Through the eyes of farmers' daughters: Academics working on marginal land

Women's Studies International Forum 32 (2009) 395–405

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Women's Studies International Forum j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / w s i f

Through the eyes of farmers' daughters: Academics working on marginal land☆ Debra Langan a,⁎, Mavis Morton b a b

Criminology Program, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford #208, Royal Victoria Place, 136 Dalhousie Street Brantford, ON, Canada N3T 2Y3 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph 50 Stone Road East Guelph, ON, Canada N1G 2W1

a r t i c l e

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Available online 24 October 2009

s y n o p s i s In this article we provide a reflective analysis of our experiences as marginalized academics and explore the complex, intersecting factors that combine to make the achievement of tenure track positions extremely difficult. The emergence of the entrepreneurial university, combined with dire economic times, has resulted in the trend of hiring contract faculty over tenure track hires. Women contract faculty have fewer opportunities for advancement, and family responsibilities further complicate attempts to attain secure academic employment. Within these contexts, we examine the importance of access to social capital during graduate programs and show how we prioritized particular institutional requirements and professional practices, to our detriment. We focused on completing the Ph.D.s, establishing records of teaching excellence, and presenting at conferences. We now believe that obtaining scholarships, landing research grants, securing publications in refereed academic journals, and privileging research over teaching would have better prepared us to compete in the academic job market. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction We were sitting at Mavis' kitchen table. The kids had gone to school, and we had two precious hours to get some work done on our latest collaborative project—a paper that took up the issue of access to capital as it relates to advancing one's status within the academy. We were not entirely sure how the paper would look in the end, but we believed in a grounded approach that began with us sharing our stories,1 talking back and forth, and seeing the analysis unfold. We reflected on our past and current positions as contract faculty, and acknowledged that we have come to reconcile our position as marginal labourers. We thought about the reasons for this. We accept our positions in part because of

☆ Environmentalists use the phrase “marginal land” to refer to ecologically sensitive areas (e.g., near rivers and streams) that should not be farmed, but left in their natural state. Relegated to the margins of precarious employment in the academic workforce, contract faculty within universities are, in a sense, being exploited on marginal land. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Langan), [email protected] (M. Morton). 0277-5395/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2009.09.002

where we have come from. We began to explore more fully the nature of our social locations, the historical developments in higher education during our lifetimes, and the paths which influenced, and are partially responsible for, our academic status. Debra grew up in Leamington, Ontario, Canada, on the banks of Lake Erie, with parents Al and Velda Matheson. Debra's parents were greenhouse farmers. Her father had a grade eight education, her mother grade ten, both having left school early, to work. Al had to work on the farm and Velda had to leave school to help raise her five younger siblings. Velda's mother and newborn sister had died when she was 12, leaving her and two other siblings. When her father remarried, three more children were born, and the new stepmother needed Velda's help. Mavis grew up in Conway, Ontario, Canada, on the banks of Lake Ontario, with parents Ross and Geraldine Morton. Mavis' dad was a farm boy until he joined the Canadian air force at 17 years old and was discharged at 19. After several other service sector employment positions, he spent over 30 years in a textile manufacturing company. Although he was asked many times by colleagues and superiors for the

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name of the university he attended for his engineering degree, the reality was that he was a high school dropout. Mavis' mom grew up in Montreal. She was told by her father she would not be returning to school after grade eight in order to work to add to the household finances. At age 12, she applied for a work permit and began paid employment at Sears Canada in the complaints department. The parallels in our lives are interesting. Both sets of parents did not have post-secondary educations; both were from social classes wherein education was neither a priority, nor an option. Working to help support the family was expected, even at the young age of 12 years (Geraldine, in grade 8); 14 years (Al, in grade 8), and 15 years (Velda and Ross, in grade 10). Still, as parents they knew the importance of achieving a post-secondary education, and there was never a question as to whether or not we would go to university— this was a ‘given.’ They wanted their children to have the privileges associated with a university degree, and they were financially and ideologically committed to making it happen. We have tremendous gratitude for their vision, their sacrifices, and their undying support. We met during our graduate studies, and convocated with Ph.D.s in the latter half of the 1990s. We both eventually came to receive Contractually Limited Appointments (CLAs) as Assistant Professors in the same department that had conferred our degrees: the Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, Canada. This type of appointment is made on a yearly basis and represents a commitment by the employer for 1 year only. Debra was re-appointed in this capacity for a total of 10 years, with no further possibilities for continuing as stipulated by the collective agreement between the union and the employer. Mavis was re-appointed in this capacity for a total of 4 years, with no further possibility for continuing because of a dire economy and purportedly cutbacks in government funding to the university. As we discuss in the following analyses, a number of factors combined to entrench us in dead-end employment possibilities within the universities: the corporatization of institutions of higher education; features of gender identity as played out in an organizational context; the relationship of graduate student success to social capital; and our misguided prioritizing of institutional requirements and professional practices. The impact of corporatization The 1990s represented a period during which there were fewer academic positions for Ph.D. sociologists, even though there were the same number of retirements, if not more, during this period than was the case previously (Baer, 2005). This situation is explained in part by the rise of privatization in Canada, which led to a dismantling of the welfare system, Canadian universities being directly impacted because they are part of the welfare state (Buchbinder & Rajagopal, 1996). The influence of private corporations on universities has been extensively documented, and has resulted in major changes to the ways in which academic work is organized and prioritized, the role of the professoriate, student access, and academic freedom (e.g., see Wagner, Acker, & Mayuzumi, 2008; Chan & Fisher, 2008; Lenskyj, 2004 as cited in Lenskyj, 2004). In North America, there are essentially two streams for academic

