One of the things that came up tonight at the big bloggers’ bash (an event that slipped my mind much of today, mind you) was the whole issue of titles. Brock noted some disparity in how academic titles are used in the north and south. And, recently, a fellow blogger in private correspondence rather strenuously objected to my recent Ph.D.-dropping in the blog and elsewhere.

This issue was rather more problematic in my ABD and pre-ABD teaching days. I wasn’t “Dr. Lawrence” or “Prof. Lawrence,” yet my students insisted on using those titles—even though I routinely told them to just call me Chris. I certainly wasn’t “Mr. Lawrence” either, being only a few years older than my students, while my academic title—instructor—hardly made an appropriate salutation either. Now, of course, I am at least “Dr. Lawrence”—“Prof. Lawrence” will have to wait until the fall, or possibly even longer if I go and play post-doc or end up at one of the one-year appointments that uses the rather Anglophile title “lecturer.”

As far as the north/south thing goes, I think some of it has to do with the difference in being in an undergraduate institution to going to grad school. But it may partially be a southern thing as well; I still have trouble calling some of my now-former professors by their first names. Then again, that could just be a “me” thing.

I’m still somewhat conflicted on the issue my friend raised, however. Part of me says, “I just busted my ass for six years, I earned this title, and I’m damn well going to use it whenever possible.” On the other hand, I can see how it might lead some to think I’m trying to confer false additional legitimacy on my opinions; I didn’t magically become more expert on all matters political the afternoon of my dissertation defense, after all.

Further complicating matters is being on the job trail: since there’s a statistically significant improvement in my hiring prospects based on having the doctorate “in hand” entering a job search, it’s advisable to ensure that hiring departments are aware of that fact—and given the level of attention that is generally given to application packets on a first screening, repetition of that fact as often as possible is worthwhile. So if you correspond with me at my university email address, you’re quite likely to see the “Dr.” appellation, at least until I accept a (now-hypothetical) job offer.

Something that’s come up in the past here at SN is the relative dearth of conservatives in academe and its causes. The meme went out in full force today; for a sampling, see Steve at Begging to Differ (who makes a compelling argument that the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Grutter applies equally to viewpoint diversity in the academy—and thus is highly suspect, since the Court would never make such an argument about political views), Andrew Sullivan, Pandagon, Stephen Karlson, Tightly Wound, and Kieran Healy for starters. Not being much of an ideologue myself, I’ll just step away from the fray.

Dean Esmay, who’s gone (back?) to college to get a degree so he can go back to working in the same job he used to be employed in before the tech bust, wonders if society overvalues the B.A. and B.S. degrees these days. Several bloggers have responded, including Dr. Joyner and Dr. Taylor. Kevin McGehee points to the dumbing down of high school as part of the cause, and certainly that is part of it; I think at some level, the creation of “honors” programs and the like in high school has not so much resulted in a better education for the upper tier of college-bound kids (although I suspect it has to an extent) as it has a lowering of expectations for the rest. And, to some extent, a lot of colleges have brought it on themselves by instituting remedial programs rather than requiring students who don’t have the necessary skills to succed in a four-year institution to attend a community college before coming for their undergraduate education.

On the other hand, while I wasn’t exactly thrilled about some of the classes I took as an undergraduate at the time, particularly in the sciences (I loathed physics with a passion, particularly mechanics), they gave me a lot of the background I’ve needed to succeed later on in life. Granted, until two months ago what I was doing in life was learning more stuff so I could be prepared to teach undergraduates and do cutting-edge research in political science, but I think a lot of that training would have been valuable no matter what I decided to do with my life.

Greg of En Banc links a short paper on the economics of student evaluation forms. Ole Miss just transitioned from paper “bubble sheet” forms handed out in-class to an opt-in online system somehow tied into our all-knowing but completely-screwed-up SAP campus management system.

