41–50 of 449 posts
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…
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?
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.
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…
Don't even need to go east. Cuba is that way right now. Bartenders, cab drivers, and prostitutes with PhDs.
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.
edit- spelling load -> loan.
So, where's the $150K per student in tuition going?
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…
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 highe…
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.
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…
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.
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.…
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.