The Adaptive Power of Career Activism

For the past eleven months, we've been exploring the principles and practices of Career Fitness. When you take up that program, you are -- consciously or otherwise -- transforming yourself into the persona of a "career activist." You are acknowledging that you are a person of talent and that you are responsible for the direction and content of your career.

Why is that so important? Because as I explain in my new book, The Career Activist Republic, the American workplace has never been fraught with more danger than it is right now. Nor, on the other hand, has it been filled with more opportunity.

First, the danger. Those in the field of higher education are now facing two pressing threats:

• You are enduring "employment waterboarding." Even as the economy stabilizes and hiring is beginning to rise, jobs continue to drip, drip, drip out of the workplace. Employers may be recruiting new employees, but they're doing so for fewer jobs.
• You are engulfed by a "national warming of work." Thanks to the heat generated by constantly changing requirements, the duration of jobs is now shrinking. Most people want a permanent job, but the definition of permanent has now become impermanent.

These tectonic shifts in the workplace force all of us to rethink how we approach our career. In this rapidly evolving environment, for example, there is no time to coast. Managing your career is now a lot like riding a bicycle. You have to be moving forward -- expanding your knowledge, adding to your bank of contacts, developing ancillary skills and proactively setting goals -- or your career will come to a crashing halt.

If that's the danger, what's the opportunity? The same challenges that face higher education professionals in their careers also face those in every other profession, craft and trade. As a result, a growing number of Americans now realize that they must see themselves as a "work in progress." They are never done with their occupational development, their quest for new knowledge and skills in their field.

That demand is already crashing down onto community colleges and undergraduate and graduate institutions. Five years ago, there were 92 million adult Americans enrolled in educational programs. Today, that number is undoubtedly larger. Yes, academic budgets are under severe pressure. And certainly, traditional career paths in academia are morphing. But this intense demand for education and re-education among America's working adults all but ensures that there will be abundant employment opportunities for those who can and are willing to adapt.

That adaptation is at the heart of career activism. It recognizes our natural preference for what is familiar and expected, but bases our survival and prosperity on our ability to evolve. It is our instinctive capacity to see the world as it is and to reshape ourselves in a way that leverages that reality to our advantage. Career activism won't eliminate the hard times, but it will give you the capacity to overcome them.

It's been my pleasure to serve as an Author in Residence on HigherEdJobs over the past year. I hope you've enjoyed my blog posts, or at least that they've given you food for thought. And, please accept my very best wishes for a long and fulfilling career.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Waiting for Superman or Godot?

It's not news to say that our educational system is at risk. The problem is that things are getting worse rather than better. The precariousness of the system is exacerbated by the reluctance at all levels of government to recognize the magnitude and consequences of this disease, to determine its causes, and to do the serious work needed to cure it. The paradox in the American educational system is that at its apex -- at the great American research universities -- we are the very best in the world, while we simultaneously are suffering, along with most of the Western post-industrial societies, from a deteriorating K-12 system that simply is not functioning in a way that will fulfill our society's needs in the 21^st century.

Education nourishes the health of every institution in our country, and its quality will have much to do with the longer-term health of those other institutions. If over half the nation's children are incapable of solving simple mathematical problems; are incapable of using our language appropriately; are incapable of understanding how to solve problems; are incapable of learning enough to make considered choices during elections that reflect their interests; are incapable of critical reasoning skills; then family, business, politics, and the health of individuals suffer -- and the society begins to deteriorate.

We can attribute some of this abysmal condition to the responses of states and the federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. We can fool ourselves into believing that when the economy becomes robust once again, these problems will disappear. We can believe that excellence can be obtained without paying for it. We can delude ourselves into believing the old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention," and we'll come to grips and solve these educational problems when we truly have to. But, such beliefs are illusory. Surely mindless cuts in K-12 and higher education budgets that are part of general cost-saving measures in states facing severe budget shortfalls provide immediate and critical evidence of a lack of understanding of the central importance of education in our lives. But the origins or etiology of this multidimensional education mess goes back farther and has deeper roots than the recent financial tsunami. Identifying the causes for the broken educational system is no easier, and perhaps equally elusive, as finding cures for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, and Parkinson's. Without any effort at completeness in understanding, which I'm sure we do not yet possess, here are a few factors that contribute to the multidimensional problem.

