My recent blog on the wasted resources associated with the academic “summer vacation” stirred up quite an interesting dialogue. What is most shocking to me is that outside of a few comments about the benefits of summer internships for students (as if there are enough summer internships and jobs for all who want them, or that all college students are spoiled 18-year-olds who have never worked a 9-to-5 job before and need to do it during their college summers, or that summer is the only time when it is conceivable that an internship or job might be available), it is clear that most of the commenters weren’t at all concerned about how to improve outcomes or reduce costs for students, but instead how to make their own lives and careers more comfortable.
Having summers off certainly doesn’t help students finish college more quickly, it doesn’t reduce the cost, and it definitely doesn’t prepare students for the reality of the work world where July is every bit as busy as March, and where productivity cannot go down just because the sun is shining and the surf inviting. The point is that we need to find a way to better utilize our higher education infrastructure so that more students can be served at a lower cost.
Of course I’m not saying that faculty should work for 12 months and be paid for nine or that there should be no time away from the classroom for students or faculty. Like many who responded to the earlier post, I agree that student internships can be valuable and meaningful, but there is no reason that they must be done in the summer. Truth be told, there aren’t enough summer internships or jobs for all students who want them anyway, so even more students might enjoy the benefit of an internship if they could do it in the spring or fall while still completing a full academic year by enrolling in a regular semester that takes place during the summer (as opposed to a condensed summer semester in which fewer courses are offered and even fewer upper-level electives). The idea that summer is the best time or the only suitable time “off” just doesn’t make sense given our goal of educating more students and the current shortage of summer jobs.
Beyond an opportunity to stagger internship experiences, a three- or four-semester year would have other benefits. Assuming that most students would enroll during two out of three (or four) semesters, institutions could enroll and serve more students by adding a third or fourth full semester. For working students, a three- or four-semester year would allow them to take fewer classes each semester while still completing a full-time course load each year, and graduating in a shorter amount of time. And for those who are highly ambitious or looking for a way to save a significant amount of money, a three- or four-semester year would allow them to complete a full bachelor’s degree in three years rather than four or five. So moving to a 12-month academic year might allow institutions to increase their total enrollment while improving the higher-education outcomes for a more diverse population of students.
As for faculty, I agree that some faculty need and deserve a break from teaching responsibilities to conduct research. However, I do not believe that all of those individuals need time during the summer to do that work, or that a concentrated three month research period is the most practical way to support scholarship, or that even the majority of faculty who have the summer off are using that time dutifully to work full time on a research project (nor should they if they aren’t being paid). On the other hand, if a faculty member really is doing rigorous scholarly or administrative work, they should do it at the time of year that makes the most sense, and be compensated fairly for that work. Justified and documented release time is not the same thing as summer vacation for everyone.
A full summer semester would bring added revenue to the institution and could allow at least some faculty to work on 12-month contracts. In fact, year-round contracts (and compensation appropriately adjusted to reflect 12 months of work) might mean that for the first time ever, the most dedicated faculty members will actually be paid for the work that they do, and that fewer faculty members will be dependent upon a shrinking supply of federal research grants to keep their labs running and earn the salary they deserve over the summer. I’m not saying that faculty should do more for less, but instead that it makes no sense to have such a significant gap in the middle of the summer when some other arrangement might be better for them and their students.
Yes, construction and maintenance is difficult when the campus is full, but it isn’t like major cities shut down for months at a time so that buildings can be built and refurbished. Students should learn to cope with the inconveniences of construction noise and dust while in school since this will be a part of their life when they enter the work world.
As for all of the comments about me not understanding how academic institutions work, I’d like to say that I spent most of my career in academia, at two very different types of institutions, and I do understand how campuses work. Yes, some colleges do offer courses in the summer, but many don’t, and even among those that do, many do not offer upper-level courses in the summer. It can be hard for students in some majors to find classes in the summer that fulfill upper-level graduation requirements.
I do understand that semesters are busy and hectic, but in large part that is because all of the administrative work involving faculty has to be crammed into a few short months since everyone knows that many are MIA through the months of January, June, July, and August. It can be almost impossible to get everyone to show up for the fall faculty meeting if it takes place more than a week before the start of classes. A more steady pace over 12 months may have significant benefits to students and faculty, especially if more time was spent teaching and less time was spent doing “scholarly” activities, many of which have little value other than filling a CV. Some of the time pressure that faculty members feel is due to the fact that many want to be on campus for only a few hours a day or for only a few days a week, and only two-thirds of the months each year. Ever been to a campus on a Friday afternoon?
