Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 60 posts

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

#51

Post by jrells »

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.

I wanted to teach high school at one point but couldn't. I was an adjunct lecturer at a college.

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

#52

Post by oijaf888 »

crucini wrote: post #46
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 overeduc…

You feel that a 4 year degree is enough depth and background to learn all of the details of most technical fields to contribute original research to them? To me that seems unlikely and if someone could pick all of that up then they would already be in the Newton category and probably bypass the PhD process altogether.

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

#53

Post by blacksmythe »

plg wrote: post #13

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 positio…

  >> simply getting credentialed (i.e. getting your Ph.D.) 
  >> does not mean you can count on a tenure track 
  >> academic faculty position.
This has never been the case. In order to avoid exponential growth, the average professor that trains Ph.D.s can only produce in his/her career about one student who goes on to become a professor that trains Ph.D.s. (ignoring some growth in a particular field). Some schools produce a much larger number of future professors. As a result many smaller schools produce very few.

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

#54

Post by fecklessyouth »

sopooneo wrote: post #25
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…

I hear you, and I think you make a very good point. But from my own experience failing to do so, I can say that teaching high school well is spectacularly difficult. And if you are not good at the underlying classroom management and people skills, your subject-matter expertise will go largely wasted.

Well, one would hope that classroom management and people skills are imparted by a 5+ years of TA'ing.

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

#55

Post by iak8god »

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.

> In this, as in so many areas of business, the consumer (the student in this case) might wonder where all the money is going.

The student has no idea what an adjunct is, and doesn't particularly care. If it occurs to the student to wonder why the instructor seems frazzled or unprepared, or why he isn't available outside the classroom, the student assumes he is just a bad or lazy professor. But the vast majority of the students have no idea why they're there and are much more interested in their social lives than their studies, so it works out just fine in the end... well, society loses and bunch of overeducated schmucks are really getting shafted, but everything else is going according to plan.

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

#56

Post by wutbrodo »

bashinator wrote: post #32
oulipian wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why there isn't a bigger push to move all these underemployed programmers to careers as cashiers. They'll make more money and get better benefits than what they get as an underemployed programmer. They won't necessarily get much time to "solve problems," but with their typing and math skills, cashiering should be a breeze!

Where are all these underemployed programmers?

I think he was drawing a sarcastic comparison, not making an actual suggestion. The former doesn't require that there actually _be_ underemployed programmers

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

#57

Post by javert »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #29
javert wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying there are not plenty of jobs in the oil fields for people without highly specialized training? That was not my understanding but what I heard was just secondhand. Anyway, it's just an example---there are still plenty of jobs out there for people who are willing to work hard, especially intelligent people, even if they don't have specialized training.

The population of the Dakotas is 1.5 millions. The number of unemployed people in the US stands at 12 millions. The Bakken oil patch couldn't make a dent in the national unemployment rate, even if it wanted to. I have no clue where this pernicious "there's jobs in the Dakotas" meme comes from, but it needs to die right quick.

That is just one example, but the point is that there are a LOT of people in this country that could work but simply don't want to. So the egalitarian whining is just that, whining.

> I have no clue where this pernicious "there's jobs in the Dakotas" meme comes from, but it needs to die right quick.

This is an attempt to replace a rational debate with intimidation. I often see people try to replace it with emotion, but intimidation? Really? I can only assume it wasn't intentional.

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

#58

Post by bashinator »

wutbrodo wrote: post #56
bashinator wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are all these underemployed programmers?

I think he was drawing a sarcastic comparison, not making an actual suggestion. The former doesn't require that there actually _be_ underemployed programmers

And that was also my point. There's no economic reality requiring programmers look at less-ideal employment right now. Anecdotally, I did work retail for a couple years after the first dot-com crash. It was very eye-opening and educational in a lot of ways; no regrets, would do it again if I had to.

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

#59

Post by doktrin »

crucini wrote: post #46
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 overeduc…

I think it's important to note that neither Einstein, Newton nor Galileo were geniuses in a vacuum. They all stood on the shoulders of prior discoveries, and were well educated by the standards of their time.

In general, I think we tend to be a little quick to hero worship. Either way, there's certainly enough room in the scientific community for researchers who are diligent, meticulous and contribute to small measurable improvements in the state of the art.

Moreover, given the increased complexity involved in actually pushing the state of the art in just about any field - I'm not exactly sure what an alternative higher-educational model would or should look like.

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

#60

Post by forkandwait »

scarmig wrote: post #47
forkandwait wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

It is trying to act as a value add, but it failing consistently and pointlessly. The data, I think, are in. It is a waste of time and limits the number of possible good teachers.
Post reply on HN