6 ms·

Why do these teachers take on such a life? You could say that the long-timers were fooled, they are now in too deep, and can't start a new career, but those dec

Why do these teachers take on such a life? You could say that the long-timers were fooled, they are now in too deep, and can't start a new career, but those deciding whether to do a PhD must know what they are facing, no? This sort of article has been going around for many years.

sandspar 3y ago
Academia is one of the very few places where you can do research of your choice. If your theory is like a bug in your brain then you have few other options.
- jnwatson 3y ago
  One doesn't need a professorship to do research, or go to conferences, or publish papers. There are plenty of folks that do private research on their own time. This is the right choice for the vast majority of folks that have the "bug".
  - ghaff 3y ago
    As someone who was very into photography as an undergrad and observing the reality of the profession for almost all photographers, I basically made the almost certainly wise decision to get a "real" job and do my photography as a hobby.
  - linguae 3y ago
    This is true, but what makes academia attractive is the idea of being paid to do research. One doesn’t have to be in the NBA to play basketball, but there’s a world of difference between playing at the local park versus being on the Golden State Warriors. Of course, the reality of research careers is quite different from the pursuit of research itself. They’re quite competitive, especially in fields that lack a lucrative industry, and there are many restrictions on freedom that many people aren’t aware of until they actually become researchers. I learned these realities the hard way, and I’m in the process of restructuring my life to where I can pursue research as a hobby rather than as a paid profession. Of course, the hardest part about pursuing research as a hobby is making a living outside of it. If a person who wants to be a researcher is aware of this reality, then he or she could prepare by developing some marketable skill, product, or service and use that to make a living while devoting time outside of money-making to research. However, for those deep in research or academia who feel trapped in postdocs, adjunct positions, or other unfulfilling positions but who spent their who careers preparing for an elusive permanent research job without developing other skills, it can be a very painful transition, even if in the long run stubbornness results in an even more painful outcome.
    - badpun 3y ago
      > One doesn’t have to be in the NBA to play basketball, but there’s a world of difference between playing at the local park versus being on the Golden State Warriors. Depends on the research field. For example, Einstein did some of his best work without any university affiliation.
      - linguae 3y ago
        This is true; one doesn't need a university affiliation to do research in many fields. In Einstein's case, he famously worked as a patent clerk during his day job while working on his research during his spare time. However, there is a difference between pursuing research as a unpaid side activity versus being paid to do research; that is the sentiment I wanted to express with my local park vs. NBA analogy. While arguably pursuing research as a hobby provides a great deal of freedom (e.g., no publishing or "impact" demands from management because there are no managers), the problem is making a living that is sufficient for paying for shelter, food, and other necessities typically requires 40 or more hours per week of work, which relegates research to nights and weekends, which I don't believe is enough time to engage in deep work, though it's not impossible and there are many people who have done this, Einstein included (https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/milestones/greatinventors/einstein/index.html https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/mileston... and https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-ipi/einstein/einstein-at-the-patent-office https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-ipi/einste...). It just requires a job that is not too intellectually demanding. On the flipside, working as a paid researcher means you don't have to worry about trying to carve out free time to do your research. However, "he who pays the piper calls the tune" has become the mantra of research institutions these days; the days of pure curiosity-driven research, whether in academia or in industry (pre-divestiture Bell Labs and Bob Taylor-era Xerox PARC), are long past. These are the tradeoffs of being a researcher these days, and I've come to know this the hard way.
      - aragilar 3y ago
        He also did that more than a century ago.
  - ray__ 3y ago
    This only holds true for research that doesn't require a lab.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  You can’t do that either. You are dependent on grant funding which means you can’t just research what you want, you need to tailor it to what the grant writer wants. If you want to truly research what you want you need your own huge pile of money.
- araes 3y ago
