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

I don't think getting rid of tenure is the solution. Tenure is almost gone in practice if not on paper, and the effects of this have been detrimental. The current crisis of replicability is a side effect of this. Tenure is often for soft money positions one way or another: the university might guarantee you a position, but what that position looks like is a different issue. If anything tenure needs to be strengthened.

People get hung up on tenure when it's really irrelevant.

Top-heavy administration is a problem, but capping salaries isn't really the solution. What is required is self-governance, where administration is voted on by professors and staff, policies are voted on by professors and staff, etc. Basically, things need to be more democratic.

I also think research funding and public financing is to blame. Basically more state financing has to occur, or more reliable federal funding needs to happen. Grants are underfunding things, and are too unreliable and fickle.

Finally, none of this will change until employers in the private sector change and stop mindlessly demanding degrees, or demanding overly specific degrees. E.g., assuming that you can't do X unless you have a bachelors or master's in X. In some ways this is most important. Employers don't want to train employees, or do research, or even be bothered to discern actual ability or qualifications, so they treat degrees like rubber stamps, and demand that universities do their research for them for free. The bubble exists because the private sector demands the bubble. You could cut government loans, but that doesn't cut demand for the degrees.

Like a lot of things, the crisis in academics is very complex, and a lot of proposed cures are actually worse than the disease.

I think what it is going to amount to eventually probably is some hard decisions as a society whether or not we really value education and research or not (from K-12 all the way to post PhD). Many of these issues are pretty similar to healthcare in this regard, and other public services.

Weird, my professors answered questions that I and my coursemates had.

If academic discipline really taught rigor and critical thinking, do you think the subjects of this article would be putting themselves through such horrible experiences?

From what I've seen, critical thinking (which I do regard as a highly desirable capability, on a personal level) has to be acquired outside of any established institutional framework. An institution which actually teaches critical thinking is at a disadvantage in many circumstances, because it reduces compliance and hence organizational strategic focus. That disadvantage means that well-established institutions almost always have ways to shut critical thinking down. Those which don't tend to be out-competed by those which do.

If you don't get an apprenticeship, then your options after passing the bar with self-study are essentially (it seems to me):

1. low-paid government work (like public defenders)

2. setting up your own practice (hard to build up a client base initially)

3. working on contract/temp basis for another law firm with variable prospects

Law school isn't just about credentialling and signaling; it also sets you up with a valuable alumni network that helps you get work. Anecdotally it's easier for an aspiring programmer without a network to get a referral into a tech company; go to a few meetups, hackathons or conferences, build a portfolio/github, meet a few people and ask them if they'll refer you (I've both gotten a job and helped someone get a job this way). And very few people ask or care about where you went to school when they can see your work instead. Again I may just be biased because I know the tech field better but it seems to me that it's harder to demonstrate your legal skills since you can't exactly post a sample contract or legal opinion you wrote, on Github (or maybe there's a portfolio site for lawyers too, who knows).

> Confusing “what you need to get a job at a top law firm” with “what you need to be a lawyer” is like confusing “what you need to get a job at Google” with “what you need to be a programmer”.

Again, not knowing the legal field well it seems to me that even mediocre programmers do better than mediocre lawyers because of the supply-demand differences between the two fields.