careers: the full-time, tenure track, stream and the parttime, or adjunct, stream. Beyond the factor of job security that distinguishes these two streams (tenure track promising job security until retirement, and part-time ensuring employment on a course by course basis), tenure track employment includes teaching, research and service (to the university) responsibilities, while part-time employment requires solely teaching responsibilities. Arguably, research productivity is valued over teaching excellence for tenure track hires, even though most universities valorize teaching for public relations purposes. Growing corporatization changed the relationship between teaching and research in that research became “more product-oriented and the professor/researcher [became] more company oriented” (Buchbinder & Newson, 1999:371). “Professor/researchers became entrepreneurs in this market-oriented model, and research activities became the priority, while teaching activities became viewed as a less productive or less efficient use of time, unless they involved graduate teaching” (Buchbinder & Newson, 1999:371). One example of the role of professor as entrepreneur is when faculty who are engaged in funded research have the ability to “buy out” their teaching time, leaving courses to be taught by parttime, contract faculty (Buchbinder & Newson, 1999:371). Contract, or adjunct, faculty “form a cheap and flexible academic workforce, having little or no hope of entering the traditional career path leading to a permanent academic position” (Hakala, 2009:2). They experience discrimination with respect to remuneration and access to support for scholarly activity (i.e., research funding), and are blocked in their quest for tenure because “‘high quality research’ will always trump good teaching” (Oliver et al, 2008). The parttime workforce satisfies the needs of the entrepreneurial university to increase enrollment in a way that is both less expensive and more efficient (Charfauros & Tierney, 1991:142). These changes preceded the current economic downturn which means that tenure track hires are now, and possibly in the future, will be, even less likely. Media reports, scholarly publications, and internal communications from university administration point in this direction.2 In the past year alone, Mavis has applied for three tenure track positions in Ontario, which were ultimately cancelled due to financial restraint. Commensurate with the corporatization of the university and a reduction in tenure track hirings, universities have generally seen a growth in graduate student populations. In Ontario, for example, a multi-year agreement stipulates that the number of graduate students in the province will have increased substantially by 2010. At York University, the Academic Plan (UAP) 2005–2010 draws attention to the growing graduate student enrolment and the need for new resources and sophisticated planning that such growth brings. With limited provisions to support a growing graduate student population, faculties, departments, graduate program directors, and faculty are facing significant concerns with respect to how graduate students can be accommodated and supported, the impact on faculty workload, and the implications for program design and delivery. It is no longer the case that Ph.D. credentials will automatically pave the way to an academic appointment. Once graduate students have finished their degrees, the likelihood of continuing in tenure track

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academic careers is not what it used to be.3 The cost-cutting advantages of hiring part-timers (who are paid significantly less than tenure stream faculty), combined with the current cut-backs to funding of post-secondary institutions during rough economic times mean that tenure track positions are often more difficult to come by. Many graduate students are frequently ill-prepared for a more diverse range of career options. This situation is similar elsewhere (e.g., in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia) where there are increasing numbers of Ph.D.s, with fewer academic appointments, and concerns from stakeholders, both inside and outside the university, that people with Ph.D.s do not have the skills that are required (Park, 2007:11). Institutional requirements, as enforced by faculties of graduate studies, play a central role in determining the structure of graduate programs, and consequently the expectations that are imparted to graduate students with respect to the priorities in completing degrees. Growing corporatization and increasing graduate student enrolments call for strategies to retain graduate students and improve time to completion of graduate degrees. Funding decisions for graduate education in the future will, in all likelihood, rest upon outcome measures like graduation rates and time to completion. Therefore, faculty who are supervising graduate students face institutional pressures to have students finish their degrees on time, so the completion of dissertations is promoted as a top priority. Add to this scenario the fact that most (and in some institutions, all) graduate students receive funding through teaching assistantships, or research assistantships, or graduate assistantships, or course directorships. These involvements are often touted as important training grounds for graduate students, the implicit message being that teaching is a valued activity within the academy, and an important skill that will enhance future employability. But, as we will argue, completing dissertations in a timely fashion, and acquiring teaching experience, should not be prioritized above other activities if one wants to eventually enter the tenure stream, for accomplishing these institutional priorities,(while making the Faculty of Graduate Studies happy) will not position one well for entry into tenure track positions. Rather, producing publications that demonstrate expertise in one or more substantive areas, that are popular within one's discipline, before completion of the Ph.D., is more important in preparation for entering the tenure stream. We must emphasize that publishing before the Ph.D. is finished is integral, for if too much time elapses between completion of the Ph.D. and application for tenure track positions, the impression gained is that the candidate has been unsuccessful in hirings elsewhere because (s)he did not get hired earlier. In other words, Ph.D. credentials implicitly carry a “best before” date. In sum, institutional priorities are different from departmental hiring priorities, and this disconnection has profound repercussions for those who aspire to tenure track careers. In the next section we focus specifically on the experiences of women within these political, economic, and social contexts. “Women's work” within the academy Women are consistently over-represented within the cheap and flexible contract workforce of the university, and are clustered at lower academic levels (Charfauros & Tierney,