  Couple issues: The article itself is basically a direct description of how people are lured into academia with exactly that expectation, and then end up in the gig economy. Not "choosing" much of anything. The market says you're the academic equivalent of a taxi driver. There are other locations to consider theory if theory's your thing. Museums: support of archaeology, art analysis, sociology, geography, history. Ex: The British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects Aquariums/Zoos: Earth science, plants, genetics, ecology, animal science, zoology, microbiology, nutrition, pathology, physiology, medicine, conservation. Ex: Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, https://www.columbuszoo.org/science https://www.columbuszoo.org/science NGOs and Foundations: Earth science, plants, genetics, ecology, astronomy, education, data science, sampling/measurements, foreign affairs, international politics, finance, economics, public outreach. Ex: The Carnegie Foundation and Sub-Foundations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_Yo... Gov: support of aeronautics, engineering, data science, computer science, forestry, agriculture, architecture, almost every hard science, economics, finance, law, even recreational specilists. [1] Feds have ~3M employees. States have ~5M employees. Local govs have ~14M employees. [2] A lot of the jobs are workaday jobs, yet there's still a bunch out of ~22M that are somewhat "research". Formerly a contractor at NASA, and even for a contractor (not civil servant), seven publications. Mostly, minor citations, maybe 10-15, yet still, seven publications on research topics. [1] https://www.usajobs.gov/help/working-in-government/unique-hiring-paths/students/federal-occupations-by-college-major/ https://www.usajobs.gov/help/working-in-government/unique-hi... [1] http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/u-s-government-employment-during-presidential-terms.jpg http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/u-s-government-employ...
- linguae 3y ago
  Even in academia the freedom of inquiry is circumscribed by performance expectations by peers and administrators, especially pre-tenure. While tenure-track professors do not have managers telling them what to research and how to go about doing it like many industry researchers do, they are often expected to publish regularly (preferably in top venues, and at top universities this is required), do “impactful” work (where “impact” is often measured by citation counts, awards, examples of adoption by industry, etc.), and raise money for the university by acquiring grants. Grant agencies such as the National Science Foundation have their own requirements that have a way of circumscribing a professor’s research direction, and they are very competitive to earn. So, it is more accurate to say that academia gives professors the freedom to run their own research organization, but if that professor wants a good shot at getting tenure and staying in the good graces of the university, the professor needs to be mindful of the expectations that the university has placed and the requirements of funding agencies. Even if a professor is mindful of these things, research is inherently risky, and a professor runs the risk of not getting tenure due to research results and grant-earning efforts not meeting expectations. This is distinct from the idea that a professor can do whatever research he or she wants. Theoretically this is true in the sense that there will be no manager watching over the professor’s shoulder, but if the professor isn’t meeting the university’s performance expectations for publications and grants, the professor won’t make tenure, and even post-tenure the university could find ways to make life difficult for the “unproductive” professor. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I personally believe that a professor actually has more freedom in predominantly teaching environments. At teaching-oriented universities, the publication and grant-earning requirements are typically lower than that of research universities. At all-undergraduate colleges, sometimes there are no expectations for research. Of course, reduced research requirements mean increased teaching requirements, which could be challenging for researchers who don’t have an interest or talent for teaching. But for those who love teaching and who want reduced or even non-existent “publish or perish” pressure, then a teaching-oriented institution is a great alternative. Even if one’s research is restricted to winter and summer breaks due to the workload of teaching, this certainly beats trying to do research as a hobby on nights and weekends while juggling a 9-5 job and only getting 2-4 weeks PTO per year.
Cheer2171 3y ago
I entered grad school at 22, thinking I would become a CS prof. I loved CS research I did as an undergrad in a prof's lab. That prof was my role model for my still not fully formed brain. I wasn't told all these things by him or the program, but I did my research and found stats about how so few PhDs become profs. Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their advice about how to make it is like taking financial advice from lottery winners. I read lots of these kinds of "grad school isn't worth it" confessionals. But many were about humanities PhDs, not STEM. And I thought I was special, above average, even maybe a genius. And I was special, but apparently not special enough. I dropped out to work in tech and have a better salary and life than my few ex classmates in my program who did make it in academia. But one of my housemates was a humanities PhD who also started at 22, and was smarter and a harder worker than any of us STEM PhD students. We all thought that if any of us deserved to make it in academia, it was him. But the humanities are shrinking in the academy. What the article describes is his current life. An PhD from an R1 university who can only find a patchwork of adjunct positions at different 2 year community colleges. He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage? He got some work doing freelance writing and editing, mostly helping college applicants with their essays, but ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market. We all made these decisions at age 22, after spending 4 very formative years in college. I made the same stupid decision he did and mine worked out, but the intellectual bug that bit me just so happened to be infinitely more valuable to industry than the one that bit him.
