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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

#431

Post by dragonwriter »

alexanderstears wrote: post #430
kbenson wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see it the same way, sure the power of the purse and all but if the Federal Government can't coerce states to follow immigration law as a condition of accepting some federal grants, we may as well say that the feds can't tie money to behavior and just let the chips fall where they may. I'm confused, I wasn't making any case for that. I'm not sure where we got to Federal funding tied to specific program attr…

>I'm confused, I wasn't making any case for that. I'm not sure where we got to Federal funding tied to specific program attributes. Federal funding coerces schools into offering women's sports programs. > I wouldn't be comfortable attributing it to genetic variance of physical capability without a bit more info. Why do we have to attribute the difference to genetics or physical capability to make sports programs acce…

> Federal funding coerces schools into offering women's sports programs.

No, leaving aside whether funding they aren't forced to take can coerce anything, it mandates equal sports programs. They don't have to offer women's sports programs, if they don't offer men's sports programs.

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

#432

Post by bmarkovic »

nsxwolf wrote: post #268
maccard wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a pool of applicants for a job, all with no relevant experience, it's an easy filter. You filter out all the people who haven't proven they can do something they agreed to do for 3/4 years.

If that's all it is, there's got to be a way to come up with something that lets someone prove they are willing to do something for 4 years, but only costs maybe $250 a year.

This is mostly a problem of the Anglo-Saxon world. In continental Europe, for the most part, at least AFAIK, publicly owned universities are harder to get in, harder to get a degree from, and valued much more in the job market. The upside is that the education is subsidized by the government to the point of being roughly that expensive.

I.e. one enrolls in a privately-owned, for-profit universities if they have the money, but don't want to work their arse off to get a degree, or don't have good enough grades from the secondary education to qualify for public unis.

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

#433

Post by raverbashing »

aoenstkn4nto wrote: post #403
raverbashing wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of English majors work in journalism, copywriting, advertisement. Tech companies also employ them for writing documentation. Same for other "liberal-arts" degrees.

Not to mention writing books, writing for television, plays, screenplays, etc.

Yes, but those are rarely "walk-in, get paid" jobs

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

#434

Post by wfo »

msla wrote: post #271
wfo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unions are great at establishing entrenched interests. s/Unions/Companies/g Unions can be for unskilled labor. They can exist without qualifications and gatekeeping. That's why I presented that as a distinct option, separate from them. All they need to do is bargain with employers to make working conditions better. That's it. Unpaid overtime "just this once because we're all part of the team, guys" every month? We s…

Unions still must restrict the supply of labor, or else they're not unions, which would destroy Open Source, or at least Open Source which isn't appendant to a company which pays programmers to work on projects. Otherwise, by using GNU Emacs, you're depriving a union worker of their wages, and, since GNU Emacs gets updated even when there's a General Strike on, contributors are scabs, and union supporters have, histo…

The massive and well-funded propaganda effort to destroy unions at all costs has been extremely successful, as we can see from your post.

I have never heard of, read, talked to, or even imagined that any living person would consider contributing to open source to be "depriving a union worker of their wages" or "scabbing". Have you ever even heard of an actual existing union before? Have you ever known someone who has participated in (well, let's be generous: imagined) a strike? Has any union ever banned its members from donating their free time to charity? Are you listening to yourself?

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

#435

Post by jononor »

forapurpose wrote: post #429
jononor wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which industries hire for English majors? Are there good opportunities to be had, and are future prospects looking stable,upwards or down?

Industries where writing and reading comprehension arein demand, such as advertising, journalism, marketing, film, diplomacy, public relations, publishing, technical writing, law, and many more ...

For those fields, wouldn't one be significantly better of with a degree in advertising, journalism, marketing, film/media, policy (local/foreign), print/media, engineering, law?

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

#436

Post by Sacho »

dsr_ wrote: post #273
tpeo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, that's a problem too. I mean, I take that 90% of jobs aren't specialized positions. Once you need a college degree for a position that only requires general skills, or in which the employee can do just fine on-the-job training and experience, then what are those years in college for exactly? As far as I know, people could get by with a high school degree in the 1970s: there was no significant wage differenc…

Degrees are not reliable signals of productivity. I would much rather hire someone who didn't finish college but has had five years of progressive responsibility in the right area, than someone who had just finished a four or five year degree course but had never worked.

