As a professor biology, I have a different perspective. I am not at all overwhelmed by having to write letters for students. I do a few a year. Most of the letters I write are for people who have done research in my lab. The vast majority of these efforts do not lead to publishable data so there is little way for indepenent evaluation. My office is inside my lab and I interact with the students whenever they are in the lab, I get to know them and see how they approach things. I can provide insight into the way the students work. While it is certainly true that the statement the student writes also provides insight I think there is value in an outside perspective. I know that being on grad admissions committees, I find letters written from lab mentors to be extremely helpful.
However, where I completely agree that letters are a total waste of time are tenure and promotion cases. When at last I got to serve on PCs (and I have been on both departmental and college level committees) I was shocked. Every single letter I have ever read recounts the tale of a Marie Curie combined with a Martin Luther King III. I mean the people they describe are brilliant and perfect. No one is willing to be responsible for a colleague getting shafted. And god forbid a letter writer should say that candidate X blew their nose one day--this will provoke the committee into paroxysms of egegesis on the word blow. And also nose. Likewise when I am asked to write a letter for tenure or promotion I feel completely trapped. Honesty could cause the case to fail because of this insane evaluation inflation. So I have to write an over the top letter. Maybe this is different in the humanities but letters for tenure and promotion in science are so uniformly glowing as to be useless. For a tenure case the scholarship and the statements, along with objective accomplishments really should speak for themselves.
So interesting! I am a lone voice in the wilderness (at least I perceive it this way) when it comes to using blockchain technology for all matters that allow people to circulate in society, that includes: voting, academic records, IDs, and medical records. Self-sovereign identity (the blockchain use case that allows each citizen, or in this case student, to have a unique identity on the web facilitates not only privacy, but also the mobility of important data from person to person, person to institution, institution to government, and so on. Under such a system, a TA could never "fill in" for the big fish. It seems as if there might well be reason to check a few boxes for students on behalf of study abroad programs because it matters if they are drug addicts or racists or simply high-maintenance. However, these questions could be asked easily via blockchain without an entire, usually fake-ish, document being constructed by a prof or TA. Naturally, this would still allow professors to "stick a shiv" in a student, but the process of conveying such information would be transparent and private. Furthermore, the students' academic credentials could flow with ease from one institution to the other. Just a thought.
I probably agree. I’m just thinking about how different letters of rec from most European systems are—shorter, less effusive/inflated. Might there still be a role for such letters? Maybe not. But I will say that sitting down and figuring out how best to represent the strengths of a dissertation student I’ve worked with is by far not my least favorite task. On the other hand, it’s not clear how much good it’s done most of them.
After I applied for an internal fellowship in grad school, I got a warning from a member of the fellowship committee that I shouldn't ask one of my recommenders for any more letters. Interestingly, it was the least famous of my recommenders that was the problem. She was also the only one who wasn't on my committee, so it wasn't a big problem going forward.
As a professor biology, I have a different perspective. I am not at all overwhelmed by having to write letters for students. I do a few a year. Most of the letters I write are for people who have done research in my lab. The vast majority of these efforts do not lead to publishable data so there is little way for indepenent evaluation. My office is inside my lab and I interact with the students whenever they are in the lab, I get to know them and see how they approach things. I can provide insight into the way the students work. While it is certainly true that the statement the student writes also provides insight I think there is value in an outside perspective. I know that being on grad admissions committees, I find letters written from lab mentors to be extremely helpful.
However, where I completely agree that letters are a total waste of time are tenure and promotion cases. When at last I got to serve on PCs (and I have been on both departmental and college level committees) I was shocked. Every single letter I have ever read recounts the tale of a Marie Curie combined with a Martin Luther King III. I mean the people they describe are brilliant and perfect. No one is willing to be responsible for a colleague getting shafted. And god forbid a letter writer should say that candidate X blew their nose one day--this will provoke the committee into paroxysms of egegesis on the word blow. And also nose. Likewise when I am asked to write a letter for tenure or promotion I feel completely trapped. Honesty could cause the case to fail because of this insane evaluation inflation. So I have to write an over the top letter. Maybe this is different in the humanities but letters for tenure and promotion in science are so uniformly glowing as to be useless. For a tenure case the scholarship and the statements, along with objective accomplishments really should speak for themselves.
So interesting! I am a lone voice in the wilderness (at least I perceive it this way) when it comes to using blockchain technology for all matters that allow people to circulate in society, that includes: voting, academic records, IDs, and medical records. Self-sovereign identity (the blockchain use case that allows each citizen, or in this case student, to have a unique identity on the web facilitates not only privacy, but also the mobility of important data from person to person, person to institution, institution to government, and so on. Under such a system, a TA could never "fill in" for the big fish. It seems as if there might well be reason to check a few boxes for students on behalf of study abroad programs because it matters if they are drug addicts or racists or simply high-maintenance. However, these questions could be asked easily via blockchain without an entire, usually fake-ish, document being constructed by a prof or TA. Naturally, this would still allow professors to "stick a shiv" in a student, but the process of conveying such information would be transparent and private. Furthermore, the students' academic credentials could flow with ease from one institution to the other. Just a thought.
I probably agree. I’m just thinking about how different letters of rec from most European systems are—shorter, less effusive/inflated. Might there still be a role for such letters? Maybe not. But I will say that sitting down and figuring out how best to represent the strengths of a dissertation student I’ve worked with is by far not my least favorite task. On the other hand, it’s not clear how much good it’s done most of them.
After I applied for an internal fellowship in grad school, I got a warning from a member of the fellowship committee that I shouldn't ask one of my recommenders for any more letters. Interestingly, it was the least famous of my recommenders that was the problem. She was also the only one who wasn't on my committee, so it wasn't a big problem going forward.