Succeeding in the World of Ideas: The Great Potential of an Academic Career
This is an excerpt from a career guide published by IHS, Succeeding in The World of Ideas.
The Great Potential of an Academic Career
“ . . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. . . . soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), 383-84
If you are excited about the prospect of continuing to learn about political and social theories, of coming up withtheories of your own, and of doing research into the validity of these ideas, you should consider an academic career. Think how fulfilling it would be to spend part of each week for the rest of your life reading, thinking, and writing about intellectual issues and so make a contribution to the growth of human knowledge and understanding. There are vast areas of anthropology, economics, history, law, literature, political science, psychology, and sociology that cry out for fresh thinking of the kind that can be provided by students who are familiar with classical liberalism and who approach their work with a scholarly, open-minded attitude.
In the course of a thirty-five-year career at a liberal arts college you would teach introductory classes to thousands of students and conduct intermediate and advanced classes and seminars for hundreds more -- which means that, if you get two or three students in each large class and one student in each small class to consider seriously a new idea, you’ve reached at least a few hundred, and maybe several hundred, students in the course of your working life, students who will proceed to positions in education, journalism, public policy, the arts, public administration, law, business, and politics.
Another benefit of an academic position, even one at a liberal arts college, is the opportunity to pursue your intellectual interests and be paid to do so. As you may know, the majority of academics are tenured. In other words, after a probationary period in which the untenured assistant professor proved himself, his colleagues granted him tenure so that he now enjoys until retirement a permanent position from which he can be removed only for exceptional reasons and after a lengthy investigation by his colleagues. So eventually when you receive tenure, you have the opportunity to pursue your mind’s most precious desire, perhaps writing a book or satisfying an intense intellectual curiosity.
The workload of an academic varies depending on the sort of institution at which she works. A liberal arts college (such as Carleton or Wellesley) attaches relatively more importance to teaching and advising students, and a professor spends much of her time engaged in those activities. On the other hand, a typical professor at a premier research university (Yale or Berkeley, for example) has a much lighter teaching load, and promotion depends largely, perhaps entirely, on the record of her published research in the professional journals. Indeed, when she lectures to undergraduates she would be helped by teaching assistants (or TAs). These are graduate students who receive financial assistance for conducting tutorials and grading papers. A less prestigious university (such as Fairleigh Dickinson or California State at Northridge) usually requires its professors to teach rather more, but promotion usually depends largely on getting published in the journals. They would also be assisted by TAs.
You have to be smart to be a successful academic, but you don’t have to be a genius. Indeed, the very smartest people rarely make the best teachers. The principal reason why students so often think that professors are very smart and knowledgeable is that the professors have spent a large part of their lives reading and thinking and possibly writing about their subject and consequently know far more than any student is likely to. They’re not on average smarter than people in other professions, they’ve just specialized in being academics. This means that they’ve studied a subject in depth, read (some of) the literature, and learned the jargon. It is a profession attainable by anyone who is motivated and reasonably bright.