Recruiting Minority Students for Academic Careers: The Role of Graduate Student and Faculty Mentors

Abstract

careers in general. When the material rewards, in terms of salary and security, are matched against the effort, it may hardly seem worth it in any rational sense. Yet there are some important compensations. In most cases, this career offers the prospect of being able to define one's own objectives and control the pace and content of one's labor. It offers the many rewards of teaching-making a difference in the lives of others, starting students on their own quest for knowledge, contributing to the betterment of community and so on. It often includes the opportunity to participate in work at the frontiers of knowledge about a critical dimension of human life. It almost always provides a lifetime's worth of intellectual challenges, often in company with helpful and exciting people who encourage one to keep trying to meet those challenges. It can, in short, make life interesting. And for all of those that fall by the wayside, there are many others who make it through successfully. Further, while it shares the liabilities of an academic life, a scholarly career in political science offers the same compensations. For many, this includes a measure of modest financial security with tenure. More importantly for most, whether in research or teaching, it offers the excitement of making a living by one's wits, of shaping events (occasionally) and minds (often) on the strength of pure intellectual energy. For some, such compensations are enough rationally to offset the risks of failure this career entails. For others, there is no question of choice, since the alternatives are so infinitely less attractive as to be unthinkable while any hope of success remains. It is in the hope of saving these last committed aspirants that I have set these lessons down.