approaches. When I nod rigorously and yell “YES!” so everyone at the pool thinks I’m Meg Ryan, you know I stand with this book. If you need more proof, I dog-earred every page and realized just as I was about to start writing in INK that this was a library copy, so I ordered a clean copy that I’m wondering should I return to the library…That good. That good I could have finished it an hour but I savored it and was sad when it was over. I treated this book like The War I Finally Won, Lighter than my Shadow, The Book of Mistakes. If the job that pays your bills is in academia, you owe it to yourself to read this book, to invite the idea of slow to steep into your work, to re-frame how you might treat yourself, your colleagues, the students in your life, and to practice the deliciousness that rest and repose have to offer, even to us over-achievers. Five-fucking stars.

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My relationship with the slow food movement has been ambivalent at best. I remain passionately and politically engaged in understanding how to reduce food waste, but also to act with decency and ethics with regard to food producers.

The bit of the slow food ideology that disturbs me is the fetishization of consumption. It may be posh consumption - but it is still consumption. Telling the history of a leg of ham or cheese production is part of a marketing programme for that leg of lamb or cheese. Slow food does not release food from capitalist structures. It intensifies them.

So the slow movement reveals some challenges. I approached the Slow Professor with some ambivalence. But this small book is a pleasure to read. The writing is magnificent and the research showed care and attention.

While I would like more attention to the historical nature of the academic working life to demonstrate the changes, I really enjoyed the exploration of academic time, particularly for humanities scholars. Our resources are not labs, chemicals or equipment. Our required resource is time to think. That's it, really. Therefore, this book speaks to this singular and unusual resourcing requirement with relish and focus.

A pleasure to read. Recommended.

[rabble.ca]

http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/0...

Review by Christina Turner

Symbols of the neoliberal university in Canada are so common these days it's hard not to feel inured to them sometimes. Stories of $1 million signs going up next to mouldering arts buildings, ballooning administrator pay contrasted with poverty wages for sessional faculty, and two-tier toilet paper systems circulate often in the mainstream press and around certain dinner tables.
This has also given rise, in the past few years, to a burgeoning subfield of literature that attempts to explain the precise state of crisis that we find ourselves in.
As a doctoral student in the humanities, I am all too familiar with the corporatized university's problems, as well as with proposed solutions that sometimes feel as attainable as home ownership for millenials in Vancouver. This is why I approached Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber's new book, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, somewhat warily.

Read more here: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2016/0...

[Elora Orazio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The themes of this book are valuable, if not a bit obvious. Faculty and graduate students work in an environment that hyper-focus on output, frequently at the cost of the process. The Slow Professor posits that we can begin to resist this culture in order to foster some of the other values that make academia sustainable: reading, writing for the sake of processing thoughts (not always publishing), and candid conversations with colleagues.

This may be a helpful read for academics who are feeling exhausted by the system and are looking for someone to commiserate with, as Berg and Seeber certainly emphasize that an individual's frustrations are shared by many. It is a short read, though I found it to be a bit dry. The authors would sometimes alternate between first and third person when referring to themselves, which was a bit awkward to follow. Overall, this is a nice little book on thriving within the corporate university.

[Christine Streeter (Scholar Culture) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title naturally grabbed me, as a PhD student in academia that is seeking a slower life and pushing back against the culture of productivity and overwork. It lived up to my expectation and compared "the slow professor" to the slow food movement. It was an extremely well-researched book that I know I will continue to go back too. My critique however would be the lack of discussion around contract instructors and graduate students. There was a quick mention, however, contract instructors and graduate students don't have the financial luxury to "move slow" like tenured professors do and I would have liked to hear more tips for us folks. Overall, this book made me feel less alone in craving a slower work life. There were nuggets of gold on each page and spoke to some of my favourite aspects of academic - collaboration and collegiality.

[Chanda Prescod-weinstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is very useful in some respects and should be read by everyone. But I think its allergy to technology and unwillingness to go beyond what the authors know — only the humanities — makes me think they did this too rapidly. They should have taken the time to engage with the sciences. In addition, it’s all well and good to say these things when you have tenure but they don’t really address the challenges faced by junior faculty and postdocs, instead choosing occasionally to reflect on how this culture impacts graduate students. As an assistant professor, that seems like a pretty big gap to me.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Plusses: lots of the major critiques, and some of the solutions, all in one place.
These are ideas that I think about a lot and care about.
Minuses: no mention of the vast educational literature and theory on these same issues. Devoid of a moral or spiritual perspective. Boring to read. Cites "I have attended several workshops on teaching effectiveness" as lead-in for a list for advice about teaching. !?!

