Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-homeless-sex-work-academia-poverty

by tjalfi • 9 years ago

378 412 9 years ago

qaq• 9 years ago

The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting teaching positions and increasing admin.

xythian3• 9 years ago

I'm not sure why you're downvoted. This is a real problem that is palpable for anyone that has worked in higher ed since the 1980s as most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities. The reasons for this move are complex, and one result is a rise in well-paid administrators and low-paid adjuncts with a decline in tenured faculty.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/academic-b...

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/14/new_book_argu...

https://www.agb.org/trusteeship/2013/5/changing-academic-wor...

pm246012• 9 years ago

most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities.

At my alum mater, the state cut support to the state universities to practically nothing. Voters saw how much money the big universities were making on college football. They consistently voted to cut the money to the university system.

Only problem? Most state supported universities did not have a football program.

My university:

* turned to Chinese/Indian nationals (no financial aid/full price)

* raised everyone's tuition (went from low-cost school to higher-end)

* raised other fees

My university is in a part of the US that has low cost of living. So at the very least, the profs are unlikely to be homeless - yes even at the wages specified.

gerbilly• 9 years ago

most universities have moved to act more and more like for-profit entities.

I think this reflects a larger trend.

Most institutions are taking on the rituals of the dominant organizing principle in society: the corporation.

I believe this is why church groups are having "annual general meetings" and that formerly not for profit institutions are mimicking the organizational structure of corporations: meetings, hierarchical teams, layers of administrators etc...

spectrum1234• 9 years ago

Exactly!

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-...

"...some of this probably relates to a difference between personal versus institutional risk tolerance."

yardie2• 9 years ago

I wonder what percentage of the admin is dedicated to chasing money. While I was working as an undergrad assistant the grant writing process was insane and I rarely saw the professor overseeing research. He was walled off in his office writing grant proposals.

I learned that for the budget of most research projects, 50% was administration. That is 50% wasn't for researchers, the lab, labor, or equipment. Part of the 50% administration budget was paying for the oversight of said budget.

I am no longer amazed when government projects go severely overbudget anymore. Its designed to do that. Not just the contractor but the government itself. Budget a project, get the vendor, project goes over, create a department to track costs, budget goes over, write a new law to track budget, budget goes over, create another department to track budget, budget goes over, write a new law to track budget, ad nauseum.

xythian3• 9 years ago

In my experience (former PhD student and instructor and my spouse is a full-time faculty and program director), if you're a tenured faculty member at a R1 university, then grant writing is your job. You're expected to be self-funding and the only way to do this is to grind out grants and pass the work onto graduate students and staff. And, you pay a ~50% tax on your grant award as 'overhead' to the university, so you have a lot less money to work with than the sticker value that gets awarded.

At the university level, arguably the second most important person in the administration is the President of the Foundation and they don't even technically work for the university as the foundation is a separate legal entity. This person has a massive private army of fund-raising staff that shakes the alumni money tree looking for gifts large and small.

But, that doesn't mean that universities don't also have money chasers. My former uni had a special division in the recruiting/admission office that focused on high-value future alumni, aka, children of rich and famous parents. These kids were brought in for tailored events, private meetings with faculty and admins, and received a general red carpet treatment to try and lure them to the university.

Related, Malcom Gladwell has done some great work dissecting the money making machines of the administrator class who go after $100M+ gifts (far more money than 99.99% of researchers could acquire in a lifetime of grants). And, how this gift giving continues to pile on at elite schools while starving everyone else of gifts.

http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-...

mattkrause2• 9 years ago

Some of the Ivys take around 65-70 percent, and a few places (admittedly with very specialised facilities) are over 100%--spend a dollar on research, spend another (edit: had written two) on admin.

gbacon2• 9 years ago

A cynic might think failure is success for them.

empath75• 9 years ago

It seems like there should be a market for low overhead small schools with high paid teaching staff.

moduspol2• 9 years ago

They were looking at doing this at my last job (small private university).

We already outsourced custodial and food service. Do student accounts and financial aid really define us as a university? Are they part of our core competency? Do we do them particularly well relative to competitors?

Of course not. So why not outsource them?

gipp2• 9 years ago

For the university "market", the only game in town is prestige, which teaching quality plays into very little, if at all.

_ptgt• 9 years ago

Right? I've thought about this as well. My guess is that:

1) Nearly all university students are making their decision when they're 18, so a lot of them are mostly interested in non-academic aspects of their school

2) It seems really hard to actually start a new university. Anecdotally, every university I can think of is quite old.

3) This is probably related to (2). The benefits of universities aren't really dependent on good professors. The advantage of top schools in both educational progress and student outcomes can probably mostly explained by signalling, filtering out weak students before they arrive, university culture, and networking. None of this has much to do with professors.

potbelly83• 9 years ago

Couldn't agree more. It's not so much about the prestige but guaranteeing good employment options.

dragonwriter11• 9 years ago

They're called “community colleges” (faculty are paid less than universities, but they still have a comparatively high-paid overall teaching staff because the faculty get all the teaching duties, none of it is farmed out to really low-paid grad students.)

And, yes, there's a market for them.

(This is also what a lot of private, non-research schools sell themselves as, and some actually fit the bill without being abusive frauds, though the money available and historical ease of getting away with being an abusive fraud in that area has made it hard to find the wheat among all the chaff.)

sevensor• 9 years ago

I believe this is the model Olin tries to follow. In general, institutions that don't offer graduate programs can afford to focus on undergrads. You can see this with the small liberal arts colleges, although they generally fail at low overhead and tend to succumb to the donor-industrial adminstrative complex.

awal• 9 years ago

Several years ago in the animation industry things like Animation Mentor, AnimSchool, etc. popped up to provide cheap(er) classes that were much higher quality than what was offered at almost any big 4-year institution. They were able to do this by paying working professionals side money to generate content and provide student feedback. Code bootcamps seem to be a continuation of this theme.

jimbokun• 9 years ago

Please please please tell me where these schools are. I have two teenage sons on college tracks in high school, and absolutely terrified at the bankruptcy inducing sums bearing down on me like a freight train.

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

"Don't worry, we can have an adjunct professor do it on the cheap."

And then they come to us for tax dollars, while also slashing their involvement with local communities. Why should education tax money go to universities that are so woefully inefficient and bloated with money when it could be spent on primary and secondary education, or better access to preschooling?

hashberry2• 9 years ago

I dated someone who worked an administrative position... she would complain of coworkers who would do nothing all day. She said her job was being done by three people when only one was needed. The lack of oversight and actual work being done was alarming. Who administrates the administrators? No one.

jseliger2• 9 years ago

The admin staff is a problem but does not seem to be the main problem: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m....

Glyptodon• 9 years ago

I work for a university and while I think there's some justification for increases in some roles - many universities desperately need internal equivalents of an 18F/US Digital service type entity among other things.

Other situations are complex - grants/external funding impose substantial administration requirements (while being larger and larger shares of revenue) or require substantial administrative expertise, often require things like outreach programs which PIs don't want to deal with, etc.

But at the same time, I think administrative salaries are frequently unconscionable.

asabjorn• 9 years ago

Universities are like dictatorships where only staff has a vote on if the top executives should stay in their job. Since professors are tenured and are therefore not beholden to anyone, the top executives are highly incentivised to increase the pool of voters that they have leverage over in order to create a stable coalition. This pool is administrative staff.

This problem is further aggravated by the fact that students often choose Universities based upon reputation and are therefore rather insensitive to price increases, so extra spend on administrative staff is easy to find. In addition to this the government gives away student loans that matches rising tuition costs and because you can't get rid of student loans in bankruptcy it is an attractive asset class even for private lenders.

akeck• 9 years ago

So, where's the $150K per student in tuition going?

monocasa• 9 years ago

The administration

ceejayoz• 9 years ago

Fancy dorms, athletic facilities, big houses for the university president, endowments...

sixQuarks• 9 years ago

true, the highest paid employee at most large universities are the sports coaches.

rgrieselhuber• 9 years ago

Endowment funds and administration.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

Students exchanging their body for a place to stay during university years seem to be a commonplace thing today. I guess economic hardships move upwards, so it's time for university staff too.

thearn42• 9 years ago

How does the academic bubble in the U.S. break? Knowing quite a few career adjuncts, I have to wonder if their situation will only be getting worse.

Overtonwindow2• 9 years ago

Reform the tenure system and place caps on university administrators pay.

vkou4• 9 years ago

Tenure's not the problem, the problem is that in their academic career, a PHD will produce X new PHDs. Where X is substantially greater than 1. Until this is fixed, it doesn't matter if academic jobs are for life, or are contracts that get renewed (or not) every 8 hours.

This pyramid scheme was fine while demand for PHDs was increasing (By industry, and growth of academia), but now its really not (Industry doesn't want to pay, academia can't grow anymore). Universities must start greatly restricting their grad school programs. Of course, this will absolutely kill the practice of using underpaid grad students to do research... And would have to be offset by public increases to research spending.

nousilias• 9 years ago

I'm a tenured professor who is almost certainly on my way out. Academics is a mess.

I don't think getting rid of tenure is the solution. Tenure is almost gone in practice if not on paper, and the effects of this have been detrimental. The current crisis of replicability is a side effect of this. Tenure is often for soft money positions one way or another: the university might guarantee you a position, but what that position looks like is a different issue. If anything tenure needs to be strengthened.

People get hung up on tenure when it's really irrelevant.

Top-heavy administration is a problem, but capping salaries isn't really the solution. What is required is self-governance, where administration is voted on by professors and staff, policies are voted on by professors and staff, etc. Basically, things need to be more democratic.

I also think research funding and public financing is to blame. Basically more state financing has to occur, or more reliable federal funding needs to happen. Grants are underfunding things, and are too unreliable and fickle.

Finally, none of this will change until employers in the private sector change and stop mindlessly demanding degrees, or demanding overly specific degrees. E.g., assuming that you can't do X unless you have a bachelors or master's in X. In some ways this is most important. Employers don't want to train employees, or do research, or even be bothered to discern actual ability or qualifications, so they treat degrees like rubber stamps, and demand that universities do their research for them for free. The bubble exists because the private sector demands the bubble. You could cut government loans, but that doesn't cut demand for the degrees.

Like a lot of things, the crisis in academics is very complex, and a lot of proposed cures are actually worse than the disease.

I think what it is going to amount to eventually probably is some hard decisions as a society whether or not we really value education and research or not (from K-12 all the way to post PhD). Many of these issues are pretty similar to healthcare in this regard, and other public services.

SomeStupidPoint• 9 years ago

I believe there's a limit:

I'm a programmer, and a PhD student's time is worth a certain amount to me -- at least, as a tutor on subjects I never got to learn but have an interest in. After all, most of the graduate students, adjuncts, etc have worked as tutors and instructors. Presumably, this is true of some fraction of other programmers. So you can support a community of some size by selling lessons -- it just requires substantially adjusting the business arrangement, eg, teaching evening advanced math classes that I can easily take 1 at a time of.