This isn’t about taking a nine-month program and stretching it across 12 or about making faculty do more work for the same salary. Instead, this is about finding ways to better utilize our campus facilities and resources, serve more students, and reduce costs. That is precisely what policy makers and academic leaders should be thinking about and doing.
20 Responses to The Wasted Summer Break, Continued
ledzep - July 22, 2010 at 9:59 pm
The position in this post is more moderately stated than in the first one – in particular, the equation of summer research with personal projects has been dialed back, just a bit! Perhaps that explains some of the reaction to the first post…A more general point – insofar as there should be research going on at institutions of higher learning, the collective experience of scholars has long recognized that that kind of learning requires leisure, in a certain sense – these days that just sounds lazy, but I don’t mean lounging by the pool, I mean having time to focus on a project for an extended period of time. Now maybe we don’t need so many research or wannabe-research institutions – I’m very sympathetic to that position – but where research is desired, time for it is needed, and it’s not clear to me why it would be better to have that managed by a central administration rather than entrusted to the faculty. As far as research goes, the summers-off-teaching arrangement gives a common structure for all the faculty, rather than requiring every bit of research to be centrally vetted and approved. Cutting out that level of additional bureaucracy (which is where most of the bloat in academia is anyway) is surely worth quite a bit. But this all goes back to the larger point – not all institutions have the same purposes, and a one-size-fits-all analysis is not going to work.
deanette - July 23, 2010 at 10:29 am
if she keeps to the feltboards she’ll be fine. she has no idea what being a real academic is like. that’s why bush hired her.
deanette - July 23, 2010 at 10:32 am
does she have a ph.d.?
hampipers - July 23, 2010 at 11:21 am
To paraphrase this bloger: What is most shocking to me (given her past and present jobs) is that she is knowledgeable in neither academia nor politics!In order for her scheme to work Congress has to change the Student Loan timetable; I doubt that her Republican allies will agree to that! She states that academics who teach in the summer should be paid for 12 months but has she been living in the same academic universe? Administrators like her will not give a 33% raise to full-time faculty (20,000 or 30,000 increase plus benefits) to teach 2-4 courses over the summer. They will hire adjuncts to do the same for less (often much less) than 15,000 and without any additional benefits.So she does not understand academia, politics, or the business of education (or maybe she understands the business part only too well as she seems to carry water for certain interests) so what exactly is her area of expertise?
luther_blissett - July 23, 2010 at 8:42 pm
1. Auer Jones still hasn’t addressed the students’ need for gainful employment in the summer. This isn’t just about internships. Most students need a decent period of time to work full-time to save money for tuition, room, board, and expenses. 2. Being “MIA” for a pre-fall-semester meeting is NOT a sign that the faculty are not working. How much research can a professor do at her desk in the department office? I’d imagine that many professors are off at special collections, archives, and so on. Many are attending summer conferences (summer being the only time that nearly every professor can count on having “off” together). 3. While I do think more attention needs to be given to pedagogy over research, that attention will itself require time for professional development, meaning time for workshops, conferences, etc. 4. There’s no way to determine, before the fact, what research will simply be CV filler and what will be a meaningful contribution to the field. Reading Antonio Damasio’s work on brain science shows how often studies that made almost no impact for ten or twenty years can suddenly be essential to new, groundbreaking work. This is even more the case in the humanities. I wrote a dissertation on contemporary American historical fiction. When I’d check out books from the library on historical fiction that were written the 50s and 60s, I’d find that they hadn’t been checked out in a long time. However, the 90s saw a huge resurgence of interest in historical fiction and issues of historiography. 5. While summer classes would bring in money, they would also mean a huge outlay of expenses: air conditioning, increased faculty and maintenance salaries, etc. The many schools that rent out their facilities for summer programs, workshops, and conferences would lose that money, which is far more than the price of tuition. Now, if all we’re talking about is a three-semester school year during which students can choose which two of the three (or all three) they want to attend and during which research faculty can have a one-semester leave every year, then fine. I do wonder how that would affect the sense of community at a school, when you cannot really count on seeing the same professors and students from one semester to the next. Social and professional networking would break down to some extent. And for what gain? Students who want to finish college in fewer than four years can already take summer classes at their institutions or at an institution that offers the needed classes.