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book raises a lot of important questions and for anyone in academia to think about, but I wasn't fully satisfied by all of the answers put forward. Particularly, as others have raised, can those in pre- or non-tenure positions afford to be "slow professors"? Also, the chapter on research is very specific to the humanities, so research basically means reading. I think scientists could benefit from "slow" reflection on their research too... maybe this would reduce the number of retractions?

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read this book before but re-read it while on sabbatical to help with some of my work goals, which include recalibrating my relationship with “productivity.” A lot of great reminders in this. I appreciated the many practical tips.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I probably would have gotten more out of this book if I’d read it several years ago; it does what it says on the tin, drawing on a lot of secondary material, but it felt like it was trying to convince me of something I already believe rather then deepen or complicate new ideas. I think “easily digestible introduction” was in fact their goal, hence why I blame the timing.

I’d recommend the book to people who are alarmed by or uncomfortable with its thesis, but not necessarily to folks who already think a lot in this direction. (For those folks I’d recommend Odell’s How To Do Nothing.) I also found myself a little frustrated at times by a tendency to describe a systemic problem and then propose an individual solution— they make a reasonable case for this as, in itself, part of a structural change, eg in the collegiality chapter, but I wanted more.

The one bit I liked best was right at the end: “In order for collaboration to work well, it emerges locally in conversations between people, rather than being imposed top-down by funding models. The corporate university puts a high value on research clusters” — as someone who does collaborative work, including on the fringes of a highly funded research cluster, I think this gets at something important. My own “research cluster” treats its community Slack group, which is fundamentally a social space, as the most important thing we do, and it’s led to all kinds of interesting publications.

[Isabel EM · Rating 4 out of 5]

“La corporativización de la universidad y el énfasis en la eficiencia, la productividad y la rendición de cuentas han contribuido a una situación en la que los procesos de pensamiento, escritura e investigación —que consumen tiempo, son abiertos y a menudo no lineales— se ven devaluados. La cultura de la velocidad promueve un modelo de trabajo académico que privilegia la cantidad por encima de la calidad, desincentiva la toma de riesgos intelectuales y fomenta un sentimiento de insuficiencia y ansiedad entre el profesorado. En contraste, un enfoque slow de la investigación valora la profundidad más que la amplitud, el proceso más que el producto, y permite la serendipia, la reflexión y el placer en el viaje intelectual”.

[Robin Bittick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pros: the authors identify several problems ongoing in higher education that undermines its mission. As I read the book, the authors seemed to be describing universities where I have worked.

Cons: I have read studies that show most professors are very independent and objective by nature, and the authors' recommendations require individuals to be interdependent and recognize social and emotional needs of individuals.

Overall, I recommend this book for anyone working in higher education or who is thinking of working in this profession.

[Doenja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly a quick read

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-curated work with a lot of great points. I wish the authors had spent at least a little time acknowledging and troubleshooting the challenges in implementing their good ideas.

[Mita · Rating 5 out of 5]

imprescindible

[Marieke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alsof ze de gesprekken tussen mij en mijn collega hebben opgenomen. En dan uitgeschreven door mijn andere mede-academicus 🙃

[Vita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful ideas but still unclear what to do. If anything I got a bit depressed about the state of affairs.

[Jen G · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an assistant professor entering my fourth year on the tenure track in the physical sciences at an R1 university, I thought this book presented an intriguing thesis. I agree about the real and present dangers of burn out and isolation in academic culture today, and that universities should do more to reward service, teaching and collegiality, not only because it will make for a happier and healthier workforce but because it will also create a more diverse one producing higher quality and more creative scholarly work that will have greater impact on society at large. I also agree about the importance of productive venting and acknowledging and hopefully even beginning to embrace the necessary, indeed essential, emotional component of an academic existence. It also made me thankful that collaboration on publications is so common now in the sciences compared to the author's descriptions of the isolation of single authorship which is more typical in the humanities.

I'm not convinced that the problem is necessarily "corporate culture", but instead expansion of bureaucracy and excessive upper administration enabled by increased overheads, combined with significantly lower grant funding rates.

The benefits of modern technology & social media for academics were completely dismissed in favor of reminiscing about the good ol' days when academia was easier/slower. The reverse is true, in my case: social media has provided me with new academic collaborations and friendships.

I was also disappointed to see teleconferencing dismissed despite its clear environmental benefits, while Slow Food was lauded for being eco friendly.

The book quoted excessively from other works; I estimate that more than half of the text was quotes or analysis/criticism from other books, which made for choppy/repetitive reading for the general academic audience to which it was marketed.

A few good quotes:

"The irony is that the more committed we are to our vocation, the more likely it is that we will experience time stress and burnout."

"The open-endedness of thinking is connected to an openness to otherness."

"Creating a “holding environment” requires the simple acknowledgment that our work has a significant emotional dimension, whether it be disagreeing with a colleague in a meeting, or finding a student guilty of a departure from academic integrity."