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1991; Bain & Cummings, 2000; Blunsdon & McNeil, 2002; Kjeldal et al., 2005). Women contract faculty find it especially difficult to move into entry-level tenure track positions because while they are over-represented as contract faculty, they are under-represented within tenure track positions. Data from Statistics Canada reveals that for the academic year 2004–05, women were consistently under-represented in all academic ranks in Canadian universities4 (Drakich & Stewart, 2007). They make up less than one-third of faculty and less than one-third of administrators (Drakich & Stewart, 2007:8). A central problem is that once relegated to the lower academic levels, women faculty have very little opportunity for advancement (van Anders, 2004:511); they are not appointed to the rank of full professor at the same rate or speed as men; and they continue to be under-represented in senior administrative positions (Drakich & Stewart, 2007:8). Furthermore, marginal positions for faculty typically require heavier teaching loads, because so little is paid to teach each course, and in order to make a living wage, they must teach many courses, leaving little, if any, time for research activities. In addition, contract faculty face fewer opportunities for research funding, and are given fewer facilities to support their teaching and/or research pursuits (Kjeldal et al., 2005:434). There is a considerable literature on women's experiences in academe, much of which points to the challenges that women face (van Anders, 2004). In addition to the problem of representation discussed above, the feminization of marginal, contract, faculty reinforces the stereotype that these workers are truly temporary and work only for pin money. Insofar as contract workers often are perceived as secondary-income earners, administrators and others may justify reduced benefits, minimal service support and career development, and little to no job security. Unfortunately, the invisibility and marginalization of contract faculty are often linked to the high percentage of women within the ranks. (Charfauros & Tierney, 1991: 143). Women faculty face further stereotypic expectations, and the repercussions of these, because they are women. The literature speaks of how women academics engage in a different kind of work than their male colleagues, work that adds to what is formally expected of the job. Women are expected to do an unequal share of pastoral and administrative work in their teaching and service involvements (Barata et al., 2005:237), and in their attempts to be good departmental citizens, often end up literally exhausted. This extra “women's work” tends to be disregarded within the institution, particularly by men, for they usually do not have the same demands made upon them (Barata et al., 2005:237).5 The institutional pay-off for this additional work is not forthcoming, because of a gendered reward system that culturally defines teaching and service-related activities as “feminine,” and thus less valued (Bellas, 1998:96). While “women's work” does not benefit the doers, it does benefit the students because it provides support that helps them cope with both personal and/or academic challenges. For example, we have seen in our own experience how we, and our female colleagues, take the time to explain ‘the game’ to students, and in so doing spend an inordinate amount of time and energy helping students navigate their academic careers, at the expense of our own.6 The decisions that one

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makes around how much time and energy to devote to teaching students “the ropes” have very important implications for one's career advancement, or lack of it, we believe. Because we are committed to certain principles as teachers, one of which is “caring” (see Langan & Davidson, 2005; Langan, Sheese & Davidson, 2005; Langan and Morton, 2009), we have tried to accommodate our students, but realize now that this has been, in all likelihood, to our own career detriment. The willingness to engage in “women's work” is not always done benevolently, neither is it always done. When the demands become too great, there can be a withdrawing of the initial offers of support to students, the feeling being “well I had to figure it out, and so you should too.” This situation is particularly acute when higher-level students approach us to provide counsel on their scholarly work, or letters of reference, for not only does this make onerous demands on our time, we realize that they may soon be competing with us for work within the academy. Mavis recently received an e-mail from a student who requested her help in a course that she was not teaching, because the male professor in that course had not provided assistance. Consider the following e-mail Debra received from a fourthyear student who she instructed earlier on how to contact publishers, follow submission guidelines, etc. In her methodology classes, Debra had counseled students on the importance of publishing their research, and on the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of doing so. Now, the student requests further assistance, but Debra has neither the time, nor the energy, to continue to provide support. Her initial, internal response is one of anger, even though the student is asking for what Debra said she herself needed from professors when she was a student: Prof. LanganI was wandering (sic) if I could send you my thesis so that you could have a look at if (sic) possible (sic), just to give me some feed back and guide line (sic). I did email my supervisor on several occasion (sic) but have never gotten a respond (sic) from her.Thank you so much for your consideration. The lack of tangible support in marginal positions, combined with expectations around “women's work” affect academic productivity: Women are less likely to get research grants, and may be less motivated to do research, spend less time in research activities than their male colleagues, and attend fewer academic meetings where research is presented.... [L] acking funds, equipment, motivation and time, women produce less research and, consequently, are disadvantaged when it comes to proving research output for promotion. (Bain & Cummings, 2000 as cited in Kjeldal et al., 2005: 434) There is also a body of literature that addresses the negative effects that women experience when teaching feminist ideas (see Menzies & Chunn, 1991; Bulbeck, 2001; Kitzinger & Thomas, 1995; Volman & Ten Dam, 1998; Titus, 2000; Letherby & Marchbank, 2001; Paquin, 2001, as noted in Langan & Davidson, 2005; Webber, 2005). It is argued that feminist academics in Canadian universities have been

subjected to a form of violence known as “chilly climate” which includes sexual harassment, misogynist orientation rituals, and threats of physical or sexual violence (see Osborne, 1995; The Chilly Collective, 1995 as noted in Langan & Davidson, 2005). Our own experiences speak to this context, and we know how it affects our personal and professional lives. In Davidson and Langan (2006), “The breastfeeding incident: teaching and learning through transgression,” an analysis of the students' responses to Mavis' breastfeeding during her guest lecture on violence against women underscores what is arguably an example of pervasive violence against women in the academy. Yet, we deal well with being “…disregarded and disvalued in what remains a male and masculinized academy” (Reay, 2004:31). As is the case so often in patriarchal culture generally, women are socialized to see themselves as deserving to be in the positions that they are in. Even for us as sociologists, employing a sociological imagination to analyze our individual biographies within a social context is often difficult to do, and even when we are able to apply an analysis, it is so difficult for us to change the social structures that keep us, as women, in our place. Too often we end up blaming ourselves for our lack of success, rather than pointing to, and fighting to change, the social structures that impede us. One of those social structures is the institution of the family. The family context, for many women in academe, further complicates the attainment of secure academic employment. It is well documented that a disproportionate amount of domestic labour and care-giving work falls to women in families, who are expected to be primarily responsible for taking care of the household, partners, children, and extended family members (Luxton, 1980; Duffy, Mandell, & Pupo, 1989; Gazso-Windle & McMullin, 2003; Hochschild, 1989; Silver, 2000). Given that many assistant professors are in their late thirties and early forties, it is not feasible for them to delay having children until after they have received tenure (Jacobs & Winslow, 2004). The combination of “women's work” on the job and women's work in the family leads to situations that can be overwhelming for women, and female academics are no exception. Research on women in higher education confirms that high levels of stress, exhaustion, and sleeplessness characterize building an academic career when bringing up young children (Acker & Armenti, 2004; Chesterman, 2002). Raddon (2002), quoted in Acker and Armenti (2004:16), “comments that ‘women academics with children are both positioned and positioning within complex and contradictory discourses,’ notably the discourses of the ‘successful academic’ and the ‘good mother,’” and our experiences illustrate our locations within these competing discourses: Debra: I remember sitting at my computer, working on my dissertation, and crying while my one-year old son knocked on the door, also crying to come in and see “Mommy.” This kind of scene continued for years (as did the dissertation!), with my one-year-old daughter joining my son at the door when he was about three. I perfected the art of composing, typing, nursing, and sometimes crying, all at the same time! Mavis: This week alone there have been three school-related events that my children have asked me to participate in that take me away from continuing to write this paper. I am constantly struggling with how to balance the demands of

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mothering and scholarly work without feeling incompetent at both.

