Why is anybody still in Academe? I guess because, when things run well, it's a great place to be. We get paid to pursue our curiosity, and to enthuse over our interests to students who more or less share them. And the pay's even pretty good once you get established. So it can be a good place to work. But the notion that academics are somehow more civilized than ordinary humans is counterproductive. We're as varied as any other branch of humanity in that regard (in fact, the status and autonomy may attract more than our fair share of sociopaths, but I doubt there's a reliable statistic on that). Anyhooo, the notion is counterproductive because, in part due to that presumed civilizing effect of education, we have a high degree of autonomy and weak administrations. In a crisis, that can be catastrophic.

Today I was involved in solving just such a crisis-turning-into-catastrophe. Two professors in neighboring departments here had, for some reason unknown to me, decided to dump their shared PhD fellow from the program. They may have other reasons, but the ones they've officially offered do not hold water. The student came to me since I was teaching one of her classes (Philosophy of Science for the Social Sciences). Luckily, she did well on her term paper for my class, so I was able to argue her case upward through the hierarchy, using my authority as instructor to defend her against her supervisors' claims that she wasn't competent to complete the degree. Without that "second opinion", the administration would never have dared to oppose her supervisors' assessment. Today the dean seems to have landed on a fair solution. If her head of department agrees, she'll be allowed to change supervisors. Whew! She and I and a sympathetic professor from her department all went out into the sunshine and ate ice cream bars to celebrate. I'm glad things sometimes get set right! I hope your case lands right side up as well!

Now back to grading exams (one of the more boring aspects of Academe ).