It's actually near that point -- for what I would pay for lessons, you'd only really need 10-15 students to have an okay job (def: median household income where I live). So there my be some sort of actual logistics problem we can solve with technology here. (As an off-the-cuff idea: Kickstarter an evening class; prepay with limited refunds, etc. It wouldn't cost much for adjuncts to try.)

troupe3• 9 years ago

Some of the people who could be teaching as an adjunct professor are now doing well with classes on Udemy and similar sites. It isn't a magic, but it is another option that is available for making money using teaching skills.

xor1• 9 years ago

Student loan collapse

virmundi• 9 years ago

What I enjoyed the most about this question: you got a right and left answer. The right said the market will fix it by collapsing the loan market. The left said govermnet caps and management.

edit- spelling load -> loan.

jacquesm3• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the former Eastbloc countries where you will find scientists as janitors and living in terrible conditions. Not that people who are not scientists don't live in terrible conditions but you would never expect a maths or physics professor to be unemployable.

Even here in NL there are niche websites that pretend to be dating sites but that actually are sites where students are hooked up with 'sugar daddy's' effectively prostituting themselves to be able to finish their academic education.

This is a hot topic in the news here right now.

yardie2• 9 years ago

Don't even need to go east. Cuba is that way right now. Bartenders, cab drivers, and prostitutes with PhDs.

pacala• 9 years ago

The PhD system is a Ponzi scheme. There are a few lucky winners, and a vast army of overspecialized people with little real-world options.

gipp2• 9 years ago

Don't even need to go anywhere.

https://gizmodo.com/5671062/there-are-5000-janitors-in-the-u...

david927• 9 years ago

In Eastbloc countries that was done as a form of punishment, often for not toeing the party line. It was true across disciplines: medicine, law, etc, when otherwise they would have "good" jobs. (I'm clarifying, not justifying.)

I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

jacquesm3• 9 years ago

I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

But life is not.

mattashii• 9 years ago

Higher education in NL is about 1800 euros/year for citizens (limiations apply in age, etc.). Living costs, study materials etc. are not included. You can loan ~1100/month max from the government, which currently is at 0% interest, but starting 2 years after finishing your studies you'll be required to pay it off in the next 30 years. (? unsure about this timespan)

I hadn't heard about said hot topic, but one of the reasons might be that recently the government stopped remitting part of the student loan as a gift after graduation.

KirinDave5• 9 years ago

For those who have university degrees, this should be a difficult read. Next time you say to yourself, "Sure, I went to college. I know that's a privilege, but I worked hard there and made it because of my hard work and nothing else!" Remember this article.

This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that's becoming more acute. Even if we ignore the adjuncts, the brilliant folks who taught us all what we know subsist on less than half of the median wage for our professions, with increasingly mediocre benefits.

These are the same folks who's amazing research work is powering our industry, often with a 10 year lead time.

aaron-lebo4• 9 years ago

It's not just the adjuncts, it is graduate students, too.

I've got friends who are working on their PhDs while teaching 4-5 classes (at other locations). I considered being a TA a few years ago, but you couldn't have a second job. The stipend as a TA was $1300 a month + tuition for 40 hour weeks (may have actually been "20" hour weeks, not certain). Yeah, right.

It's pretty screwed up. It's a privilege to be in higher education but it is also pretty crushing and you've got to be a soldier to deal with it. The worst part is I've almost never met anything but great people who willingly put themselves through it.

It's why as an overeducated graduate student, I'm against expanding education more and more (like free community college for all). The incentives are way off currently, not sure what the solution is, but it has to change.

legitster• 9 years ago

If it includes room and board and some insurance plan, $1300 a month isn't bad? My brother had a something like that at his university and ended up saving most of it because you really don't have a lot else to spend it on.

Sure, I wouldn't start a family on that, but it far surpasses what I lived off of right after college.

EDIT: It looks like the article was about people late in their careers. I was assuming that adjunct faculty positions were only entry level or for grad students.

newacct8086• 9 years ago

I thought a TA appointment was 20 hours per week?

throwaway6138346• 9 years ago

It's not just the adjuncts, it is graduate students, too.
It's pretty screwed up. It's a privilege to be in higher education but it is also pretty crushing and you've got to be a soldier to deal with it. The worst part is I've almost never met anything but great people who willingly put themselves through it.

Isn't that selecting for exactly the kind of people they want in academia though? Great people who would willingly put themselves through pain just for the sake of advancing knowledge? I'm not actually convinced that if they paid a better salary it would necessarily end up selecting for people better suited for academia -- not saying this because of lack of skills, but because if you're worried about making money the moment you start, it seems pretty plausible that you (or far people in your shoes than would feel so otherwise) would be distracted by it the whole time and not working purely for the sake of advancing your science.

Analog244• 9 years ago

University of California salaries are shared publicly. I haven't actually crunched the numbers but it seems like an average salary is around 150k for professors in research based fields. That's well over half of the median salary in almost any profession.

tptacek• 9 years ago

Those are full professors, not adjuncts.

throwaway2016a3• 9 years ago

This varies hugely by school. A lot of state run Universities have very competitive salaries because their reputation depends on retaining rock star professors.

Adjuncts are a different story.

I taught as an adjunct part time at a state school where professor made $150k. I made $5000 per course. I did it more of less for fun because I like teaching. Which is not bad for extra pay on the side but terrible if it is your only pay.

Edit: as a side note, the department head told me she fought to have adjunct Comp Sci professors make more because the field is in such high demand. I am sure English adjunts at the same school make far less.

billmalarky• 9 years ago

I'm out of my element here so someone in the industry can correct me, but from what I can tell academia is a tournament economy, like law. Those at the top (tenured professors) make all the money, everyone else struggles to get by.

mturmon• 9 years ago

UC averages are also skewed by doctors at places like UCSF.

3pt14159• 9 years ago

In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it.

Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas."

Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to 400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A single student paying $30k per year is paying $75 / hour / student, or an annualized salary of $150k / year.

True, you can't work all year round, but the average adjunct earns less than a single average student's tuition?! Where does all the money go? How is the market so broken?

kbenson4• 9 years ago

Marketing. By marketing, I mean research grants, sports team equipment and training, and anything else that increases the prestige of the school (research sometimes leads to patents for the school, so there's additional benefit to that). You have to attract students willing to pay and good teachers and researchers to attract more students. The entire market is reputation based to the point where reputation is often (usually?) more important than results.

aswanson2• 9 years ago

Administrative salaries, new buildings, and athletic stadiums.

uaydin• 9 years ago

We have that saying in Turkey as well. The funny part is, I've been living in Texas in last 4-5 years and Texas is actually a great state, especially if you stick with metroplexes such as DFW or Austin.

intern4tional• 9 years ago

I work part time as an adjunct at a local 4 year college in WA state and am paid a flat fee of $150 a student per class. For one of my higher level (400 level) courses, I have 4-5 students usually and prep work to keep the course current still requires at least 2-3 hours a week in addition to teaching class.

At the end of the day, I make less than minimum wage teaching these students. I'm lucky that I have another job that supports me.

Colleges and Universities are not lean organizations. My department has significant amounts of overhead - people that in some cases work full time doing administrivia or extra paperwork and they require a salary. The buildings and labs also require upkeep and technology has a fairly high turnover cost. Add in the racket that is software + books and things add up quickly.

I'd estimate that my department has almost a 1 to 1 back office staff to professor ratio - simply due to the lack of automation (and no desire to automate) many portions of the work that is done at the school. Many of the back office staff are full time and they receive a regular salary rather than a flat fee per student.

dave_sullivan2• 9 years ago

How is the market so broken?

Student debt.

Look at the housing market: in the 70s you could buy a house for much less because houses cost less because people didn't have more money to overpay. With a thirty year explosion of the mortgage industry and the idea that anyone should qualify to own a home, suddenly consumers had extra money to outbid people on buying houses. This broadly increased property prices with no signs of slowing (unless the money runs out, as per '08). All of that debt is increasing people's ability to buy (raising demand, increasing prices) but not increasing their ability to pay (suggesting some kind of time limit).

Now look at the education market: in the 70s, you could buy an education for much less because people didn't have more money to overpay. The cost of education was in line with normal market mechanisms. But with a thirty year explosion of student debt and the idea that everyone should go to college and qualify for loans if they can't pay for it, prices broadly increased.

The problem is, for many, there is no alternative. "I'm the first one in my family to be able to go to college." "Not going to college makes it impossible to find a job." "I have to get an education." When "No thanks, that's crazy, I'll do something else" is not an option, prices are going to do crazy things. Perfect example being healthcare costs.

I think "Don't go to college" is the best advice today. Learn to program early, start working as a freelancer when you're 18 and graduate from highschool. By the time your friends graduate from college with a bunch of student debt and can't find a job because they don't have job experience and employers want to hire people that know what they're doing, you'll be making and saving a lot more money freelancing with 4+ years of experience under your belt already. Experience is waaaaaay more valuable than degrees. Might as well get it early.

vidarh4• 9 years ago

In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means "That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it.

According to this article [1] in Washington Post, the first occurrence of Texas as "crazy" in Norwegian dates to 1957. Makes me wonder if it's used this way in other European countries too, and whether or not the etymology is independent.

It's worth noting that unlike the term "Amerikanske tilstander" ("American conditions") in politics (as shorthand for implying your opponent is pushing for whichever stereotypically bad thing about American politics fits best in the specific policy area), the use of "Texas" refers to wild west movies, and so is about 19th century lawlessness, not modern Texas (though there certainly is still a stereotype of Texas as being at least, well, somewhat Texas)

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/10/2...

KirinDave5• 9 years ago

Let's be really clear: this system is working as intended. America has always had a ruling wealth class. As time has gone on that class has changed who they try to yoke for wealth extraction & control.

It used to be that masses of factory workers were required, so those people were carefully set up for wealth extraction until they unionized and did an organized rebellion.

America's knowledge workers are where America's value is, so economic yokes have been installed at the most profitable point: where people receive higher education.

Honestly I'm not sure the EU is THAT different, I think you just do it at a different time.

valuearb2• 9 years ago

I went to 4 years of university. I do not have a degree. I have help write over 100 shipping applications, and led teams as large as 45 people. Everything I've learned and use in my daily work has been self taught. University computer science taught me very little, I have spent my own time reading and learning continuously since then.

The truth is, the brilliant professors are surrounded by mediocre professors, who in turn are dwarfed by the numbers of administrators and staff. At the vast majority of universities you are unlikely to get taught by anyone especially brilliant.

A university education was a bit of an expensive luxury in the past, now with the internet it's far more true.

moretai• 9 years ago

If anyone thinks getting through college is "hard-work", they are fooling themselves. It's literally designed for morons to pass.

sctb2• 9 years ago

Could you please stop violating the guidelines and post civilly and substantively instead?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

rayiner4• 9 years ago

These are the same folks who's amazing research work is powering our industry, often with a 10 year lead time.

No they're not. STEM professors get paid quite well.

GuiA• 9 years ago

“I feel committed to being the person who’s there to help millennials, the next generation, go on to become critical thinkers,” she said. “And I’m really good at it, and I really like it. And it’s heartbreaking to me it doesn’t pay what I feel it should.”

Sadly, there are more people with that kind of deep calling and sense of duty to the next generation willing to put it above a better salary than universities need, so as long as that will hold true, universities will be able to get that highly educated labor for very cheap.