The importance of capital Having access to Bourdieu's theorizing on capital, we are in a better position to identify and explain additional factors that have combined with the political, economic, and social developments described above to result in our marginalized employment situations. According to Bourdieu, the location of class position depends upon the relative amount and composition of four forms of capital: economic, cultural, social, and symbolic (Bourdieu, as elaborated by scholars such as Black, 2005; and Reay, 1997, 2004). Bourdieu's framework helps us understand, in part, our current dilemma. Our parents provided the economic capital for us to succeed, by financially contributing to the costs of our post-secondary educations. Bourdieu describes cultural capital as possessed in either an embodied state, or in the form of cultural objects and goods in an institutionalized form. Our parents' values with respect to higher education were such that they envisioned lives for us that would be different from their own working class locations, and these values represent one form of cultural capital from which we have benefited. The attainment of our university degrees represents another form of cultural capital (Black, 2005), and these educational qualifications have also made possible many material and cultural opportunities (e.g., we own homes, and our children benefit scholastically from our tutelage). At the same time, our inability to achieve permanent employment as a result of our educational qualifications suggests that we also lack cultural capital. Furthermore, we have always lacked social and symbolic capital. Social capital consists of the networks and relationships in which a person is embedded and that a person can mobilize (Black, 2005). Symbolic capital is the form other capitals take on once they have achieved recognition and it is the key to validating and legitimating other capitals (Black, 2005). In the discussion that follows, we provide examples of the ways in which our career journeys have been impacted by the interplay between these various forms of capital. Our social class of origin conferred by our families meant, during our pre-university years, a lack of access to networks and relationships that were related to higher education. Still, as we note above, we were supported by our parents to attend university through their provision of economic capital, and we acquired cultural capital in the form of our university credentials, and the material and non-material opportunities that these have made possible. We now realize that, within academe, where the cultural capital acquired by having a university degree is common place, it is our relationship to social capital that has been the most significant variable with respect to our diminished capacity to be “successful” within the university.7 Our awareness and understanding of the way in which social capital, or the lack thereof, has impacted our careers comes from those who have examined social capital as a “network phenomena” (Tindall & Wellman, 2001:276). We have benefited from Erickson's argument that social capital comes from “a variety of persons, ties, and networks, rather than stably from a single, solitary group” (as noted in

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Tindall & Wellman, 2001:276). Involvement with social networks provides a person with access to “social resources” (Tindall & Wellman, 2001:290). D'Agostino provides examples of the kinds of social resources possible: “Social capital is thought to enhance the instrumental returns such as better jobs, earlier promotions, higher earnings or bonuses and expressive returns such as improved mental health” (2006:35). Thus, advantaged people's cultural resources are due not only to their social class of origin, or their current locations within social structures, but because of their involvement in diverse social networks that lead to social resources that symbolize success (Tindall & Wellman, 2001). Furthermore, Erikson argues that in contemporary society, social capital takes into account the complex ways in which social networks, class, and cultural capital interconnect and operate at the individual and group levels. Distinguishing social class of origin, from cultural capital, and social capital, and understanding the interrelationships among these, helps to explain why it is that social class of origin alone, for instance, does not determine who succeeds or does not succeed in academia. It explains why it is that some academics, whose social class of origin was working class, were able to become established as tenured academics.8 Reay (1997b:20) argues that these success stories are exceptions that “offer a justificatory discourse to New Right rhetoric about the ‘triumph of individualism over community’; ‘proof that equal opportunities work’” (as quoted in Black, 2005:13). Reay cautions against allowing such individual exceptions to stand as indications of a broader trend. The degree to which social networks provide social capital depends in part upon the prestige, reputation, and influence of the social networks. Graduate students almost inevitably become connected to networks through one or more of the following: courses, supervising committees, institutional events, and teaching/graduate/research assistantships. Undoubtedly, some social networks are comprised of individuals who, in combination, rank higher than others as conduits of social capital. At first glance, it might seem that the greater the prestige, reputation, and influence of a social network, the more likely one connected to that social network will achieve social capital. Our analysis is that more is at play, and we have identified another particular (and arguably, ignored) aspect of social network theorizing, that being the ways in which individuals in networks influence self concepts, emotions, attitudes, and behaviours as “agents of socialization” (Henslin et al., 2007:69). Access to, and interpersonal involvement in, prestigious social networks are necessary, but not sufficient conditions, for success in academe. Of central importance is the examination of how social networks serve as agents of socialization that influence the perspectives formed and decisions made by graduate students as they move through their graduate educations. In the context of higher education, we are arguing that the most important social resources that are gleaned through social networks are in fact the advice, direction, and general influences that are imparted during the informal socialization of graduate students as aspiring academics. The importance of social networks lies in learning the “right” kinds of information about how to navigate graduate education in a way that will best prepare you for achieving the career that you have in mind. Recognizing this