Consider first some symptoms rather than causes. Perhaps the most referenced symptom is the comparative performance of the United States youngsters versus those in other nations on math and science examinations at grade levels four and eight. American students consistently score far below Asian students of comparable age on mathematics and science achievement examinations. Within the last week, on December 7, 2010, the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD reported the results of tests in math, science, and reading taken by 15-year-old students in 65 countries. American students again did not distinguish themselves -- 30 countries, for example, had math scores higher than those of U.S. students. If there was any shocking finding it was that the Chinese students living in Shanghai, one of the most educationally and economically advanced cities in China to be sure, were included for the first time and essentially blew away the rest of the competition with scores that made the U.S. students look second-rate. The value of these test results is often questioned as a measure of rote learning rather than creative thinking. Some nations do, in fact, emphasize rote learning rather than the development of critical reasoning skills. At most American schools, it is unclear whether we emphasize either. While basic reading and quantitative skills are critically important foundations for the nation's need to fit its longer-term employment needs with skill levels of its population, teaching to the test rather than reforming what we teach and how we teach young students to think analytically and critically for themselves won't solve our national needs. Nonetheless, the PISA results represent a shot across the bow. We cannot simply dismiss them. The Chinese and other Asian societies are training millions of their young students in basic skills (including requiring English of every student); we are doing far less well, as are most of the European nations. Certain basic skills are necessary before worrying about creativity and innovation.

There are other disturbing symptomatic facts: Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics... [And] ninety-three percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught the physical sciences by a teacher without a degree or certificate in the physical sciences; the U.S. now ranks 27^th among developed nations in the proportion of its students who earn bachelor's degrees in science or engineering; we rank 20^th among industrialized countries in high school completion rates, 16^th in college completion rates.¹ What flows from all of this? Forty-nine percent of adults in the United States do not know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. This level of ignorance, which has nothing to do with analytic ability, extends far beyond science and technology. Only about six in ten Americans can correctly identify Joe Biden as the nation's current vice president; atheists and agnostics demonstrate greater knowledge of the Bible's content than Catholics and Protestants. In short, the relatively low level of scientific, mathematical, and general literacy in the United States is alarming and it is not improving. In fact, these levels of knowledge are closely correlated with the educational achievement of those who occupy these classifications.

These are consequences of the disease we must fight, but we can't infer the causes of the disease from its consequences. Let me suggest several causes (leaving others to forthcoming postings), some of which have been studied for many years -- but which are not sufficiently incorporated into the public mind and social policy. The education disease is caused, in part, by the relative weights that Americans place on a set of personal values, of which scholarly achievement is not at the top of their hierarchy, except in some subgroups of the population -- for example, Asian Americans and Jewish Americans, as well as those who already occupy prestigious occupational and income positions in the United States.

James S. Coleman, the renowned sociologist, identified this problem in his 1961 book, The Adolescent Society. Despite the need for a greater emphasis on educational achievement, there was emerging an independent "society of adolescents," an adolescent culture in which educational achievement was less important than students' focus on cars, dates, sports, popular music, and other matters just as unrelated to schools. This was, and still is, reinforced by parents of these youngsters who spend more time at local football games than reading books and discussing them with their children, or for that matter, talking to them about art, music, or science. Add social networking, the use of new technology, and a few contemporary school inventions of extra-curricular activities and not too much has changed in the hierarchy of values since the 1950s. Star athletes, cheerleaders, and the most popular youngsters still represent "the leading crowd" at our elementary and high schools, rather than the nerds who are separated into special "gifted" classes and viewed as incomprehensible objects by most in the schools -- rather than the local heroes. The continuing ambivalence of Americans to expertise and the intellect, the periodic explosion of anti-intellectualism in our country, is testimony to the insufficient value placed on learning and the learned. Of course, we can all point to fantastic schools, some public and others private, where academic ability is honored and admired, but that is not the norm. We are fortunate that our nation is large enough that the absolute number of highly motivated, strongly educated youngsters continue to innovate and perform highly skilled jobs, but that gap between the number needed and the number we are educating -- particularly in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering -- is growing rapidly.

In an even more important 1966 report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Coleman found, contrary to his and others' expectations, that the social composition of the school, the quality of the facilities, and the quality of the teachers, were far less important factors in a student's educational achievement than were the influences of their families and the values that family members placed on educational success. This seems to still be true today -- as demonstrated in countless empirical studies of the process of social mobility through the educational system. The absence of adequate emphasis on families also comes to light in the recent, highly acclaimed documentary film by Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman, which focuses on how the charismatic educator, Geoffrey Canada, takes Harlem youngsters, and with the right school facilities and a set of dedicated teachers, produces highly successful students who go on to college.