I have several friends who are adjuncts making barely more than I used to make as a grad student, and who are living in borderline poverty (fortunately for now they are young and dependent-free, so it's not too much a sacrifice). I can very much relate to them, as I miss teaching terribly - but I refuse to give cheap labor to what many US universities have become, ie investment firms with an education themed PR front (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/business/dealbook/harvard...).

conjectures• 9 years ago

This. It should be pointed out that for individual decision making for someone in this situation that opting out may not only improve their own prospects, but also benefit those still hanging on in this career.

pickitupsnake• 9 years ago

This is probably most of it for lower tiered schools and for libarts.

I know several adjuncts that teach law/business and they are largely indifferent to their adjunct pay - a drop in the bucket. The title 'adjunct lecturer' confers high-valued benefits of prestige, networking, and depending on the course, specialization signaling that helps fuel their practices.

pwaivers• 9 years ago

There is only one academic who turned to sex work in this article right? Unless I missed some one else the article mentioned. This is a very specific example and paints with a broad paintbrush.

tkyjonathan• 9 years ago

Are you saying that this news article is anecdotal and incorrect about the actual situation? It seems to me that as a whole, the situation with adjunct teachers is quite bad..

showmetherec• 9 years ago

Are you arguing life for adjuncts is improving?

dekhn• 9 years ago

No, they're arguing that using a single anecdote which may not be representative. Coupled with the placement of that in the title of th article, it's a framing anecdote that's used to shock the reader into thinking the problem is more dire than it is (the situation is bad, but I claim that few academics are becoming sex workers to remain as academics).

dqpb• 9 years ago

It's reasonable to ask why the title is plural - "academics turn to sex work" - while the anecdote in the article is about a single person turning to sex work, and then there is no other information about how common this is.

The closest it gets to statistics is:

Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance programs such as Medicaid.

Which says literally nothing about how common it is for adjuncts to turn to sex work.

On the other hand, I would argue that it is unreasonable (or at least intellectually dishonest) for you to ask: Are you arguing life for adjuncts is improving?. Obviously the OP is not arguing that. Your intent with this question is to shame the OP for asking clarifying questions that might weaken the articles case. If you were intellectually honest, you would be in favor of accurate information.

sambull• 9 years ago

I know of a a 'virgin' who tried to sell her self for academia at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in NV. She went by the moniker 'Natalie Dylan'. Specific case I know, she was a personal friend and it kind of caught us off guard at the time. She made some money but never did go through with it. Her stated cause though was for graduate studies.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginity_auction

the_stc• 9 years ago

We're not even launched, but have been contacted by one escort-assistant type person that does workshops/classes on how to put yourself through school using sex work. Seeing what academics get paid, I would not be surprised at all that this continues well past the undergrad years.

_Codemonkeyism3• 9 years ago

With companies no longer requesting university degrees, online learning (like watching Harvard courses) becoming more popular and in some countries university being outragous expensive, the future of universities is bleak because people will stop going there. And that of acadamics teaching is even worse.

The internet will cut all middleman, and teachers being the middleman between you and knowledge, or gatekeepers to degrees. If people do not add value - and empty classrooms show many teachers do not add value, in my theoretical CS and math classes professors only wrote proofs on the blackboard for 1.5h and then left - the internet elimates you.

aaron-lebo4• 9 years ago

I very strongly doubt that. The market for a piece of paper is way too strong. That's why this stuff is expensive. Everyone can do this stuff, so the surest (and most advertised) way to get a leg up in the economy is by getting a piece of paper.

That effect only seems to be growing. That said, certainly do agree with you in principle.

_Codemonkeyism3• 9 years ago

"The market for a piece of paper is way too strong."

Penguin, PwC and EY have already dropped university degrees as a requirement.

"The move comes just months after accountancy firm Ernst & Young, one of Britain’s biggest graduate recruiters, made a similar announcement, saying in August that it would no longer consider degree or A-level results when assessing potential employees"

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/18/penguin-ditche...

"It found no evidence to conclude that previous success in higher education correlated with future success in subsequent professional qualifications undertaken."

http://www.ey.com/uk/en/newsroom/news-releases/15-08-03---ey...

Also related

"Goldman last year also made other moves to help it identify strong candidates who may not attend Ivy League schools by scrapping first round interviews on college campuses in favor of a video platform."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-goldman-sachs-hiring/goldm...

adjkant• 9 years ago

Many courses and students benefit from learning in person across many subjects, CS included. Sometimes it's the push they need, sometimes it's the value their classmates bring, sometimes it's the value the professor brings.

Online courses are great, but they don't replace everything. I don't think the future of universities is bleak. The explanations above considering that we have a surplus of Ph.D.'s seems to be a lot more likely of a cause to this. Simple supply and demand.

visarga• 9 years ago

Online courses are great, but they don't replace everything.

The MOOCs don't work well because they are 100% virtual. What they need is a bit of in-person, human touch. I'd like to see a system where online courses are being supervised by "educational coaches" who are not necessarily experts in the field, but experts in motivation and maximizing results.

Imagine a remote location, where there are no universities. A number of people could take completely different online courses there, monitored by the same coach. The role of the coach is mostly to witness the effort of the student (great for motivation) and counsel the student as to how to apply his effort most efficiently. The coach could help organize local study groups as well, if there are enough students. Technical questions could be handled by online forums and the MOOC staff. The training of the MOOC counselors could be a MOOC course itself, to spread the system organically.

ken472• 9 years ago

The future of lower-tier universities is bleak. Once MOOCs have been refined, top-ranked schools will dominate market share, and if they play it right, will make a lot of money. Who would rather take classes at a run-of-the-mill state school vs. an Ivy League university online?

And when that happens, it will open questions about the antiquated college admissions processes of said universities, which evolved from the physical limitations of campuses. Who is the more ideal job candidate between person A who was admitted to an Ivy League because he/she had the know-how and resources to play the college admissions game vs. person B who didn't, if person B is able to get higher grades on said Ivy League coursework? This will no longer be a hypothetical question when MOOCs have matured. This effect will put downward pressure on tuitions, which will be a good thing for students, while at the same time enriching the handful of colleges and universities with enough of a brand name to make it in the MOOC world.

hashberry2• 9 years ago

University degrees are a form of social signaling. It's a status symbol. I've met many self-taught developers with liberal arts degree from top ranked schools. I have no doubt their degrees helped them get their foot in the door and job hop and advance in their career.

Balgair2• 9 years ago

True, but the 'credentialing' is becoming less and less valuable, ie. more credentialing is needed. I've had industry people looking to hire from our department (BioEng) come to our classrooms and tell us that a MSBE is a entry level requirement both in terms of pay and hierarchy. Not just one, but a few of them have one this.

It is not enough to just have a BS/BA in a STEMy field, you need the MS as well. I think it's fair to conclude that the credentialing is then worth less at the undergrad level.

FrozenVoid• 9 years ago

The whole system reminds me of professional taxi drivers and Uber drivers. The established education system is based on legal proof and bureaucratic paper trails(analogous to taxi medallions), made to guarantee some level of competence(being a taxi driver vs Uber driver).

The whole prestige of academia isn't access to information: internet has more academic content than any university(e.g. Sci-hub, Arxiv, book sites, online courses). Universities own vast collections of lab equipment/tools/devices which universities can afford due economy of scale(serving groups), this "lab-grade" stuff is out of budget for most people. Of course there are areas where research can be done with older, cheaper and simpler equipment, but cutting edge science is confined to top-hardware owners: An example is amateur astronomers having much less capable telescopes and recording equipment, but still capable of advancing science with affordable devices.

Mediterraneo10• 9 years ago

The whole prestige of academia isn't access to information: internet has more academic content than any university

This is not the case at all for many fields. In my branch of linguistics, for example, the majority of important literature is not available online. A person cannot teach themselves this field; you need access to the print resources in a large library at a handful of universities. Now, since the dawn of ebook sharing sites, my colleagues and I have been gradually scanning resources and uploading them to Libgen or the like, but progress is slow and we have barely scratched the surface.

emodendroket2• 9 years ago

No it won't, because the reason they ask for a degree has little to do with actual coursework.

trentmb2• 9 years ago

in my theoretical CS and math classes professors only wrote proofs on the blackboard for 1.5h and then left

Weird, my professors answered questions that I and my coursemates had.

javaPro• 9 years ago

Academia, has become a big business, it's no longer about the actual academics but keeping the gigantic snowball moving, gathering snow as it rolls until finally it crashes in the bottom of the hill.

I hope the admins and boards of the colleges and universities get hit worst. This isn't the fault of professors or their tenure, this is a greedy and disgusting late-stage-capitalist culture that has completely warped academia. The entire administration of academia and the groups associated with it are parasitic burdens on society.

SubiculumCode3• 9 years ago

A friend of a friend is an adjunct. His college has put him and 20 other adjuncts into a single classroom to serve as their offices..open floor plan?

When students come in to talk, they must do in a room filled with other students and adjuncts. As we know, these conversations often include quite personal details. After complaining to the dean, the dean responded something to the effect, "I realize that you don't have access to the big picture, so let us worry about the big picture and feel assured that this is necessary."

Outrageous.

wehadfun• 9 years ago

I would like to know which universities these people work at. Are they Billion dollar universities or are these lower tier schools. Regardless schools care more about money then education and enslave their students in debt, send their athletes on the road for week missing class, and literally pimp out there professors.

Afforess• 9 years ago

This is the result of entirely understandable forces, with no solution in sight. High school students (and their parents) select Universities based on status first (or second), and education quality nearly last. Worse, this is entirely sensible. There is an implicit understanding better ranked Universities are a prerequisite for higher-status jobs, moving up in the economy. Employers making the decision to favour high-status graduates is also rational: with a glut of credentialed applicants, _why_ would you choose a lower-status candidate when an equally good high-status one was available? That's leaving money on the table.

Every part of this slow-motion disaster is explainable. Every individual actor is making the best choice available to themselves. And yet, Moloch wins.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

moduspol2• 9 years ago

It wasn't always this way, though. Tuition rates outpacing inflation has only been over the last few decades.

You're right that each actor is making (more or less) rational decisions, but federal subsidies for student loans are what throws a wrench into the mix. Previously, the decisions were all the same, but consumers had much more limited capital and were far more price sensitive.

Now they can get bigger loans much more easily, and sure enough, they're willing to pay higher prices. The less the consumer knows / cares about the price of something, the faster that price will increase. See also: health care in the US.

paapi__gudiya• 9 years ago

What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways? All the material they teach in classes has been available online for the last 20 years. It makes sense (going by market needs) that they have been driven to such levels of poverty.

The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the same, i.e. a place where one can meet such people, universities will be obsolete too. The only question is when? And are there any organizations out there that already offer such services?

Clubber• 9 years ago

What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways?

Not so much lecturers but curriculum. I can't tell you how many developers I've met that don't know much about designing relational database models, which is arguably the most important, if not the longest lasting part of business application development.

When you are self taught, the stuff you decide to learn, you can really master. It's the stuff that you decide to put off that is actually important that hurts you.

Torwald• 9 years ago

There are different learning styles. Universities could stay relevant by offering environment for specific styles or a combination thereof, that no other place does. In other words, for some people a given university would be the best way to learn.

Second, shared resources like laboratory equipment or an auditorium can be of value. A university could develop unique offerings there, that other entities wouldn't willing to provide.

