4 ms·

No offense, but if you are in a saturated field then unionizing and making some of your fellows even more expensive will simply open up opportunities for others

No offense, but if you are in a saturated field then unionizing and making some of your fellows even more expensive will simply open up opportunities for others or even lock many out. I do not understand why people expect to be rewarded for making their career choice knowing full well the field is saturated. The ultimate goal is to get tenured which they should consider that the time invested is the payoff just as with any other career. You don't start in the upper half or top, you pay your dues.

sokoloff 11y ago
If I look at medicine as a comparison, when I graduated undergrad (early 90s), medicine was a field with seemingly very strong prospects. Fast forward 20 years, and the prospects in medicine don't look nearly as good, and certainly not when weighed against the investment (in time and money) and risk (malpractice, regulatory insanity, etc) I wonder if the same thing happened in academia. If you look at the fundamentals a decade ago and continuing even now (consumption rate growing faster than the consumption of medical services, tuition rates rising MUCH faster than inflation), it's reasonable to think that the industry is growing quickly. Whether or not it ought to be, and whether or not that's sustainable, I can understand a counter argument that even if the field is saturated now, if the industry growth continues as implied by the fundamentals, it could still be a good choice. Now, if my teenage offspring ask for advice, I'd tell them to pick something that's meaningful and interesting to them and then double-check that they can survive on the value they create. If so, don't go chasing further monetary value.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  The same did not happen in academia. When I was an undergrad (approx 15 years ago) I was well aware that it's a tournament - life is wonderful if you win, otherwise life sucks. A quick google image search suggests this Petrovich guy is about the same age as me. A lot of folks are in academia because they simply can't admit to themselves that they lost. See also people employed as an actor/waiter or musician/barista. Living that lifestyle is a personal choice.
  - mydick 11y ago
    k
- analog31 11y ago
  Medicine is great if you have the money to invest in a medical related business. The degree grants you access to those opportunities. More than half of all doctors are self employed. They own the malpractice insurance companies. They hire people to take care of the red tape. Academics can start businesses, but they don't have unique access to business opportunities.
  - nradov 11y ago
    In the US the number of self employed physicians is rapidly declining. The overhead of dealing with billing, practice management, and EHRs means that medical offices need economies of scale to survive. More and more physicians are becoming regular W-2 employees of hospitals, payers, and large integrated provider groups. Fortunately the unemployment rate for licensed physicians is effectively 0.
    - analog31 11y ago
      Maybe that's good news. I have suspected that the rats nest of doctor owned business entities is a significant driver of health care costs, because it's impossible to figure out where the money is actually going. The doctors will still have "insider" investment opportunities -- in my locale, they own the provider groups as shareholders. I will admit that I favor a government provided health care system, where medical training is free (maybe even for nurses, dental assistants, etc.) and everybody works for the government on a decent professional salary.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
spaceisballer 11y ago
I don't think the real issue is saturation. The problem is that universities aren't interested in tenured positions. So if you want to teach your only option is to take an adjunct position.
- thedufer 11y ago
  Aren't you just saying that the field of tenured professors is saturated? That is, there are more people looking for such jobs than there are available.
  - karmajunkie 11y ago
    It's a lot more complicated than merely a blanket statement of "saturation". The entire industry has changed in some pretty fundamental ways in the last 15 years, and for many if not most of the academics caught up in this, it did so well after they were committed to the endeavor. The problem is not one of just saturation but exploitation of cheap labor caused by artificially constraining the demand (in this case, tenured professorships). Would you say that the market for software developers after the first dotcom implosion was merely saturated and all the out of work devs had chosen careers poorly, joining a saturated market? The two phenomena are not dissimilar.
    - thedufer 11y ago
      > Would you say that the market for software developers after the first dotcom implosion was merely saturated Yes, I sure would. > all the out of work devs had chosen careers poorly, joining a saturated market? I would, although obviously only of the devs who had decided on the job after the crash (given how short it was, this applies to very few). Tenured professorship, on the other hand, has been in decline for a long time and clearly not a good financial choice for close to a decade, if not longer.
Shivetya 11y ago
If not saturation then its the desire of the majority of people in these positions to work part time. The median income is still very high for this type of work. [1]. Read the links within the link provided. Do note that there good numbers of those classified as Adjunct who are former retirees who purposefully work small loads and many in the humanities already knew their course of study had little to no bearing outside of academia which increased competition for what spots there were. The only issue I have found that is truly actionable for people in this position is having to attend mandatory meetings and such without guarantee of pay which I cannot imagine is remotely legal. If you are a parent or student and don't like the situation then ask the schools you plan to attend how they are performing in this area. It won't change unless students stop attending schools which rely on it. Finally the costs of secondary educations are going to come down and this will put even more downward pressure on wages and have colleges and such refrain from tenure track employment. The reason it all came into being is that colleges felt price pressure and had no mean of cutting the tenure levels and worse bloated up non teaching jobs. [1] http://mattbruenig.com/2013/12/04/what-does-the-national-data-say-about-adjuncts/ http://mattbruenig.com/2013/12/04/what-does-the-national-dat...
jostmey 11y ago
Agreed, unionizing will backfire. There are simply to many PhD's for the number of teaching positions.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  Unionizing might well backfire, but I'm not sure there are too many PhDs, if quality education were actually the important metric (it isn't, of course). Ideally college classes would be taught in small groups, but we have classes taught in groups of hundreds to thousands (particularly at large state universities). This has certainly let the universities hire fewer faculty members, shove the lower-division courses off on underpaid adjuncts, etc., but somehow this economy of scale hasn't made it down to the tuition level. Tuition and fees continue to increase, while the number of instructor hours per student continues to decline. Why is that? All of the savings (and more) have been eaten by the administration monster. If there was ever an area ripe for disintermediation higher education is it. As soon as someone figures out a good way around the accreditation roadblock universities as we know them are toast. Most likely we'll wind up with a two-tiered system, with free or low-cost MOOCs (or MOOC-like things) on the low end, and a return to personalized instruction on the high end. What we have now is McDonalds education at Michelin guide prices. That can't last.

