Academic Departments Books

Are you a beginning graduate student who is a bit overwhelmed? This is a great book for you! This book contains great advice about how to balance a busy home and work life with the demands of graduate school, as well as practical tips about how to complete all the major components of graduate school programs. The author takes a very realistic approach, too. This is a useful tool!

This book provides generic advice about graduate school, from the decision to pursue an advanced degree to choosing your committee and writing your thesis. However, the book is only 130 pages... quite small for its hefty price tag. Most of the advice also seems obvious, such as getting to know professors on your committee, and the reminders that graduate school is difficult and life-changing hardly help one feel more at ease.

This book is not worth buying. Buyer beware! Don't waste your hard-earned money on this book. Anker Publishing Company has many good leadership books, but this is not one of them. I don't understand why Anker chose to publish this book. Once again, don't waste your money on this book.

Chu extols the details surrounding all the important job characteristics of department chairs. A practical guide, it should be on every college administrator's book shelf. Definitely a must read for those in the business of higher education!

Patrick Maloney

I think that says it all. Don't waste your money on this book; it's not worth a dime, or even a token.

Dr. Phillip R. Roberts, Jr.

An excellent and succinct insight into the requirements, conflicts, and leadership needs of university chairs and deans. In fact, this should be required reading for ALL in such positions. The paradigm shift from faculty to admnistration and the bi-directional demands are clearly addressed, illustrated, and suggestions provided. Short scenarios put you in the "hot seat" and stimulates one to consider the dilemmas that might occur. This volume provides an ample foundation to become a successful leader among leaders. READ THIS BOOK!

I am sorry I didn't review this book earlier; don't waste your money on it!

If you want to know the structure of a purpose statement or research questions, or formats for a desertation, this is NOT the book for you. This is a pep talk on how swell it would be to write one, time management (which you should ALREADY be into) and cute and witty goody nice stuff. I was looking for examples and structure and theory. I can get all the time mgt stuff from my mentor. If you need a book to boost your morale, this could be the book for you. If you're looking for a book on the mechanics of writing a thesis this book is NOT for you. I wish I could get a refund. This book is that bad.

It's NOT well written and if you are already into this, you'll find the writing style too soft and yucky, like a coffee shop discussion; nice and cute converations, but no real substance.

This is a vanity book.

Some autobiographers devise fantasies that unwittingly divulge facts. In this autobiographical Work and Academic Politics, William H. Form devises the fantasy that academic sociology is a mediaeval guild. A guild is a kind of trade association in old Europe that enforced a trade monopoly and opposed nontraditional technologies. The unintentionally divulged fact is that sociology is merely an academic trade association operating like a guild instead of a science.

Form is not the only sociologist to use the metaphor of the guild, although he is the only one to my knowledge to employ it approvingly. In the "Introduction" to their book, Sociology on Trial, Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich say that sociologists form professional associations organized to perform the classical functions of a guild - regulation of admission, monopolization of employment opportunity, control and expansion of marketing, and the development of occult terminologies - with the result that the task of sociology gets lost. Form's book amounts to a confession of guilt in sociology's trial.

As a nonsociologist let me submit the following brief as an amicus curiae in this trial: I speak as a witness from personal experience. In 1981 I had submitted a paper to the American Sociological Review, the official journal of the American Sociological Association, while Form was editor. The paper set forth a dynamic model estimated statistically over fifty years of sociologically relevant historical data collected by U.S. government, and developed mechanically with an artificial-intelligence discovery system. In simulations the model exhibited damped oscillations converging in a stable equilibrium growth path, which is due to intergenerational negative-feedback cultural lags among the interacting social institutions. It shows empirically that the five basic institutions of our macrosociety interact to promote macrosocial consensus stability, if per capita real gross domestic product grows at four percent or more annually, and if internal migration is unrestricted so the labor force can exploit economic opportunities.

Form rejected the paper with two referee criticisms. The first showed abysmal ignorance of academic philosophy of science. The second stated that the paper did not reflect sociology's traditions and called it an "empiricist venture". I submitted replies, to which Form responded citing his "folkways". In his Work and Academic Politics Form summarizes his own alternative "organizational approach" to institutional analysis, which exhibits no empirical modeling.

I believe that Form's indulging in his Mediaeval guild fantasy while editor of the American Sociological Review has had a debilitating effect on American academic sociology's information pool comparable to that of incest on the gene pool of a small isolated aboriginal tribe. It has produced a sterile monoculture. Sociological thought is inbred and conformist. Academic sociologists need remedial education in mathematics, statistics, computer systems, and most importantly philosophy of science. I believe that this book is too self-serving to be interesting even to historians of sociology. In fact I believe that it is worthless. The sociologist reader would benefit more from an undergraduate course in philosophy of science.

Readers interested in my further comments are invited to read my book titled History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science at my web site philsci, and to read my other reviews on the Amazon web site.

Thomas J. Hickey

This was a total waste of money. Almost all of the information on the DVD is available at the Coast Guard Academy website. In fact, most of it is lifted from the website pages. The book is in Acrobat Reader format. Many of the web links are broken.

My daughter and I had so looked forward to getting this and were so totally disappointed. I would go as far to say as it is the worst product I have ever purchased.