The Chronicle Review
Copyright CHE 2010
August 8, 2010

[JWW note: Any resemblence with OSU is accidental.
This article got nearly 40 online comments all over the map: student and faculty who did or didn't recognize themselves in part or in full. ]

Confessions of a Bad Academic Adviser
By Mark Montgomery

As an academic adviser, I am something of a delinquent, and as delinquents often do, I blame the problem on poor role models at key moments in my youth. My own undergraduate academic adviser never gave me any good advice. Or any bad advice, for that matter.

In 1971, on my second day at a midsize state university, I tried to turn in a registration card without the signature of the adviser whose name had been given to me the day before, on my first day. In that era, such information was transmitted on paper. Then, as now, I wasn't good with paper. I had no idea who my adviser was. But his or her signature was required. Of several potential solutions to this problem, I chose the most expedient: I signed a name. The first name that sprang to mind was that of a high-school friend who was attending a different college. My card was accepted without hesitation.

For the next three years, my friend Ron served as my official, though fake, academic adviser, and our arrangement worked very well. One good thing about a fake adviser, as opposed to a real one, is that you can choose anyone, at any time. So at the beginning of my senior year, I upgraded: I unceremoniously dumped Ron and selected a new adviser with substantially more impressive credentials. I signed--in legible handwriting, I swear to you--Gerald R. Ford, who was then president of the United States. My card was accepted, no problem.

Having had this nonexperience with academic advising, when it came time for me to be an academic adviser, I naturally approached the job with a certain amount of cynicism. My attitude was like what I imagine would be that of some crotchety old alumnus of an English public school: "By God, I never had an academic adviser, and I don't see why these kids today need one!" But I have spent 28 years teaching at private colleges, where the student body is small and the tuition is big. At such places, students and their families justifiably expect real advice from a real adviser.

At my institution, the first professor students meet is indeed their academic adviser, who instructs 12 to 13 of them in a semester-long "tutorial," a kind of boot camp for college students. One of the first things we do is help them choose their courses. Happily, this is very easy because we have no core curriculum; sadly, this is very hard because we have no core curriculum. We are no less committed to broad liberal education than are campuses that barrage incoming students with a long list of requirements of near-Talmudic complexity.

The students don't really understand that--they think they can take anything they want. The person who disabuses them of that notion is the academic adviser, whose job it is to explain the difference between "no requirements" and the more subtle no "requirements." (I'm not exactly sure what the difference is myself, but ... there is one.) You do this, in some cases, by arguing with them. Or not. You can always be one of those nice advisers who lets students take anything they want. But later, when colleagues are horrified by a transcript so narrow it looks as if the student was advised by my old friend Ron, they will know that the adviser was actually you.

New students, not unreasonably, expect an adviser to know things. They may ask me what it means that "credit for French 112 is awarded only in conjunction with 113, except when 113 is substituted for 212 as a prerequisite for 213, in which case, 213 shall satisfy the prerequisite for 313, but neither 112, 113, or 213 may be counted toward the major." (I made that up, but you get the point.)

And then there are the students who want your advice about their courses. Indeed, on all courses. Every single one. They want you to stroll hand in hand with them through the catalog, discussing the merits of each potential item in their program: the subject, the professor, the workload, how a particular course might fit into a broader life plan of intellectual development. A good adviser does not grab that student by the ears and yell, "Pick one! It doesn't really matter!"

At my college, freshmen are more or less assigned an adviser, but later, they must choose one in their major. By the end of sophomore year, students come to ask you to advise them, and you say yes.

It's a simple process, but apparently I'm no good at it. Some years ago, over pizza one night, a group of advisees explained to me how disappointing they found the experience of having me as an adviser. I was genuinely surprised. They spoke of coming to me, with jittery enthusiasm, to announce the first life-altering decision they had made on their own, with no supervision by parents: to major in economics. The actual event went something like the following:

Student: Professor, I've decided to major in economics.

Me: Uh-huh.

Student: I would like you to be my academic adviser.

Me: OK, bring me the forms.

What they had anticipated, I was shocked to discover, was something more like this:

Student: Professor, I've decided to major in economics.

Me: You have? How wonderful! I was so hoping you would.

Student: I would like you to be my academic adviser.

Me: Me? You want me to advise you? Why, I'm overwhelmed--this is such a great honor!

If I sound mocking, I honestly don't mean to be. For people barely out of their teens, a decision like this is no trivial matter. Obviously I had failed to give it the proper respect.

And that's not the worst of it. Because, as explained above, one becomes my advisee with very little fanfare, the event is not especially memorable. I consequently don't always remember it. So when I ask a student, in casual conversation, what her major is, it hurts to see her look of wounded incomprehension as she replies, "Econ. ... You're my adviser."

Oh, yeah, I knew that.

I may soon get a taste of my own medicine. Ron is now a chiropractor in southern New Jersey, and I will probably see him next year at my 40th high-school class reunion. Will he remember his (only) advisee?

Mark Montgomery is a professor of economics at Grinnell College.