A recent Forbes article sparked a firestorm in higher ed by asserting that university professor is the “least stressful” profession of 2013. Having worked with UW faculty members for many years, Inside UW doesn’t believe it for a minute. How would you respond to the author?
After years of observation I have to agree with Forbes. Faculty maintain a very low stress, highly paid profile. They are all so smart, they think we don’t see it. It is very self-evident and in some cases it is outstanding.
Whoa… take a step back and breathe deep. What’s with the brinksmanship around who has the most stressful profession?
In certain ways, my life as a tenured faculty member at a major research university is low stress indeed. I have job security, health insurance, I do research in my chosen field, and I teach students about some of the pinnacles of human thought. I love my job. Then why am I and most of my colleagues under constant stress, and why do I work nights, weekends, and in the hours before dawn? Whatever I’ve achieve never seems to be enough. The very fact that opportunities for research are unlimited makes it impossible to “finish”. Many tasks compete for my attention – in a single week I might prepare for class several times, grade an assignment, make up an assignment, meet several times with students and postdocs to brainstorm with and advise them, prepare a talk for a conference, work on a grant proposal, try to make progress on one of my own research papers, write a few recommendation letters for young people applying for schools or jobs, attend a couple of department committee meetings – every day I have to figure out how to budget my time, and I leave tasks unfinished because other deadlines are more pressing. One other thing – I have been in this profession for decades, and I can say that many types of administrative work that used to be done by other people are now assigned to faculty. Objectively, my job is harder than it used to be.
I suspect that Forbes is correct. Faculty have positions that are universally respected, have decent salaries, come with health care and retirement benefits, involve generally humane working conditions, involve doing largely what faculty love to do, and, in the case of tenured faculty, include a level of job security that is found almost nowhere else.
It is important not to confuse “stress” with “overwork.” Faculty, especially tenured faculty, have low stress levels by many measures, but they tend to be overworked. I recall walking the hallways of an engineering building as a graduate student a couple of decades ago on a Sunday afternoon (I don’t recall why I had to stop by there), and noticed that almost all the faculty were in their offices, working. I started calling out as I was walking around “GO HOME PEOPLE! IT’S SUNDAY AFTERNOON!” These guys weren’t especially stressed, but they were overworked.
The fact is that many faculty are workaholic. They overwork themselves because that is the way they are. If they do not start off that way, the process of obtaining tenure makes them that way, or, at very least, generally selects against people who are not.
The extramural world can do the same thing, but the survival business never stops there (there is almost no such thing as “tenure” outside of the academy). If you don’t love what you are doing so much that you happily overwork yourself for that reason, you will likely UNhappily overwork yourself for economic reasons, and that brings stress.
ALMOST all of my whole UW career was a ball, with wonderful post-docs doctoral students and colleagues. The deans let me do what I wanted to as long as I met my courses and kept up my responsibilities with those smart Sociology graduate students.
So what was it that I wanted to do? Well, I had the privilege of travelling over a lot of the world, lecturing and doing research. And the Fulbright organization sent me to Brazil–a nation I love–about seven times. Other countries: Japan, Taiwan, India, Germany, Italy, Australia, Poland, Paris (many times).
It was always a mystery why the UW deans were so open to what I wanted to do, and why the Fulbright (and others) were willing to fund it.
Also, note that many of the doctoral and post-doctoral students were Brazilians. Today, I it’s a joy to be able to maintain contact with practically all of them.
Above, I said “almost”. Why? Because once, in Brazil during the dictatorship, a phony “jounalist” turned out to be a secret service (SIS) agent. For awhile I was afraid I’d be dumped in the Atlantic Ocean from a helicopter. This was because I published a map I made of the development regions of Brazil (something Brazilian geographers had unsuccessfully tried for 50 years.) She, the SIS agent thought my work was subversive. But within 24 hours my Brazilian friends had saved me.
If you want to pass this on to the UW’s two sociology departments, that’s OK. Both departments had great sociologists in those days, both students and faculty. I trust they still do.
Archibald O. Haller, Professor Emeritus
PHD Wisconsin,
Honorary Dr of Social Science, Ohio State University
4150 E. Calle Cambujo
Tucson, AZ 85712
It’s really more time-starvation, from which nearly everyone with a professional job suffers, rather than stress. Having a completely full day over which you have control is fulfilling and exhilarating; the same full day over which others have control (bosses, customers, colleagues) is stressful. The most stressful jobs in the world are generally considered to be the “wait staff” at a restaurant. The least stressful are those where you control your own calendar, do what you love, are paid comparatively to what others doing your job are paid, pick your closest colleagues, know exactly how you will be evaluated and have personal control over those few ‘no-no’s’ that will cost you your job. Think CEOs, senior civil servants and yes tenured college professors.