What makes a good academic?

Naturally, I regularly receive mails from my readers on some of the issues I write about. Lately, however, I have read several mails inquiring about the vocation of an academic.

A number of my readers, want to know what it takes to be an academic, and how to be a successful researcher. I take these inquiries with humility, noting that while I am an academic, I do not consider myself to have reached the acme of academia.

The nobility of being a university teacher is shared across the world. Despite how different countries treat and reward their academics, there has never been doubt that academics produce and comprise the most qualified and most learned minds in those respective fields.

Whether those fields are in professions such as education, law, media, medicine or in disciplines such as economics, political science, literature or Chemistry etcetera. As such, the most important social capital that an academic can bring on any platform is his or her knowledge.

Contrary to perceptions, academia is not an avenue to make riches. Across the world, academics are given fairly decent wages, but are not necessarily the most well-paid of professions.

I have recently seen academics in the UK go on strike over pay in just the same way as Kenyan academics do. The average junior professor in Germany earns equal to, or sometimes a little less, than a high school teacher there.

Ethiopian professors earn the equivalent of a senior primary school teacher in Kenya. While not justifying it, early career academics in Western Europe and the US live precariously, with some working on zero-hour contracts where the employer is not obliged to provide any minimum working hours, while the worker is not obliged to accept any work offered.

Junior academics in big cities like London and New York survive through house-share arrangements. On the other hand, mid-career and senior academics can expect to live decently, but not opulently. The acquisition of tenure, usually after some post-doctoral experience of teaching and publishing, gives security and an assured middle-class lifestyle.

Afterwards, the rise in pay is hinged on many other factors. Within academia itself, a research option is both professionally and economically more rewarding than a pure teaching option. Decades of teaching experience are not even comparable to a couple of years research. But then, academia may make you comfortable, but not rich.

Nobel prizes

It is far much easier to be wealthy, than be a good academic. Here, I am quoting my friend, Vassar College Historian Rashid Ismail. If one wants to be wealthy, and make money, academia is not their thing.

It is a lot easier to win a tender or walk into the Harambee Annex boardroom and sell drones, than be an academic.

I have yet to meet excellent academics who are also wealthy. Many of the Nobel prices are won by academics, but these awards scarcely transform them into millionaires. In my opinion, an academic career cannot be balanced with other vocations, such as business or farming. I know a number ‘academics’ who ‘farm’, ‘sell wares’, ‘run matatus’ ‘fix tenders’, mixing academia with all kinds of hustling. The truth is, they cannot be good in any of them. Academia is a jealous profession.

For a truly rewarding academic vocation, a balance between relevance and recognition outweighs every other thing. Academics are driven by a passion to discover, explain and think independently, scaffolded by previous research done across the years by peers, and other academics. Contrary to perceptions -- even within academics themselves -- the primary task of an academic is not to provide solutions or advise government.

Many times, graduate students think that unless they make recommendations, usually to the government, their research is pointless. In fact, a sign of a poorly conceptualised dissertation is one that ends up lecturing the government. Junior academics struggle with this a lot. Too many times, they seek to study social problems as opposed to research problems. The primary task of an academic is to define research problems, clarify concepts, and give options.

It is not the job of academics to build products. Our task is to split the atom, not to make the bomb. Academia should not be confused with industry. Our calling is to give options, not offer solutions. For instance, in the current coronavirus pandemic, researchers give the options and industry develops the drugs. I wish I had enough space to explain this, since even senior academics struggle with this. Nonetheless, it is both humbling and liberating to internalise this. 

Generally, a doctorate is a recognition of consistent and persistent focused research, aimed at building and anchoring expertise. You do not need a PhD to run government, run for political office, or lead a church, or run a business. Too often, our society treats the PhD in two extremes. ‘Academics’ who do not have it consider it overrated, and those who do, wear the accompanying title a little too strong. 

In my opinion, the PhD is important -- actually pivotal -- if you wish to make a career in research or academia. I have seen academics asking to be recognised or promoted to senior academic positions without a doctorate. This is especially the case with academics from the medical sciences, and sometimes in law.

A professional career needs to be generally understood as contiguous, but also separate from an academic vocation.

A dedicated academic does not need statutory edicts, or university senate directives, or external whipping to read for and acquire a PhD. As the most qualified professionals in their fields, academics should generally not be caught debating the merits of a doctorate.

This may come as a shock to many, but the PhD marks the beginning of an academic career. In advanced economies, a post-doctoral qualification is the entry point to academia. 

Academics are not necessarily good teachers. In fact, many of the most prominent academics are woeful speakers. Some are clumsy and difficult to hang out with. Others are nerdy. Many more are plainly boring. However, it is virtually impossible, especially in social sciences and humanities, to be a good academic and not be a writer.

Besides analytical and original thinking, a good academic may be excused for poor speech, but not sloppy writing. Some academics are pompous in their writing, others are plainly abstruse-difficult to understand-but still, they write. For those in natural sciences, originality may be primed over prose. 

Finally, I think, with much learning and discovery, and the realisation that each academic can only scratch the surface, the defining element of a good academic is humility.

- The writer works for the Social Science Research Council, New York

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