Letters

The Benefits Game

To The Faculty Newsletter:

Benefits has always been a stealth topic at MIT. There is the story about Karl Compton assigning the MIT treasurer, Horace Ford, I think, – after all, this is only gossip – the task of writing Slater's large monthly salary check and giving it to him privately when Compton induced Slater to take over the Physics Department. And there is democracy like that in Italian universities. When I asked why the Italian full professors were on strike by themselves, saying was there no democracy? Of course, there is democracy, democracy among full professors, was the reply.

After a couple of attempts at getting benefits by asking my administrative superior I concluded that effort was beneath my dignity and that of my supervisor. One request was for a sabbatical leave to write a book. I was told that at MIT professors wrote books during their regular service. One other request was turned down with the explanation that one did not ask for that at MIT. But I did get the benefit the next term. So to preserve the dignity and friendship of my colleagues I gave myself the benefits I needed using my consulting practice income.

I do feel sorry for the younger professors who have not developed good traction on the career treadmill to play this game that goes on now between the academic who must generate a good offer from another university and the retention package they talk about that they received from their department. It would be nice to think of administrators generously rewarding a professor with what he is really worth. But in a system in which professors are assumed to have great administrative skill, this is not achieved. I ran a business once, and it took me a couple of years of intense study weekends to learn the skills needed for the job. It has always seemed to me that at MIT those skills are assumed to be passed along with the passing of the key to the front office, though the Sloan School seems to say it takes years of study.

Sincerely yours,

M.W.P. Strandberg

________

From The Editor

In the September/October issue of the Faculty Newsletter, we published a letter from Prof. Hugh Gusterson commenting on MIT's response to Prof. Ted Postol's allegations of scientific fraud at Lincoln Labs. In that issue, we inadvertently omitted the information that Prof. Gusterson is a colleague of Prof. Postol in STS and that his wife is a member of Prof. Postol's research team.

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