jffoster - July 24, 2010 at 7:37 am
Contrast between No 5 Luther Blisset’s thoughtful reasoned appraisal and the Postress Originale, Diane Auer Jones’, is very interesting and telling. While Mr. Blisset and I do not always agree, he actually cares and has thought deeply about education and actually knows things of substance. Diane Auer Jones care about politics and “pedagogy” and has ah agenda.
stinkcat - July 24, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Like college professors never have an agenda?
goxewu - July 24, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Yes, college professors frequently have an agenda. Therefore any agenda Ms. Auer Jones has is peachy, and her post is absolutely right.(Hello?)From my experience with the estimable Prof. Foster, he’s hardly one of them there devious liberals with a socialist agenda. If he thinks Ms. Auer Jones has a political agenda…
rchill - July 25, 2010 at 8:08 am
I am confused as to how this three semester system would work. At SLACs,we tend to have just enough faculty to teach the required courses, as well as advanced and non-major courses. I am the only one teaching cell biology, and it is offered in the fall. If I decide fall is optimal for my research (and yes, to do the type of experiments I do, having dedicated time that I can be in the lab working rather than trying to split time is necessary)then who would teach it? It would put someone else on overload. We have a hiring freeze right now, so how could you teach all year, and rotate time off over the course of the year, and provide for more students and more courses? I am teaching a summer course. I do not get my normal salary, I get an adjunct salary (which is why many professors do not teach in the summer…pay is not worth it). I read every response, and I saw nothing stating “college students are spoiled 18-year-olds who have never worked a 9-to-5 job before and need to do it during their college summers”. I did see more than one correctly pointing out many students MUST work to support themselves through school, and having a block of time to work their butts off, so they can work less or not at all during the semester really helps their mental state and their GPAs.I do not want to disparage Ms. Auer Jones, but working IN acadmeia is NOT the same as working AS an academic/teacher/professor (whatever you want to call those of us in the classroom and the lab/library/research venue). You paint all of academia with an incredibly broad brush. Were this a student paper, I would ask you for your references (are all academics on vacation in the summer?) and would chide you on sweeping generalizations. It is true not all academics are invested in teaching and research. But that can be said for any occupation; a few are really good, a few really bad, and the majority some level of acceptable. At my college, and in my experience (which is all I can accurately describe) we are expected to both teach a full load (12 credit hours) AND do research. There are no start-up funds, no graduate students to assist in the work load. My first class is at 8am; I am usually heading home around 6 – 6:30pm. I spend a couple of hours with my husband, then I am in front of my computer for another 2-4 hours grading, responding to emails, preparing for the next day. If I had to do this all year, I would burn out more rapidly than I am burning out now. And yes, given the financial conditions, and the limited number of faculty we have, I would have to carry this load (as would other faculty) to ensure sufficient course offerings to accomplish the goal of all year course availability. So, Ms. Auer Jones – how would you address this situation?
stinkcat - July 25, 2010 at 10:09 am
“Yes, college professors frequently have an agenda. Therefore any agenda Ms. Auer Jones has is peachy, and her post is absolutely right.”No, I just mean that I don’t think we have anyone without an agenda discussing this topic. I think you are right about Prof. Foster though.
trendisnotdestiny - July 25, 2010 at 11:13 am
Diane,This is so precious of you (bordering on amusing)! It seems that your inner neoliberal has come out to play.Waste is relative. Like wasting trillions on a publically funded bailout of our largest institutions. Or like wasting billions on private contractors and unaccounted for dollars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Or like BP oil spill type of environmental waste. But these are just some things I read over the summer while I was getting comfortable (but they probably not that important anymore, heh). Instead, we have more important problems to address like reducing costs and improving outcomes for students. Oh……..If I thought for one minute that industry saw students as anything other than a commodity to profit from, then I would take the bait you offer Diane. However, this is an administrative voice trying to clone itself inside the professorate’s psyche. The issue is gaining market share and profitability. For you to sell anything else is disingenuous and misrepresents all those whohave currently gone through the corporate based education system in the last few decades…. More is more thesis is a neoliberal business model, not an education liberation process where debt is used to disguise the wealth hierarchy…
literarytype - July 25, 2010 at 11:41 am
Give Diane a summer off and see if she can finish her doctorate. Why is a person who never made it past the ABD phase writing for Brainstorm and identified as having one of the best minds? Best minds usually complete the tasks they begin, n’est pas?
