{"id":6831,"date":"2015-11-22T04:39:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T04:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/11\/22\/so-youre-getting-a-phd\/"},"modified":"2015-11-22T04:39:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T04:39:47","slug":"so-youre-getting-a-phd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/11\/22\/so-youre-getting-a-phd\/","title":{"rendered":"So You’re Getting a Ph.D.?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the worst job market in America.  Extracts<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

As late as 1970, more than two-thirds of faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities were tenure-line, but now the percentages are reversed, with 1 million out of the estimated 1.5 million Americans teaching college these days classified as \u201ccontingent\u201d faculty, the overwhelming majority of them working part-time. Parents who have shelled out or borrowed the more than $60,000 per year that it can now cost to attend an elite private college may be shocked to learn that their young Jayden or Sophia isn\u2019t actually being taught by the Nobel Prize-winners advertised on the faculty but by shabbily attired nomads with ancient clattering cars who are wondering how to get the phone bill paid. Some adjuncts have successfully unionized. In 2013 adjuncts at the University of Oregon won the right to a boost in base pay, regular raises, health insurance, and the ability to qualify for multiyear contracts. That still didn\u2019t erase\u2014and perhaps set in stone\u2014their second-class faculty status, and they still would earn tens of thousands of dollars less than the greenest assistant professor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Explanations for this two-tier phenomenon abound. Marc Bousquet, now an associate professor of film and media at Emory University, contended, in his 2008 book, How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation<\/em>, that the problem was the \u201ccorporatization\u201d of the university. Bousquet argued that formerly high-minded academia figured out that it was actually a business. Like the rest of American businesses during the 1980s and 1990s, Bousquet argued, universities adopted outsourcing as their most profitable economic model, transforming their historic teaching mission into a form of low-wage, gig-economy service employment in which the majority of the instructors, like Uber drivers, are responsible for their own overhead.<\/span><\/p>\n

An alternative and less class-warfare-driven theory came from Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. In his 2011 book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters<\/em>, Ginsberg targeted administrative bloat as the culprit for the massive shrinkage in tenure-line faculty from the 1970s onward, even as college tuition costs were rising exponentially. He pointed out, for example, that between 1998 and 2008, America\u2019s colleges increased their spending on administration by 36 percent while boosting their spending on instruction by only 22 percent. In an adaptation of his book for the Washington Monthly<\/em> Ginsberg wrote: \u201cAs a result, universities are now filled with armies of functionaries\u2014vice presidents, associate vice presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, vice provosts, assistant provosts, deans, deanlets, and deanlings, all of whom command staffers and assistants\u2014who, more and more, direct the operations of every school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, though, the best course for Ph.D.s facing underemployment\u2014as most do\u2014is probably a version of William Pannapacker\u2019s \u201cJust Don\u2019t Go\u201d: Take the supply-and-demand problem into your own hands, and just say no to adjuncting and its Dickensian miseries. This past April Jason Brennan, a philosophy professor at Georgetown and a self-described libertarian, incurred the Internet wrath of the famously left-leaning adjunct-advocacy community by proclaiming that \u201cit\u2019s hard to feel sorry for [adjuncts].\u201d There\u2019s no reason for them \u201cto wallow in adjunct poverty,\u201d Brennan wrote, pointing out that they could \u201cquit any time and get a perfectly good job at GEICO.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a phone interview, Brennan said, \u201cSo many people consistently make bad decisions. The system isn\u2019t going to deliver more tenure-track jobs. A small number of people will, and the rest get kicked out for good. Most people won\u2019t get what they want. There just isn\u2019t that much money.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Related:  Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy?<\/a>  I give a nuanced answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Professor-Student 'Non-Aggression Pact'<\/span><\/a> I confess an instance of abdication of authority.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Academic Job Market in the 'Sixties<\/a>.  Robert Paul Wolff tells it like it was and I throw in my two cents.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the worst job market in America.  Extracts: As late as 1970, more than two-thirds of faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities were tenure-line, but now the percentages are reversed, with 1 million out of the estimated 1.5 million Americans teaching college these days classified as \u201ccontingent\u201d faculty, the overwhelming majority of them … Continue reading “So You’re Getting a Ph.D.?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}