Last I heard, compliance with the evaluation procedure was sharply lower—something I think would lead to a non-random error that biases responses downward, as students who disliked a class will probably be more likely to bother filling out the evaluations. On the upside, at least you don’t have to keep the original copies of the evaluations around for the written comments—which is a good thing, since the university managed to shred one semesters’ worth of evaluations a couple of years back, making those written comments lost to history.

Chris has already commented on Drezner's post about low retention rates at graduate school, but as a bona-fide grad-school dropout myself (ABD in philosophy, 1997, University of Rochester), I just have to put my two cents in.

I dropped because after five years my funding ran out, my dissertation on Kant's Theory of Substance was going nowhere, and the job market was looking awful. Why put myself through it anymore, when the newly-minted PhDs I saw were teaching multiple part-time gigs at Monroe Community College and St. John Fisher, and making less than I was making as a TA? So I ditched it all to become a computer geek, and seven years later, I’m doing better financially than I would have teaching. I’m making an upper middle-class income according to the Calpundit scale, and I’m living in a city that I like where there’s very little snow.

I’m not bitter, and I have no regrets except for not shooting higher in terms of what schools I applied to. I had the chance to study with a brilliant metaphysician, who was also an excellent teacher, and even got two footnotes in his book. (Even if, due to a typo, one of them reads “Sider (1997)” instead of “Sides (1997).” Grrrr.)

I could have spent 1992–1997 working some job I hated, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Grad school was a fun way to kill some time, and it’s better to drop out of grad school with very little debt than graduate from law school with a huge mountain of debt, only to discover you hate practicing law.

So go on and go to grad school. But don’t get your hopes up about a career in academia. Have a back up plan.

Dan Drezner has a post looking at a piece in today’s Chicago Tribune on the high dropout rate of Ph.D. students (registration required; use your favorite combo). Dan writes:

So, if there’s to be reforms to ensure a higher yield of graduate school entrants earning their Ph.D.s, there would also have to be a radical change in the culture of most academic departments. Faculty would have to tell their Ph.D.s that it’s OK to get a job in the private sector. That won’t happen soon—for tenured faculty, a key measure of prestige is how well they place their students. The more students that get jobs at top-tier institutions, the better it looks.

I think a higher yield would also require a reduced intake. Certainly at lower-tier schools, programs take in quite a few grad students on “spec,” who eventually wash out because they plainly don’t belong in grad school. That doesn’t happen so much at places like Stanford and Chicago, who have their choice of qualified potential grad students, but out here in the boonies of academia it does.

And, this gives rise to a second question: assuming all these grad students stick around, where are they going to get jobs? It’s a bitch placing the survivors now, even in fields like political science that have good placement rates (on the order of 80% and up for applicants with Ph.D.s in hand). If you think the job market is arbitrary and capricious now, just wait until departments have twice as many applicants per entry-level position—and the burden of that is going to fall squarely on the shoulders of potential professors like me, who have the same (or better) skills as students coming out of “big name” programs but whose degrees come from institutions without that name.

The only realistic solution I can see is to start revoking accreditation from Ph.D. programs to get supply and demand closer to being in check, even though I suspect the results would be monumentally unfair to many potential grad students who have the ability and interest to succeed in grad school. It’s not a solution I particularly like, but if we’re going to encourage students to stick around I think we also have to ensure they have a decent shot at a job at the end of the process.

Update: James Joyner says, “If one doesn’t fit into the academic culture in the comparatively collegial graduate school environment, one is almost certainly not going to be happy as a professional academic. This is a winnowing process that should be hailed, not cause for alarm.” And, Laura McK* thinks Dan underestimates the degree to which grad students are often treated like crap. (Speaking just for myself, I’ve had it much better than the horror stories would have you believe is typical; then again, it’s possible I just have a thick skin.)

My alma mater is hosting a lecture on string theory by University of Maryland professor James Sylvester Gates, Jr., tomorrow evening at 7 pm.

It looks to be terrificly interesting. Unfortunately, I have tickets for Hedwig and the Angry Inch at TheatreWorks tommorow evening – which my wife will undoubtedly enjoy more than a physics lecture.

