Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Virtual Events
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    A Culture of Cybersecurity
    Opportunities in the Hard Sciences
    Career Preparation
Sign In
The Two-Year Track

Why Are Some Academics So Unprofessional?

Calls go unreturned, emails are ignored. That’s the way business is conducted too often in higher education.

By Rob Jenkins March 16, 2016
Careers - Shaking Hands Laptops
Garfield Anderssen / Creative Commons

Are academics the most unprofessional professionals in the world? Sometimes it seems that way.

Although I’ve spent most of my adult life in higher education, I’ve also had extensive dealings with people in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, and I have to tell you: Those of us in academe don’t always look so good by comparison.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Careers - Shaking Hands Laptops
Garfield Anderssen / Creative Commons

Are academics the most unprofessional professionals in the world? Sometimes it seems that way.

Although I’ve spent most of my adult life in higher education, I’ve also had extensive dealings with people in the corporate and nonprofit sectors, and I have to tell you: Those of us in academe don’t always look so good by comparison.

Case in Point: Back in November, after our new book The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders came out, my co-author Karl Haden and I sent complimentary copies to select business and education leaders. Most of the corporate types responded within a few weeks with a nice note — in several cases, handwritten — thanking us for the book. (Whether they actually cracked it, we have no idea.)

The academics? Other than a few we know personally, we never heard a word from most of them.

When someone gives you a gift, whatever you think of it, you send a thank-you note. That’s just good manners. Then again, that’s precisely what professionalism is — good manners extended to professional life.

Permit me to illustrate the point with a second anecdote. Last fall, about a week before Thanksgiving, I was contacted by a college asking if I was available to give a talk to its faculty in January. I got back to the college right away because it seemed like the courteous and professional thing to do, and also to confirm my availability for an event that was less than two months away. I received no immediate response.

Three weeks went by, and still no one from the college had contacted me. At that point, we were well into December, almost to the end of the semester. If I were going to visit that campus in January, I really needed to attend to certain logistical details before the holidays, such as filing a travel request with my own college and booking a flight.

So I wrote back to say, in essence, “Hey, I haven’t heard anything from you. Do you still want me to come speak in January? Because if so, there are some things I need to do on my end.” I went out of my way to be polite and not sound annoyed.

Again, nothing. It’s March and I still haven’t heard anything back from that college, which I find not only baffling but unconscionable.

Acting professionally simply means behaving like a decent human being in the workplace.

It’s not that they had any obligation to invite me to their campus, but they were the ones who approached me. Maybe they decided to bring in somebody else or use an in-house speaker. Maybe they canceled the event altogether. I don’t know. And I’ll never know, because they didn’t bother to tell me. That’s unprofessional, not to mention rude. And the saddest part, perhaps, is that this was not an isolated incident. I encounter that sort of unprofessionalism among people who work at colleges and universities on a regular basis.

Why do we behave that way?

I don’t know the answer to that either, although I can certainly speculate. Perhaps, in keeping with the stereotype of the absent-minded professor, we’re just a little scatterbrained. Or, as intellectuals living “the life of the mind,” we don’t think the normal rules of human social interaction apply to us — or we don’t even know the rules. Or we’re so impressed with our own importance, or the importance of our function (professor, dean, director), that we think everyone else ought to put their lives on hold and work around our schedule.

ADVERTISEMENT

Or maybe we just haven’t been taught any better. Graduate programs prepare students for a lot of things: in-depth research, field-specific publishing, even (in some cases) the job search. But apparently they’re doing a poor job teaching professionalism — perhaps because professors don’t always model that behavior themselves.

I do know that unprofessionalism, in the long run, is highly destructive. It puts a strain on what should be collegial relationships. It harms reputations, as people get labeled “hard to get along with.” It drives away potential clients, collaborators, and students. It prevents the college and its programs from running as smoothly as they could.

So how do we fix this? The obvious answer is through education, which is why I’m broaching the topic in this column — to help young academics and administrators understand what it means to behave professionally. (Frankly, I don’t have much hope for the older ones.)

But that raises another question: What, exactly, constitutes professionalism? Here are a few specific behaviors that come to mind:

ADVERTISEMENT

Respond in kind. As a faculty member or administrator, you get a lot of emails, not to mention voice messages, texts, and even old-fashioned letters. Do you really have to respond to all of them?

Professionalism dictates that you do, at least within certain parameters. Personally, I don’t feel obligated to answer unsolicited inquiries (via email or otherwise) that are directed to multiple recipients. I understand that people who send out mass emails fully expect only a few of those recipients to “bite.” I have no problem not being one of those few.