Larrikin• 9 years ago

If you sit in the back of the class on Facebook the entire lecture the classroom setting still offers the invaluable information of evaluating how well you actually understand the material at the end of the class. Even in project based classes, getting guidance and suggestions of improvements from people that know a lot more about the subject than you is always invaluable.

Obviously if you engage in class you often get immediate clarity on issues that you may have had to research for hours in a different source than your online material.

If you're not taking advantage of the lecturer, then it is on you, and obviously you won't get much more out of it than an online course with little to no feed back

jmilloy• 9 years ago

To call professors "lecturers" is a straw man. Sure, I had classes, too, that I didn't attend because the material was straightforward and covered in a text book, but other classes were not like that. I got the most value from class in office hours (one-on-one with professors), and the most academic value out of university as a whole in research positions outside of class (again, working with specific professors).

wallace_f4• 9 years ago

Frankly weird things to make low cost education not happen--like government making OCW illegal, ostensibly for helpful reasons(1)--raise further questions about academia.

1-reason.com/reasontv/2017/09/26/stossel-entrepreneur-saves-free-college

sgt1012• 9 years ago

If the value that your lecturers offered to you was that they stood there and recited course material then you are right. Also your university has done a bad thing.

For me the value of lecturers is that they respond to the needs of the group they are teaching and to the individuals on the outliers of the group. That interaction is what changes the educational trajectory of students from fail->pass and from pass->excel.

I find it hard to harden my heart to the idea that people who work to do that should be ill rewarded for the effort.

dsfyu404ed• 9 years ago

A professor, lecturer and teacher are all very different things and you can be good at any one while being terrible at the other two.

exclusiv• 9 years ago

My dad went to a public university in the 80s for about $2k/yr back when only 20-25% had a degree. It was an incredible value back then. Now over 33% [1] have a college degree, it costs way too much, you get less and we have amazing content on the web, most of which is free.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai...

dredmorbius• 9 years ago

Education is not simply a matter of exposure. The same information that's online has also been available, in books, notes, and other forms, generally, for a century or more, much of it from lending libraries at little or no charge.

If you think about it, humans are unique among all other species in that we do have a dedicated category of productive workers whose only task is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. Few other species have any concept of teaching, and without permanent records, no mass culture or collective wisdom that can extend beyond a particular group or tribe.

There are several schools of teaching. One, that I don't subscribe to, is that of the student as a vessel to be filled. This strikes me as all sorts of wrong.

Another takes its lead from the root of the word information itself: to inform. That is, to leave an imprint that recalls the original. This view also recognises the difference between explicit knowledge, that which can be transferred by words or writing, and tacit knowledge, which ultimately has to be experienced. Even much of the information we tend to think of as explicit has a very large element of tacit-nature to it. There are concepts I've been using, working with, and being exposed to (through writing, reading, lectures, video, and even experienc) for decades that I have only recently come up with far better understandings of.

(Example from the past week: maser and laser technology are the molecular equivalents of electronic oscillators used in radio, and achieve much the same ends: a highly uniform, high-capacity information channel. This a realisation despite having first learned of lasers and masers in the 1970s. And yes, this was an insight I'd arrived at myself, but it's taken me three decades on from Uni to reach that stage -- rather inefficient.)

What a good teacher understands is not merely the subject but the transmission of understanding of the subject -- where students get stuck, how to progress through intermediate understandings, exercises which truly cement critical concepts, or operations, or techniques, in the neural wiring of the student's brain. Teaching is itself a skill deeply founded in tacit knowledge, difficult to express in verbal form. As with a coach, or music teacher, or dance instructor, often the trick comes from hints and prompts which nudge the student in the right direction.

Another element is simply enthusiasm for the subject. I've taken classes I really had no particular interest in only to discover that the instructor was deeply immersed in, and truly loved. (I'll occasionally experience this listening to lectures or interviews on topics I'm not particularly interested in, but where the speaker has an absolutely infectious attachment.) Contrast with multiple topics I'd launched into with gusto myself only to find that a teacher, or author, or lecturer was unable to communicate, not only the material itself, but any interest whatsoever in it.

That's the inherent value of lecturers.

eric_b• 9 years ago

I'm surprised to see adjunct's make so little. When I was in school the full-time professor's salaries were public (since it was a public university). They were all making over 100k/year, and this was some time ago. Many were high 100's or low 200's.

Even the lecturers were pulling in 70k or more, and this was in a midwestern state with low cost of living.

Why do the adjunct's put up with this? You can make more being a high school teacher, and get better benefits. Is it because the adjunct approach is the best way to get in to a full time position? If I recall, the tenure-track "associate" profs at my university did not go the adjunct route, but perhaps things have changed?

Anyways, disheartening that tuition is through the roof, and many instructors are being paid subsistence wages.

searine• 9 years ago

The difference between an adjunct and a full professor is the difference between a Temp and a rockstar developer.

Adjuncts are a cost for the university, their salary is a liability on the budget line. Professors are a net positive. They have high salaries but they bring in millions of dollars in grants and attract talented students who can be paid worse than adjuncts (and teach classes).

Adjuncts are space fillers. When a university can't goad a professor, post-doc, or grad student to teach the 101 class they farm it out to a Adjunct.

The skills needed to teach the entry level courses are basic, so there is a wide field of individuals who can fill that role. As a result the pay is not great.

scott_s• 9 years ago

Agreed, but with one disagreement: professors in science and engineering bring in millions of dollars of grants. Those in the humanities tend not to bring in nearly as much grant money.

GlenTheMachine2• 9 years ago

In engineering, at least, adjuncts often are teaching in their free time and working a full-time engineering job. They do it because they enjoy the teaching, or because in a few cases they appreciate the extra money. Several of my colleagues do that; my office is next to the guy who teaches advanced undergraduate and graduate level astrodynamics at the local state university. But he is working full time as a civil servant and pulling that salary, plus the adjunct pay on top of it.

You can get away with paying those adjuncts a pretty low wage. But then it drives the cost of adjuncts down across the board.

The problem really comes in when you are in a field that doesn't afford you full-time non-academic employment, such as the arts or sciences such as archaeology etc. and are teaching full time to pay the bills (or not, as the case may be).

troupe3• 9 years ago

It seems more and more people value "going to college" over "getting an education." This leads to a focus on all the niceties around the college experience rather than the actual education. When the education isn't the part that is being valued, the professors aren't going to be valued.

jsonhero• 9 years ago

You might be better off just throwing your college fund into bitcoin. The financial risk is about the same at this point.

troupe3• 9 years ago

Most people can go to a junior college and get a two-year degree debt-free between working a part-time job and non-loan financial aid. Transfer into an inexpensive 4-year school to complete your undergrad degree and if you are careful you can graduate with less than $5,000 of debt...maybe no debt at all depending on how much financial need you have and how valuable your skills are.

I don't think that skipping college and putting the funds you have into bitcoin is anywhere as risk-free as going to college in the scenario I outlined.

khawkins• 9 years ago

The fact that the article features an English professor is unsurprising. This is a supply-side problem--liberal arts degrees are in relatively low demand, but institutions continue to graduate students at unsustainable levels. No one is telling the students that they're spending 4-12 years getting an education which is worth less than what they're paying for it.

For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts degrees are universities and schools. Even so, we're graduating people at rates comparable with STEM fields. With so much supply, the price of the work is driven far down.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cta.asp

chrisseaton4• 9 years ago

For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts degrees are universities and schools

This is such nonsense. Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree, and with an English degree you can apply for 90% of jobs. You could graduate and go on to be anything from an advertising executive, to a soldier. Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.

dragonwriter11• 9 years ago

You can be a soldier without ant college education (and qualify for a direct path to Officer Candidate School with a two-year degree or equivalent credits, IIRC), so giving “soldier” as on option with 4-year English degree is literally suggesting that it is worth the same as no college education at all.

bachmeier2• 9 years ago

That's largely true for an undergrad degree. For a graduate degree, and a PhD in particular, there aren't a lot of alternative employment options. I've been told that having a PhD in those fields makes you less employable for positions in general (because why are you applying for this job, and it is uncomfortable to hire an older person with a PhD for an entry-level position).

anonacct374• 9 years ago

That's true in software. Source: mid 6 figures principal engineer w/ high school diploma.

Other jobs are pickier.

trendia• 9 years ago

You can get any job, but it's going to be harder and you're probably not going to be compesated as highly [0].

[0] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21646220-it-dep...

glonq• 9 years ago

Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree

Then why do they require a degree at all? What specific skills will a degreed applicant have that a high school grad won't?

Moto7451• 9 years ago

This is true for occupations like sales where the litmus test is professionalism and the ability to stick to goals. However, you will lock yourself out of occupations with degree requirements for credentialing and those with domain knowledge you gain through school like Chemistry.

I live in LA and, surprise surprise, there are a lot of writers, artists, and other folks who want to work in Liberal Arts oriented industries. Most of my Liberal Arts degree equipped friends are in sales while dabbling in their art on the side. A few of them sell a book or script every 3-5 years. The rest of them went back to school for a Law Degree or an unrelated Masters degree.

tpeo3• 9 years ago

You know, that's a problem too. I mean, I take that 90% of jobs aren't specialized positions. Once you need a college degree for a position that only requires general skills, or in which the employee can do just fine on-the-job training and experience, then what are those years in college for exactly?

As far as I know, people could get by with a high school degree in the 1970s: there was no significant wage difference between a high school graduate and a college graduate, and both faced similar rates of unemployment. Nowadays employers take for granted that candidates must have some form of qualification, even for positions that don't seem to require it. Has the quality of education fallen and the grades been inflated to such a point where degrees are no longer reliable signals of productivity?

partycoder• 9 years ago

That's right. With a music composition degree you can be a Chief Security Officer at large companies such as Equifax.

nsxwolf2• 9 years ago

Why do employers keep putting so much value on something so worthless? There must be cheaper ways to demonstrate to employers you have something equivalent to whatever it is they think they're getting from any old 4 year degree.

naravara2• 9 years ago

Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.

TBH I am far more likely to hire an English major with demonstrated technical skills than a technical person with a purely technical education.

Learning the technical skills to live up to the expectations of an entry level software or coding job is just not that hard for a decently smart person. I want to see evidence that you can think more broadly too rather than just checking the boxes.

geebee3• 9 years ago

I don't think it's nonsense - I don't entirely agree, but I would agree with a milder version of the statement. I do know an English majors who is a director at at a top tech company, so I would agree that many companies will hire English majors.

However, that's different than saying you can get hired as an English major vs saying these companies hire for English majors.

Engineering and CS are majors that companies specifically target, in large numbers for hiring. "Related" majors like Math, Physics, other sciences, may also get recruited in the same batch.

Although English is sometimes specified as a specifically targeted major for a job, this is considerably less common.

omginternets2• 9 years ago

Exactly this. The problem here is wanting to be a tenured professor, not having an English degree.

metaphorm2• 9 years ago

its not non-sense but it might be underspecified. the only jobs that care that you have, specifically, an English degree are jobs in academia. Corporate jobs will gladly hire an English major just because it's a degree they don't care that it's an English degree though.