- post- 3y ago
  > He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage? I appreciate the thinking that went into the parent post, but I want to challenge this statement, which is emblematic of the kind of reasoning that paints training in the humanities as frivolous and out of touch with the demands of the market, as if the market is the sole arbiter of reality. I recently earned a PhD in a humanities field, and I'm currently gainfully employed as a research software engineer at a major university. I'm making less than I did when I was in tech just out of college, but more than many of my humanities colleagues in various positions between the PhD and the tenure track. My point is not to brag about being able to get into tech with a humanities background, but to say that I don't think I'm anything special. When I was first applying for tech jobs out of college, I drew on my training in literature and human languages to guide my learning and application of CS fundamentals. I admit that I caught a lucky break with companies willing to take a chance on someone with a non-traditional background, and I'm grateful to have these skills to draw on if a traditional academic career doesn't work out for me. But I think my story is repeatable. But back to the original point: rather than denigrating the value of a history PhD, it's important to question the market forces that have created this kind of precariousness for people who possess not only important knowledge about the past but, more importantly, the training and skills to use that knowledge to interpret the present. The assumption that jobs are available to people because of what they _know_ is based on faulty logic that comes from the MBA-ification of everything -- the obsession with "deliverables." Really, what PhD training in any discipline brings is both a deep pool of knowledge and the training to synthesize and use those "facts" in novel ways. > ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market Relatedly, this statement only makes sense if one assumes that we have given up on teaching everyday people -- non-specialists -- the importance of the medium for a message's delivery, dissemination, and broader understanding. "ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market" because we have collectively failed to reinforce the value of human perspectives on an issue. Allowing "The Market" to dictate reality has led to schisms in shared truth like climate change denialism. We need interpreters of history, literature, drama, etc. in order to get back to any hope of getting back to broad agreement about what the world is. Will we ever get everyone to agree? Of course not, but market forces can't repair these divisions. As the old Upton Sinclair quote goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
setgree 3y ago
Status and autonomy. Even an adjunct professor still gets addressed with a honorific. You rarely have anyone yell at you or look over your shoulder as you work. And, as a friend who has a TT job at a Canadian University recently observed, it is generally the adjuncts who most adopt the professorial look: sweaters, jackets with elbow patches, horn-rimmed glasses. So long as these things are enticing to enough people, supply will outstrip demand and wages will fall.
- mycologos 3y ago
  I think this is an underrated point in these discussions. There are three components to every job: how much value other people get out of you doing it, how much value you get out of doing it, and how many other people want to do it. Whether it's game development or adjunct prof'ing, employers know when the job their offering has benefits beyond pure salary, and they adjust that salary accordingly. The humanities grad students I knew weren't stupid. They could see the statistics in front of them. But staying the university world for a bit longer, and seeing other people do the same, tempted them down that path, and continues to tempt a surprising number of them.
jseliger 3y ago
"This sort of article has been going around for many years." Exactly, this article could've been written any time in the last couple decades. In 2016 I put up "Universities treat adjuncts like they do because they can" in response to one of them. https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-like-they-do-because-they-can https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc.... Supply and demand.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
red_admiral 3y ago
Many reasons, but here's one from the same site: https://thelocal.to/one-year-fifty-cover-letters-three-interviews-zero-jobs/ https://thelocal.to/one-year-fifty-cover-letters-three-inter... (the URL kind of gives the point away already)
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  getting rejected from a master’s program is like dodging a bullet
gnicholas 3y ago
I worked as a lawyer from 2007-2014. Most of the partners I worked for had PhDs and had taught at least briefly in the 80s-90s. They went back to school to get JDs (their PhDs were in unrelated fields) and now make very good money as biglaw partners. One is married to a professor at an R1, but that's the extent of their connection to higher ed. The lack of jobs for PhDs has been a trend for several decades. These guys are smart and are successful. They came from all different fields. And if they hadn't detoured into academia they would have had an extra 10-15 years of legal earnings (or the ability to retire that much sooner).

