Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/nyregion/crowded-out-of-ivory-tower-adjuncts-see-a-life-less-lofty.html?hpw&rref=education

by ilamont • 13 years ago

40 57 13 years ago

nytimes.com

smoyer3• 13 years ago

I'd be curious to know whether he's willing to move out of the city ... and whether his prospects of finding a job elsewhere are better.

javert5• 13 years ago

There are tons of high-paying jobs in the oil fields in Canada and the northern-middle US.

But many people (not necessarily this guy, I don't know his whole story) would rather bitch and leech off society than go work.

eigenvector2• 13 years ago

There are tons of high-paying jobs for qualified engineers and tradesmen with relevant experience. Let's not pretend a guy with an English PhD can get a well-paying job in Fort McMurray without years of costly retraining.

Even engineers without relevant experience (SAGD or at least site exp) will have a tough time getting O&G industry jobs.

When the industry says "skill shortage" it means that engineers are starting to ask for 1/50th of the CEO's pay, not that they'll actually hire any comers.

smoyer3• 13 years ago

I didn't down-vote your comment (or your other comment) but I can see why someone might think it's a bit harsh. I tend to agree with you in at least one respect ... we only need a certain number of English professors and while the complaint is universities and colleges hiring instructors instead of offering tenure track positions, the ability to staff their institutions this way is strictly due to an abundant supply.

My wife followed her dream 25 years later, I'm still supporting the family while the work she does is primary for the benefit of society as a whole. We're not surprised and therefore we're safe so long as I'm employed.

javert5• 13 years ago

What do you call a 42 year old, with a wife, a toddler and mounting credit card debt who got an English PhD 18 months ago?

Either someone who completely failed to plan ahead, or someone who wanted to knowingly gamble everything to "follow his dream."

Either is fine---just don't ask society to bail you out.

A growing gap between 0 and the top is not inherently a problem---in fact it is necessary in a free market that is progressing. There is no problem here, move on folks. It is an intellectually bankrupt argument. Seriously, this guy is the best they can dig up to advance their agenda?

And the ironic thing is that in trying to promote its egalitarian agenda, the NYT has acidentally provided additional evidence that the government-education axis is fundamentally broken.

We need separation of government and education just as we need separation of government and religion.

venus• 13 years ago

Your username matches your comment - harsh, unempathetic, and blind to a larger, kinder view of society as you pursue a simplistic, black and white ethical code.

Your willingness to throw people to the wolves because they've pursued their dreams without strict pragmatism about their career prospects is disturbing, to say the least. Do you really think society will be better off without any English professors? Artists? Dreamers? Of course not. So this guy's problem is indirectly everyone's problem.

javert5• 13 years ago

Absolutely wrong. My viewpoint is the MOST empathetic, loving and kind. Here is why.

What is better for a person at the bottom of the economic ladder who wants to pursue actual values---happiness and prosperity---instead of simply languishing?

The answer is a free market and a booming, robust economy.

What about the ones who languish? You literally can't help them anyway. Somebody who just lives on the dole and stays there is NOT going to have a happy life, no matter how hard you try to help them.

Therefore, as a society, we should always choose freedom and the concommitant prosperity over egalitarianism, which just sacrifices those pursuing values to those who are helplessly languishing.

Also I'm all for artists, dreamers and English professors--that's why I disjuncted "willing to gamble." Which is quite reasonable if you're young and possibly even reasonable when you're 42, poor, and have a family---which is why I didn't pass judgement on this specific man.

stefan_kendall2• 13 years ago

Yes, I do not wish to finance someone else's dream. I could have told this guy 20 years ago that his life plan was awful and going to lead to financial hardship.

AnimalMuppet• 13 years ago

Not quite.

Imagine that I found a startup. But I'm 42, with a wife and a kid. I'm running into debt because my startup isn't taking off.

Would you say something similar to me? Would you tell me that society would be better off with more startups? (A true statement, BTW.) Would you say that I should pursue my dreams without strict pragmatism about my career path? (Another true statement.)

Or would you say that, having taken the responsibility of getting married and having a child, I should think at least somewhat pragmatically about the odds of a payoff before I condemn them to a life of debt so that I can chase my improbable dream? Startups working are a 10-to-1 longshot, you know. That gives me a 9-out-of-10 chance of it not paying off, leaving my family in a large financial hole.

Your response is as black-and-white as the one you are responding to. The odds are against an English PhD getting tenure. (I don't know that they're 10-to-1 against - anyone got real numbers?) Chasing your dream is fine, doing what you love is fine, but leaving your family in financial danger while you go against the odds is a bit less benign than you paint it.

smtddr• 13 years ago

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=javert+rich

Just read a couple of those and you'll have a good idea about the kind of person you're dealing with here.

crucini2• 13 years ago

Well, hang on. While I understand your reaction, this is a bit of a strawman:

without any English professors?