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processual dimension of social networks builds on the aforementioned, more static, understanding of social networks as a matrix of interconnected individuals who have the capacity to confer, or in other ways facilitate, the achievement of institutional rewards. In sum, within the academic context, it is the kind of information and direction that individuals in social networks impart that has important implications for how graduate students prioritize their time and energies. Such prioritizing, in turn, has important implications for career mobility. In our cases, while we sensed that affiliation with social networks was important (even though we were not knowingly drawing on theories of social capital to reflectively analyze our situations), we under-appreciated the importance of the ways in which such networks fostered particular interpretations of how to navigate through a graduate program. We have come to realize is that it is how students prioritize the institutional requirements and professional practices of their degrees that is of utmost importance to becoming a successful academic. The emphasis that is placed on certain requirements, and when they should be completed, matters most. For example, we have learned that the most valued aspect of a graduate students' portfolio, when it comes to consideration for tenure track hiring, is the publication record. Demonstrating research sophistication through publications (and if research funding has been secured, even better) trumps having completed the dissertation. Of course, being “all but finished” (ABD) the dissertation, with a reasonable likelihood of completing, is still important, but it is much more likely for an ABD Ph.D, student, with publications, to be hired for tenure track positions than it is for a newly-minted Ph.D., with no publications, to be hired. Throughout our Ph.D. educations, we were misguided in thinking that finishing the dissertation, and obtaining the Ph.D., should be the priority. Our thoughts in this regard are understandable in light of the institutional requirements, at the departmental and faculty levels, to complete the Ph.D. within a specific timeframe in order to receive funding, maintain an active student status, avoid being withdrawn from one's program, etc. With respect to professional practices, our inclination was to devote an inordinate amount of time in preparing for, and engaging with, our teaching responsibilities. We reveled in working with students, were assigned heavy teaching loads, and revamped our course curriculums and pedagogical approaches course after course. While we understood the adage “publish or perish” we continually pushed publishing to the ‘back burner,’ and chose teaching, and to a lesser extent service, over publishing. The way in which we prioritized these professional practices has interfered with our becoming ‘successful academics.’ Upon reflection, we see that the ways in which we were socialized during our graduate student years did not take into account the earlier-discussed changes that were unfolding, and that were on the horizon, in higher education. We must emphasize that, in making this point, we are not blaming the agents of socialization who made up our social networks, nor are we discrediting their prestige, reputations, and influence. The information that they imparted was pertinent to their own experience within the academy, and arguably was still applicable to those

seeking tenure track positions in the early 1990s. But by the time we started applying for tenure track positions, our records (as depicted in our Curriculum Vitaes) reflected how we had prioritized institutional requirements and professional practices, and our accomplishments did not represent qualifications, and attributes, that were considered most desirable for hiring. It was arguably ‘too late’ for us to undo what had been done.9 In the discussion that follows, we expand upon what we previously understood to be important for achieving academic success, and what we now know was/is more important given the political, economic, and social conditions that have unfolded in higher education. Prioritizing the rules of the game Knowing the ‘rules of the game’ or possessing the types and volume of capitals which facilitate smooth and privileged movement within a field allows the person to exist like a ‘fish in water’, never needing to be conscious of the water which surrounds her (Bourdieu, 1987). In contrast the water can become very murky indeed where the knowledge, skills and tastes possessed are ‘wrong.’ (Black, 2005:130) As we have argued, graduate students informally learn ‘rules of the game’ through the social networks with which they are connected. Unfortunately, the rules of the game that we believed were most important for achieving career success within academe10, while they were the rules by which those in our social networks had achieved their academic job security, over time became superseded by new rules.11 Although we were aware of all the rules, we attributed diminished importance to the rules that we know now should have been priorities. Specifically, during our graduate program years, we focused on completing the Ph.D. dissertations, establishing records of teaching excellence and independent course management, and conference involvements. We now believe that obtaining scholarships, landing research grants, securing publications in refereed academic journals, and privileging research over teaching during our graduate student years would have better prepared us to compete in the academic job market. Furthermore, we see now that it is imperative to work on these various pursuits in an integrated way, so that the amount of work being done overall is decreased. In the following analysis, we provide examples of what we did, and did not, do. What we didn't do First, we never realized the importance of applying for scholarships, and when we did, we did so without guidance, and our applications were, for the most part, unsuccessful. We did not understand the symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1987) that obtaining scholarships represents, the importance that is attached to them when they appear on a Curriculum Vitae. A further disadvantage has been that we continually worked within and outside of academia throughout our educations, and upon graduation (i.e., we never applied for postdoctoral scholarships). Doing paid work detracted from the amount of time that we should

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have devoted to institutional requirements and professional practices. We worked because we needed the money to survive, but also because our social class of origin had shaped our perspectives around the importance of paid work. Doing paid work meant not being an “egg head” who was shirking her responsibilities and being dependent upon the state like a welfare recipient. Furthermore, we wanted to be seen as having healthy roots in the world of work, for in our social networks outside the university, such work represented a continued connection to the working class and a wellrounded resistance to total cooptation by the Ivory Tower. We had “real jobs.”12 Secondly, while we knew the rhetoric around “publish or perish,” we did not understand that publishing should have been one of the top priorities. Simply put, “publish or perish” shapes professors' work by directing their energy toward conducting research and publishing in great volumes. At a research university, if a professor fails to publish he/she will perish professionally; in other words, he/she will not receive tenure, promotion, salary raises, or other perks. (Vannini, 2005:246) Our argument is that the “publish or perish” imperative is equally relevant to what one should be doing during graduate education. It goes without saying then that we also did not learn how to publish until relatively recently, long after we had begun teaching as contract faculty. Numerous times during our educational journeys we conducted research and produced papers, and we completed theses and dissertations, all of which we should have submitted for publication, but we did not recognize the importance of doing so, nor did we have any idea as to how one might go about doing this. Mavis: I recently came across a letter I received from the Executive Editor of the University of Toronto Press in 1996, three months after successfully defending my Ph.D. dissertation. I had submitted an abstract, table of contents and introductory chapter of my thesis for their review. The letter stated “I can say that we would be interested in a book manuscript carved out of your thesis. I am enclosing a copy of The Thesis and the Book, which may give you some help in revising your thesis for book publication” (personal communication).Eleven years after receiving the letter, I recognize that this was a green light to which I should have taken advantage of. However, in 1996, with no prior publications, no knowledge of the process of publication, and no mentor, support or assistance in “transforming” a thesis to a book, I was uninspired and lacked confidence in my ability to make this transition. I have felt substandard about this since then.Debra—I started to work collaboratively, in teaching, research, and publishing, and doing so changed the whole experience of academics for me. I learned that two or more heads are in fact better than one. As I share drafts with colleagues both within and outside of sociology, I receive confirmation of my abilities as an academic, and I have a heck of a lot more fun than I had before. But this model of doing academics does not receive the same

