Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, writing from Evanston, Illinois in the US.

I have an unusual addiction for an academic.  I enjoy drinking my morning coffee with the “Morning Mika” and “Morning Joe” crew. In part, this stems from my role as the only woman at the table in many contexts throughout my life. As I once told Ms. Brzezinski after a speaking engagement, I use her as a model for young women in high-pressure interviews. Subtle pricks to over-blown male egos work wonders to transform tension into laughter and what may feel like persecution into conversation. Brzezinski mastered that art at her parents’ political power-broker parties as I did at my parents’ academic dinners.

Last week, Dr. Newt Gingrich’s presence as a Republican candidate inspired a conversation between Rich Galen and Joe Scarborough about doctors in Congress that I think merits further meditation from those of us who seek to understand the academy’s perception and potential within the broader public sphere. Galen wondered why PhDs in Congress, like Gingrich, always have to prove they are the smartest person in the room. In his estimation, only MD members of congress have a similar need. Galen took a swipe Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, for her use of the title, “Dr. Biden.”  Ms. Brzezinski noted that her father is “Dr.” Brzezinski.  Squirming ensued.  Scarborough, an attorney and former Representative, expressed his preference for community college graduates to PhDs in Congress.

Academic historians obsess over Gingrich, because he holds a PhD in history from Tulane and once embarked on an academic career. Gingrich taught as contingent faculty before he entered Congress. Academics wonder whether he fled failure or pursued the public good. I think the answer less meaningful than the question in terms of the purported phenomena Galen described.

Those who take the time to train within highly specialized fields, whether cardiothoracic surgery or medieval political theory, have only their degrees to demonstrate the value of their achievement. We don’t get to trot out numbers of employees, or profits as do businessmen.  We don’t have a litany of budget-cutting and program production as do long-time politicians. The closest academics can come to a numeric evaluation of our worth is an average teaching evaluation score and articles per anum. Voters are unlikely to find either a persuasive decision rule.  Without tenure, we have one less gauge as to whether we are ‘good enough.’

The title, “Dr.” (whether PhD or MD), says something immediately. I am an expert. I spent a lot of time learning something. Other experts acknowledged my ability. I’m smart. I’m really, really smart. I can’t fix your car, build your house, write your will, or file your taxes, but I could  teach you something (PhD) or save your life (MD) if I hadn’t decided to become Dr. Candidate instead.

When people who are told their main value to the world is their brain enter a new situation, they fall back on what they know best and set out to prove their smarts yet again.  I haven’t noticed any signs that read “Dr. Gingrich” or “Dr. Paul” for President.  Their assertion of ‘book smarts’ comes in a different form. “Dr. Biden” didn’t pick the political arena.  I suspect she wishes to avoid the label as Joe’s “Mrs.” more that she clings to the claims implicit to “Dr.” She seemed a red-herring in Galen’s swipe at Gingrich’s fragile academic ego.

PhDs’ perception as pretentious show-offs desperate for approval (which I suspect far outstrips that of MD “Drs.” and increases if the PhD fell afoul of tenure) illuminates much popular attack on the academy and teachers from kindergarten to college classrooms.  Who do we think we are anyway?  Who are we to judge the ability of others?  Gingrich’s overblown persona – the man who forged a contract with America but failed to honor his marriage contracts – puts fuel on the fire of popular ambivalence about academia. We televise teaching awards while we badmouth teachers’ unions.  We pay fortunes for college degrees while we scoff at ‘professors’’ claims to superior ‘smarts.’  The conversation served as a reminder that no matter where we are, we do best to check our egos at the door.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, writing from Evanston, Illinois. 

It’s that time of year. I’ve read through more resumes and essays than I care to remember. I have the luxury of reviewing applications written by the most accomplished young men and women at my university as they dream of life after the molly-coddling experience we in the US call ‘college.’

Fellowships seek young scholars of depth and breadth. The two categories can appear contradictory. The be-goggled geek may never engage the world beyond her beaker despite a deep understanding of the bubbling chemicals in her grasp. The triple-major, student-government-president may skim a broad surface but fail to understand much of anything. Whither the ‘middle path?’

No one wants to wind up a dilettante. The person who engages in a vast array of activities may fail to see their core connection at first. That disorder defines dilettantism: activity, even excellence at an activity, for its own sake. Look at me! I’m fantastic! I can juggle, play the bassoon, recite the Aeneid in the Latin, prove Fermat’s last theorem, and dance the tarantella. But why? And to what end?

