I have been a college professor for 28 years. My area of expertise is the hospitality industry, and my résumé includes many kinds of skills in vastly different, and sometimes disparate, areas. I am a chef, a plumber, a manager, a carpenter, and student of history and art who is trained in accounting, marketing, and law, with an M.B.A. I teach courses in hotel and restaurant management, professional cooking, and catering—but I am not regarded as an academic in the traditional sense by many in academe.
Years ago, when I was younger, and when that condescension sometimes stung a bit, I started referring to myself as a “blue-collar prof.” I felt that “real” professors, who taught more-intellectual subjects, often looked down their noses at me.
To be sure, the tide may be shifting. In Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009), the philosopher-mechanic Matthew B. Crawford extolls the manual trades and questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a “knowledge worker.” Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel series Dirty Jobs, in his 2011 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, argued that we need to change the way the country feels about skilled work. Somewhere along the line, he noticed that he himself “had become less interested in how things got made, and more interested in how things got bought.” His point was that we need to recognize that a nation of consumers that discards a passion for and ability to produce the physically tangible is surely doomed to destruction.
In his Senate testimony, Rowe pointed out society’s disdain for vocational training: “We’ve elevated the importance of ‘higher education’ to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled ‘alternative.’ Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as ‘vocational consolation prizes,’ best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree. And still we talk about millions of ‘shovel ready’ jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.” A fairly intellectual observation for a man with dirty hands.
Condescension flows both ways. I’ve been derided as a “college boy” by workers with no college education, suggesting that I was less because I had studied more and earned a few degrees. I’ve even worked with academics who disparaged genuine intellectuals as somehow irrelevant and unworthy of respect. At a college where I once held tenure, two small-minded, vocationally oriented professors roamed the halls sarcastically calling everyone, including myself, “Doctor,” although none of us were. Their attitude was that a Ph.D. was just some arbitrary title tossed around and bestowed on people who had not earned it with hard work. Obviously that was a defense mechanism, one that seemed to quell my colleagues’ feelings of inadequacy while exempting them from exerting any intellectual sweat of their own.
Vocations taught in colleges can require as much work and study as “knowledge” disciplines like economics and history.
On the other side of the divide, at my previous college, there was a vice president who epitomized intellectual arrogance. Sporting a tailored suit while smoking in his office in a no-smoking building, a pipe clenched in his teeth, he thought nothing of dictating to me the types of teas and the manner of service he wished to see executed in the instructional dining room where I taught professional dining-room service. He did not respond well when I suggested that he try making those same demands of what literature should be read in a literature class or what art should be viewed in an art class to satisfy his superior tastes.
In my particular area, although celebrity chefs have raised the status of professional cooks, their popularity has also engendered a sense that anyone who has ever cooked anything or eaten in a restaurant understands the business. Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t suggest to me how I should teach my profession. I have lost count of the closet chefs who know more than I do, the magazine-reading gourmands who understand cooking theory better than I do, or the people whose aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, fathers, or mothers can do this or that culinary act that, when combined with attending restaurants, hotels, and catering functions, qualifies all of them as experts.
Watching reality TV is not the same as living reality. Watching Dirty Jobs is not the same as getting your hands dirty. Nor does having physically waited tables in a restaurant while working your way through college toward a “real” job qualify you as an industry expert. I have seen and even touched van Gogh paintings. Thrilling as that was, I do not qualify as an art expert. I would never claim to be one, because I realize that you have to work in and study that discipline to qualify. Similarly, vocations taught in colleges can require as much work and study as “knowledge” disciplines like economics and history. The knowledge and skills of a chef or a welder are not easily obtained, no matter what one may superficially observe.
While intellectual pursuits are valuable and necessary, nothing physical gets built without physical labor. Balance is key; mutual respect for intellectual and physical labor is essential for us to prosper and advance as a society. Yet still we marginalize nonintellectual work, both in academe and in the larger culture. “Blue-collar profs” and the students pursuing vocational studies deserve the same respect we award other professors and students.
While a roster of faculty with Ph.D.'s looks impressive in a college catalog, it might be equally impressive to include faculty who have not achieved terminal degrees but are highly skilled and possess a depth of talent and experience in service industries and the manual trades, where experience counts more than research. Vocational studies need not mimic purely intellectual pursuits, but they are needed just as much. Events management and wedding planning are just two examples of careers that require a blend of intellectual and dexterous skills that are difficult to achieve and take years to acquire.
As an academic, I appreciate theory and intellectual work. I am proud of my four degrees, my position as a tenured professor, and my title as chairman. I can go toe to toe with anyone in a debate, regardless of pedigree. Yet I am equally as proud of the fact that I rebuilt my house inside and out—plumbing, electric, carpentry—with my own hands. One set of skills is not superior to the other. They have each played an equal role in my success as a professional and a person.
