Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty

Your username matches your comment - harsh, unempathetic, and blind to a larger, kinder view of society as you pursue a simplistic, black and white ethical code.

Your willingness to throw people to the wolves because they've pursued their dreams without strict pragmatism about their career prospects is disturbing, to say the least. Do you really think society will be better off without any English professors? Artists? Dreamers? Of course not. So this guy's problem is indirectly everyone's problem.

It sounds crass but modern academia is becoming like most other professions, i.e. simply getting credentialed (i.e. getting your Ph.D.) does not mean you can count on a tenure track academic faculty position. These positions are highly competitive.

Listen. At least it's not like many places in Europe (Italy? Germany?) where it's basically an old boys club and someone senior has to literally die before another position is available. At least in north america things are (mostly) still based on merit. You compete for jobs, the cream rises to the top.

Again not to be crass but another pattern I see in modern academia is an unwillingness to move, to take on a job. "I grew up in NYC, my family is here, and goddamnit I want a faculty position here too, not in Ohio or Nebraska or Arizona". I'm sorry but again, wha??

Maybe this sense of entitlement is not adequately dismantled as young graduate students come up through the ranks, that's certainly an issue we can discuss.

Anyway I'm empathetic with the guy in the article, he loves to do X, he is highly educated to do X, and he can't get a top-tier job to do X and so he has to do X-light. Join the club, man. You think everyone who gets an accounting degree expects to work at the top firms? You think everyone who gets a law degree automatically expects to get the top jobs? Of course not. It's competitive. It's a jungle out there.

There's the issue of how long it takes to get credentialed as a PhD, and how it's an extra burden for a 40-something with a young family to not have job security. Sure that's true... but am I missing something? Did someone promise this guy 15 yrs ago when he started on this journey that he would land in a tenure track job? Did someone tell him that it's not competitive? I don't think so.

In fact I'm a bit on the peeved side about this guy, if he does have a young family, what the crap is he doing, why isn't he ensuring a more stable life for his family? For god's sake, get a stable job, do poetry on the side as a hobby like the rest of the world.

Anyway enough ranting, I'm sick of the elite class bellyaching about how they didn't win the lottery even though they bought a ticket.

I'm genuinely curious how universities are allocating their money such that these adjunct professors who are teaching more classes with more students, who are paying ever growing tuition themselves, are still living below the poverty line. Is there just enormous waste in the system or is there some complication between the supply and demand of people and PhD-level academic positions?

Absolutely wrong. My viewpoint is the MOST empathetic, loving and kind. Here is why.

What is better for a person at the bottom of the economic ladder who wants to pursue actual values---happiness and prosperity---instead of simply languishing?

The answer is a free market and a booming, robust economy.

What about the ones who languish? You literally can't help them anyway. Somebody who just lives on the dole and stays there is NOT going to have a happy life, no matter how hard you try to help them.

Therefore, as a society, we should always choose freedom and the concommitant prosperity over egalitarianism, which just sacrifices those pursuing values to those who are helplessly languishing.

Also I'm all for artists, dreamers and English professors--that's why I disjuncted "willing to gamble." Which is quite reasonable if you're young and possibly even reasonable when you're 42, poor, and have a family---which is why I didn't pass judgement on this specific man.

Anecdotally, but here they always seem to have money for some fancy building project or another, hell, over the ditch in Australia UTS is building a fucking Gehry! This all seems to happen despite staff cutting, increasing fees and declining research output.