Cool thing discovered recently: the Chronicle has RSS feeds of its job listings.

Not-so-cool thing discovered recently: the postal service needs a 46¢ stamp. I went through two books of 23¢ stamps in about ten minutes on Wednesday. So much for saving trips to the post office…

I’ve spent most of today writing syllabi for courses that I’ve never taught, and probably will never teach (most notoriously, a syllabus for southern politics—a great class, and one that I’d love to teach, but one that nobody will offer north of the Mason-Dixon line). And I’m not done yet… still got a few more to go.

How this exercise proves I could teach these classes is beyond me. Gotta love being on the job market…

Will Baude ponders the procedure of assigning students to discussion sections. My gut reaction is: “don’t have discussion sections”—none of the political science courses I ever took had them, and I’m not really all that sure they add much value for anyone involved in the process. I suppose they provide a way to get grad students some teaching experience to slap on the vita without having to give them the responsibility of teaching a real course and running the risk that their first outing will be an unmitigated disaster.

Such things do happen, mind you, but I’d rather grad students crash and burn during a lecture early in their careers rather than emerging from school with zero experience besides asking ten undergrads to discuss their feelings about Plato’s allegory of the cave*—and then crashing and burning repeatedly on their way to being unceremoniously canned at their third-year review.

By the way, my recommended procedure is to have the discussion sections listed separately in the schedule of classes (or, as a bookkeeping exercise, each lecture-discussion combo is considered a separate course even though the lectures all meet at the same place), so students sign up for them directly. This neatly avoids the issue of schedule conflicts since, if the scheduling program is doing its job, there won’t be any.

Notice to any prospective employer who got here by Googling my name:

It’s been nearly ten years since Memphis State University inexplicably became the University of Memphis, and it’s still causing problems. Case in point: my Ole Miss transcript, which (in addition to not having my degree posted on it yet, despite noting that I passed all my exams, completed by dissertation, and had it approved by my committee) claims I previously attended “The University of Tennessee Memphis,” an institution that doesn’t even exist: the Memphis campus of UT is properly styled The Universty of Tennessee Health Science Center, while the University of Memphis isn’t even part of the UT system for political reasons that make zero sense to me.

The young woman I discussed this problem with today at the registrar’s office did promise to change it—but the university’s new computer system (thank you, SAP) doesn’t know about the name change. End result: it’ll read “Memphis State University” on any future transcripts I receive. Someone, somewhere is smiling. That person is not me. I’m annoyed that I’m going to spend the rest of my life as a graduate of a university that requires me to include this sort of crap on my vita:

B.A., Political Science, The University of Memphis (formerly known as Memphis State University), 1998.

Jeff Jardine of the Modesto Bee opines on the apparently-bogus Scott Peterson survey conducted by Professor Stephen Schoenthaler of Cal State-Stanislaus.

Kevin of Wizbang links an AP article that indicates some kids at CSU-Stanislaus faked survey data that helped get Scott Peterson’s trial moved out of Modesto. The Modesto Bee has more coverage here and here, that suggests the survey was based on non-random samples, did not receive IRB approval before it was conducted, and lacked effective supervision—all of which are serious no-nos for valid research. (The Bee also has a copy of the questionnaire on its website.)

The whole situation is embarrassing—not just to CSU-Stanislaus, but to anyone who takes survey research seriously. And while there can be pedagogical value to having students work on surveys, particularly in public opinion classes, there’s no excuse for the apparent lack of supervision in this case.

Update: Eugene Volokh has more. To echo Eugene, however, I will say the lack of supervision and other problems in no way absolve the students who falsified data from responsibility for their corrupt behavior. If the allegations are true, everyone involved should be frogmarched in front of disciplinary committees—the students who faked data and the professor.

