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

nytimes.com

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

#41

Post by wutbrodo »

harryh wrote: post #39
HarryHirsch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I don't know about the humanities, but up to about 2009 with a PhD in the sciences from a second-tier institution you could get a tenure-track job at another second-tier university or four-year college. That was the typical career track, be…

Students aren't, for the most part, paying for the instruction. They're paying for the certification. Unbundling these two things would solve all kinds of problems. That's a pretty big challenge though.

Forget being a challenge, is it even possible? Isn't the certification's only value that it certifies that you've received the instruction?

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

#42

Post by slyall »

justin66 wrote: post #20

There's an interesting discontinuity here: - he's got a full workload (not a universal amongst adjuncts) and so the guy's skills are clearly in demand - he's taking home peanuts - students are paying a lot more in tuition than they ever did In this, as in so many areas of business, the consumer (the student in this case) might wonder where all the money is going.

A quick check shows that CUNY charges NY resident students around $5700 per year.

For the same money:

- This guy could teach on a dozen students for a year. 20 hours per week class time and 20 hours of smaller groups or 1 on 1.

- The University or some external organisation could administer exams or otherwise check he was up to standard.

- The Students would get a lot better education that they would have from being in a class of hundreds.

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

#43

Post by JDShu »

harryh wrote: post #31
stefan_kendall wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different markets. Demand for the jobs is high, and supply is low. This keeps pay low. Compare to tuition. Demand has been increasing over the last decade, and supply has remained relatively fixed or grown slowly. As more students seek to acquire trash art history degrees, price has risen to match the demand.

I understand and agree with you here, but that still leaves the question: where does all the money go? Most universities aren't for profit institutions churning out dividends for shareholders, so it's gotta be going somewhere internal to the schools. I'm honestly a bit mystified.

I personally think it's university administration and large recurring service contracts.

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

#44

Post by harryh »

wutbrodo wrote: post #41
harryh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students aren't, for the most part, paying for the instruction. They're paying for the certification. Unbundling these two things would solve all kinds of problems. That's a pretty big challenge though.

Forget being a challenge, is it even possible? Isn't the certification's only value that it certifies that you've received the instruction?

Unbundling doesn't mean that you haven't gotten the instruction. It just means that the institution that does the instructing doesn't have to be the same institution that grants the certification.

If somehow Harvard could start certifying extra 22 year olds as "just as good as any other Harvard grad" even if they never took a single class there then lots of interesting things might happen.

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

#45

Post by harryh »

JDShu wrote: post #43
harryh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand and agree with you here, but that still leaves the question: where does all the money go? Most universities aren't for profit institutions churning out dividends for shareholders, so it's gotta be going somewhere internal to the schools. I'm honestly a bit mystified.

I personally think it's university administration and large recurring service contracts.

Administration makes sense. I saw something else in this thread indicating that the administrators :: student ratio has exploded in the last 30 years.

What do you mean by "large recurring service contracts" ?

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

#46

Post by crucini »

doktrin wrote: post #5

It's an unfortunate predicament, and one for which I don't see any particularly simple solutions. First of all, this is hardly a problem that's exclusive to "liberal arts" PhDs. However, it's probably exacerbated in their case due to the often limited market demand for their skills. What solution, other than some form of guaranteed job, is viable? Subsidizing PhDs lifetime employment with public funds would be messy…

The entire system of modern "research" and PhDs strikes me as an unsuccessful attempt to mass-produce the kind of scientific thinkers that made our modern world.

PhDs are basically people who occupied the "student" role as long as they could. Based on my experience, they often lack the fundamentals to make use of their education. They are not clever enough, curious enough or brave enough.

We have expensively overeducated an ordinary person in the hope of producing a Newton or Galileo.

No doubt there are many exceptions, but I have noticed this tendency.

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

#47

Post by scarmig »

forkandwait wrote: post #38
fecklessyouth wrote: post #16

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these jobless PhDs to high school teaching positions. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an adjunct. They won't necessarily get much time to "research," but with their own knowledge and experience, lesson planning should be a breeze. More importantly, they'll be bringing something vitally important to high school education: instr…

Many PhD's would probably teach high school, except for the ridiculous credentialing programs / teacher licensing requirements. Basically you have to get a 1.5 year education degree to "qualify" to teach a subject; yes, you can have a PhD in math from Princeton and be unqualified to teach 9th grade math in Trenton. Makes me want to vomit.

In terms of math skills, sure. But a senior in high school should have enough mastery of the material to explain things to a 9th grader, so that's a bad argument. As anyone who's taken an undergraduate class in the hard sciences knows, a PhD does not indicate anything about teaching ability (in my experience, it's anti-correlated with it if anything).

I'm sure the credentialing process has its own unique failings, but it is trying to act as a real value add.

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

#48

Post by crucini »

venus wrote: post #11
javert wrote: post #3

What do you call a 42 year old, with a wife, a toddler and mounting credit card debt who got an English PhD 18 months ago? Either someone who completely failed to plan ahead, or someone who wanted to knowingly gamble everything to "follow his dream." Either is fine---just don't ask society to bail you out. A growing gap between 0 and the top is not inherently a problem---in fact it is necessary in a free market that…

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…

Well, hang on. While I understand your reaction, this is a bit of a strawman:

> without any English professors?

It does feel like we're educating too many English majors for the limited number of English teaching slots. Not to mention that English professors need to be of a certain caliber, and most English majors aren't.

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

#49

Post by JDShu »

harryh wrote: post #45
JDShu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think it's university administration and large recurring service contracts.

Administration makes sense. I saw something else in this thread indicating that the administrators :: student ratio has exploded in the last 30 years. What do you mean by "large recurring service contracts" ?

To take two examples, Blackboard costs at least in the hundreds of thousands (maybe a few orders of magnitude more) while an individual license of matlab is 3000, so perhaps with a group purchase it's more like 1000 per student? Schools also tend to spend a great deal on their course registration systems and perhaps hire external consultants to develop and maintain them. Those are just two examples, the list goes on for all the services the university provides.

I also want to note that often the administrators have to ok so many contracts (which they have no expertise in) and there are so many options, that inevitably the university ends up paying for stuff that nobody uses. At least in my last school, it was apparent that there were many sources of waste.

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

#50

Post by harryh »

JDShu wrote: post #49
harryh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Administration makes sense. I saw something else in this thread indicating that the administrators :: student ratio has exploded in the last 30 years. What do you mean by "large recurring service contracts" ?

To take two examples, Blackboard costs at least in the hundreds of thousands (maybe a few orders of magnitude more) while an individual license of matlab is 3000, so perhaps with a group purchase it's more like 1000 per student? Schools also tend to spend a great deal on their course registration systems and perhaps hire external consultants to develop and maintain them. Those are just two examples, the list goes on…

Ya, that all makes sense. My wife is in the academy and she's got some stories too.

No competition -> bad management -> all kinds of waste. It's sad. I don't know how to fix it though.

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