There is much to praise in Guggenheim's film: its critique of the public school system is largely on target; its harsh treatment of the teachers' unions is spot on in depicting their intransigence over 50 years to change; their resistance and unwillingness to abandon a tired trade union mentality in favor of a merit-based system of rewards and recognition for excellence in teaching. Yes, highly dedicated, remarkable teachers working in a nurturing environment with a limited number of students in each class, can change the lives of receptive youngsters forever. But by being mesmerized by the charismatic character of Canada, what Guggenheim failed to highlight and emphasize sufficiently (and most critics failed to note) was the extraordinary quality and devotion and sacrifices of the African American parents, especially mothers (often single mothers) who were fighting for the lives of their children. They were fighting -- often against great odds -- to give their children what they believed was the most precious gift they could give them -- a quality education that would free their children from the constraints of their neighborhoods and to expand their effective scopes and horizons so that their children would experience things that these dedicated parents could hardly imagine. This message was at the center of this film -- and the moving agony is palpable of most of those dedicated parents losing the lottery that would have opened the doors for their youngsters to one of the prized schools -- dashing, in the process, their sense of hope. Ironically, the key to changing educational outcomes lies not only in the schools, but also in our homes. It is distressing to see critics of parent's lack of effort in instilling the value of knowledge and education in their children get kicked in the face for their criticism. Until we can transform the relative value families place on educational achievement, efforts to reform the curricula and the types of teachers in the schools, while marginally making a difference, are not apt to do much to cure the larger educational maladies that we suffer from.

Another cause of our failures is, of course, the way we go about educating most of our children. No Child Left Behind type programs almost invariably emphasize how much information children have assimilated and whether they are able, even by rote learning and without real understanding, to solve a simple equation. Perhaps this is a necessary, but surely not a sufficient condition for a well-functioning educational system. Teaching to the test, whether it is for fourth grade math students, or advanced placement applicants to college, does not teach students how to think or challenge them about how one might go about solving a difficult problem. Can youngsters learn to ask questions for which there are no answers at the back of the book? Can they learn, by whatever methods they are capable of using, how to solve problems without relying on formulaic learning? Rewarding youngsters for the way they think about problems and how they go about solving them, rather than simply for getting a correct answer, needs to be more pervasive in our educational system. The process of inquiry is, in many ways, as important as the outcome. The distinction I'm trying to make can be illustrated in an often-told anecdote around Columbia University about the great American physicist, Isidor Isaac Rabi. The story has it that Rabi was visiting his mother's home in Brooklyn, celebrating Friday night Shabbat services, when he received a call from Stockholm. When he hung up the phone, he turned to his diminutive 90-year-old mother and said: "Ma Ma, I just received a call telling me that I had won the Nobel Prize in Physics." Rabi's mother looked him straight in the eye and with her Yiddish accent said: "Son, did you ask a good question?"

¹ As reported in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2010. The PISA results were reported in The New York Times on December 7, 2010.

A Resume for Employers or a Record for You?

Most of us see our resume or CV as a single-purpose document that details our employment and professional accomplishments. We use it to list our work experiences, our academic degrees and publications, and our occasional public presentation and service on special committees. Moreover, our only reason for doing so is to impress employers enough to open the door to an interview. In short, we think a resume is simply a tool for a job search.

Unfortunately, this focus on an external audience and a single role often lulls us into thinking that we need not keep our documentation up-to-date. Since we need it only when we're in transition and communicating with prospective employers, we can ignore it until such moments arrive. And, that's a mistake. The recitation of our history in the workplace is even more useful as a tool for career self-management.

For that reason, the Career Fitness System envisions a comprehensive and current work record as the key document in our career. This record has two roles, both of which are internally focused. They are:

• To serve as a virtual trophy case, a place where we can spotlight and celebrate our accomplishments. The record enables us to avoid the unreliable counsel and recognition of our supervisors by supplementing it with our own celebration of what we have done.

• To provide a means of self-evaluation and coaching. By using the record to review our own performance on a regular basis, we can determine what we are doing well and where we need to improve in order to continue our professional advancement.

Granted, this much more proactive use of our career record requires both self-discipline and self-insight. We have to be candid and honest with ourselves about what we have done well and what we should work on to improve. That can be a challenge, to be sure, but the reviews are personal and private, so there's no reason to be anything other than straightforward with ourselves.

