Millennial Professor

Millennial Professor:
Acting Like an Expert (Still Figuring It Out)

  • Faculty Interview Questions and Answers: A Search Committee Insider’s Guide

    A committee-side guide to the most common faculty interview (Zoom) questions For many candidates, the faculty Zoom interview feels like an academic version of speed dating: short, awkward, high-stakes, and deeply consequential. But from the committee’s side, the goal is not to interrogate you. It is to reduce uncertainty. Hiring a faculty member is one…

  • What Academics Say vs. What They Mean

    Academia has its own language. On the surface, it sounds polite, thoughtful, and collaborative. In reality, it’s a carefully evolved dialect designed to survive meetings, peer review, and email threads that never end. Here’s a quick translation guide. Peer Review, But Make It Passive-Aggressive Peer review is how science moves forward. It is also how…

  • Universities Don’t Actually Have a Space Shortage. They Have a Space Allocation Problem

    I sit on a ‘faculty building committee’ whose stated purpose is to “provide faculty input” on a new campus building. Space shortage is everywhere in academia, and my university isn’t an exception. Listening to other faculty and student colleagues, the message is simple: We need more classrooms, more instructional labs, and more research spaces. But…

  • Too Many Deans Spoil the Broth: How Administrative Bloat Is Quietly Undermining Teaching and Research

    Administrative bloat is getting out of hand. Over the past decade, I’ve watched job titles multiply like bacteria in a petri dish: Associate Dean of This, Vice Provost of That, Senior Executive Director of Strategic Alignment and Synergy (okay, slight exaggeration—but not by much). Meanwhile, class sizes creep upward, faculty searches get “paused,” and research…

  • AI in Higher Education Isn’t the Problem. Our Incentives Are.

    Almost all students use AI [source]. Probably, by the time many of you are reading this post, it might be safe to remove the word ‘almost.’ AI in higher education is a thing. In the past few years, generative artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed the landscape of higher education, and it has stirred profound anxiety…

  • Emails, Messaging Apps, and Modern Work Inefficiency

    Modern work has perfected a strange illusion: everyone is busy all the time, yet very little seems to move forward. Welcome to the world of modern work inefficiency. Our days are filled with emails, meetings, follow-ups, calendars, and tools designed to “streamline communication.” Somehow, the more we optimize communication, the less actual work we seem…

  • Graduate School Is a Career Choice, Not an Achievement

    For many students, graduate school feels like the next obvious step. You did well in college. People told you you’re “good at school.” You’re not quite sure what you want to do next—but graduate school sounds productive, respectable, and safe. That’s exactly why this needs to be said clearly: Graduate school is not an achievement.…

  • Faculty Zoom Interview: Tips and Know-Hows – Part 2

    Here are more Zoom interview tips following the previous post. This time, more on techniques and setup that you can improve easily. Your Zoom Interview Setup Is Part of the Evaluation (Whether You Like It or Not) This is not about aesthetics. It’s about friction. Even though it is not part of the rubric, committees…

  • Faculty Zoom Interview: Tips and Know-Hows (That Actually Matter)

    A faculty Zoom interview may feel lower-stakes because you’re at home. It is not. In some ways, it’s harder because small signals get amplified. Here’s what candidates should realistically prepare for. Get to the Point Quickly and Clearly In interviews, especially on Zoom interviews, many candidates make the same mistake: they gradually build up to…

  • Academic Publishing Profits from Free Labor…and We Call It Productivity

    This post examines how the academic publishing business model relies on unpaid academic labor, public funding, and prestige-based incentives, and how common productivity metrics in academia quietly reinforce that system. Researchers write the articles.Academics review the articles.Academics edit the journals.Universities pay the salaries.Libraries pay the subscriptions. Yet academic publishers continue to generate billions in profit.…

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