Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 449 posts

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

#11

Post by GuiA »

“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...).

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

#13

Post by xythian »

qaq wrote: post #2

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

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...

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

#14

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

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.

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

#15

Post by javaPro »

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.

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

#18

Post by vkou »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #7
thearn4 wrote: post #5

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.

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

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.

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

#19

Post by spectrum1234 »

qaq wrote: post #2

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

Exactly!

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

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

Post reply on HN