sandspar 3y ago

Academia is one of the very few places where you can do research of your choice. If your theory is like a bug in your brain then you have few other options.

jnwatson 3y ago
One doesn't need a professorship to do research, or go to conferences, or publish papers. There are plenty of folks that do private research on their own time. This is the right choice for the vast majority of folks that have the "bug".
- ghaff 3y ago
  As someone who was very into photography as an undergrad and observing the reality of the profession for almost all photographers, I basically made the almost certainly wise decision to get a "real" job and do my photography as a hobby.
- linguae 3y ago
  This is true, but what makes academia attractive is the idea of being paid to do research. One doesn’t have to be in the NBA to play basketball, but there’s a world of difference between playing at the local park versus being on the Golden State Warriors. Of course, the reality of research careers is quite different from the pursuit of research itself. They’re quite competitive, especially in fields that lack a lucrative industry, and there are many restrictions on freedom that many people aren’t aware of until they actually become researchers. I learned these realities the hard way, and I’m in the process of restructuring my life to where I can pursue research as a hobby rather than as a paid profession. Of course, the hardest part about pursuing research as a hobby is making a living outside of it. If a person who wants to be a researcher is aware of this reality, then he or she could prepare by developing some marketable skill, product, or service and use that to make a living while devoting time outside of money-making to research. However, for those deep in research or academia who feel trapped in postdocs, adjunct positions, or other unfulfilling positions but who spent their who careers preparing for an elusive permanent research job without developing other skills, it can be a very painful transition, even if in the long run stubbornness results in an even more painful outcome.
  - badpun 3y ago
    > One doesn’t have to be in the NBA to play basketball, but there’s a world of difference between playing at the local park versus being on the Golden State Warriors. Depends on the research field. For example, Einstein did some of his best work without any university affiliation.
    - linguae 3y ago
      This is true; one doesn't need a university affiliation to do research in many fields. In Einstein's case, he famously worked as a patent clerk during his day job while working on his research during his spare time. However, there is a difference between pursuing research as a unpaid side activity versus being paid to do research; that is the sentiment I wanted to express with my local park vs. NBA analogy. While arguably pursuing research as a hobby provides a great deal of freedom (e.g., no publishing or "impact" demands from management because there are no managers), the problem is making a living that is sufficient for paying for shelter, food, and other necessities typically requires 40 or more hours per week of work, which relegates research to nights and weekends, which I don't believe is enough time to engage in deep work, though it's not impossible and there are many people who have done this, Einstein included (https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/milestones/greatinventors/einstein/index.html https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/mileston... and https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-ipi/einstein/einstein-at-the-patent-office https://www.ige.ch/en/about-us/the-history-of-the-ipi/einste...). It just requires a job that is not too intellectually demanding. On the flipside, working as a paid researcher means you don't have to worry about trying to carve out free time to do your research. However, "he who pays the piper calls the tune" has become the mantra of research institutions these days; the days of pure curiosity-driven research, whether in academia or in industry (pre-divestiture Bell Labs and Bob Taylor-era Xerox PARC), are long past. These are the tradeoffs of being a researcher these days, and I've come to know this the hard way.
    - aragilar 3y ago
      He also did that more than a century ago.
- ray__ 3y ago
  This only holds true for research that doesn't require a lab.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
You can’t do that either. You are dependent on grant funding which means you can’t just research what you want, you need to tailor it to what the grant writer wants. If you want to truly research what you want you need your own huge pile of money.
araes 3y ago
