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

theguardian.com

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

#171

Post by throwaway613834 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #24
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…

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…

> 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.

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

#172

Post by dredmorbius »

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…

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.

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

#173

Post by guelo »

pm24601 wrote: post #50
xythian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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…

The cut in state support coincides with a successful propaganda campaign that turned the public against academics and science.

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

#174

Post by vidarh »

sol_remmy wrote: post #148
vidarh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tils…

Actually Texas has cheap, well-funded state schools. It is financially a well-managed state. Maybe you should switch to saying "That's Illinois" or "That's Chicago", they're the dysfunctional state now.

We're more likely to start referring to them as Texas than change the term.

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

#175

Post by mattkrause »

skosuri wrote: post #110
mattkrause wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be clear, a 60%-70% overhead rate implies that the university is taking 37-42% of the money (for each dollar spent, another 0.60-0.70 goes to university). In addition, other expenses like tuition and equipment have no overhead taken out.

Sure, but it's almost always quoted as a rate like this.

Equipment is a special case in that "capital" equipment is usually exempt from most or all overhead. Smaller things are often not though, and some things are very difficult to charge to a grant at all.

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

#176

Post by BeetleB »

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…

>Adjuncts are a different story.

The article gives a median income of under $50K for non-adjuncts. Of course, that includes assistant/associate professors.

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

#177

Post by token_throwaway »

woahhvicky wrote: post #111

“I feel committed to being the person who’s there to help millennials, the next generation, go on to become critical thinkers,” Said the person unable to use critical thinking to avoid becoming a prostitute.

LOL. Yeah she's blatantly choosing to do it, her income puts her at twice the poverty line figure for a family of 4. God knows it's tough out there but come on. Get a cheaper flat and take responsibility for your choices, lady...

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

#178

Post by dragonwriter »

empath75 wrote: post #35
qaq wrote: post #2

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

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

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.)

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

#179

Post by tome »

munin wrote: post #144
samfriedman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more high-tier universities don't supply tenured PIs with dedicated grant writers, or at least easy access to them. Many of my social circle work as grad students at a private R1 institution, and I've seen a vast difference in the experience of students with a PI who self-funds and writes grants all day - less interaction, most of the teaching and mentoring is done by postdocs - and a PI that has an alt…

> I'm surprised more high-tier universities don't supply tenured PIs with dedicated grant writers, or at least easy access to them. Who would pay them?

Presumably they'd pay for themselves because the universities would bring in larger future grants, because the output would be increased, because the academic staff would be better utilized.

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

#180

Post by losteric »

cortesoft wrote: post #154
gerbilly wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, hiera…

Isn't that just how large organizations are run? How else would you run a large organization except with layers of hierarchy and meetings?

Competent self-managing sub-organizations.

Big corporations do require bureaucracy, but smaller entities use bureaucracy as a substitute for competency and autonomy.

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