sokoloff 11y ago

If I look at medicine as a comparison, when I graduated undergrad (early 90s), medicine was a field with seemingly very strong prospects. Fast forward 20 years, and the prospects in medicine don't look nearly as good, and certainly not when weighed against the investment (in time and money) and risk (malpractice, regulatory insanity, etc) I wonder if the same thing happened in academia. If you look at the fundamentals a decade ago and continuing even now (consumption rate growing faster than the consumption of medical services, tuition rates rising MUCH faster than inflation), it's reasonable to think that the industry is growing quickly. Whether or not it ought to be, and whether or not that's sustainable, I can understand a counter argument that even if the field is saturated now, if the industry growth continues as implied by the fundamentals, it could still be a good choice. Now, if my teenage offspring ask for advice, I'd tell them to pick something that's meaningful and interesting to them and then double-check that they can survive on the value they create. If so, don't go chasing further monetary value.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
The same did not happen in academia. When I was an undergrad (approx 15 years ago) I was well aware that it's a tournament - life is wonderful if you win, otherwise life sucks. A quick google image search suggests this Petrovich guy is about the same age as me. A lot of folks are in academia because they simply can't admit to themselves that they lost. See also people employed as an actor/waiter or musician/barista. Living that lifestyle is a personal choice.
- mydick 11y ago
  k
analog31 11y ago
Medicine is great if you have the money to invest in a medical related business. The degree grants you access to those opportunities. More than half of all doctors are self employed. They own the malpractice insurance companies. They hire people to take care of the red tape. Academics can start businesses, but they don't have unique access to business opportunities.
- nradov 11y ago
  In the US the number of self employed physicians is rapidly declining. The overhead of dealing with billing, practice management, and EHRs means that medical offices need economies of scale to survive. More and more physicians are becoming regular W-2 employees of hospitals, payers, and large integrated provider groups. Fortunately the unemployment rate for licensed physicians is effectively 0.
  - analog31 11y ago
    Maybe that's good news. I have suspected that the rats nest of doctor owned business entities is a significant driver of health care costs, because it's impossible to figure out where the money is actually going. The doctors will still have "insider" investment opportunities -- in my locale, they own the provider groups as shareholders. I will admit that I favor a government provided health care system, where medical training is free (maybe even for nurses, dental assistants, etc.) and everybody works for the government on a decent professional salary.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