Couple issues: The article itself is basically a direct description of how people are lured into academia with exactly that expectation, and then end up in the gig economy. Not "choosing" much of anything. The market says you're the academic equivalent of a taxi driver. There are other locations to consider theory if theory's your thing. Museums: support of archaeology, art analysis, sociology, geography, history. Ex: The British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects Aquariums/Zoos: Earth science, plants, genetics, ecology, animal science, zoology, microbiology, nutrition, pathology, physiology, medicine, conservation. Ex: Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, https://www.columbuszoo.org/science https://www.columbuszoo.org/science NGOs and Foundations: Earth science, plants, genetics, ecology, astronomy, education, data science, sampling/measurements, foreign affairs, international politics, finance, economics, public outreach. Ex: The Carnegie Foundation and Sub-Foundations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_Yo... Gov: support of aeronautics, engineering, data science, computer science, forestry, agriculture, architecture, almost every hard science, economics, finance, law, even recreational specilists. [1] Feds have ~3M employees. States have ~5M employees. Local govs have ~14M employees. [2] A lot of the jobs are workaday jobs, yet there's still a bunch out of ~22M that are somewhat "research". Formerly a contractor at NASA, and even for a contractor (not civil servant), seven publications. Mostly, minor citations, maybe 10-15, yet still, seven publications on research topics. [1] https://www.usajobs.gov/help/working-in-government/unique-hiring-paths/students/federal-occupations-by-college-major/ https://www.usajobs.gov/help/working-in-government/unique-hi... [1] http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/u-s-government-employment-during-presidential-terms.jpg http://www.truthfulpolitics.com/images/u-s-government-employ...
linguae 3y ago
Even in academia the freedom of inquiry is circumscribed by performance expectations by peers and administrators, especially pre-tenure. While tenure-track professors do not have managers telling them what to research and how to go about doing it like many industry researchers do, they are often expected to publish regularly (preferably in top venues, and at top universities this is required), do “impactful” work (where “impact” is often measured by citation counts, awards, examples of adoption by industry, etc.), and raise money for the university by acquiring grants. Grant agencies such as the National Science Foundation have their own requirements that have a way of circumscribing a professor’s research direction, and they are very competitive to earn. So, it is more accurate to say that academia gives professors the freedom to run their own research organization, but if that professor wants a good shot at getting tenure and staying in the good graces of the university, the professor needs to be mindful of the expectations that the university has placed and the requirements of funding agencies. Even if a professor is mindful of these things, research is inherently risky, and a professor runs the risk of not getting tenure due to research results and grant-earning efforts not meeting expectations. This is distinct from the idea that a professor can do whatever research he or she wants. Theoretically this is true in the sense that there will be no manager watching over the professor’s shoulder, but if the professor isn’t meeting the university’s performance expectations for publications and grants, the professor won’t make tenure, and even post-tenure the university could find ways to make life difficult for the “unproductive” professor. I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I personally believe that a professor actually has more freedom in predominantly teaching environments. At teaching-oriented universities, the publication and grant-earning requirements are typically lower than that of research universities. At all-undergraduate colleges, sometimes there are no expectations for research. Of course, reduced research requirements mean increased teaching requirements, which could be challenging for researchers who don’t have an interest or talent for teaching. But for those who love teaching and who want reduced or even non-existent “publish or perish” pressure, then a teaching-oriented institution is a great alternative. Even if one’s research is restricted to winter and summer breaks due to the workload of teaching, this certainly beats trying to do research as a hobby on nights and weekends while juggling a 9-5 job and only getting 2-4 weeks PTO per year.