It is true, of course, that we may, from time-to-time, lack the knowledge to understand or remediate a specific problem. Unlike with traditional performance appraisals, however, we don't have to rely on (or be subjected to) our supervisor for the assistance we need. We can select the individual or group that we want to help us. And no less important, the more genuine self-awareness provided by such a process ensures that we can accurately describe the issue that is troubling us.

Finally, by keeping our record up-to-date, we have all of the information we need to compose a powerful resume quickly. As a result, we can launch off on a job search without delay if we suddenly find ourselves in transition or we can tailor our resume more effectively if we find a new opportunity for which we would like to compete. And, in an era fraught with uncertainty and continuous change, such preparation is a key component of career success.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

The Unexamined Career…

The great thing about the Career Work-in and the various exercises it takes you through, is the thorough examination of one's career you end up with. Taking time to pause and become reflective about one's career prospects, goals, and direction is not something many feel they have the luxury to do. However, as Peter asks throughout Work Strong, do we really have the luxury NOT to take this time out and put in the effort to carefully examine our careers? 

For those seeking employment, whether currently employed or unemployed, the time it takes to work through the exercises in Work Strong should be seen as an investment in a healthier career. Taking time to be self-reflective about our careers means we will be more aware of our personality, interests, needs, and achievements.

Our personalities are fluid and change as we age and gain wisdom. It is unlikely you have the exact same personality you had when you first entered the job you currently hold. In fact, it might be that change in personality that has you wanting to move on.

As time moves along, we seek out new interests, or sometimes, new interests find us. I was not always interested in Social Media. However, about ten years ago I found forums, and soon after that weblogs, as great outlets for connecting with people about various interests. This desire to use new media to connect with others led me to a new interest and a career in Social Media.

How often have your job searches or the job searches of friends been spurred on by changing needs? Getting married? Divorced? New addition to the family, or are the kids finally moved out? All are events that change our needs and thusly, our careers may or may not need to change to meet those needs.

One thing I find very useful about reflecting upon my careers is discovering different achievements I have made. Often things go by as just routine parts of the job and are not necessarily marked with pomp and circumstance. Rediscovering these achievements will help you explain what you have to offer to your next employer and might even open up some forgotten doors.

I encourage job seekers and those considering a career change to stop and examine your career. Work Strong has many valuable exercises to help guide you along the process. You might be surprised by what you find.

Myths About Higher Education in the United States

By Jonathan R. Cole*

It's time to dispel four widespread myths about the quality of higher education in the United States. The first of these is that teachers at the elite institutions of higher learning don't give a damn about undergraduates and care less about teaching them, since all of their professional success depends on their research productivity. The supposed result is that even at places like Harvard, Williams, and the other distinguished Ivy League schools and their equivalents, students have unsatisfactory experiences in the classroom and resent being neglected by the faculty. The second myth is that academic tenure is nothing more than a protective shield against sanctions of poorly performing teachers and researchers. It should be abolished, say these critics, because it not only fails to protect the free inquiry of faculty members from inappropriate and abusive power both inside and outside the university. Tenure, they claim, is also expensive for universities; it's wasteful, and a boondoggle for unproductive and lazy faculty members. The abolition of academic tenure is essential, they assert, if we are to solve today's "crisis" in higher education.

Then there is the growing criticism that excessive concentration on research corrupts the values of the university and undermines commitments to teaching. Therefore, critics assert that if we are going to promote good teaching at our universities, we ought to separate the teaching and research missions into separate institutions. Among these critics, there is no appreciation, and at best reluctant, passing acknowledgment, that research discoveries made at our great universities have become the engine of innovation and change in the larger society. Nor is there appreciation that in our system of higher learning, the boundaries between teaching and research have become sharply attenuated.

Finally, the myth persists that the cost of education at the elite colleges represents nothing more than gauging a willing and poorly informed public -- and that the price charged by these elite colleges and universities simply is not matched by the quality of education their students receive. In four postings, I'll take up each of these myths and half-truths.

These familiar beliefs have most recently been reinforced in Mark C. Taylor's, Crisis on Campus, and in Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus' new book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing our Kids -- And What We Can Do About It. One should always be a bit skeptical of those claims of "crisis" in reference to higher education. By diagnosing the system as in crisis, these authors sound alarm bells that resonate with those who know little about colleges and universities, but ring hollow with those who systematically look at the facts about the current state of American higher education. Audiences love to read about crisis and the golden past -- language that sustains popular myths about the failures of higher learning, especially when "discovered" at our best universities and colleges. This misled audience often includes legislators and others who are looking to disinvest in the great universities and colleges in their states. Like all institutions that must adapt to a changing world, higher learning faces many challenges and threats to its values and its quality, but it surely is not in crisis.