But does the progressive responsibility ladder exist for a high school graduate? Can they start their career in a job, even at an internship level?

I think you can tease out three possible factors influencing the situation here:

- more people graduating, more supply, means that even entry-level jobs are flooded with college graduates - entry-level jobs in decline, either due to automation or companies just not interested in providing apprenticeships - student loans shifting the power dynamics between employer/employee; you're more pressed to get a job, any job, so you're more likely to take up positions where you're overqualified and underpaid

These scenarios all form positive feedback loops to each other; with more high-skilled worker supply in the market, companies can grow their non-entry level jobs while automating the low-level ones; this reduction in entry jobs means that the desperate college students compete more fiercely with high school students, raising the bar for entry level jobs; the raised bar for entry level jobs forces more high school students to go into college rather than start work, which saddles them with student debt, feeding into the cycle.

I've noticed that many social situations tend to end up in such vicious, entangled circles. My dad used to call these the "downward spiral of failure" and the "upward spiral of success", and I really don't know how you transition from one to the other without a monumental effort or some kind of miracle breakthrough.

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

#437

Post by Sacho »

nradov wrote: post #348
nsxwolf wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do employers keep putting so much value on something so worthless? There must be cheaper ways to demonstrate to employers you have something equivalent to whatever it is they think they're getting from any old 4 year degree.

A bachelor's degree of any type demonstrates ("signals" in economic terms): communication skills, ability to follow instructions, sufficient persistence to finish a long-term project. Some colleges are way overpriced, but in general I doubt you're going to find a cheap way for prospective employees with no real work experience to demonstrate those qualities.

I think the issue is exactly that - the colleges are low efficiency, either overpriced or not a good match for the position you go to work as.

As a hypothetical, let's say that most jobs require a degree. Let's say that you use 50% of the stuff in your English Major throughout most of your career; you've eaten a 50% inefficiency on your college investment(essentially doubling the "price/skills" of your degree), you've lost time that you could have invested in obtaining those skills. Further, you are pressured into demanding a higher salary because of your college investment, which isn't matched by the skills you've received; so either your employer carries the burden of your inefficient education, or you do.

This is usually decided by the power dynamic between the two, and if you're a broke college student desperate for a job, you don't have much bargaining power, so you're shouldering all the burden. The worst part is, there's no way for you to fix this - there's no 2-year program that is 100% aimed towards your career goal, and there's no entry-level job for you to start at 0%(you're probably already starting at the entry-level even with your 50% degree). So you're stuck making this investment whether you want to or not.

One way to look at university is insurance - you're learning all these extra things as an insurance that you'll have a baseline of skills if you change your career. The issue is, not everyone can afford such an expensive insurance, but most people are forced to take it under our hypothetical.

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

#438

Post by woahhvicky »

sctb wrote: post #221
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.

This kind of predictable snark falls way short of the standards of discourse for this site. Please review the guidelines and stop posting like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This wasn't snark. It's pointing out a real problem with the premise of this article. It's creating a narrative of adjunct professor exploitation based on anecdotal cases. For all we know, these anecdotes are outliers and their situation isn't due to their profession or its pay.

I could have said all that or I could have been concise. Is being concise snark?

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

#439

Post by maccard »

nsxwolf wrote: post #268
maccard wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a pool of applicants for a job, all with no relevant experience, it's an easy filter. You filter out all the people who haven't proven they can do something they agreed to do for 3/4 years.

If that's all it is, there's got to be a way to come up with something that lets someone prove they are willing to do something for 4 years, but only costs maybe $250 a year.

Remember that lots of student debt isn't necessarily on tuition fees. I went to university for 4 years with "low" fees (started at €1750, ended at €2750, now €3000), but renting a room in that city will cost you 5-6 hundred euro a month, plus other "normal " living costs like eating, transport (another €120/month). All while you're probably not supposed to be working. My loan was purely to pay for accommodation for my time there.

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

#440

Post by throwaway2016a »

BeetleB wrote: post #176
throwaway2016a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It varies greatly by school and reputation.

I doubt it is because of associate professors. More likely it is because of the size of the school, location, and type. I bet there are a lot of community college students in there.

A quick look in my area (New England) shows associates starting at about $60k and going up from there. But New England has a high cost of living so it is all relative.

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