spaceisballer 11y ago

I don't think the real issue is saturation. The problem is that universities aren't interested in tenured positions. So if you want to teach your only option is to take an adjunct position.

thedufer 11y ago
Aren't you just saying that the field of tenured professors is saturated? That is, there are more people looking for such jobs than there are available.
- karmajunkie 11y ago
  It's a lot more complicated than merely a blanket statement of "saturation". The entire industry has changed in some pretty fundamental ways in the last 15 years, and for many if not most of the academics caught up in this, it did so well after they were committed to the endeavor. The problem is not one of just saturation but exploitation of cheap labor caused by artificially constraining the demand (in this case, tenured professorships). Would you say that the market for software developers after the first dotcom implosion was merely saturated and all the out of work devs had chosen careers poorly, joining a saturated market? The two phenomena are not dissimilar.
  - thedufer 11y ago
    > Would you say that the market for software developers after the first dotcom implosion was merely saturated Yes, I sure would. > all the out of work devs had chosen careers poorly, joining a saturated market? I would, although obviously only of the devs who had decided on the job after the crash (given how short it was, this applies to very few). Tenured professorship, on the other hand, has been in decline for a long time and clearly not a good financial choice for close to a decade, if not longer.

Shivetya 11y ago

If not saturation then its the desire of the majority of people in these positions to work part time. The median income is still very high for this type of work. [1]. Read the links within the link provided. Do note that there good numbers of those classified as Adjunct who are former retirees who purposefully work small loads and many in the humanities already knew their course of study had little to no bearing outside of academia which increased competition for what spots there were. The only issue I have found that is truly actionable for people in this position is having to attend mandatory meetings and such without guarantee of pay which I cannot imagine is remotely legal. If you are a parent or student and don't like the situation then ask the schools you plan to attend how they are performing in this area. It won't change unless students stop attending schools which rely on it. Finally the costs of secondary educations are going to come down and this will put even more downward pressure on wages and have colleges and such refrain from tenure track employment. The reason it all came into being is that colleges felt price pressure and had no mean of cutting the tenure levels and worse bloated up non teaching jobs. [1] http://mattbruenig.com/2013/12/04/what-does-the-national-data-say-about-adjuncts/ http://mattbruenig.com/2013/12/04/what-does-the-national-dat...

jostmey 11y ago

Agreed, unionizing will backfire. There are simply to many PhD's for the number of teaching positions.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
Unionizing might well backfire, but I'm not sure there are too many PhDs, if quality education were actually the important metric (it isn't, of course). Ideally college classes would be taught in small groups, but we have classes taught in groups of hundreds to thousands (particularly at large state universities). This has certainly let the universities hire fewer faculty members, shove the lower-division courses off on underpaid adjuncts, etc., but somehow this economy of scale hasn't made it down to the tuition level. Tuition and fees continue to increase, while the number of instructor hours per student continues to decline. Why is that? All of the savings (and more) have been eaten by the administration monster. If there was ever an area ripe for disintermediation higher education is it. As soon as someone figures out a good way around the accreditation roadblock universities as we know them are toast. Most likely we'll wind up with a two-tiered system, with free or low-cost MOOCs (or MOOC-like things) on the low end, and a return to personalized instruction on the high end. What we have now is McDonalds education at Michelin guide prices. That can't last.