It does feel like we're educating too many English majors for the limited number of English teaching slots. Not to mention that English professors need to be of a certain caliber, and most English majors aren't.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

It's an unfortunate predicament, and one for which I don't see any particularly simple solutions.

First of all, this is hardly a problem that's exclusive to "liberal arts" PhDs. However, it's probably exacerbated in their case due to the often limited market demand for their skills.

What solution, other than some form of guaranteed job, is viable? Subsidizing PhDs lifetime employment with public funds would be messy and unpopular (although not completely without merit, IMHO).

The second option would be to limit supply. For instance, Universities only admitting as many PhDs as they could possibly absorb (or, providing a guaranteed-employment PhD track for a select few).

This would drastically lower the number of PhD recipients, with uncertain effects on society as a whole. While this might negatively effect our net research output, it might also funnel talented and hard working individuals into potentially productive lines of work. I'm basing this on the assumption that anyone who is capable of completing a PhD (in anything), has the potential to contribute very meaningfully in a variety of other professions or even fields.

smoyer3• 13 years ago

"Universities only admitting as many PhDs as they could possibly absorb"

This is an excellent idea, and I've also been a proponent of pushing liberal arts minors in combination with other degrees that provide a much more employability. Neither of these ideas will be embraced because each college department honestly believes their area of focus is the most important topic on earth. Add the desire of the college administrators to build a little kingdom of their own, and you won't even be heard.

Brashman• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how it works in the liberal arts, but for STEM PhDs, it's not so much that they "believe their area of focus is the most important topic on earth" as much as they admit PhD students so that they have employees to do research.

mbreese• 13 years ago

No it's not... there are many more job-types available for PhDs than academia, so tying it directly to how many that particular school could support isn't a good strategy.

Is a school only to admit a graduate student when one of their tenured faculty is ready to retire?

Sure there are more graduate students than jobs available, especially in academia, but it's not necessarily a good idea to tie admissions directly to something like that.

It makes less sense in the sciences where graduate students are typically the ones that do the experiments that the PI is interested in and keep a lab running and funded (Post-docs usually have a little more independence in their projects). But, one thing that naturally limits the number of graduate students in the sciences is that those positions are usually funded. So, if a department wants to admit a student, they had better make sure that there is some way to pay for them. That naturally limits the number of graduate students that a program can handle at any one time.

JASchilz• 13 years ago

Another solution would be to allow those interested in PhDs an informed decision as to whether or not to pursue the degree. Major media could make occasional reports on the status of the post-doctoral job market available to all interested parties; those parties could then be allowed to balance personal cost against expected outcome.

crucini2• 13 years ago

The entire system of modern "research" and PhDs strikes me as an unsuccessful attempt to mass-produce the kind of scientific thinkers that made our modern world.

PhDs are basically people who occupied the "student" role as long as they could. Based on my experience, they often lack the fundamentals to make use of their education. They are not clever enough, curious enough or brave enough.

We have expensively overeducated an ordinary person in the hope of producing a Newton or Galileo.

No doubt there are many exceptions, but I have noticed this tendency.

oijaf888• 13 years ago

You feel that a 4 year degree is enough depth and background to learn all of the details of most technical fields to contribute original research to them? To me that seems unlikely and if someone could pick all of that up then they would already be in the Newton category and probably bypass the PhD process altogether.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

I think it's important to note that neither Einstein, Newton nor Galileo were geniuses in a vacuum. They all stood on the shoulders of prior discoveries, and were well educated by the standards of their time.

In general, I think we tend to be a little quick to hero worship. Either way, there's certainly enough room in the scientific community for researchers who are diligent, meticulous and contribute to small measurable improvements in the state of the art.

Moreover, given the increased complexity involved in actually pushing the state of the art in just about any field - I'm not exactly sure what an alternative higher-educational model would or should look like.

plg• 13 years ago

It sounds crass but modern academia is becoming like most other professions, i.e. simply getting credentialed (i.e. getting your Ph.D.) does not mean you can count on a tenure track academic faculty position. These positions are highly competitive.

Listen. At least it's not like many places in Europe (Italy? Germany?) where it's basically an old boys club and someone senior has to literally die before another position is available. At least in north america things are (mostly) still based on merit. You compete for jobs, the cream rises to the top.

Again not to be crass but another pattern I see in modern academia is an unwillingness to move, to take on a job. "I grew up in NYC, my family is here, and goddamnit I want a faculty position here too, not in Ohio or Nebraska or Arizona". I'm sorry but again, wha??

