If nothing else, I can serve as a bad example

My hero of the week is the guy who expressed his irritation with four of his neighbors by driving a bulldozer through their houses. Rock on, dude! Sure, you are in jail now and probably will be for a while, but how did it feel, crunching their houses to smithereens? I'm sure before the remorse set in you had a moment of euphoria.

My two neighbors and I live in a triplex. A bulldozer crashing through Joy's apartment would definitely affect me, since I am in the middle. I would expect the whole building to fall into the basement. So no, I won't be driving a bulldozer through here anytime soon. But I think a couple times I have approached that tense moment when whaling on the wall with a hammer seems like the appropriate thing to do.

I look at it this way. I'm all about service quality. I live to serve. If nothing else, I can serve as a bad example.

Speaking of bad examples, this week I received my second and final rejection from the VP of Media Relations who represented the institution I approached for permission to interview ten of its faculty. Apparently, they have a policy of not accepting research proposals from doctoral students! Stupid me. I guess I naively assumed that because they are operating institutions of higher learning around the country, that they would... I don't know, be supportive of higher learning. I am chagrined to say I should have known better. These institutions are corporations, not colleges. They don't care about higher learning, or any kind of learning that doesn't line their pockets. They care about one thing only: profit. Duh. I'm an idiot.

So, on to Plan B. No, I'm not pregnant. Plan B consists of approaching the career college I used to work for. Two weeks ago I was laid off with many of my compadres when the campus was closed. Now that I'm no longer an employee, no more conflict of interest! I sent a groveling email to the president of the college yesterday, trying to get a sense of how much he dislikes me. I did, after all, briefly gain some notoriety among my co-workers with my somewhat sarcastic photo blog of the campuses last days. I don't know if the president of the college ever saw the blog, wrapped up as he was in his own overwhelming problems: (How could I have been stupid enough to invest my retirement money in this floundering sham of a school!? Kick me!)

I doubt I'll hear from him, as absorbed as he is in his own crumbling world, so I'm already moving ahead with Plan C. Plan C is the guerilla tactic of recruiting faculty through other faculty. It has a couple names. Sometimes it is called chain sampling. My favorite term is snowball sampling. You use one participant to recruit the next. It's subversive. What's not to like.

One way or another, this study is going to happen. Yes, I need to finish this doctorate, but more than that, the world needs to hear what faculty think about the academic quality of for-profit vocational programs. People (the Department of Education) seem to think that as long as students graduate and get jobs that allow them to pay off off their student loans, then the students received a quality education. I think faculty might have a different view. I want to find out. Just because for-profit institutions are behaving like cults, circling the wagons around their faculty and trying to keep them from talking to researchers doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach them.

Join the underground! For-profit faculty unite! Speak your truth! (Just do it under the radar, so you don't jeopardize your job.)