When the dilettante discerns the connective tissue among the activities and identifies the driving force that motivates them all, s/he ceases to carry the label and graduates to the mature status of “Renaissance” wo/man. Leonardo DaVinci could demonstrate why and how his science improved his art as well as the reverse. Thus, he remains the icon of the Renaissance man not the early modern dilettante.

The subtlety of the distinction confounds most. Universities advertise their students’ ability to pursue three majors, play a varsity sport, and spend breaks in different ‘developing’ countries. Indeed, they can, but they take little from it. Minimum coursework for three majors typically teaches less than one studied in depth with clusters of correlated electives. Two weeks spent with local children in a clinic does not equate to twelve months living among them and learning their language. Our students spin about subjects and landscapes like whirling dervishes, who have forgotten that they must mature and stop to be of service.

Parents panic-stricken for their progeny feed the frenzy. Their practical reasons why their children should acquire skill sets rarely translate to meanings able to motivate students’ essential selves. They underscore the how – to get into grad school; to land the job; to make lots of money – without an explanation as to why the child cum adult should desire that goal.

The lucky ones figure it out for themselves before they wake up as management consultants with large bank balances and shriveled souls. Those of us on the advisorial front lines attempt to hold up mirrors and find the DaVincis within the dilettantes. The application process offers an unrivaled opportunity for such introspection and necessitates a stockpile of tissues.

September is my month of tears. In shock that they have no idea why they do what they do beyond parental injunctions to do it, superstars seep. The facade fractures; lips quiver; and eyes fill. Sometimes recovery necessitates amputation of imposed ideas. Parents’ penury need not demand their offspring’s focus on finance. Mom’s stellar medical career will shine whether or not her daughter becomes an MD. Dad’s company can endure without his son at the helm.

The final lab class for a third major in biology becomes a seminar about Baudelaire and a future in international law. The hours in an accounting internship get re-allotted to the solar car team and lead to a green revolution. That bit of biology helps to prosecute a weapons case in Brussels. Some economics serves the engineer well when she solicits start-up funds. Each now understands the why that motivates the how. They have redefined the dilettante with a personal renaissance and merit Mona Lisa’s smile.

This post was also published at Inside Higher Ed.

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, writing from Evanston, Illinois in the US.

“Can’t hang it on the wall for the world to see

But you’ve got yourself a working man’s Ph.D.”

–Aaron Tippin, 1993

We are remodeling our house. This might not seem connected to a blog about international higher education. However, I come home each day for an update from our outstanding Irish carpenter and to marvel at the evidence of his higher education.

I delight in the array of accents echoing off my walls, but I recognize their reflection of a sad truth. The United States fails to produce phenomenal craftsmen like these. We import them from countries where post-secondary or ‘higher’ education continues to train masters of something other than business administration.

A deep historical irony underlays the American obliteration of artisans. Academic training modeled itself on the rigorous requirements of craft guilds. Each June, I don a velvet cap, grasp a scepter, and serve as a faculty marshal for Northwestern’s doctoral hooding ceremony. While I try to keep the professoriate in their chairs, the Dean regales the assembled PhDs-to-be and their relieved relatives with tales of medieval journeymen academics made masters.

Sceptics scoff at the Oxbridge MA collected once the recipient of a BA has practiced his or her art in the world for a few years. To a European familiar with an apprentice’s journey (hence journeyman) across the continent practicing his craft under different masters before ascending to that status himself, this makes sense. The BA is an apprentice, who has completed classroom training but not the education only practice can provide and make a Master.

Back when Benjamin Franklin was a Boston journeyman, he ran for freedom in Philly like so many through our national history who stepped off ships, trains, and planes into communities desperate for bakers and builders whether or not their training had reached completion. Many, like Franklin, succeeded without further supervision. Nonetheless, our culture of runaway craftsmen left us without a way to assess quality until it’s too late. No guild gauges excellence on the community’s behalf.

My Celtic carpenter attended a technical school where he learned ‘joinery.’ Google Irish carpentry and you’ll quickly find yourself on a page about apprenticeships. Spend time in Germany and you’ll eventually see young carpenters in silly smocks, the journeyman’s uniform. Hire a graduate of these training programs and you know precisely what you get: who taught them for how long to what end.

Into this gaping hole in America’s educational economy stepped for-profit institutions willing to grant working men and women the certificates absent from craftsmen and women’s walls in Aaron Tippin’s lyrics. Such institutions ran amok when they restructured the economy of apprenticeship. Franklin’s father bought Ben’s place, but Ben then worked for his brother to earn his keep. As Marx would say, the masters owned the means of production – the tools. The apprentice’s parents paid for their child’s access to those tools until his work became of the quality that he merited his own.

