Fuji Lozada's Fieldnotes

Anthropologist at Davidson College

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Rethinking the University

April 29, 2009 By Fuji

Prof. Mark Taylor, religion department at Columbia, wrote in a recent op-ed piece: The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.
(Read the complete editorial for yourself)
For those of you at Davidson (or similar colleges, like Haverford where my oldest son goes), I’m hoping that this is the reason you chose to attend a liberal arts college — for direct contact with professors whose main mission is teaching undergraduates. We do not have graduate students to teach and grade papers, although at this time of year I often wish we did!
Note his main criticism: graduate students are unprepared to pursue careers outside of academia. As reported by the American Anthropological Association about nine years ago, most anthropology PhD’s are not in academia – and given their interdisciplinary training, regional or methodological focus, are indeed well equipped to pursue a wide range of options outside academia. Of my own PhD class at Harvard (at least those who were in the picture that I took at graduation, since I glanced at the photo to try to remember who left in 1999), close to half are outside academia – in various businesses and NGO’s.

Filed Under: Anthropology, Classes, Davidson College, Teaching and Learning


Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. is Associate Dean of Faculty, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies, and Director of the Crosland Center for Teaching & Learning. He is a sociocultural anthropologist who has examined contemporary issues in Chinese society ranging from: religion and politics; food, popular culture and globalization; sports and society issues; and the cultural impact of science and technology. more...

Crosland Center for Teaching & Learning
Davidson College
Davidson, NC 28035 USA

office: Little Library 1005
tel. 704-894-2035
erlozada [at] davidson.edu

Make the digital work for you

Essential Tools (mostly free) (Updated, 16 March 2017) Technological literacy (something I really need to define later) is essential to getting things done in today’s mediated world. There are a lot of useful applications out there that will cut back on the tears or punched walls late in the semester. Below are some of the […]

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