Boothroid3• 9 years ago

From my viewpoint this stopped being the case in the UK around 20 years ago, not coincidentally around the exact same time that the numbers of graduates started rising considerably year on year. It's a simple case of supply and demand. If you went to a top uni, have contacts or are genuinely oustanding then great, you probably have the luxury of being able to walk into a decent job from nearly any degree, but if not you are competing with tens of thousands of other graduates for the remaining decent jobs. So how do you make yourself stand out? I'd suggest that a CV that shows no evidence of interest in the field before graduation is not a terribly good differentiator. Far better to have studied something related or at least have gained some work experience in the area rather than look like every other grad that's graduated and thought oh shit, must find a job, any job..

kutkloon72• 9 years ago

That is absolutely false. Since I have my computer science/math degree my linkedin inbox has been flooded with messages from recruiters. I can guarantee you that they are not looking for an English major.

raverbashing2• 9 years ago

A lot of English majors work in journalism, copywriting, advertisement. Tech companies also employ them for writing documentation.

Same for other "liberal-arts" degrees.

aoenstkn4nto• 9 years ago

Not to mention writing books, writing for television, plays, screenplays, etc.

aphextron• 9 years ago

There's nothing wrong with getting an English degree. Practically any uneducated person would benefit greatly from four years of college level writing courses no matter the level of "usefulness". The problem is the overarching mentality of the culture which says "you have X degree, so you must now try to use it for X". If you judge English degrees on the same level of a job training course it doesn't make sense. They have different purposes entirely. The point of a liberal arts education is to sharpen the mind and create better decision makers and thinkers.

throwaway6138346• 9 years ago

There's nothing wrong with getting an English degree. Practically any uneducated person would benefit greatly from four years of college level writing courses no matter the level of "usefulness".

I think you entirely missed what the comment said. The statement wasn't about there being anything "wrong" with getting an English degree. It was that there aren't enough jobs for English PhDs and comparably too many students getting them, hence driving the salary down:

> The fact that the article features an English professor is unsurprising. This is a supply-side problem--liberal arts degrees are in relatively low demand, but institutions continue to graduate students at unsustainable levels

jononor3• 9 years ago

All fine things, but probably not worth putting yourself into a lot of debt for.

_rpd• 9 years ago

No one is telling the students that they're spending 4-12 years getting an education which is worth less than what they're paying for it.

I think that some fault lies with unrealistic expectations. Every liberal arts graduate student knows that there are only enough positions for 1 in 10 of their cohort, but each firmly believes that they will be in that 10%. Worse, many who are talented enough to actually be in that 10% self-sabotage by being unwilling to move to locations they perceive as less than desirable.

JustAnotherPat• 9 years ago

It's a risk worth taking if you think you're too good to work in private industry. Almost all liberal arts phds i know couldn't stomach working for the man.

arkades• 9 years ago

The schools exacerbate this because the professors themselves have such survivorship bias.

I once had a professor try to convince me to go for a bio phd. I objected that there's only one TT position for every 20 graduates. His response was that it's just about hard work - look at him, for example!

He didn't get my point; I didn't get the phd.

dvvc2• 9 years ago

This is not about the teaching discipline. I am a Computer Science adjunct, and the salary I get from teaching is equivalent to what the article mentions.

I only do this because I like teaching, so this is not my main source of income. I am not in the verge of homelessness because I do programming for a living. But the problem is still the same: Universities are charging astronomical tuitions and then paying a laughable part of them to teachers.

It does not make any sense, and IMO that explains in part why University education is losing its value: you get overworked and unmotivated teachers as a student, so you may better learn your stuff online.

jldugger• 9 years ago

I only do this because I like teaching, so this is not my main source of income.

IMO, this is what adjuncting excels at: supplementing your full time instructors with professionals spending most of their time in the workforce. This more or less happens in CS, but service departments like Math or English end up replacing the majority of their instructors with adjuncts working at 2-3 colleges.

Sadly, this trend does make sense and is easy to diagnose. Instructor salaries have stagnated despite increased student tuition because states have, for the past few decades consistently cut higher education funding. I was laid off from a self-funded university unit amid a very real concern that the state's failure to raise taxes to pay for pensions would ultimately impact the university's funding, and while this was not the immediate cause for the unit's layoffs, it was absolutely a factor in whether to cover the unit's budget shortfall.

qsymmachus• 9 years ago

This is not a pure supply-side problem. In general, demand for college instructors remains high and job growth in the sector outpaces the average[1]. This is not surprising given that the number of students enrolled in post-secondary education continues to rise[2]. There is plenty of teaching to be done, the problem is that the bulk of this teaching is no longer done by full-time professors.

In the last decade, universities have shifted teaching responsibilities from full-time, tenure track positions to part-time adjunct positions. Today, half of all teaching positions are part-time and include no benefits. Adjuncts are paid an average of $2,987 per semester-long course[3]. That's less than $1000 a month. If you've ever taught a college class before and realize how much preparation it actually takes, an ostensibly "part-time" position easily demands 40-60 hours of work a week.

In some fields, over-supply is helping drive this trend[4]. We produce more History PhDs than there are jobs to fill. This weakens the bargaining power that academics have on the market. But this does not absolve universities from their role in the immiseration of academics – after all, they continue to accept more PhD candidates with full knowledge that most of them will never find gainful employment in their field. This is not surprising given the fact that departments now rely on _graduate students_ to teach one-fifth of their course loads[5].

The "casualization" of post-secondary teaching is also a disservice to students, many of whom don't realize that the bulk of their instruction is now done by overworked, underpaid adjuncts who don't have the time or incentive to do their best work.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/posts... [2] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_101.20.a... [3] http://www.chronicle.com/article/Adjunct-Project-Shows-Wide/... [4] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/11/grad [5] https://www.aaup.org/issues/contingency/background-facts

forapurpose4• 9 years ago

This is a supply-side problem

It's a demand-side problem. Most higher education is funded by state and federal government, and they have been cutting funding dramatically, reducing demand for skilled academics.

It doesn't have to be that way. The U.S. could fund higher education at the levels it used to, and fund reasonable incomes for the higher ed workforce. To create a less educated population than the prior generation is to go backward.

tarboreus• 9 years ago

I think you're confusing "liberal arts" with "humanities." Math and science are liberal arts, though engineering is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education

Humanities students do indeed go on to earn less, but the differences are much more slight than stereotypes would have you think. They also narrow as people progress in their careers:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/05/new-data-what...

There are indeed too many PhDs minted in the humanities, but I'd say this also applies to pretty much every field other than, perhaps, CS. Times are pretty tight for bench and social sciences as well.

kazinator5• 9 years ago

No one is telling the students that they're spending 4-12 years getting an education which is worth less than what they're paying for it.

Because that would be like saying "hey, there is a big white elephant in the room!" to the room's occupants, when there is indeed precisely such a beast in that room.

Such as proclamation is rather more befitting of, say, the Economics faculty.

rossdavidh• 9 years ago

Clearly unsustainable. One thing I don't see examined is, if we fix this by giving colleges some reason to employ full-time profs instead of multiple part-timers, this would make those jobs middle class jobs but actually reduce the number of spots available. Which might be the right thing to do, but won't help most of these people.

lmm• 9 years ago

Well, it might help them if it was the kick they needed to leave academia. As the article concludes, for many of these people the problem is that they keep chasing the dream of being an academic, long after the reality is that it's not a livelihood that can support them.

TheMagicHorsey• 9 years ago

How come nobody asks whether what these people are teaching is actually useful stuff. I mean useful in the sense that someone would voluntarily pay money for it with full knowledge of the benefits.

I have not been impressed with the colleges in the Bay Area and Sacramento. Except for some programs in the UC system and Stanford, the vast majority of educational programs seem to be run for the benefit of administrators. Neither the teachers nor the students reap many benefits.

The career offices for many programs practice deception to hide the ball when it comes to the prospects of alumni of their programs. Many programs teach a curriculum that is irrelevant to employers, and when challenged claim they are "teaching you to learn". What a hollow fucking claim. How do we test that claim? They are teaching us to learn INDEED! Why don't they teach themselves how to teach something useful first!

As a Senior in college I TAed an intro engineering course at an Ivy League school. A couple decades later a friend of a friend, who was dean of students at a for-profit, needed a teacher at the last minute for a subject I'm an expert at, and so I helped her out by teaching a night class after work, two days a week, for a semester.

The latter experience was eye-opening. Most of my students should not have been there. They were paying $25,000 a year or more in fees. They were hardly prepared to tackle high school material, much less 4th year college material. The for-profit institution was happy enough to continue taking their money while delivering nothing tangible. Most of the teachers there were living hand to mouth themselves. Some of them former students. It was a scam through and through. Nothing useful was being taught. There were no employers lining up to hire these kids.

Basically, federal student loans are being funneled to "teachers" that should probably not be teaching, because they don't have anything useful to teach.

We have to shed this societal delusion that it costs $25,000 per year to read books in a room with a person leading the class. It does not cost that much. It should not cost that much. This is doubly true if the books being read/taught are non-technical.

We really need a Universal Basic Income. Most of the people involved in this educational industrial complex are just unemployable. Let's not allow them to pass on the same unemployable skill set to another generation because they need to have a salary to live. They should just be paid off and it should be a separate exercise from education.

contact_fusion• 9 years ago

I think you're definitely right. Most programs out there are not worth paying anything for in the first place, much less $25,000 a year.

The problem, at least in my diagnosis, is that there is a huge disconnect between the "ideal education" and education in practice. Even at elite institutions known for the quality of their teaching, half or more of the work is done by screening their applicants and admitting only those who are equipped to succeed. In other words, the summa cum laude graduate from a state's flagship school would probably be a summa cum laude graduate anywhere. The same phenomenon is seen in charter schools, who pad their statistics by choosing only excellent students, and then claim that their better outcomes demonstrate the superiority of their management.

A useful concrete example is my academic department. We are well known for the quality of our teaching, and even provide graduate students with specific and well tested training in pedagogy, which is extremely rare in a STEM field. (This isn't to say we slack in research; this is a top school in the field. In other words, our graduates go to prestigious postdocs almost without exception, though in recent years its been getting harder and harder.) Nevertheless, we are ultimately limited by what we have to work with. If you have motivated students, you can teach excellent classes covering difficult material. If your students are unmotivated and without preparation, there is simply a limit to what you can teach them.

People who work in higher ed in less than prestigious institutions do not have the advantages we do. Their students are often (but not universally) less motivated and prepared than ours, so they have to work much harder to teach the same material. The problem is that everyone is already working as hard as they can, so in the end they are probably doomed to fail. They will retreat onto statements like "teaching how to learn." Yes, in theory, that is what the value of a liberal arts education is - you learn not only the curriculum but also acquire the attributes of an educated mind: how to think and reason; how to acquire more knowledge when needed; how to communicate both verbally and in writing. This is the "ideal education." Nevertheless you will simply never acquire this if you lack the tools necessary to do so - and if you have these tools, you will acquire them regardless of where you go.

The answer is that, frankly, college is pretty useless for most students. If you can make education work for you, you are very likely to succeed anyway. Personally, I cherish my education. I benefit tremendously from it, and at this point, my education colors my entire existence. Nevertheless, most of my high school classmates - even those who did relatively well in class - were woefully unprepared to take advantage of a college education. A corollary to this is that, no matter how much you value the academic lifestyle, it is extremely irrational to continue working in it unless you are a "winner."

vkou4• 9 years ago

How come nobody asks whether what these people are teaching is actually useful stuff. I mean useful in the sense that someone would voluntarily pay money for it with full knowledge of the benefits.