goxewu - July 25, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I’m one of Ms. Auer Jones’s more constant detractors, but I think some commenters should call off the dogs about a couple of things:1a) Ms. Auer Jones’s hot having, I gather, completed her Ph.D. Some of the greater intellectuals in the history of the West haven’t possessed doctorates, even in recent history when it’s been an almost absolute requirement for entrance into academe. No, I’m not saying Ms. Auer Jones is one of the greater intellectuals of our time–none of us, blogger or commenter, on “Brainstorm” is. (If we were, we wouldn’t be fooling around with “Brainstorm.”) It’s just that Ms. Auer Jones’s not possessing a Ph.D. is irrelevant to her posts, which should be judged on their merits, or lack of them.1b) Cracks such as “Give Diane [we're on a first-name basis here?] a summer off and see if she can finish her doctorate” are truly prissy, small-minded, and bush-league.2) Reducing costs of college students is a legitimate issue, especially given all the fuss that’s made, all over The Chronicle, about student debt–mostly, according to my unscientific recall, by liberals who stand opposed to most of what Ms. Auer Jones espouses.3) The issue of “waste,” as in the physical plants of colleges standing mostly idle in the summer, is also a legitmate issue–as anybody who’s ever set foot on a desultory campus during June, July or August knows. Yes, the problem is too complex to solve merely by declaring colleges to be open year-’round. But the truths are that the nine-month school year is a holdover from our long-gone agrarian era when kids were needed on the farm in the summer, and that the resistance to changing comes mainly from habit and vested interest. Arguments such as students needing the summer to work full-time for money for their educations are debilitated by there being a flood of students on the job market in the summer who might be better served by a choice of three semesters (fall, spring, or summer) during which to work. And arguing against addressing this “waste” because much bigger examples (the war in Iraq, the Gulf oil spill, etc.) exist is as wrong-headed as arguing that no police resources should be devoted to residential burglaries until all active murder cases are solved. (In short, there’s always a bigger problem.)All that said, Ms. Auer Jones still suffers from–at least the appearance of–a certain disingenuousness. Which is to say that she raises issues of public concern (academic “waste,” the potential of fusion energy) and then reveals another agenda (the putative softness of professors’ nine-month schedules, money to be made in fusion). There’s a not-so-subtle drift in her academic “waste” posts in favor of lean-and-mean for-profit colleges where the faculty would put in 40-hours-on-campus weeks and get maybe a month’s vacation, as white-collar works in the corporate world do. She kindly corrected me on my faulty physics in a comment on her fusion post, but then clammed up when I asked whether the fusion plants that might come about from her proposed big public commitment to fusion would be publicly owned or private enterprise. Ms. Auer Jones doesn’t run a school for lobbyists for nothing.
trendisnotdestiny - July 25, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Goxewu,QUOTE”I’m one of Ms. Auer Jones’s more constant detractors, but I think some commenters should call off the dogs about a couple of things:”Yes, some criticism is more justified than others… agreedsmart people sometimes have letters after their names and sometimes not.. granted and applauded GoxQUOTE”Reducing costs of college students is a legitimate issue, especially given all the fuss that’s made, all over The Chronicle, about student debt–mostly, according to my unscientific recall, by liberals who stand opposed to most of what Ms. Auer Jones espouses.”I am all for cutting costs for students (I teach personal and family finance); I know the drill… Goxewu, what is more important than talking about reducing costs is identifying all the available areas of expense and creating a clear picture so as not to convolute issues of (thrusting jibes of “a comfortable professorate” with adding to the increasing costs of higher education).My point is that waste in this economy is so systemic that by dealing with some of the larger problems we would have resources to handle many of concerns listed on CHE pages…. but as you refer it comes off as disingenuous…. QUOTE”And arguing against addressing this “waste” because much bigger examples (the war in Iraq, the Gulf oil spill, etc.) exist is as wrong-headed as arguing that no police resources should be devoted to residential burglaries until all active murder cases are solved. (In short, there’s always a bigger problem.)”Wasn’t very clear on my response, I seem to have written about four extensive posts before the submit button accepted my actual response (very frustrating)… Let me be clear that local, community and state responses to addressing waste are not only laudable but necessary and I wish to amend my response to not suggest that addressing waste should not be done. However, my concern arises that the process of becoming more efficient or less wasteful is an isomorphic process (top-down and bottom-up) requiring multiple levels of the system to participate. Bringing up recent wasteful events is an argument that is intended to show that higher levels of our economic system are intent on reducing certain types of waste and not others…. Funny how waste (shit) is brought to the doorstep of the professorate at this point in history (as a means to be more efficient argument) using the ackbasswords phrase of comfortable academics. Goxewu, if I could do over again I would have written your fourth paragraph, but I spend too much time fooling around Brainstorm:)