Crisis or not, are the factual claims about undergraduate education true? The authors take anecdotes as hard evidence and fail to present better evidence that would falsify or question their central assertions of fact. Had they looked to superior, existing data, they might have reached different conclusions, or at least have made a more sophisticated argument about where and how the teaching of undergraduates at our preeminent colleges and universities is failing our society.

Consider first the myth that undergraduate students, especially at the Harvards, Stanfords, and Columbias of this world, receive poor educations and are extremely dissatisfied with the way they have been treated. One excellent source of evidence about the way students feel about their educational experience at these elite schools can be found in the survey that the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) conducts every four years -- a questionnaire that asks seniors at 31 of the nation's most distinguished universities and colleges what they thought about various aspects of their college experience.^[1] These schools are all private institutions with very high sticker prices, if you fail to account for the incredible generous, need-based financial aid packages awarded to their students. Virtually all of them are ranked in the top 25 of the "best" national universities or liberal arts colleges assessed by U.S. News & World Report. In short, these are the Ivy League Schools plus some of the best large private universities in the nation, along with the better private liberal arts colleges.

As an example of the bareness of the undergraduate experience, Hacker and Dreifus quote one Harvard junior who notes: "We don't feel the professors are here for us... When we come to Harvard, we have to understand it's not for the education we get, but for the reputation its degree gives us." I'm afraid that such statements don't represent the overwhelming majority of those who graduate from Harvard and schools of similar quality. While there is no agreed upon metric for assessing the quality of teaching, individual anecdotes are not to be mistaken for facts; "for example" is not proof. Alternatively, we might best begin with large samples of students and their assessment of the academic aspects of their undergraduate experience.

The 2006 COFHE survey did just that. Here is what the students at these universities and colleges, including all of the elites that Hacker, Dreifus, and Taylor refer to, conclude about their experience. When asked about their satisfaction with their academic experience, fully 88 percent of the graduating seniors said that they were generally satisfied (48 percent) or very satisfied (40 percent). And what specifically were these students from 31 of the nation's best undergraduate schools most satisfied with? Over 90 percent said that they were either generally or very satisfied with the "quality of instruction" and an equally high proportion was very satisfied with "out of class faculty availability." They were also overwhelmingly satisfied with class size, with course availability, with interdisciplinary courses, and with the opportunity to participate in research with faculty. They made a special point of noting the value of study off campus or abroad programs. When they evaluated the quality of study in their major field of interest, roughly 80 to 90 percent of the students said they were generally or highly satisfied with the "helpfulness of faculty outside the classroom," "the availability of faculty outside the classroom," "the quality of instruction," and the "intellectual excitement" that they experienced.

Contrary to the mythology, the simple fact is that excellence in teaching and research are compatible and mutually reinforcing at these great universities and colleges. Of course, there are great researchers there who are embarrassingly poor teachers. But great researchers don't monopolize poor teaching. There are many poor researchers whom you wouldn't want to place in front of an eager group of students, either. At the great universities and colleges, it is very often the case, however, that the best researchers are also among the most brilliant lecturers or mentors of students. These are the producers of fresh ideas who are truly at the cutting edge of their disciplines and who can give their students a sense of excitement about scholarship at the research frontier. Even if the quality of education is not what defines the unique character of the most distinguished research universities, it influences the culture of the institutions and affects their ability to attract the best scientists and scholars.

To be sure, students were not enamored of all aspects of their undergraduate educational experience. While they overwhelmingly applauded the quality of their library services and computing facilities and resources, they were far less sanguine about career and psychological counseling, about their advising systems, the food services, and about the responsiveness of their college administrators. But these criticisms of administrative offices sharply contrast with their very positive views about the quality of their teachers and what they were being taught. While there is some variance in levels of satisfaction at the COFHE schools, for the most part, the levels of expressed satisfaction fall within a narrow band. The simple fact is that most undergraduates at the top private schools in the nation believe they have had a remarkable educational experience.^[2] Unfortunately, neither Hacker and Dreifus, nor Taylor, examine the "culture of complaint" at various universities and colleges. At some colleges, it is normatively appropriate to sing the praises of the place, perhaps beyond what they deserve; correlatively, at Harvard, it seems normatively expected that, if asked, you complain that research trumps teaching at the great university in Cambridge.