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accolades as does the individualistic model, for there is the sense that an academic may be unable to complete a project independently if others have been included in the project. Thirdly, we never appreciated the importance of landing research grants. ‘Get grants or perish’ is a somewhat newer institutional force. Professors have always needed to seek research grants ... but over the last 25 years university administrators ... [have pressured] ... their faculty into raising funds for the university.(Vannini, 2005: 246) Our argument is that the “get grants or perish” imperative is equally relevant to what one should be doing during graduate education. Sadly, we applied for none during graduate school, and although we have obtained a few research grants as contract faculty, the amount of each grant is relatively small. A few years ago, we collaboratively pursued a large research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)13 The research plan involved a not-for-profit organization who was interested in partnering with us to pursue a new and innovative web-based support for abused women and their children.14 Our application was unsuccessful (unsuccessful by a fraction of one point!), and we are arguing that the criteria for successful funding work against academics who have been marginalized. The rationale for not funding our research proposal pointed to the “record of achievement” of the applicant (Debra). Debra had made the argument that her involvement with a young family, combined with her role in the care of her aging mother, warranted consideration under the “special considerations” category of the application. The committee assessing the application provided the following comments: The committee considered the applicant's special circumstances and judged that it (sic) did not fully account for her modest record of publication when compared to other applicants at a similar career stage. The committee encouraged the applicant to raise her profile by way of more publications in mainstream refereed journals.(personal communication SSHRC, March 2005) Finally, we failed to understand the importance of integrating our teaching and research foci. The separation of research and teaching led us away from seeing these as necessarily integrated activities, with research needing to take priority over teaching. If possible, the substantive area of research should be connected to the substantive area of teaching, as this allows for the cross-fertilization of ideas, and the dual usage of analyses, as one moves from one activity to the other, the result being much less work overall. If teaching and research areas are different, too much work is involved in order to do each well. What also is common in our experience is that we were each charged with teaching courses in different areas, at the same time that we were doing research and publishing in different areas. An even bigger mistake is that we did not appreciate the importance of prioritizing research over teaching. Kain makes

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the point that “[d]espite ... a call for more equal reward structures, it remains the case that research is more highly compensated than teaching” (2006:329). So, while teaching is deemed important in rhetoric, it is arguably not as valued as research within the institution, as is evidenced, for example, in decisions to hire individuals who have never taught courses (but who have achieved notable research grants/publications). As we describe below, dominant discourses around the importance of teaching within the academy led us to believe that teaching is an important stepping-stone to a tenure track position. While teaching for pay was a necessity for us, we now know that we should never have spent as much time on perfecting our teaching as we did. Instead, we should have focused more on obtaining scholarships, publishing, and getting research grants. What we did do First, as just noted, we taught, as teaching assistants (TAs), and as contract faculty, both during and following our graduate educations, because we needed the money, and because we loved teaching. We believed that teaching was an important prerequisite to any future work that we would do, and we believed that if we were great teachers, we would increase the likelihood that we would secure academic appointments that had longevity. The teaching assignments that we assumed, particularly during our years as TAs, were influenced more by our preference for substantive areas, and our connection to particular social networks within the faculty. It would have been more prudent for us to have thought about substantive areas that were “hot topics,” with respect to both research and teaching, as doing so would ultimately have enhanced our candidacy for tenure track opportunities. As contract faculty, we exacerbated the situation. Because we needed employment, and opportunities to apply for lucrative one-year, fulltime contracts were available (and we were successful in getting, and being re-appointed for, every contract that we applied for), we taught according to the needs of the institution, year after year, in order to ensure that we had paid work. For Debra, this initially meant teaching courses that were in her area of expertise, social psychology, but when this substantive area fell out of favour in her department, she agreed to teach any course that the department needed her to teach. While Mavis's initial appointment was in the area of criminology, and her subsequent appointments have continued to be in that substantive area, like Debra, Mavis has had to develop new course curriculums most years in order to prepare for the courses the department needed her to teach. Because of our passion for teaching, we came to focus some of our teaching and research on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Contemporary literature advocates more active styles of pedagogy than have traditionally been the case in university classrooms. We embraced this literature and incorporated recommended strategies in an attempt to improve both our own, and our students', teaching and learning experiences. For example, while a lecture format continues to be part of our mode of delivery, we also draw upon participatory and reflective group exercises in class and technologically-based teaching tools (e.g., streaming videos,

