As a counter to this article I found my time as a grad student exceedingly productive and gave me great faith in the scientific institution. I definitely believe academics are underpaid; when most of the people in my department could have easy made 500k doing ML in the valley, they were making less than 100k as post docs or 30k as grad students. Otherwise my advisors were always incredibly proud of their students, pa…
They aren’t underpaid. Tenured professors have the ultimate job security. They also get paid sabbaticals which is fairly rare in the real world. Adjunct professors on the other hand — those are definitely underpaid, but they’re often doing that work as a side job or they’re trying to fight their way to tenure. A job from which you can’t be fired? That’s worth something. Stellar benefits? That’s worth something as wel…
This is like saying that it's OK that a job is paid poorly because the jobs are part-time. Or that it's OK to pay someone less for a second job because it is a second job. Or one group less than another group because obviously they don't need the money.
Underpaid is underpaid. It doesn't matter what the reasoning is. Especially if you are getting paid less than the "full time" or "permanent" person simply because you aren't "full time". I'll also argue in the case of tenured professors: Job security isn't everything, nor is a sabbatical - and IIRC, fewer places are even offering tenure as often. The adjunct professors have little hope.