Will Baude is documenting Dan Drezner’s use of profanity in the classroom. I think I’ve used “pissed off” and variants of “shit” in lectures, but never anything stronger. On the other hand, I’m sure my students have used far worse terms in reference to me…

Kate Malcolm thinks colons are a scourge in academia. Anecdotal point: my vita lists twelve different works (my dissertation, a working paper that I plan to send out for review Monday, and ten conference papers). My dissertation’s title doesn’t contain a colon; the working paper does. Six of the conference papers have colons in their titles; two have a question mark that functions as a colon; and two lack colons completely.

Of the colon titles, though, only two fit the “witty title, sober subtitle” pattern: one was a co-authored piece that I didn’t pick the title for (which is one of the question-mark titles), and the other uses aliteration in the main title. The remainder contain colons because of allusions to other works (two pieces that are extensions or responses to published material), to set up the context that a theory is being tested in (e.g. “Impeaching the President: The Influence of Constituency Support on a Salient Issue,” where the substantive situation being analyzed isn’t the key focus, but it is the “hook” for the theories being tested), or because I wanted to downplay the authoritativeness of the work.

All that being said, colons are probably overused. Perhaps as full-text indexing of journal articles becomes more widely adopted, including the integration of the SSCI into other databases, colons will become less widespread.

Update: One of the co-authors I impugned above, fellow Ole Miss alum Scott Huffmon, writes:

Obviously, an exception should be made for those of us who feel it is both sport and imperative to come up with the most annoying paper titles. I actually had to harass Bobbi [our other co-author] into that title. I told her, “It may sound and look stupid, but I’m not submitting a title without a colon…it’s tradition.” John White and I decided we would try to put as many colons in titles as possible after a guy … wrote a conference paper titled (the post colon subtitle may be off, but the pithy pre-colon title is correct), “How Bubba Votes: The Voting Behavior of Southern White Males.”

I plan to continue my quest for the most annoying and stupid paper title possible by incorporating unneeded colons whenever possible. I stand defiant in the face of your punctuationist discrimination.

Viva la colon!!!

If this doesn’t prove academics have too much time on their hands, nothing will.

Peter Northrop of Crescat Sententia considers whether or not Britney Spears would have benefitted from a college education. Of course, the snarker in me would speculate that Ms. Spears would have attended Louisiana State University, given her affinity for the institution, despite rumors that she is a fan of Ole Miss quarterback Eli Manning—I’ll leave the rest of the joke to you.*

Snarkiness aside, I don’t think it is necessary or sufficient for people to have an undergraduate education, even though it would certainly be in my economic interest for more people to go to college (as it would increase the demand for political scientists), and I suspect much of the attitudinal maturity associated with college education has more to do with the experience of being “on one’s own” for four years than it does with the undergraduate curriculum.

Update: It turns out that Mr. Alexander attends Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, better known as “the place where I-12 and I-55 intersect.” Trivia point: SELU is part of the burgeoning “University of Louisiana” system,† but didn’t adopt the name (unlike UL-Lafayette and UL-Monroe).

Eugene Volokh, in a post defending Strom Thurmond against the charge of child molestation, notes a handy table that lists the age of consent in all fifty states, and comments:

I also suspect that the table is mostly designed for people who like to have sex with teenagers, but it seems to be pretty accurate, and I’ve found it useful even for more academic purposes.

Now, I’m not an expert on such matters, but it seems to me that having sex with teenagers is quite a popular activity, particularly among college students; the only thing I can figure is that law professors—the only academics who, as a group, don’t have much contact with the 17-21 demographic—are unaware just how much sex goes on among undergraduates.

Henry Farrell discusses an apparent epidemic of ghost-written letters of reference being sent by professors on behalf of students. Thankfully, nobody’s ever asked me to write my own letter of recommendation—which is just as well, I suppose, as I’ve never been very good at self-promotion. Besides, seeing as I’m an only child, I get more than enough of that from my parents…

Today’s big exercise—besides watching the Indianapolis Colts defeat the Nashville Carpetbaggers—has been dealing with job applications. I’ve divided the pile of job listings, representing about 30 jobs, into four stacks based on the sort of packet they’ll get (Research/American, Research/Methodology, Teaching, and Post-Doc), updated and polished the vita, and printed out my old teaching evaluations.

