Preface Part 1. Welcome to the Academy 1. What’s all this Business about Purgatory? Do Professors Make a Stop before They reach the Heavenly Gates? 2. Why would Anybody in their Right Mind Choose to be a Professor? Would Electrical Shock Therapy be a Better Choice? 3. Are Contingent Faculty the Barbarians at the Gate? What on Earth is a Contingent Faculty? 4. What’s the Buzz about Faculty Value over Replacement Economics? When did this Silly Theory Creep in? 5. Are Tenured Professors an Endangered Species? Will the last full-time Professor please turn out the lights? Part 2. Welcome to the Classroom 6. Who do you want in front of the Classroom? Are Professors Perfect in Every Way? 7. Professor, can you ever be Wrong? Do you Understand What Happens if you don’t Agree with me? 8. Why do Students Fail to Learn what I Fail to Teach? Why did Nobody Tell Me Nothing about Teaching? 9. What is your Problem with Students Sleeping in Class? Would it bother you if a Student asked you to Keep It Down? 10. Did you Hear About the Death of Written Exams? Did the end of Cursive Writing Pass you by? Part 3. Life on the Faculty 11. How About a Last Great Lecture just for Posterity? Can you Offer Some Words of Wisdom for the Ages? 12. Should you be David or Goliath in the Classroom? As Goliath is my role model, what’s the Question here? 13. Is the Faculty Search Process Fatally Flawed? Why do we Make so many Wrong Hiring Decisions? 14. Is the Faculty Evaluation Process Fatally Flawed? What on Earth is Going on in that Promotion and Tenure Committee? 15. Should you Take a Stint as Department Chair? Does Anybody Need this Grief? Part 4. Protecting What We Have 16. Does a Liberal Arts Foundation Protect Anything that Needs Protecting? What are we Teaching and Why do we Teach it? 17. Does Anybody Believe in Hybrid and Distance Learning Courses? Is a Changing World your Friend or your Enemy? 18. Does Academic Freedom Protect Anything that Needs Protecting? Would the Academy Collapse if Academic Freedom went away? 19. Does Tenure Protect Anything that Needs Protecting? Would the Academy Collapse if Tenure went away? Part 5 Career Decision Making for Professors 20 Despite it all, would you Like to be a Professor? Can you Tell Me More about Academic Purgatory? 21. Can you Believe Limbo is the Next Stop after Purgatory? Where, Oh Where, is Tenure? 22. Do you Know you can Choose Your Own Limbo or Paradise? Does God Give Us so many Options Simply Because She Loves Us? Index

The Hampton book offers a keen insight into the status of professors in colleges and universities. As the father of a young woman in graduate school, I am familiar with the stresses of pursuing the doctoral degree. I was less familiar with the fact that the pain continues as the assistant professor pursues a full-time appointment. I reflected on the quote about the juvenile sea squirt. When it finds its home for life, it no longer needs to think. Does it really eat its brain? Is the same true for a professor who gets tenure? I enjoyed the reflections throughout this book. The portrayal of the journeys by Dante and the aspiring professor are compelling. I recommend this book to anyone concerned about the current state of higher education in the United States.