> It's not just the adjuncts, it is graduate students, too. > It's pretty screwed up. It's a privilege to be in higher education but it is also pretty crushing

> It's not just the adjuncts, it is graduate students, too. > It's pretty screwed up. It's a privilege to be in higher education but it is also pretty crushing and you've got to be a soldier to deal with it. The worst part is I've almost never met anything but great people who willingly put themselves through it. Isn't that selecting for exactly the kind of people they want in academia though? Great people who would willingly put themselves through pain just for the sake of advancing knowledge? I'm not actually convinced that if they paid a better salary it would necessarily end up selecting for people better suited for academia -- not saying this because of lack of skills, but because if you're worried about making money the moment you start, it seems pretty plausible that you (or far people in your shoes than would feel so otherwise) would be distracted by it the whole time and not working purely for the sake of advancing your science.