The question I was immediately struck by was "how many of those are tenured?". For the last decade+ we've seen the same flow of contract gigs rather than jobs w

The question I was immediately struck by was "how many of those are tenured?". For the last decade+ we've seen the same flow of contract gigs rather than jobs with assured benefits proliferating higher education. It makes our colleges' education poorer because these non-tenured contract profs are making a lower quartile salary with no benefits after 4+ years of being underpaid as a grad student while also pursuing and interviewing for tenured positions/working on their research. Universities have two jobs: 1. teach the populous, but also 2. be a leader in understanding the corner of the world they are focused on. We have been a leader in the latter and the less we invest in it, the more problematic a future we'll face as a nation.