Maybe this sense of entitlement is not adequately dismantled as young graduate students come up through the ranks, that's certainly an issue we can discuss.

Anyway I'm empathetic with the guy in the article, he loves to do X, he is highly educated to do X, and he can't get a top-tier job to do X and so he has to do X-light. Join the club, man. You think everyone who gets an accounting degree expects to work at the top firms? You think everyone who gets a law degree automatically expects to get the top jobs? Of course not. It's competitive. It's a jungle out there.

There's the issue of how long it takes to get credentialed as a PhD, and how it's an extra burden for a 40-something with a young family to not have job security. Sure that's true... but am I missing something? Did someone promise this guy 15 yrs ago when he started on this journey that he would land in a tenure track job? Did someone tell him that it's not competitive? I don't think so.

In fact I'm a bit on the peeved side about this guy, if he does have a young family, what the crap is he doing, why isn't he ensuring a more stable life for his family? For god's sake, get a stable job, do poetry on the side as a hobby like the rest of the world.

Anyway enough ranting, I'm sick of the elite class bellyaching about how they didn't win the lottery even though they bought a ticket.

punkghetto• 13 years ago

despite the ranting I agree with you. I had my first kid while at university and immediately switched to a program where I could have a job and career, and graduate quickly. It wasn't my passion, but it provides for my family, and I don't winge about it to anyone else. I pursue my interests on the side as a hobby - which I hope to turn into a business or career if/when possible. It can be very hard to find the time for hobbies when you have a young family and a marriage to maintain. It's not about elites vs. non-elites though. Its about the fact that no-one has a right to be entitled to anything. You have to face the realities of life make sacrifices and be accountable for where you have ended up.

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Jane Jacobs, more noted as an urban planning visionary, started taking a hard look at institutions, including education and the role of credentialing. Her book The Dark Age Ahead is (as you might suspect) a dark vision of the future:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9781400062324-3

She addressed the topic in an essay, "Credentialing vs. Education": http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2004/spring/jacobs-credent...

jessriedel• 13 years ago

Again not to be crass but another pattern I see in modern academia is an unwillingness to move, to take on a job. "I grew up in NYC, my family is here, and goddamnit I want a faculty position here too, not in Ohio or Nebraska or Arizona".

Maybe you're confusing New Yorkers for everyone else? (In which case, this has everything to do with the NYC culture and nothing to do with academics.) I have met very few industries in which workers will desperately move as far and wide as in academia.

HarryHirsch2• 13 years ago

Did someone promise this guy 15 yrs ago when he started on this journey that he would land in a tenure track job? Did someone tell him that it's not competitive? I don't think so.

I don't know about the humanities, but up to about 2009 with a PhD in the sciences from a second-tier institution you could get a tenure-track job at another second-tier university or four-year college. That was the typical career track, because industry recruits only from top institutions at PhD level.

Then the funding crisis struck, and while universities are increasing enrollment (with the students shooting mostly for pre-med at my state school) they are no longer hiring for tenure-track positions, it's now untenured lecturers or part-time adjuncts.

Universities have found out that they can hire at lower salary levels because of plentiful supply, and they do not mind that quality of instruction is suffering. It is suffering because as a lecturer you are moving around every three years looking for a better deal and the first year is spent getting used to the syllabus at the new place, and if you are teaching three sections at three different places to make ends meet as an adjunct you just can't be good.

It's strange that the students don't mind that they are getting less of an education, but they really don't mind.

harryh5• 13 years ago

Students aren't, for the most part, paying for the instruction. They're paying for the certification.

Unbundling these two things would solve all kinds of problems. That's a pretty big challenge though.

blacksmythe• 13 years ago

  >> simply getting credentialed (i.e. getting your Ph.D.) 
  >> does not mean you can count on a tenure track 
  >> academic faculty position.

This has never been the case. In order to avoid exponential growth, the average professor that trains Ph.D.s can only produce in his/her career about one student who goes on to become a professor that trains Ph.D.s. (ignoring some growth in a particular field). Some schools produce a much larger number of future professors. As a result many smaller schools produce very few.

freyrs3• 13 years ago

I'm genuinely curious how universities are allocating their money such that these adjunct professors who are teaching more classes with more students, who are paying ever growing tuition themselves, are still living below the poverty line. Is there just enormous waste in the system or is there some complication between the supply and demand of people and PhD-level academic positions?

te_chris• 13 years ago

Anecdotally, but here they always seem to have money for some fancy building project or another, hell, over the ditch in Australia UTS is building a fucking Gehry! This all seems to happen despite staff cutting, increasing fees and declining research output.

iak8god2• 13 years ago

Is there just enormous waste in the system

That depends on your point of view. If you are a part of the metastisizing university bureaucracy, then you might think replacing full-time faculty with more administrators and staff is a great use of resources.