Cheer2171 3y ago

I entered grad school at 22, thinking I would become a CS prof. I loved CS research I did as an undergrad in a prof's lab. That prof was my role model for my still not fully formed brain. I wasn't told all these things by him or the program, but I did my research and found stats about how so few PhDs become profs. Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their advice about how to make it is like taking financial advice from lottery winners. I read lots of these kinds of "grad school isn't worth it" confessionals. But many were about humanities PhDs, not STEM. And I thought I was special, above average, even maybe a genius. And I was special, but apparently not special enough. I dropped out to work in tech and have a better salary and life than my few ex classmates in my program who did make it in academia. But one of my housemates was a humanities PhD who also started at 22, and was smarter and a harder worker than any of us STEM PhD students. We all thought that if any of us deserved to make it in academia, it was him. But the humanities are shrinking in the academy. What the article describes is his current life. An PhD from an R1 university who can only find a patchwork of adjunct positions at different 2 year community colleges. He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage? He got some work doing freelance writing and editing, mostly helping college applicants with their essays, but ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market. We all made these decisions at age 22, after spending 4 very formative years in college. I made the same stupid decision he did and mine worked out, but the intellectual bug that bit me just so happened to be infinitely more valuable to industry than the one that bit him.

post- 3y ago
> He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage? I appreciate the thinking that went into the parent post, but I want to challenge this statement, which is emblematic of the kind of reasoning that paints training in the humanities as frivolous and out of touch with the demands of the market, as if the market is the sole arbiter of reality. I recently earned a PhD in a humanities field, and I'm currently gainfully employed as a research software engineer at a major university. I'm making less than I did when I was in tech just out of college, but more than many of my humanities colleagues in various positions between the PhD and the tenure track. My point is not to brag about being able to get into tech with a humanities background, but to say that I don't think I'm anything special. When I was first applying for tech jobs out of college, I drew on my training in literature and human languages to guide my learning and application of CS fundamentals. I admit that I caught a lucky break with companies willing to take a chance on someone with a non-traditional background, and I'm grateful to have these skills to draw on if a traditional academic career doesn't work out for me. But I think my story is repeatable. But back to the original point: rather than denigrating the value of a history PhD, it's important to question the market forces that have created this kind of precariousness for people who possess not only important knowledge about the past but, more importantly, the training and skills to use that knowledge to interpret the present. The assumption that jobs are available to people because of what they _know_ is based on faulty logic that comes from the MBA-ification of everything -- the obsession with "deliverables." Really, what PhD training in any discipline brings is both a deep pool of knowledge and the training to synthesize and use those "facts" in novel ways. > ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market Relatedly, this statement only makes sense if one assumes that we have given up on teaching everyday people -- non-specialists -- the importance of the medium for a message's delivery, dissemination, and broader understanding. "ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market" because we have collectively failed to reinforce the value of human perspectives on an issue. Allowing "The Market" to dictate reality has led to schisms in shared truth like climate change denialism. We need interpreters of history, literature, drama, etc. in order to get back to any hope of getting back to broad agreement about what the world is. Will we ever get everyone to agree? Of course not, but market forces can't repair these divisions. As the old Upton Sinclair quote goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

setgree 3y ago

Status and autonomy. Even an adjunct professor still gets addressed with a honorific. You rarely have anyone yell at you or look over your shoulder as you work. And, as a friend who has a TT job at a Canadian University recently observed, it is generally the adjuncts who most adopt the professorial look: sweaters, jackets with elbow patches, horn-rimmed glasses. So long as these things are enticing to enough people, supply will outstrip demand and wages will fall.

mycologos 3y ago
I think this is an underrated point in these discussions. There are three components to every job: how much value other people get out of you doing it, how much value you get out of doing it, and how many other people want to do it. Whether it's game development or adjunct prof'ing, employers know when the job their offering has benefits beyond pure salary, and they adjust that salary accordingly. The humanities grad students I knew weren't stupid. They could see the statistics in front of them. But staying the university world for a bit longer, and seeing other people do the same, tempted them down that path, and continues to tempt a surprising number of them.

jseliger 3y ago

"This sort of article has been going around for many years." Exactly, this article could've been written any time in the last couple decades. In 2016 I put up "Universities treat adjuncts like they do because they can" in response to one of them. https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-like-they-do-because-they-can https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjunc.... Supply and demand.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

red_admiral 3y ago

Many reasons, but here's one from the same site: https://thelocal.to/one-year-fifty-cover-letters-three-interviews-zero-jobs/ https://thelocal.to/one-year-fifty-cover-letters-three-inter... (the URL kind of gives the point away already)

iraqmtpizza 3y ago
getting rejected from a master’s program is like dodging a bullet

gnicholas 3y ago

I worked as a lawyer from 2007-2014. Most of the partners I worked for had PhDs and had taught at least briefly in the 80s-90s. They went back to school to get JDs (their PhDs were in unrelated fields) and now make very good money as biglaw partners. One is married to a professor at an R1, but that's the extent of their connection to higher ed. The lack of jobs for PhDs has been a trend for several decades. These guys are smart and are successful. They came from all different fields. And if they hadn't detoured into academia they would have had an extra 10-15 years of legal earnings (or the ability to retire that much sooner).