One of the more peculiar requirements of many academic job applications, particularly in the “Teaching” stack, is that they require a statement of teaching philosophy—sometimes coupled with a statement of research interests. I have a broad idea of what I’d like to write, but these exercises, like the related need to write cover letters, always seem to call for a degree of introspection that makes me uncomfortable—I’ve never been a huge fan of the “self-marketing” exercise. I’ll get through it, but it still bugs me.

Seen at the bottom of this ad for an otherwise normal-looking tenure-track position at Texas A&M University at Texarkana:

This is a security-sensitive position. Criminal background checks will be conducted on finalists.

I’m simultaneously amused, intrigued, and (slightly) disturbed.

I’ve put a copy of my dissertation up on my personal website; save yourself the bucks it would cost from UMI, of which I’d probably never see a penny anyway. (It’s copyrighted and most definitely not in the public domain; if you care about the particular licensing terms, ask me and I’ll think about it.)

Now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I figure I’ll talk a little more about the defense. I had four professors on my committee, three from our department (my dissertation chair, Harvey Palmer; John Bruce; and Chuck Smith) and one from outside the department (John Bentley, of the Pharmacy Administration department; he’s their resident stats guy). During most of the defense, it was just the five of us, but another professor (Bob Albritton) ducked in toward the end.

Unlike David Hogberg’s defense, my committee didn’t huddle up at the beginning, and I’d been assured going in that I was over the “hump” so-to-speak—the defense wouldn’t have been scheduled if they thought I wasn’t going to pass.* I did have to make a brief (15-20 minute) presentation, in which I focused on fleshing out what I thought the meaning of “political sophistication” was, discussing the key contributions of the dissertation, and broaching some potential future avenues of research in the general area that would build on, and reinforce, the findings of the dissertation.

The question-and-answer session was actually less stressful than the presentation; even though there were plenty of hard questions, I felt like I could confidently answer them and take reasonably strong positions that were grounded in the literature. Toward the end, a bit of a scrap broke out between the “rat choice” and “psychology” camps in the room, which was fun (by the end, I was borderline giddy). Then I shuffled out of the room, talked with Dr. Albritton for a minute or two, and was waved back into the room. Of the three oral defenses I’ve faced (comps, prospectus, and dissertation) it was by far the least stressful.

There are a few more i’s to dot and t’s to cross—some paperwork apparently got lost, and I need to finish up some revisions and run off the final copy of the dissertation (and turn in the photocopies on the legendary 24# cotton bond paper), both of which I can probably accomplish today if I put my mind to it—but otherwise it’s a relief to be done. Now I get to worry about finding a job…

Last-minute paperwork snafus aside (grr), you can now call me Dr. Chris Lawrence, after a dissertation defense that—among other wide-ranging topics—wrestled with the eternal questions of whether or not Paul Krugman and Ann Coulter are politically “sophisticated,” left unanswered who would survive a cage match between John Zaller and Robert Luskin, questioned whether or not Arthur “Skip” Lupia knows any psychologists, and pondered whether or not a heuristic can be perfect.

I’ve always wanted to use that as a title for a post.*

D-Day is in 37:45 and counting (I’d add a JavaScript counter, but it’d just make me nervous). I just finished yet another “final-but-not-really-final” draft. I still need to find a ream of 24# Cotton Bond paper and figure out the logistics of this whole “the signatures on your signature page can’t be a photocopy, but has to be on the same paper as your dissertation—which has to be a photocopy” thing. And I’ve got to figure out this whole page numbering of the frontmatter business, since I can’t cajole the pdflatex program that’s generating 140+ pages of my dissertation into making the right signature page or the right copyright page.

Yes, I’m totally stressing. Yes, everything will be fine.