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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

#181

Post by david927 »

jacquesm wrote: post #6

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…

In Eastbloc countries that was done as a form of punishment, often for not toeing the party line. It was true across disciplines: medicine, law, etc, when otherwise they would have "good" jobs. (I'm clarifying, not justifying.)

I thought in The Netherlands that higher education was effectively free.

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

#182

Post by TaylorAlexander »

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?

There’s a notion that much of the hierarchy that exists in the world is unnecessary, and perpetuated only because it’s the status quo. A university for example doesn’t strictly need to manage the professors - you could have a very large university where the professors primarily manage themselves, with only a small administrative group. An organization arranged in this way wouldn’t need many meetings.

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

#183

Post by throwaway613834 »

gervase wrote: post #58
legitster wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it includes room and board and some insurance plan, $1300 a month isn't bad? My brother had a something like that at his university and ended up saving most of it because you really don't have a lot else to spend it on. 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 ad…

Graduate stipends almost never include room and board, as far as I know. This may be different if you're in a high-rent area (UCLA, Stanford, NYU, etc), but in general, your rent comes out of that $1300. They do currently include decent health insurance, at least. No dental/vision, obviously.

> They do currently include decent health insurance, at least. No dental/vision, obviously.

Probably school-dependent -- I'm aware of one that does have dental at least (I forget about vision but I think it has that too).

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

#184

Post by rayiner »

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…

> These are the same folks who's amazing research work is powering our industry, often with a 10 year lead time.

No they're not. STEM professors get paid quite well.

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #151
aswanson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The irony is I don't have a Phd or Masters for that matter (I do have a BS). The universities much like industry would rather have someone with huge relevant industry experience than someone who has a Phd. It looks better on their marketing to say "We have the person who invented X, used by millions of websites" or "We have this best selling author" (in the English world) than "We have a person who got their Phd" Tha…

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by aaron-lebo »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #171
aaron-lebo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's very possible.

Surely there's some middle ground between incentives that attract too many people and underpaying dedicated talent? Even if you were to get paid more, the work is so intense and extended (grinding for years), those just attracted by money would have more attractive alternatives.

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

#187

Post by tinduck »

We should move more research to lower cost cities like Memphis or Detroit that have affordable housing. In addition, we need to prioritize funding to our middle tier Universities.

I don't understand how people expect us to subsides wages in high cost cities. It's not the only problem, but we do have a prestige issue.

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

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

chrisseaton wrote: post #163
khawkins wrote: post #83

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…

> For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts degrees are universities and schools This is such nonsense. Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree, and with an English degree you can apply for 90% of jobs. You could graduate and go on to be anything from an advertising executive, to a soldier. Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.

You can be a soldier without ant college education (and qualify for a direct path to Officer Candidate School with a two-year degree or equivalent credits, IIRC), so giving “soldier” as on option with 4-year English degree is literally suggesting that it is worth the same as no college education at all.

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

#189

Post by BeetleB »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #34
vkou wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

I will say that those who can do research probably dont become adjuncts, but continue as a researcher on soft money or go in industry. The more liberal arts, philosophy, turn to adjunct positions.

>I will say that those who can do research probably dont become adjuncts, but continue as a researcher on soft money or go in industry. The more liberal arts, philosophy, turn to adjunct positions.

I know a bunch in engineering and medical fields who are adjuncts. It's not rare. They do get paid a lot better than liberal arts ones, though and often get benefits as well. But they're situation is as precarious - they could get cut any semester.

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

#190

Post by hashberry »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #14

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…

University degrees are a form of social signaling. It's a status symbol. I've met many self-taught developers with liberal arts degree from top ranked schools. I have no doubt their degrees helped them get their foot in the door and job hop and advance in their career.
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