klblk - July 26, 2010 at 5:32 am
“Dear President Jones,I noticed that there are very few students around campus now (summer semester).Presumably our university’s central administration is idle, since there is no research or teaching going on by faculty, and no need for central services such as HR since most faculty are on 9 month contracts.Given the economic crisis, I suggest that all administrators be given a 33% pay cut to reflect the fact that they are doing no work during the break.Yours sincerely,Underemployed Faculty Member”
zarathustra - July 30, 2010 at 12:31 pm
“A more steady pace over 12 months may have significant benefits to students and faculty, especially if more time was spent teaching and less time was spent doing “scholarly” activities, many of which have little value other than filling a CV. Some of the time pressure that faculty members feel is due to the fact that many want to be on campus for only a few hours a day or for only a few days a week, and only two-thirds of the months each year. Ever been to a campus on a Friday afternoon?”As for promoting “a more steady pace over 12 months:” haven’t we all experienced the effect of allotting more time to do the same amount (or a little more?) work? What happens…the work expands to fill the time allotted. “Ever been on a campus on a Friday afternoon?” Heck yeah…that’s the only time we can have faculty meetings. That’s also a prime time for our faculty to go recruit students. And if I leave at the oh-so-early hour of 2 p.m. (after starting that morning at 9 a.m.) it’s to compensate for the 3 nights a week I was there until 10 p.m.Expanding the academic year to 12 months is not going to make the week longer.I don’t think anyone in our department gets “release” time to do research, as we are traditionally a teaching institution. If our department were to go to 12 months, additional faculty would have to be hired to teach the very specific courses that are part of our loads. We would lose the facilities and time to do a community outreach/recruiment music camp that we run in the summer–in turn costing our department (and university) money because we would lose those recruits. Also, the summer months are when we send off instruments to be repaired, so additional instruments would have to be purchased/leased while some are in the shop. I’m sure other departments have similar issues.I have no idea where the author of this blog gets off with the remark that we are primarily “filling” our CV’s. Students come to our department to study with us because of our “scholarly” activities, which I *know* make me a better teacher. There’s some veiled hostility there. Maybe jealousy, even. How many students come to universities because the administration seems so efficient or cost effective?
normative_ - July 30, 2010 at 1:59 pm
The idea of keeping a university running all-year round is compatible with research and publication, but DAJ’s proposals are neither realistic, nor do they take into account models that work without disparaging the faculty. If she were running a research institution herself, or generating her own list of publications on such a schedule and therefore leading by example, then we might wonder whether she’s right. But none of these things are true.FTR: I’ve seen one university run quite successfully on three equally-balanced trimesters. Staff teach two semesters as they would elsewhere, but some elect to teach during the summers, and are free from teaching in either the summer or the winter. It’s not the only university that does this.I would have expected a former assistant secretary for post-secondary education to know something like that. But hey, it’s only research.
zarathustra - July 30, 2010 at 3:20 pm
I *heart* normative.
libartphil - July 30, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Setting aside the counter-productive tone of these two posts, it seems to me that this proposal will be a possibility when the following conditions come true:1) Colleges and Universities are prepared to provide 33% raises to faculty.2) Colleges and Universities are willing to drop research expectations of their faculty.3) Demand is present to the tune of 50% more students than the traditional year capacity or interest on the part of students to attend throughout the year.I think the likelihood of these three conditions being met at more than a few institutions (and probably the not very good one’s for the most part–i.e. degree mill) any time in the near future makes these proposals mostly fantasies obscenely coupling with the authors snide anti-faculty prejudices.Would be nice if Chronicle would get a more substantive thinker to write on this topic.
zarathustra - July 31, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I think libartphil’s list of conditions is dead-on!