The same can be asked about sugary drinks, and cable news television. Fortunately, since all of those things make a lot of money, nobody ever questions whether or not those things should still be sold.

wfo4• 9 years ago

Say it with me friends and colleagues,

Union.

This is the future for all of us, when programming becomes commoditized just as teaching has. When our salaries are pushed to the bottom. We are not owners, we are not capitalists, we are not bosses, we are people with a skill you can learn on the internet and a corresponding talent for it.

Either a) this will happen to us as programmers, b) we have credentialing and gatekeepers to keep supply low c) we have a union to collectively bargain, or d) radical changes in the government save us from this fate.

In the U.S. (d) seems impossible. Programmers as a group seem to be virulently opposed to (b). So choose, unions or barbarism.

microDude• 9 years ago

e) You will no longer be able to call yourself a "full stack" developer that can work in any field. Employers will only look for developers that are good at programming, and a expert in a niche field. For example, bioinformatics.

collyw• 9 years ago

Your example makes me laugh, having worked with bioinformaticians. A lot of their stuff is just counting stuff from moderately large data sets and making some graphs out of it.

comicjk• 9 years ago

The word "barbarism" is quite an exaggeration.

Teaching salaries are low relative to education level because lots of people are socially pushed toward teaching (obvious example: many people's mentors are teachers). Programming doesn't have this dynamic.

I'm not opposed to unionization - I joined the new grad student union when I was getting my PhD. But I think you should focus on programmers' specific problems, like long hours and low vacation time, not on problems from other jobs which have low relevance.

wfo4• 9 years ago

We aren't there yet, things are still much better for us than teachers, yes. But I'm proposing we do something about it now, while we are in demand and have power instead of waiting until it gets that bad.

Programming and teaching are similar; they are prestige positions (for now) that mark you as one of the professional class, people who do them are by and large hugely passionate and would be unhappy if forced to do something else (many programmers I know started before school because they loved it, do it in their spare time, etc). Passion in capitalism gets taken advantage of and exploited, since dispassionate economic assessment is how a 'rational' actor works in economic models; passion is a weakness from the perspective of wealth accumulation and economic success. The thing that links the fields in my view is passion.

msla3• 9 years ago

Unions are great at establishing entrenched interests.

If you need to qualify to join a union, or to do a specific job in a union, the qualifications will be owned by the companies which are politically powerful.

Imagine being unable to qualify as a C++ programmer unless and until you've qualified on Microsoft Windows and Visual C++.

Imagine being unable to qualify as a Perl programmer at all, because Perl isn't one of the technologies owned by a major corporation.

And, of course, doing freelance work, or contributing to Open Source, makes you a scab, stealing work from Poor, Honest Union Workers.

wfo4• 9 years ago

Unions are great at establishing entrenched interests.

s/Unions/Companies/g

Unions can be for unskilled labor. They can exist without qualifications and gatekeeping. That's why I presented that as a distinct option, separate from them. All they need to do is bargain with employers to make working conditions better. That's it. Unpaid overtime "just this once because we're all part of the team, guys" every month? We strike and make a deal that says you have to pay us OT. 80 hour weeks on salary for 40? ops strikes and your system goes down and nobody fixes it until you make a deal and cut hours. Employer tries to put a clause in your contract that says they own your side projects? They have to go through the union first, and programmers vote hell no.

The rest of the stuff you've cooked up inside your head are sure things I can imagine but they have nothing to do with unions; they are imaginary FUD.

chasing• 9 years ago

Yup. If you want money, you need leverage. Unions provide that.

lioeters• 9 years ago

As a variation on (b), the supply of programmers can be kept artificially lower via "over-complication and obfuscation", to make basic operations more difficult than it needs to be. It sometimes feels like bureaucracies choose this strategy to keep themselves "necessary" and overpriced.

Boothroid3• 9 years ago

No sometimes about it! The maim purpose of bureaucracies is to provide those with nothing to contribute an opportunity to parasite themselves on the labour of the genuinely productive.

petra• 9 years ago

One thing i didn't understand from the story: those are smart people, motivated people, with good people's skills. All the things our economy loves. Why don't they say "fuck it" and change profession, to something more decent ? it would be hard, but is it possible ?

And i say this without judgement, just out of curiosity.

sgt1012• 9 years ago

Because they have a vocation - to help young people to become educated.

This is a socially productive vocation that we should capitalise on as a society, to exploit it is demeaning for all of us and eventually destructive of our social fabric.

handsomechad• 9 years ago

This is honestly the question that pops into my head as well. The sibling comment doesn't give an answer, just restates that the status quo is suboptimal for society. That very well may be the case, but parent is asking why people aren't reacting to these incentives on an individual basis.

bachmeier2• 9 years ago

As an academic (but not in those fields), let me offer the following:

Some of them believe that the only way to avoid being a failure is to work at a university.

Some of them believe non-academic work is worse than what they are doing already.

Some of them only want to live in their current town and this lets them do it.

Some of them have difficulty changing fields. Having a graduate degree, especially a PhD, in a humanities field can make it hard to get a job in another field.

A few of them are just not suited to doing other work. Most employers simply wouldn't want to hire them.

geebee3• 9 years ago

I think this article is very insightful

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/4484...

I was once an underemployed English major seriously considering applying for grad programs in literature[1]. Instead, I went back to school to build up the necessary math and CS and ended up getting an MS in engineering. Many years later, I was startled with how accurately this article explained what was going on in my head when I was trying to figure out what to do.

This article really does an amazing job explaining why people do go into these fields when the market is practically screaming that they shouldn't.

[1] this was in the recession of the early-mid 90s, and I was in SoCal which had been very hard hit by government cutbacks. I noticed that humanities majors who graduated just five years later, at the start of the first dot-com boom, did far better.

To expand on this a bit - it really showed me how much the conditions you graduate into make a difference! As a new grad, in a recession, you're competing with people with much more experience for entry level jobs. In a boom, those more experienced people are moving into higher level positions, and are often looking to hire new people themselves. If you get one of these jobs, you can build a critical few years of experience. Eventually, a recession will come along, but you're in a far better position to weather it if you graduated into a better economy and got some more experience under your belt. Had I graduated into a better economy, and found better work as a lit major, who knows? My career path might have been dramatically different.

This leads to another thing I've noticed - think of your career path as a vector field. What happens with the first couple of arrow can make a massive difference in where you are a decade or more later. Some degrees and majors are more resilient than others. For instance, I've read that graduates of Harvard are less affected by the economy the graduate into than people from less prestigious universities. This may be because the reputation and network provides you with multiple re-entry paths - in short, you can always find an up arrow in that vector field, even if you have to wait a few years to get it. Other graduates who start on a down arrow may get caught in a downward current. Five years later, when things improve, they're competing with recent grads for entry level jobs, and employers prefer to go straight to the schools than hire someone who seems to have floundered for the last half decade.

I think engineering and other in demand majors are also a way to get on to an up arrow on the vector field. Even in a recession, the engineering students still seem to get decent jobs - they may not rocket upward right away, but they get into an updraft to the point where they're positioned to advance once the conditions emerge. They don't get stuck in the underemployment rut that can afflict people with less desirable majors from lower ranked schools.

There really is quite a bit of randomness and luck to career paths. You can do great with a lit degree from a relatively unknown college, but some degrees are much more resilient than others.

dv_dt• 9 years ago

With a glut of underpaid adjuncts in a waiting pattern to become professors, and huge tuitions, it makes me wonder how difficult it would be to start a small university.

shams93• 9 years ago

Yeah my first girlfriend was adjunct faculty and was escorting to get her food being a starving student myself I wasn't in a position to help her out. That was 1991 I can't imagine how bad it is today.

nickpeterson• 9 years ago

Obviously the answer is to tear down colleges and erect large statues of President Trump. Made of copper.

sctb2• 9 years ago

Would you please comment substantively, like the guidelines ask? It helps us have the kind of conversation we're here for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

happy-go-lucky• 9 years ago

an adjunct professor of Romance languages
precarious academic jobs
a teacher of English composition
teaches history
teaching English composition and critical thinking
began teaching English composition
published a poem
with one novel under her belt, is working on a second

I see a pattern. I think those jobs are not much in demand.

scandox• 9 years ago

Romance
Critical Thinking
English composition
poem
history

The good things in life are unpaid

lucozade• 9 years ago

The good things in life are unpaid

At the risk of being somewhat obtuse: poetry, English composition and history can be exceptionally well paid. Ask Taylor Swift, JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel resp.

Now, if you mean poetry, English composition and history that no-one is particularly interested in reading, well. I would have to agree with you.

tudorconstantin• 9 years ago

Couldn't they try and do some copywriting? Wouldn't they be paid better for that? They definitely have the formal training to do it.

falcolas• 9 years ago

Six courses, $40,000 in pay; about $7,000 per course.

If we make a few rough assumptions based on the $1500 rent figure, and 3 credits average, the college is probably charging around $1,000 per credit, with a 30-40 person attendance per class.

So for one of those courses, the college is pulling in an estimated $90,000, and paying $7,000.

Huh.

dvvc2• 9 years ago

That's way too much for an adjunct. The article refers to 6 courses per semester, so she's probably pulling 12 per year at around $3k per course (assuming she's not teaching in summer).

Just so you have an idea, 4 courses per semester amount to what would be a full time job (if done right). In my experience most adjuncts / instructors have to teach up to 6 courses per semester, which results in them either being overworked, or doing a shitty job at teaching.

Not that this invalidates your conclusion, I find the difference between what the school charges versus what goes into the teachers' salary mind boggling.

dxbydt• 9 years ago

am not sure if this article and the recent naval tweetstorm are in any way pertinent to stem. i understand the value of phds in romance lit & english & so forth is zero. but in a stem phd, the timelines are 4-5 years, the educational content is substantially rigorous , seriously cannot be acquired by self-study of textbooks or youtube vids, and job prospects outside of academia are 200k+ in the bay area, thanks to the resurgence of computationally hard careers like ml/ds/ai . it is definitely worthwhile to pursue grad school in stem; worst case you can always fall back on react 24 or jquery 48 or whatever shitty version is out 4 years from now.

aklein• 9 years ago

Worth a read: https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larr...

In particular:

"SUMMERS: Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. The place to start is, General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975. They’re about the same size to within a factor of two, they’re about the same number of buildings, they operate on about the same calendar, they have many of the same people or some number of the same people in significant positions. The main thing to say is that, for something that’s all about ideas and for something that’s all about young people, the pace of innovation in higher education is stunningly slow. We’re still on a system where the break is in the summer. The reason we’re on that system is that when everybody went to pick the plants, that was the natural way to organize school, and it’s still going that way. The potential action in higher education is probably heavily through distance learning and artificial intelligence in learning technologies of various kinds because, if you think about it, the unique capacity that online education has is that, on the one hand, they’re huge economies of scale. Once the lecture’s filmed, 100,000 people can watch it at the same cost as 100 people watching it."

Not a favorable trend for the subjects of this article.

danso2• 9 years ago

It's fitting that the lengthiest non-anonymous example is the English teacher at San Jose state. Her salary might seem normal in other parts of the country, but it's very skimpy in San Jose/Silicon Valley/Peninsula

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=ellen+Pe...