web-based course management tools, etc.) to facilitate the achievement of our goals and desired learning outcomes. We have also taught workshops to support our TAs in their use of these strategies. What this means is that we are spending considerable time on not only what we are teaching, but how we are teaching it, and this places additional demands upon us. Consequences include less time and energy on scholarship and, as we noted previously, research is more valued than teaching.15 Second, when we were not teaching or working at other paid work to sustain our incomes, our first priority was working on our dissertations. As we mentioned earlier, growing corporatization has resulted in increased pressures within universities to have graduate students complete their degrees in a timely fashion; the more students processed through the system, the more revenue garnered. We saw completing our dissertations, and convocating with the Ph.D. s as a top priority, but if an academic career is the goal, this belief is misguided. It is common in our experience to see new faculty hired for tenure stream appointments with “all but [their] dissertations” (ABD) completed, having acquired the aforementioned forms of capital that are most valued within the academy. Again, there is a disparity between institutional priorities and the priorities of academic hiring committees. Third, we also saw being involved in conferences as a worthwhile professional practice that would help us to establish a reputation and connect us with influential social networks. As graduate students and contract faculty, we spent valuable time preparing for paper presentations and attending conferences, usually without transforming those presentations into publishable pieces. Hindsight reveals that this time could have been better spent. Finally, and beyond our control, we succumbed to the inevitable process of aging. Ageism is an under-acknowledged discrimination in universities that disadvantages those whose lives do not fit traditional patterns. It is “academia's dirty little secret” (Part-time history instructor, 2008). Departments that have no problem hiring adjuncts to teach courses semester after semester many times hesitate, they say, even to consider these instructors when full-time, tenure track positions open up. Younger candidates, with new Ph.D.'s and less teaching experience, seem to beat them out, many report, even for positions that are teaching oriented. (Townsend, 2009) Now in mid-life, we have teaching awards,16 publications, conference involvements, service on committees, and some grants to better demonstrate our competence, but these achievements seem to be happening too late in our careers to make a difference. Now that we are older than many candidates with whom we are in competition, we are further disadvantaged (Jaschik, 2008b makes the same argument). Inevitably, the question that arises among those in positions of power is: “Why have you not been able to get tenure before now?” Implicit in this question is the assessment that there must be something wrong with us that would render us ineligible for serious tenure track consideration. If choosing to be student-oriented is wrong, then so be it, we do not regret our efforts to enlighten, engage, and support our students. In our analysis, we have provided a number of things that we did “wrong” along the way,

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relative to the university's systemic set of practices that construe these choices as wrong. Our choices reflect a more general conundrum that women encounter in their attempts to negotiate successfully in patriarchal institutions. If we weren't so resilient, we would “take our toys and go home!” (see Langan & Morton, 2009). Conclusion We have provided a multi-layered analysis of how macrolevel political, economic, and social changes, over the last 20 years, have radically altered the way in which institutions of higher education are structured and operate, and the implications that these developments have for future career possibilities within academe. Within these contexts, degrees of access to economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital combine to impact the likelihood of achieving tenure stream, academic appointments. We are well aware of the privileges of our life circumstances, and acknowledge the advantages that have come our way given our Caucasian, able-bodied, heterosexual identities. In an effort to make sense of our experience as marginal contract faculty, we began with an assumption that our social class of origin was the main determinant of our relegation to the margins of academic employment. However, a triangulated theoretical analysis (Denzin, 1989b) has come to make us appreciate that social class of origin is but one of a number of key factors that explain our current situations. As our theoretical analyses developed we have been struck by the irony that neither we, nor our sociological colleagues or mentors, ever engaged in an analysis of where our graduate education might take us, in light of the many variables that we have elaborated. So, despite being part of a community of sociologists who revere C. Wright Mills' (1961) analysis that individual experience or “personal troubles” must be understood within the context of larger social forces or “public issues” (The Sociological Imagination), until now, our ability to make use of our sociological imaginations to explain our experience as marginal faculty eluded us. In addition, our sense is that a reflective sociological analysis of everyday life did not become accessible to us until we drew on the work of Dorothy Smith (1988, The everyday world as problematic: a feminist sociology), and while we were familiar with her insights during our graduate education, we never used them to analyze our own situations within the university as marginal female faculty. Nevertheless, even if we had employed these theoretical insights it would have been hard to predict how the environment would change by the time we graduated. Robert Townsend (2009) makes this point in relation to pursuing a history Ph.D.: “It is extremely difficult to predict the availability of jobs for those entering programs … because it takes an average of eight years to finish a history Ph.D.—a time period long enough to see ‘dramatic fluctuations in the market.’” Our use of grounded theory methodology has offered us an eye-opening experience, and left us with many contradictory emotions. We feel liberated and not so incompetent (“It was not our fault!”), despondent (“There is nothing we can do to change our situations”), and energized (“We will rise above!”). Concomitantly, there is an emerging tension among various stakeholders within universities about the purpose of

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graduate education. How “purpose” is defined, whether it be at the institutional or the individual level, will inform how institutional requirements and professional practices are prioritized. Our analyses raise serious questions about what we see to be the assumptions embedded in dominant discourses, and the practices that are in keeping with these, vis-à-vis graduate education. Traditional goals of graduate education persist (i.e., that a tenure track academic career path is likely, if you work hard enough). Yet, because a fulltime tenure track academic career is much harder to achieve for many graduate students, they are going to need knowledge, skills, and professional capacities to enhance their candidacy for careers outside of the academy (unless one wants to settle for part-time, contract teaching). One of the ways to address these circumstances is through experiential education (EE) initiatives which require students and faculty to mobilize connections between the academy and the needs and issues facing communities/organizations/ businesses, etc. outside the university.17 Interestingly, while EE initiatives are increasingly endorsed within the scholarship of teaching and learning literature, they continue to receive rather cool receptions from some sectors of the university community, because, we would argue, they challenge traditional notions of the purpose and appropriate teaching and learning activities of institutions of higher learning. Through our work outside the university, and the use of EE in our teaching, we see how important this direction and these partnerships are for helping to equip undergraduate students and graduate students alike to recognize links between theory, research, policy, and action. In this way, our analyses contribute to a diverse literature by providing insights into the complex contexts that define and impact “success” in academic careers, and by pointing to one of the ways in which graduate programs and institutions of higher learning can circumvent the problems we have experienced, and continue to experience. Acknowledgement We thank our parents, for loving and inspiring us, and making sacrifices on our behalf. Endnotes 1 These stories appear in the form of italicized insertions, and represent our use of the autobiographical method, “subjective verbal and written expressions of meaning given by the individuals being studied, these expressions being windows into the inner life of the person” (Denzin, 1989a:14). These stories reflect previous conversations between us, and for the purposes of this publication, we narratively documented the stories to systematically engage in a reflective analysis of our past and present situations. These narratives provided data with which we could begin the process of grounded theorizing (Glaser Strauss, 1967). Strauss and Corbin (1994) refer to this approach as “grounded theory methodology.” 2 York University's graduates, if they aspire to a tenure track position at York, should beware. A recent internal memo outlines “concern … about the number of York graduates being hired into full-time (tenure stream or CLA) positions … at York,” and notes the President's decision to have hiring committees provide written rationales for such hires (as one official commented: “in case we ever get a chance to hire into the tenure stream again.”). 3 Our informal knowledge of what is happening at our own, and other, Canadian universities coincides with reports that we have seen coming out of the United States (U.S.). Inside Higher Ed, a daily on-line publication about issues in higher education in the U.S. has reported on: the rise of adjunct hirings over tenure track hirings in public colleges and universities across a

