Taking the Plunge
by Jeffrey Selingo
For years, Larry Carr's day was dictated by the clock. As president and chief executive officer of a Siemens division, he had breakfast meetings, conference calls, and overnight trips in faraway places. But these days, Carr's phone can go days without ringing; on some weekday afternoons, he can be found reading at home. He's now a professor of management accounting at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.
In 1986, at the pinnacle of his career at age 40, Carr traded in his wingtips for business books and enrolled one year later in a Ph.D. program at Union College in Schenectady, New York. "I said, ‘That's it,’" he recalls. "‘I'm going to do what I always wanted to do and that's teach.’"
Since arriving at Babson in 1989, Carr has been learning to operate in a world much different from the one he left. He is one of many who have decided to give up jobs in the private or government sector for a second career as a college professor. While such newcomers bring practical, hands-on experience to the classroom, many aspects of academic life-teaching, decision making, and the overall slow pace of colleges-are often difficult adjustments. "My first summer recess, I was wondering why the phone wasn't ringing, why people weren't looking for me," Carr says.
One of the most difficult challenges for corporate professionals moving into the classroom is learning how to teach. When they first start, many resort to telling war stories about their careers, approaching the class as a guest lecture rather than a series of meetings over the course of a semester. Matthew Hartley, an assistant professor at the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on organizational change at colleges, says many first-time professors are surprised about "the tremendous amount of time it takes to set up and develop courses." Personal stories are a nice touch, he says, but they must be accompanied by books, readings, and other scholarly research in the field.
To find out if a second career as a college professor is a good fit, many corporate professionals test the waters by teaching part-time while they still have their old jobs. Jack Raiton taught a college class on and off for several years while still a chief financial officer and controller at two high-tech firms in Oregon. When he retired in 2000 after 30 years in the private sector, he knew what was awaiting him as a professor. "That was one of the reasons I dipped into higher education-I didn't want to be frustrated or face any surprises," he says. Even so, Raiton jokes, he still walks down the hall faster than most of his colleagues. "I lived with a rhythm for 30 years and there isn't that same rhythm here," he says.
New arrivals also face a strange organizational hierarchy. Many are used to being in charge and making tough decisions that at times anger others. But at most colleges, professors are an integral part of the decision-making process, working with administrators on committees and on the faculty senate. A premium is placed on consensus. "We have meetings and we have meetings, and then we have more meetings," says Jim Fahey, associate professor of communications at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, who joined the faculty there in 1990, after a career in public relations at IBM. At first, Fahey offered suggestions for improving the decision-making process. "I only made them once, because I quickly realized that things work differently here," he said.
Sometimes it takes months, if not years, to approve new programs or make changes to the curriculum. For Carr, that glacial pace has been one of the biggest adjustments from the hectic schedule that he knew as a CEO. "Decisions are slow and evolving," he says. "So you might see the path, but there is a hard effort to get that path carved out."
Still, on most days he welcomes his second career, even when his friends in the private sector question his decision. "I ask them how their life would be if they had no budget responsibilities and no one reporting to them," he says. "Those are the two biggest headaches in business, and I no longer have to worry about them."