For comparison's sake, here are what physical education teachers in Palo Alto Unified make:

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-d...

Here's San Jose Unified teachers (they don't seem to have P.E. in the job titles):

http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-d...

Not singling out P.E. teachers or K-12 in general -- look up any Palo Alto area job type (police, technicians, etc), and they're all in the same range. And living in this area myself, I completely believe that scale of salary and benefits is needed if you want employees who can live within 50 miles of Palo Alto.

sureshv• 9 years ago

I'm not sure this is sustainable for either PAUSD or SJUSD given the pension obligations.

sjg0074• 9 years ago

Dang, better money than the average software engineer.

dogruck• 9 years ago

Market dynamics at work.

Reminds me of Bukowski:

Born like this

Into this

As the chalk faces smile

As Mrs. Death laughs

As the elevators break

As political landscapes dissolve

As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

semi-nontechncl• 9 years ago

I was an adjunct for a year at a well-known arts college in the US. Some programs were made up almost completely of adjuncts with only one or two full-time professors. Since this was an arts program those adjuncts were working in the field. While it was good for students to have professors who were working professionals, it does mean that those professors are less invested in the program as a whole and since they aren't full-time/ tenured they don't have a lot of sway to influence the program since they can easily be fired.

On the other hand, the program I taught in was made up almost exclusively of full-time professors who were basically tenured. Many of the full-time professors were really great, but a lot of them hadn't created any real professional work in their field in a very long time. The tenured professors had been teaching at the school for decades, some for forty years. I quickly left the school the school when I realized I would have to wait for someone to die in my program before I would find a full-time teaching position.

My conclusion after teaching for a year as an adjunct was that: 1) Adjunct teaching is basically a side gig that you do outside of your full-time job 2) All the money the school was bringing in is going to administration or facilities/buildings, which are constantly growing 3) Full-time professors who finally retire will be replaced with adjuncts, which consolidates the administration's power. 4) College feels outdated to me. Teaching a bunch of students to use photoshop in a classroom is really inefficient compared to video tutorials where everyone can learn at their own pace and rewind the video as needed. 5) College is way too expensive, especially for students pursuing the arts who may struggle after they graduate.

noonespecial• 9 years ago

Academia is one place where a UBI would make a huge difference. These are people who obviously do what they do for motivations other than a paycheck. Organizing society so they don't have to live in their cars in church parking lots to do it would be an unalloyed win.

mrleiter• 9 years ago

It is fascinating how no top rated comment tackles the inherent ethical issues of sex work.

Wintamute• 9 years ago

The value of a college education has been vastly inflated. People have associated a college education, often in nebulous useless subjects, with upwards social mobility but the truth is most should never have gone to college - i.e. side step the debt, headed directly for work or vocational training and got a 4 year head start in the job market. It's sad when people wash up like this, and the fault isn't theirs, rather they've just been sold a false promise. Taken together with the free speech and ideological eco-chamber issues we're seeing on campus, along with the crazy town crippling debt, my prediction is we're going to start to see a rapid devaluation in the cultural collateral of a college education. Or at least in the national ambition for a democratised universal college education for all.

jseliger2• 9 years ago

Universities treat adjuncts like they do because they can: https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc... . When adjuncts stop accepting offers, prices will rise. I'm puzzled that more liberal arts profs don't teach high school: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo....

I teach as an adjunct because I like teaching and have a real job, so it works for me. But I worry about many others, especially the ones who are thinking about going to more grad school because they don't know what else to do.

tinduck• 9 years ago

We should move more research to lower cost cities like Memphis or Detroit that have affordable housing. In addition, we need to prioritize funding to our middle tier Universities.

I don't understand how people expect us to subsides wages in high cost cities. It's not the only problem, but we do have a prestige issue.

iamgopal• 9 years ago

Why tons and tons of online course are not making any difference to how University works ?

daxorid• 9 years ago

Online courses don't offer the all-important experience of getting obliterated at fraternity parties, nor do they deliver the critical piece of paper at the end.

So long as diploma issuance is still tightly controlled by the educational cartels, MOOCs will make next to zero difference.

balls187• 9 years ago

Yet another case for universal basic income.

rayiner4• 9 years ago

If someone had written an article about struggling actors turning to sex work and sleeping in cars, nobody would blink an eye. Acting pays little for the same reason being an academic pays little. Lots of people want to do it, but there is limited demand, hence only the really exceptional folks make any money doing it.

Obviously, people shouldn't need to sleep in cars. But the answer to that is a basic income. It's not treating a specific group of people specially just because they have college degrees and are more relatable to the elite than folks who work at Wal-Mart.

phkahler2• 9 years ago

> Obviously, people shouldn't need to sleep in cars. But the answer to that is a basic income.

Here we go again. Please show evidence that it works. Oh right, there isn't any. Please point to a reasonably complete economic model that shows it will work.

rayiner4• 9 years ago

Substitute basic income with whatever form of safety net you prefer. My point is that the government shouldn't be intervening specially on behalf of adjunct professors, because we have an easier time relating to folks with college degrees than to ones working retail or food service.

wallace_f4• 9 years ago

It works. Why wouldn't it? In the US, we spend roughly 4-10k* per capita in welfare, housing and transfer payments. That means we already spend enough to instead give 4-10k/person/year in BI.

In NY, homeless people cost the city over $40,000 per person! And there isn't even much to show for it!

Wars on and Poverty and Drugs have spent billions, also without improving living conditions of the most vulnerable economic group!

At what point can we say enough is enough?

And here is some proof for you: Experiments in 'just give people money or housing' have proven more successful than traditional social services(1,2)!

BI is more fair, more efficient and has an added benefit of removong incentives for crime or other deviant behavior.

Besides, it is more morally just. We are all here in this world where most of the wealth was created before we were even born. Everyone is entitled to at least a small portion of it.

*Depending on which programs you include in this category, namely SS, medi- caid and care.

www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/22/552850245/episode-796-the-basic-income-experiment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/04...

egypturnash• 9 years ago

Utopia for Realists[1] has several chapters on the basic income experiments of the 70's, and the conclusions people have reached when analyzing the data from them against various control groups. Entire towns provided with basic income had higher rates of kids graduating, lower rates of domestic violence, lower medical costs, and less homelessness.

It contains extensive citations, and costs about twelve to seventeen bucks on Amazon[2], depending on whether you buy it as an e-book, paperback, or hardback. If you don't wanna spend that much money, buy it and send a picture/screenshot of the receipt to egypt@urnash.com, and I'll cover it for you.

1: https://thecorrespondent.com/utopia-for-realists/ 2: http://amzn.to/2xJ4IKP

slmyers• 9 years ago

Basic income without universal housing, healthcare and education is more-or-less a poverty sentence.

Top192• 9 years ago

I want to comment that academics provide such an incredible amount to the world we live in.

In a time of bullshit thought leaders and companies like Equifax who will tell you obvious lies, the academic discipline with its rigor, criticalness, and policing against self-promotion is a kind of last-bastion for intellect in the West. And even that is sort of cracking.

BTW one country has already tried the “you can only get useful degrees that have immediately available needs route”. It was the Soviet Union, in which everyone was an engineer, to such absurd levels Gorbachev got his degree in “Steel Metallurgy of Ball Bearings”.

rayiner4• 9 years ago

The Soviet Union also turned Russia from a vast industrial backwater into technological superpower. I’m not sure about your point.

justabystander• 9 years ago

academics provide such an incredible amount to the world we live in.

This is true, but it's not terribly efficient about doing so. Much of it provides little to no useful return, and some of it actively harms the world we live in. If we wish to talk about the value of academics, we must honestly look at the whole balance sheet. Value isn't just about revenue, but costs, as well. And with rising tuitions and falling class quality, the ROI of a college education isn't as high as it used to be. For students and for society in general.

the academic discipline with its rigor, criticalness, and policing against self-promotion is a kind of last-bastion for intellect in the West.

I'm really struggling to word this in a polite way without discarding facts (sorry if I'm rude), but, what kind of fantasy led you to believe this is or has been the standard for academia?

- Academic discipline is more about knowing how to file papers and abuse TAs and post-grad students for free work, rather than about following scientific processes. There's been truckloads of articles lately about insufficient scientific rigor on published papers - especially in the social sciences. The glut of students, professors and information has lead to more noise than signal. Self-referential theories get presented as fact, where papers reference other papers still in peer review. Student thesis subjects are encouraged to focus on the professors' work in order to increase citations and prestige. Controversial papers are encouraged instead of scientific papers, which has caused all sorts of problems in academic journals and the parasitic journalists who write clickbait from them. And then there's the ever-present massaging of data and discarding of any contradictory samples.

- Self-promotion is absolutely huge in academia and has been that way for decades. That's how "publish or perish" came to be a staple of the industry. Not to mention the prestige factor in selecting mentors and advisors, politics in academia between people at the professor level can get extremely vicious. Elite oligarchies are as fixed in academia as anywhere else. And if they can't teach, they just move into administration and promote themselves there. Administration is probably the worst part of a modern educational institution - full of waste and corruption. Like how Katehi got rehired at her chancellor-level salary after a year's vacation after that pepper spray incident at UC Davis. Academia is literally infested with bad actors. Not to say there aren't good ones, but the bad ones are especially well connected and hard to evict. There's no policing against it except against the people who get caught before they're successful at entrenching themselves.

- Critical thinking isn't even remotely a curriculum requirement anymore. Many classes actively discourage critical thinking, and instead encourage rote memorization or directed analysis instead. In some classes, if you dare to challenge the narrative presented, you might receive Title IX sanctions for your oppressive actions from students and professor. After which you'll then be brought before a panel, denied representation and judged by a biased group more focused on maintaining image and federal funding than on the truth. And this might be from something as small as questioning the statistics or the sample set from a study. Students are encouraged with safe spaces and other policies that prevent them from processing or even seeing opposing viewpoints. That is not "criticalness". It's pandering.

- Deceiving students in academia is also a thing. Once again, there's the whole problem with scientifically bad papers being encouraged, published and referenced without peer review. These things make it in to curriculum and don't get pulled out after a retraction. Some classes will teach you that you shouldn't critique at all. Class books are often written by the professor to supplement their income, and contain their own pet theories. They put out a new edition every year with minor changes just so you can't buy a used book. And you've obviously never sat through a lecture rant on the professor's pet grievances. Lecture after lecture on the evils of western civilization from a person who literally couldn't survive outside of it can really tire you out. And honesty about career applicability for degrees is at an all-time low. Partly because some of the people teaching you have limited career aspects themselves and don't like to stare the facts in the face. Dishonesty about the value of the information presented and its critical reception is kind of the worst kind of dishonesty when you're charging someone a year's salary to listen to it.

There are good things about a university education. And not every situation is this bad. But it is not the ivory tower you're perceiving, and likely hasn't been that way for the majority of your lifetime, if not all of it. The honest, naked pursuit of science and truth always been the ideal, but rarely the reality. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But we've got to be more honest and objective about problems in academia if we have any hope of fixing them.

metaphorm2• 9 years ago

you may have a very idealistic idea of academia.