I studied in Britain when Prime Minister Major adopted American degree inflation and declared all Polytechnics to be Universities. By the time my generation bought homes, Polish plumbers built Britain’s bathrooms.

I watch the UK’s current travails from across the Atlantic like a bad re-run. First, make everyone aspire to a ‘University’ degree. This goal rests upon the devaluation and deconstruction of crafts. Second, make ‘University’ degrees unattainable for all but the fortunate few. Third, pontificate about a “broken society” in which the young fail to take pride in their contributions to the public sphere. Britain’s Oxonian Prime Minister blames “a lack of proper parenting.”

Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? I suppose I spent too much time with my parents and too little on the playing fields of Eton with Cameron and his cohort. Here I thought the US and the UK needed to accept the existence of myriad skilled crafts and social contributions, then provide youth an educational structure in which to earn “a working man’s [or woman’s] Ph.D.”

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, writing from Evanston, Illinois in the US.

As a US student in the UK, I simultaneously loathed and feared the ‘mid-Atlantic’ accent. I loathed the pretense of middle-class Americans putting on aristocratic airs. (You never hear a mid-Atlantic accent with acquired inflections from the streets of Sheffield or Swansea – only home counties and high tables.) I simultaneously fought the urge to swallow my crass Chicago ‘A’s when I spoke to my would-be-in-laws at Sunday lunch in Surrey. I was well aware of the ease with which I could become one of the cultural poseurs I despised.

Last month I re-entered the stormy seas of the culturally ‘in between.’ Well timed to coincide with the biannual meeting of the National Association of Fellowship Advisors (NAFA), Cambridge in America gathered alumni in Chicago for a breakfast chat about innovation. The don who addressed us stressed the necessity of people who could cross boundaries and nurture relationships wherever needed: between public & private, East & West, academic & corporate, ‘new’ world & ‘old.’

Historian Peter Burke dubbed these folks “cultural mediators” in the dark ages when I walked along the Cam. These arbiters of power from ambassadors to teachers run perpetual risks. Spend too much time learning your new language and face accusation of ‘going native’ whether the natives are Nobel laureates or Navajo shepherds. Meanwhile, no-matter how hard one tries to adapt, you can never jettison the suspicion that should push come to shove, you will pick past affiliations over present ones. Those of us who live among a myriad of affiliations will remain ‘stuck in the middle.’

NAFA exists by, for, and of the people charged to cross boundaries with the young and ambitious on our backs. We seek money from private foundations to fund study at public universities and from governments to fund study at private universities. We send students from the US abroad and seek funds for foreign students to study in the US. We simultaneously pre-select students for outside review and polish our pupils to make better impressions before panels. We stand accused of doing too much and too little in turn.

Like Lincoln, we cannot make all the people happy all of the time, but we can play a critical pedagogical role. We lay down over the selection processes’ troubled waters and allow students to cross safely. They may not land at their initially desired destination, but we will set them ashore. We cannot control the outcome of our efforts, which may vary wildly from our intent. When no one is happy, the mediator morphs into the enemy.

I fear the plight of Conrad Weiser, an eighteenth-century German immigrant who became an honorary Mohawk and an envoy for the British colonies from Pennsylvania to Virginia. In a decade, he went from being universally loved to universally loathed. Why? Because he could not control the connections between the many parties he pledged to represent. He could not guard all the goals of natives, colonies, and empire all the time. Those on the opposite side of the Atlantic could not even agree upon a name for the war that Weiser failed to prevent. British school children compose essays about “The Seven Years’ War,” while my sons will see only “The French and Indian War” appear on their exams. Only a few Pennsylvanians will likely ever know Weiser’s name. Children on both sides of the pond remember the name of the inexperienced officer who unintentionally undid Weiser’s efforts with the Jumonville affair. George Washington picked sides and stuck to them at all costs, including lives.

Like Weiser and everyone else stuck in the middle of complex institutions and goals, NAFA members’ names will never gain fame. My grandchildren will likely know the names of Bill Clinton, William Fulbright, Bill Gates, George Mitchell, Cecil Rhodes and the awards created in their names with their money. They may learn the names of the young men and women whom my colleagues and I support as they secure these awards, but they will not know my colleagues’ names. That’s just fine. However, I do NOT want to end my career castigated by those whose ideals I struggle to uphold. Take me at my word that if you think me a hopeless Anglophile, someone else thinks me an obnoxious Anglophobe. If you think I edit too much, someone else thinks I edit too little. If you think I am too nice, someone else thinks I am too mean. I don’t mind being stuck in the middle, but I intend to stand tall.