Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by dqpb » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

showmetherec wrote: post #36

pwaivers wrote: post #12

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.

Are you arguing life for adjuncts is improving?

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.

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

#82

Post by aswanson » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #39

Analog24 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 you…

Are compsci phds in high demand in academia, or do they suffer the same oversupply condition as the general professorial market?

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

#83

Post by khawkins » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

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

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

#84

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

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.

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

#85

Post by wallace_f » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

paapi__gudiya wrote: post #37

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…

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

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

#86

Post by intern4tional » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #42

KirinDave wrote: post #9

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…

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 s…

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.

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

#87

Post by AlwaysRock » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #53

adamnemecek wrote: post #10

Bernie can't come soon enough.

For Bernie to work, we have to restructure education to be more from the 1980s and 1970s. You won't have private rooms with private baths. You won't have school creating new pool and phsycial fitness megaplexes. You will have 2-4 people per room with a common shower. I'm not saying this is wrong. I'm saying that the quality of life will have to go down. When you picture a Bernie school, you need to picture Animal Hou…

Good? A large percentage of my friends dropped out of college freshmen or sophomore year because they were there to have fun and were not focused on school.

Hell I wasnt that focused on school because there was a gym, an event every night, and four or five extra curricular to choose from. The most focused I ever was in college was in a couple community college classes I took over a summer. I wasnt friends with the people in those classes, I showed up a couple times a week, did the work, and went home. I wish all colleges were like that.

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

#88

Post by leggomylibro » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #2

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

"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?

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

#89

Post by billmalarky » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

Analog24 wrote: post #28

KirinDave wrote: post #9

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…

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.

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.

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

#90

Post by TheMagicHorsey » Thu, Sep 28, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

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.