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wide range of disciplines (Jaschik, 2008a,b, 2009), including English (Nelson, 2008); instances of the elimination of tenure for all new faculty hires (Moltz, 2009); and the rising trend of non-renewal notices for adjuncts, during the current recession (Street, 2009). 4 In Canada, women hold 28% of tenured positions, 40% of tenure track positions, 45% of non-tenure track positions, 18.1% of full professor positions, 34% of associate professor positions, and 41.3% of assistant professor positions. They make up fewer than one-third of full-time faculty and 18% of full professors (Drakich Stewart, 2007). 5 Debra's research on critical pedagogy (see Langan Davidson, 2005; Langan, Sheese, Davidson, 2005) revealed that students hold different expectations and make different demands of men and women Teaching Assistants (TAs) when an explicit principle in the course is “caring” (see also Barnes-Powell Letherby, 1998, who describe how, as new faculty, they were overwhelmed with student demands on their time). Many more demands are placed on women. 6 In 2008, we were recipients of awards that speak to our devotion to supporting students: Mavis was the recipient of the “Dean's Award for Outstanding Service to Students,” and Debra was the recipient of the “Senate Committee on Teaching and Learning University-Wide Teaching Award for FullTime Faculty.” While we are grateful for these awards, and hope that they will enhance our possibilities for career advancement, the devaluation of teaching within the academy makes us question our decisions to devote time and energy to teaching at the expense of research. At both award ceremonies, our Dean privately commented about how embarrassing it is to “keep giving” teaching awards to people that the university “cannot hire” in tenure stream positions. 7 For the purposes of this paper, we define “success” as securing an academic, tenure track position. 8 With respect to ‘hard’ data on the topic of social class of origin inequalities within the professoriate, the aforementioned study by Drackich and Stewart (2007:9) notes the lack of information in this regard. [We are] acutely aware of the absence of the inclusion of race, class, disability, and ethnicity in [analyses of women in academe]. To speak only of gender in the 21st century is an anachronism perpetuated by the failure of universities and Statistics Canada to collect these data for faculty and students. A search of Statistics Canada substantiates Drakich and Stewart's claim; only one report that addressed this topic was found, and its analyses of women in academics is both race- and class-neutral (see Sussman Yssaad, 2005). Furthermore, because Sussman and Yssaad do not compare the gender distribution of women with that of men, but instead only look at how women's numbers within academe have increased over the past 3 decades, a much more optimistic (and arguably, less thorough) analysis about the representation and rank of women is offered when compared to that of Drackich and Stewart's. Furthermore, our search of the recent scholarly journals for analyses of the intersections of gender, race, and class relevant to the representations and ranks of women academics yielded no additional information in this regard. 9 We are not abandoning our efforts to get into the tenure stream, but in the analysis that follows, we outline the tremendous barriers that our priority ‘choices’ during graduate school have led to. 10 We must emphasize that our discussion pertains to our interest in becoming bonafied academics following completion of the Ph.D.s. The rules of the game, and how they should be prioritized, will vary, according to the career path to which one aspires. For example, if one is interested in a career outside of academics upon graduation, completing courses that include community-based learning opportunities might represent the best strategy. 11 Most often, students' access to the rules of the game is not a central concern of faculty or the administration; it's not even on their radar. If and when it is a concern, given the competitive environment that characterizes academe, those in positions of power sometimes consciously withhold the provision of social capital to students or faculty, for fear of enabling the success of the very individuals with whom they are in competition. There is also the “school of hard knocks” position that we hear from colleagues in what might be described as a “tough love” approach: “Nobody spoon fed me through my early years as an academic, and I'm going to let them figure it out on their own!” 12 Some of our jobs included lifeguarding, waitressing, taxi driving, advertising for the circus, conference organizing, training service providers on public policy, consulting for community protocols around social justice issues, probation, parole and correctional centre casework, recreational programming, group home counseling, coordinating government educational initiatives for elementary and high school students, and working as teaching and research assistants. 13 SSHRC is the federal agency that promotes and supports universitybased research and training in the humanities and social sciences. We acknowledge that many, if not most, applicants are turned down the first time they apply, and this was our first application. 14 The proposed action research would have evaluated a web-based initiative that extends the existing services of transition houses and shelters across Canada to help connect with abused women via the Internet. This

initiative, known as e-services, was developed by Shelternet (www. shelternet.ca), a non-profit organization whose mandate is to better meet the needs and situations of women experiencing abuse through supporting them safely in an on-line environment. 15 We elaborate the institutional response to our style of teaching, and the challenges involved in integrating work experiences from outside the university with academic learning in a separate article that we are currently co-authoring, entitled: “From taxi cabs and carnivals: being dirty work academics.” 16 In addition to our aforementioned awards, we have both been recipients of York University's Sociology Undergraduate Student Association John O'Neill Award for Teaching Excellence. 17 Experiential education is an engaged approach to teaching and learning that combines the theory and coursework learned in the classroom with the hands-on application of knowledge in community settings.

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