AlexCoventry• 9 years ago

the academic discipline with its rigor, criticalness, and policing against self-promotion is a kind of last-bastion for intellect in the West

If academic discipline really taught rigor and critical thinking, do you think the subjects of this article would be putting themselves through such horrible experiences?

From what I've seen, critical thinking (which I do regard as a highly desirable capability, on a personal level) has to be acquired outside of any established institutional framework. An institution which actually teaches critical thinking is at a disadvantage in many circumstances, because it reduces compliance and hence organizational strategic focus. That disadvantage means that well-established institutions almost always have ways to shut critical thinking down. Those which don't tend to be out-competed by those which do.

SilasX4• 9 years ago

I want to comment that academics provide such an incredible amount to the world we live in.

So does water, but that doesn't make it valuable; relevant question is the value of one more teacher. Given the extreme oversupply, the answer is "not much". Markets are speaking; it's up to workers to listen.

To be sure, you can make the case that academia is underfunded for these roles; but I estimate that you'd have to spend like a fourth of GDP to get a reasonable salary for every qualified academic who wants to do that. See this previous HN discussion on the matter:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566996

martin1975• 9 years ago

Does Chelsea Handler fit your definition of "exceptional"? She's made it as far as I'm concerned.

SilasX4• 9 years ago

The actor comparison is pretty insightful, as a lot of the same dynamics apply:

- There are far more qualified people than could ever be eaten up by the demand for them.

- In practice, most workers of this type can't make it their only job.

- Though a small fraction at the top are extremely well compensated.

- Unionization can allow workers to capture more of the surplus (and has, for actors), but the oversupply is so extreme that it still wouldn't make the job a viable career path for the typical qualified applicant.

My previous HN exchange on this point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964421

BeetleB4• 9 years ago

This may be unpopular, but:

1. She has more than $200K in student loan debt which is her doing. I've met many who do not want to take responsibility for their student loans - they'll prefer to go to schools whose tuition is over $40K/yr over schools that are under $10K/yr. And then they'll insist on going for several years to a grad school without funding (hence more loans). I always tell people: If you cannot get funding for grad school (or at least after the first year of grad school), then get out or change schools/departments.

2. When I was in grad school, no matter how much people gave advice, most grad students refuse to consider their ability to earn money based on the degree they are pursuing. The few wiser ones in liberal arts would work towards gaining marketing skills (often in software, but not necessarily) and did fine. Same goes even for tech fields - consider if what you're doing a PhD in will get you a job.

I do agree there is a problem with exploiting adjuncts, but adjuncts also need to own their station in life. Over 15 years ago, when I was in school, I knew adjuncts who were struggling as much as is shown in the article (having to travel to different towns to teach in multiple schools to eke by), so this has been a known issue.

ProTurist• 9 years ago

Tuition and fees keep going up, but the quality of education is heavily determined by the quality of professor. We aren't getting the best professors, because somehow despite record profits for universities, their pay doesn't seem to go up. An adjunct professor, which I personally know people who have been adjuncts for 10 years, average $42k. That's so ridiculously low as every university that I know of is having huge buildings erected.

bjd2385• 9 years ago

I don't understand why this is such a big story. It's not localized to academics.

hi412• 9 years ago

It is newsworthy because the educators who give society sacred education are having to prostitute themselves to have a roof over their head.

drderidder• 9 years ago

It's sad that in an academic workplace you'd be better of as a janitor than a prof. The facilities workers where I studied were unionized and seemed to manage alright. The abuse of part-time positions is such a scam.

emodendroket2• 9 years ago

This is the predictable result of our turn to seeing the academy as a consumer product and vocational school meant to train white-collar workers.

amalgan• 9 years ago

This is the number one reason for endowment reform. Many universities have the GDP of small countries tied up in endowments, but cry poverty when state and fed budgets are cut.

Unlocking endowments will free up money so that universities can be held accountable for tuition and salaries.

kevmo• 9 years ago

“I live paycheck to paycheck and I’m deeply in debt,” she said, including from car repairs and a hospitalization for food poisoning.

While there are many iterations, it is always this same story. Medical debt, job loss, and/or divorce precede something like 90% of consumer bankruptcies.

hi412• 9 years ago

This story breaks my heart. How come our society has come to a place where it has placed such a low value on education and the educators?

ohyes• 9 years ago

First off, I think this is a sensationalized article. My friends with liberal arts 'academic' degrees are finding jobs. Not always professor level jobs, some of them are teaching high school, others are adjuncting, one writes contracts for the DoD (her degree was in creative writing).

'College professor' is currently a middle-class job and it has been for a long time (since before I was born at least). What we have in this article are stories from people who are in the middle class and hit a bump in the road, and never recovered economically. This can happen to anyone, including you, the silicon-valley start-up STEM uber-programmer.

It is just bad luck and highlights the lack of a societal safety net. In short, this is a shock piece describing something that is very common in the USA. It is shocking simply because our mental image of a 'College professor,' is a well-to-do clean-cut person in a tweed jacket scribbling on a chalk-board. You don't think to yourself 'homeless prostitute,' (the examples were clearly very specifically picked). The contrast is intentional.

This isn't to detract from these people's plight. It is certainly a real one (maybe an example of one of the most real things that can happen to a person). The majority of us are a couple of unfortunate life events away from making the decisions that these people had to make. Lose your job and have an expensive illness at the same time, you'll pretty much be there. These people started behind because of massive college debt, for the most part, but it doesn't change that we're all close to this.

I'm disheartened that this is being reduced to in economic terms 'a supply-side problem,' under the assumption that the economics of supply and demand actually apply to a person who is (for all purposes) not making a living wage and in debt to their eyeballs. It's bullshit if a person is employed 60+ hours a week and they aren't able to properly feed clothe and house themselves (and their family, for that matter). It doesn't matter what the job is.

Honestly, it's bullshit that we have homelessness and hunger at all. At what point do we have a serious conversation in the west about attempting to become a post-scarcity society? I don't think we even know what is involved to make a society like that tractable.

technofire2• 9 years ago

While I'm not trying to be gratuitously harsh, I ask what have any of the adjunct lecturers in this article really contributed to the world? Not much in my opinion. You don't need someone with a doctorate to teach a student critical thinking. These people are living in a fantasy land and are mentally ill; who becomes homeless, putting any children they have at financial risk, or lives in a car or a dilapidated mobile home with no shower, and doesn't get the clue that what they're doing is stupid and that they should get a real job and start working up the ladder? Can they not get a real job and teach evening classes as adjuncts like many of their peers do at community colleges across the country? Oh no, they're "dedicated to scholarship" and have "taken a vow of poverty." Give me a break. These people have superman complexes. We should stop glorifying them and glorifying academia. Lectures came about back when most people were illiterate and printed books were scarce and that was the most effective way to get the knowledge out to the students. We have books and a literate populace now, and of course the Internet. The United States is one of the only places that glorify and sentimentalizes higher education so acutely; visiting students from other countries have remarked that universities here are basically vacation resorts for rich people. Modern academia is a joke.

gozur88• 9 years ago

If you can't make enough money to survive doing what you do, you should probably look at doing something else. It's not like someone smart enough to be a college lecturer can't possibly learn a different skill.

ycmimi• 9 years ago

They should go to china to teach English. There is a very high demand of native english-speaking teachers. I bet they will have a much better life than in US.

rabboRubble• 9 years ago

The academic job market is topsy-turvy. Tenured professors should be paid less than adjunct professors. The adjunct professor who takes on future income uncertainty should be paid more to represent that income uncertainty risk. If the job market was functioning correctly and in a perfect world, salaries would be so.

laughfactory• 9 years ago

What intrigued me most about the article was that it played the whole "adjunct professors get paid like shit because university funding has fallen dramatically." The truth is that this is nothing new: adjuncts have always been paid peanuts and treated poorly. What is new is that universities have realized that they can hire a fleet of adjuncts for cheap, and have them do most of the teaching. It's a cost minimization strategy which leaves them more money for sports programs and hiring more bureaucracy (and more expensive star researchers). Modern universities survive under the auspices of existing to teach and nurture young minds, but they're as much of a big business as any.

Sadly, most of my great professors in college were either adjuncts or associates. I.e., poorly paid.

pdimitar2• 9 years ago

“Most of my colleagues are unjustifiably ashamed,” she said. “They take this personally, as if they’ve failed, and I’m always telling them, ‘you haven’t failed, the system has failed you.’”

While I sympathize with these people and I know in my heart they are treated unjustly, I still cringed at this quote.

Was there a US president coming at your graduation and promising you a bright future if you pursued your academical ambitions? Were there crowds of businessmen coming there and assuring you all that you will get funding until the rest of your life?

I'd reckon no.

Let's put it bluntly: you failed to adapt and now it's finally coming to haunt you, and you most likely ignored many signs along the road. I know it's easy for me to talk being a programmer, and we are gonna be in demand for quite a while still. But I wasn't always well-paid. In fact, most of my career has been spend with very toxic employers, colleagues and freelance customers. At certain point of my life, I realized I had to make tough and big changes -- changes I was not emotionally okay with but I knew I had to do them because otherwise I'd end up on the street. And I did. And it hurt a lot. But I am not threatened by living on the street for a long time now. And years later, I am now proud of myself for having the courage to recognize it was time to move on from a few toxic / non-constructive areas of my older life.

The writing has been on the wall for a LONG time that the educational jobs are on the decline. At least for 15 years now. (No I won't cite studies; I am talking about a general feeling related to the tone of many news stories over the years, plus tens of anecdata from people in the area I happen to be well-acquainted with, including my brother.)

I will not make this into USA bashing but I can't help but notice that many Americans are finding themselves helpless after believing in "the system" their whole lives. Same goes for people I knew in Germany, UK, France, Netherlands and Sweden.

This is much less so in Eastern Europe where I am from (although it still happens to quite a lot of people; percentage-wise though, it feels like they're much smaller group compared to USA).

You have to believe more in your own abilities and trust less "the system". The system has been devised to help keep things in a relative order and nothing much else. The system doesn't stay awake at night, worrying if you will end up homeless. That's one of the harsh truths in life that many people, and a lot of them much older than me, refuse to accept and live their lives in accordance with.

SilasX4• 9 years ago

I agree with your general point, but:

Was there a US president coming at your graduation and promising you a bright future if you pursued your academical ambitions?

Yes, it's pretty typical for a prestigious public official to speak at graduations and say basically that.

pdimitar2• 9 years ago

I stand corrected.

I still think that a public official holding an inspirational speech doesn't hold any value though, out there in the material world. It's sad that many people believe in this propaganda of sorts and integrate it as one of the mottos in their lives. :(

kutkloon72• 9 years ago

The things that are priorities in the USA have always puzzled me. Students pay an absolutely insane amount of money for an education that is very mediocre. It is clear that the American education is failing. About half of the population voted for a man who does not believe in science. But somehow, the main priorities for universities seems to be enforcing diversity and gender-neutral pronouns?

I am not saying that thinking about this is wrong, there is just a deep disconnect with the realities that people live in, and many people seem to have a problem viewing things from another perspective.

kazinator5• 9 years ago

In the 2011 Japanese film Koi no Tsumi, actress Makoto Togashi plays a university professor who works as a prostitute. (Not even remotely out of poverty though, but rather depravity or something like that.)

Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars

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