Over at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, Paul Campos is vaguely miffed that Barack Obama, despite having no academic credentials beyond his JD degree, was offered tenure at the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. Now, I know academic jobs are scarce, and I understand the hackles stories like these raise for Ph.Ds. I'm also not at all a reflexive academia-hater; professors have the training and time to complete research projects I can only dream about. Their work makes my job as a public policy writer easier every single day.
Ultimately, though, I think it's a good thing when professional schools offer jobs to folks like Obama -- people with deep engagement in the worlds of politics and business. Even at the undergraduate level, I'd like to see more of this, not least so that college students can learn about diverse, realistic career paths. I recently spoke to a newsweekly editor with decades of both professional and teaching experience. He was having trouble finding a tenure-track job at a journalism school because he didn't have a Ph.D in journalism, probably the most useless degree ever conceived of. When it comes to teaching a profession, academic experience shouldn't always be the be-all-end-all in hiring decisions. A faculty with a good mix of academic and professional expertise would, I think, be ideal for students.
--Dana Goldstein