"In the two decades from 1985 to 2005, student enrolment in the US rose by 56 per cent, faculty numbers increased by 50 per cent, degree-granting institutions expanded by 50 per cent, degrees granted grew by 47 per cent, administrators rocketed by 85 per cent and their attendant staff by a whopping 240 per cent." - http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-fall-of-the-...

fecklessyouth2• 13 years ago

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these jobless PhDs to high school teaching positions. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an adjunct. They won't necessarily get much time to "research," but with their own knowledge and experience, lesson planning should be a breeze.

More importantly, they'll be bringing something vitally important to high school education: instructors who are passionate about their subject, and well-equipped to improve students' skills. They'll still get exposure to their beloved subject, but also spread that exposure to those who need it.

sopooneo• 13 years ago

I hear you, and I think you make a very good point. But from my own experience failing to do so, I can say that teaching high school well is spectacularly difficult. And if you are not good at the underlying classroom management and people skills, your subject-matter expertise will go largely wasted.

fecklessyouth2• 13 years ago

Well, one would hope that classroom management and people skills are imparted by a 5+ years of TA'ing.

oulipian• 13 years ago

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these underemployed programmers to careers as cashiers. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an underemployed programmer. They won't necessarily get much time to "solve problems," but with their typing and math skills, cashiering should be a breeze!

bashinator2• 13 years ago

Where are all these underemployed programmers?

ForHackernews• 13 years ago

High school teaching also pays miserably in many places.

forkandwait3• 13 years ago

Many PhD's would probably teach high school, except for the ridiculous credentialing programs / teacher licensing requirements. Basically you have to get a 1.5 year education degree to "qualify" to teach a subject; yes, you can have a PhD in math from Princeton and be unqualified to teach 9th grade math in Trenton. Makes me want to vomit.

scarmig• 13 years ago

In terms of math skills, sure. But a senior in high school should have enough mastery of the material to explain things to a 9th grader, so that's a bad argument. As anyone who's taken an undergraduate class in the hard sciences knows, a PhD does not indicate anything about teaching ability (in my experience, it's anti-correlated with it if anything).

I'm sure the credentialing process has its own unique failings, but it is trying to act as a real value add.

jrells• 13 years ago

I wanted to teach high school at one point but couldn't. I was an adjunct lecturer at a college.

justin66• 13 years ago

There's an interesting discontinuity here:

- he's got a full workload (not a universal amongst adjuncts) and so the guy's skills are clearly in demand

- he's taking home peanuts

- students are paying a lot more in tuition than they ever did

In this, as in so many areas of business, the consumer (the student in this case) might wonder where all the money is going.

stefan_kendall2• 13 years ago

Different markets.

Demand for the jobs is high, and supply is low. This keeps pay low.

Compare to tuition. Demand has been increasing over the last decade, and supply has remained relatively fixed or grown slowly. As more students seek to acquire trash art history degrees, price has risen to match the demand.

harryh5• 13 years ago

I understand and agree with you here, but that still leaves the question: where does all the money go?

Most universities aren't for profit institutions churning out dividends for shareholders, so it's gotta be going somewhere internal to the schools.

I'm honestly a bit mystified.

slyall• 13 years ago

A quick check shows that CUNY charges NY resident students around $5700 per year.

For the same money:

- This guy could teach on a dozen students for a year. 20 hours per week class time and 20 hours of smaller groups or 1 on 1.

- The University or some external organisation could administer exams or otherwise check he was up to standard.

- The Students would get a lot better education that they would have from being in a class of hundreds.

iak8god2• 13 years ago

In this, as in so many areas of business, the consumer (the student in this case) might wonder where all the money is going.

The student has no idea what an adjunct is, and doesn't particularly care. If it occurs to the student to wonder why the instructor seems frazzled or unprepared, or why he isn't available outside the classroom, the student assumes he is just a bad or lazy professor. But the vast majority of the students have no idea why they're there and are much more interested in their social lives than their studies, so it works out just fine in the end... well, society loses and bunch of overeducated schmucks are really getting shafted, but everything else is going according to plan.

forkandwait3• 13 years ago

Academic institutions used to have most of their teaching done by tenured faculty, now they don't, and there is such an oversupply of PhD's (myself included) that they don't have to have to offer shit to get someone to take a class.

I think it is time for tenure to go -- give teachers and professors a three year contract, good pay, and the same basic working protections as everybody else. Fire the losers, promote the achievers, and (probably) eliminate a bunch of the imbalance.

Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty

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