Finally, the belief that research-oriented faculty at the great universities assiduously avoid teaching undergraduates has never really been true at these universities and colleges, and it is even less so today than in the past half a century. Not only do many of the most able research faculty at the best universities and colleges enjoy and even prefer teaching their very smart undergraduates, but also more of them are doing it than in prior decades. With shrinking graduate Ph.D. programs at many of the great universities, more emphasis has been placed on undergraduate education and undergraduate teaching. The best evidence we have is that there is a modest positive correlation between student evaluations of their teachers and the quality of the research that those professors produce.

If the great universities and colleges have abandoned their interest and concern with undergraduate teaching, it certainly is news to them. The perpetuation of the myth that these very bright undergraduates get little more than the reputation of their schools for their tuition dollars is simply a socially constructed myth.

*Jonathan R. Cole's recent book, The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected (Public Affairs, 2010), expands on some of these themes.

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1. The response rate to these surveys is remarkably high (above 90 percent), thus reducing the possibilities of selection bias in the results obtained.
2. Since these were anonymous exit surveys of outgoing seniors, there would be little reason for students to distort their answers.

Plugging the Donut Hole

We humans are complicated beings. We have many wonderful attributes and, unfortunately, at least a couple that are less than wonderful. Among the latter are two that, in large measure, determine our success (or lack therefore) as academicians and educators: we are easily distracted and occasionally disorganized.

The negative impact of those two traits on an individual's academic credentialing and classroom or office performance has long been recognized in higher education. All of us understand that a lack of focus and useful structure will almost certainly degrade both our own acquisition of knowledge and the caliber of teaching or administrative support we provide to our students.

What's often not appreciated, however, is the impact those same two traits will have on the course and content of our career. If we are distracted or disorganized in its management -- if we do not attend to its care on a regular basis or if we care for it in a haphazard way -- we will likely experience the same dysfunction and diminished outcome, but in our employment. To put it more bluntly, if we let our career skills grow flabby, we are the perfect candidate for career cardiac arrest, or what most of us call unemployment.

Unfortunately, cultural mores and conventional wisdom make it easy to miss that fact. From our earliest days, we're counseled and taught that a college degree is the only necessary ticket to opportunity, and the higher the degree, the greater the potential for success. Whether you're on the faculty or staff, that parchment puts you on your way and keeps you progressing.

While that may have been the case prior to the Great Recession, however, it is clearly not so today. And, the evidence of this new normal is legion. There are now large numbers of Americans holding bachelor's and master's degrees and even Ph.D.s who are unemployed and unable to mount a successful job search. They have fallen through the "donut hole" in higher education.

Our institutions have taken them through a rigorous pedagogy in a branch of knowledge or an occupational field, and left them without a similar foundation in the skills and knowledge of career self-management. Our colleges and universities have made them experts in their chosen discipline and dilettantes in putting that knowledge to work.

The Career Fitness regimen is designed to remediate that shortcoming. It provides both a foundation of proven principles and a superstructure of "best practices" that together comprise a comprehensive methodology for achieving and maintaining career success. It enables a person to be systematic, professional and conscientious in negotiating the challenges and tapping the opportunities of the modern workplace. In essence, it provides a pathway for becoming as expert in the direction of our career as we are in the development of our knowledge.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

What Academic Freedom Means for Your Career

What is academic freedom? Jonathan Cole discusses academic freedom in his book, The Great American University. Cole writes that the restrictions placed on the academic community after the events of 9/11 represented the greatest threat to our academic freedom since the Red Scare propagated by Sen. McCarthy in the 1950s.

In Jonathan's most recent Author in Residence blog post, he describes the nature of universities as Unsettling Institutions. Places that push the envelope on conventional thought and challenge people to view issues from a different perspective. Ideally, universities serve as research facilities for ideas and beliefs where they can be discussed and given a chance to thrive on their own merit, and not silenced because they are unpopular. However, just scan the headlines on a regular basis and you will see academic freedom coming under fire.

What does walking the line between acceptable safe speech and provocative speech mean for a professor's career? Have we recovered from our recent assault on academic freedom or are there still ideas that are too taboo to speak or teach? Have you been asked to not teach a particular subject or publish a particular article out of concern that it would reflect poorly on the university?

I leave you with this quote:

"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action." -Albert Einstein

The American University needs to remain an arena for ideas and beliefs, no matter how unpopular, if our nation is to remain both free and innovative. Fear of repercussions impedes the development of new ideas and cutting edge research. I look forward to hearing your stories and thoughts on this issue, feel free to comment below or email me at robf@higheredjobs.com.