How to Succeed in Academe?

Career conferences, career books— indeed all of the talk and writing designed to enlighten the young about the world of work that awaits them—exhibit a tragic failing in the American ideology. For the self-appointed advisers invariably assume that everyone in their audience will be a success in his chosen calling. (The president of Pennsylvania Railroad, for example, is happy to speak on “Why I Like to Be in Railroading.”) Thus if the problems of any particular career are considered they are usually the niggling sort that arise to pester the highly-placed, whose minds and energies are devoted to loftier pursuits.

Professor: Problems and Rewards in College Teaching, by Fred B. Millett. Macmillan, $3.50

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Andrew Hacker

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Career conferences, career books— indeed all of the talk and writing designed to enlighten the young about the world of work that awaits them—exhibit a tragic failing in the American ideology. For the self-appointed advisers invariably assume that everyone in their audience will be a success in his chosen calling. (The president of Pennsylvania Railroad, for example, is happy to speak on “Why I Like to Be in Railroading.”) Thus if the problems of any particular career are considered they are usually the niggling sort that arise to pester the highly-placed, whose minds and energies are devoted to loftier pursuits.

Professor: Problems and Rewards in College Teaching, by Fred B. Millett. Macmillan, $3.50