But other than that, I answer virtually every email and phone message, even if they’re from people I don’t know, and even if the sender or caller just wants something from me. (As someone who writes for a national publication, I get a lot of emails from people I don’t know, most of them wanting something from me.) My answer might well be, “No, thank you” or “No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” but if someone goes to the trouble of contacting me directly and by name, I will extend to that individual the courtesy of a reply.

Follow through. Another common form of unprofessionalism is a failure to deliver as expected. None of us appreciates the contractor who disappears for weeks at a time, finally completing the remodeling project (or not) long after the promised date. That’s unprofessional.

ADVERTISEMENT

Likewise, academics have obligations and deadlines — to submit forms or reports, to complete manuscripts, to return students’ graded papers. There may be times when we have to swallow our pride and ask for an extension, as courteously and professionally as possible. At other times, we may need to help students and colleagues adjust their unrealistic expectations.

But for the most part, we should meet our deadlines and fulfill our obligations, because doing what we’ve promised to do is a cornerstone of professionalism. Dropping the ball is not only unprofessional, it’s rude and inconsiderate in that it creates problems for other people — just as your contractor leaving your kitchen in a shambles creates problems for you, not him.

Be there. We also have places we have to be: classes, office hours, faculty meetings, committee meetings, meetings to plan meetings. And while we may occasionally have good reason to be absent, for the most part we are obligated to be where we are supposed to be, when we are supposed to be there. “Reliable,” “dependable,” and “punctual” might not be exact synonyms for “professional,” but they’re pretty close.

And then there are those places we don’t have to be but probably should be: like a student’s art exhibit or a close colleague’s poetry reading or that holiday party at the dean’s house. As unappealing as some of those events might seem, occasionally professionalism calls for a sacrifice of time to demonstrate our commitment to the institution and to our fellow human beings.

ADVERTISEMENT

Speak temperately. A few years ago, while attending a major conference in my discipline, I witnessed a group of people attempting to shout down a speaker with whom they disagreed. Besides being annoyed that I couldn’t hear the speaker — with whom I didn’t necessarily agree, either — I thought they were being extremely rude and unprofessional. The fact that many of them were obviously senior professors probably explains why so many younger faculty members act that way, too.

Among other things, professionalism requires us to moderate our speech, to be as gracious as possible, and to seek to avoid giving offense. It may also, at times, require us to acknowledge our own failings, accept our share of the responsibility when things don’t go well, and resolve to make amends.

Follow the Golden Rule. Ultimately, the mark of a professional is how you treat people who are below you on the organizational chart and who can’t do anything for you personally. In essence, treat people the way you would want to be treated.

If you’re a true professionals, you treat everyone else’s time as just as valuable as your own. You do what you’ve committed to do. Although you may have very high expectations, you are tolerant of human failings (including your own) and considerate of other people’s feelings.

In short, acting professionally simply means behaving like a decent human being in the workplace. What does it say about our profession when a significant minority, at least, fail to measure up to that standard?

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
About the Author
Rob Jenkins
Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College who writes regularly for The Chronicle’s Advice pages. He is a senior fellow at the Academy for Advancing Leadership, a health and higher-education consulting firm, and a leadership coach.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Illustration showing two professors outside a university building sunk down in a large canyon, looking up at an unreachable outside world above them.
Stagnant pay
Professors Say They Need a Raise. They Probably Won’t Get One.
Photo-based illustration depicting a basketball scene with a hand palming a quarter, another hand of a man wearing a suit sleeve, and a basketball goal made from a $100 bill and the Capitol building.
Sports shakeup
A New Normal Looms in College Athletics. Can Trump Help Shape It?
Illustration showing three classical columns on stacks of coins, at different heights due to the amount of coins stacked underneath
Data
These 35 Colleges Could Take a Financial Hit Under Republicans’ Expanded Endowment Tax
Illustration showing details of a U.S. EEOC letter to Harvard U.
Bias Allegations
Faculty Hiring Is Under Federal Scrutiny at Harvard

From The Review

Solomon-0512 B.jpg
The Review | Essay
The Conscience of a Campus Conservative
By Daniel J. Solomon
Illustration depicting a pendulum with a red ball featuring a portion of President Trump's face to the left about to strike balls showing a group of protesters.
The Review | Opinion
Trump Is Destroying DEI With the Same Tools That Built It
By Noliwe M. Rooks
Illustration showing two men and giant books, split into two sides—one blue and one red. The two men are reaching across the center color devide to shake hands.
The Review | Opinion
Left and Right Agree: Higher Ed Needs to Change
By Michael W. Clune

Upcoming Events

Ascendium_06-10-25_Plain.png
Views on College and Alternative Pathways
Coursera_06-17-25_Plain.png
AI and Microcredentials
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin