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    IskaralPustHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:41pm

    As much as I deeply appreciate the capacity of management, across industries, to be terrible to workers, I think this particular issue may be less one of labor/management imbalance than of education generally, and the beliefs it fosters. Our entire liberal arts education system (and to an extent, the schooling that precedes it as well) seems designed to produce professors, but we just don’t need very many professors. We need skilled technical workers, we need plumbers, we need engineers, we need people to keep the robots happy and delay the inevitable uprising, but we do not need more people to teach intellectuals how to teach intellectuals. I’m very sorry for the lies that led these people to become adjuncts, but the solution is probably more to assist them in transitioning out of higher education than to improve their (nonexistent) bargaining power within their current field.

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      ScelestusIskaralPust
      5/31/16 12:46pm

      I’m right there with you. I graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing, but pursued other career goals once it became clear I was never going to be a writer, and am now doing pretty well for myself. Why anybody would get an MFA and expect to be successful legitimately puzzles me.

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      NaturesFistIskaralPust
      5/31/16 12:46pm

      I don’t think its any more complicated than supply and demand. It’s the same reason law graduates have been pissed over the past 10 years, graduating with enormous debt loads and bleak employment opportunities. I empathize for these people, but I also smirk at the irony of the higher education system which churns out so many worthless degrees finally cannibalizing itself and experiencing the frustration so many graduates have.

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    ConnorHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:40pm

    I’m an adjunct, and what gets to me even more than the lack of recognition and pay is the now routine cuts to our benefits. My healthcare costs keep going up and I’m barely able to pay my rent now. It’s crowding out my other life necessities. I didn’t sign up for this.

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      BrooksRobinsonsGloveConnor
      5/31/16 12:42pm

      Sign up for something else.

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      ConnorBrooksRobinsonsGlove
      5/31/16 12:47pm

      Tell you what. I would love to sign up for something else. I would love to sign up for “lower healthcare costs,” but I can’t seem to find where that is being offered. My college should be paying for more of it. We can’t afford it anymore.

      Healthcare costs are just too high, and I hear they’re going even higher.

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    Skipping along to our shared destructionHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:57pm

    Legit question: Are all the departments fucking over their adjuncts and associates, or just those in Liberal Arts schools? Do adjuncts in the physical sciences do alright? I guess I’m looking to see if there’s a disparity of compensation between the departments essentially because the Fine Arts and Humanities majors really have no other option for challenging intellectual work in their chosen field while the Engineers and Molecular Biologists can go do interesting work elsewhere for more compensation.

    Are we undervaluing professors or just the arts?

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      accesscodeSkipping along to our shared destruction
      5/31/16 1:08pm

      ALL.

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      Skipping along to our shared destructionaccesscode
      5/31/16 1:20pm

      Thank you. All I can give you is a Star, sadly.

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    Carlos Danger is my spirit animalHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:53pm

    Seems to me the only way to fix the system is for people to stop getting degrees that are useless outside academia and stop going into academia. The people currently doing it are probably fucked, but if you’re going to keep teaching, do everything you can to discourage students from taking the same path you did. Remember, your university doesn’t give a shit whether you get employed in your field, they barely even give a shit if you get employed at all. All they care is that that sweet, sweet student loan money keeps rolling in.

    We don’t need more art majors, or lit majors, or even political science majors, and that was my fucking major! All those are things you can learn on your own if you really have a passion for it. If you feel you really need a 4-year degree, get it in something that will actually allow you to be employed. I got lucky and stumbled ass-backwards into the IT field because I happened to have that be my hobby when it should’ve been my career, and I’m at the point now where because I already have a degree in something, the only thing I really need to do is get certifications if I want. But I could have been a lot further in life with a lot less debt if I’d realized what I was good at earlier in life, and what would pay the bills.

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      ThrumbolioCarlos Danger is my spirit animal
      5/31/16 1:07pm

      We don’t need more art majors, or lit majors, or even political science majors, and that was my fucking major!

      Just for perspective: I have two English Lit degrees, and have been gainfully employed since leaving undergrad (12 years at this point). I’ve never worked in my “field.”

      The degree doesn’t really matter. The critical thinking, communicative skills, and ability to sell one’s self matter.

      Like, yeah, maybe don’t major in Applied Basketweaving. Other than that sort of thing, any degree can work if you use it well. Hell, one of my co-workers has a degree in Theology, and we don’t work in a church or seminary school.

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      Citizen-KangThrumbolio
      5/31/16 1:11pm

      Those skills you listed should have been attained before college. I know I did. College was where I took in lots of information (all of which has been unnecessary to my career), but the ability to make sense of that information I started learning in middle school and solidified in high school. If someone is learning those skills in their college years, I question what they were up to the previous 6.

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    JustActSurprisedHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:47pm

    Income Based Repayment is an option for those with substantial loans - calculated by your loan servicer based on your previous year’s tax returns. MANY of these servicers for federal loans are understanding if you are unable to make payments. I have had a wonderful experience with my loan servicer and am always shocked at their customer service. If you make under a certain amount, this monthly bill will approach (or possibly be) $0.

    If you work for 10 years for a non-profit, a government agency, and yes, a University, the government program (thanks Obama) will allow you to remit your student loans without penalty. If you work for a higher education institution [501(c)3] you will not have tax liability for the forgiveness given to you.

    That being said, much like the student loan system, a number of these folks obviously didn’t know what they were buying into or didn’t do the research beforehand. The continuous stream of articles posted on this topic, however, doesn’t really seem to have the heft the unemployment articles had, and I think it’s because of the ivory tower type leanings.

    It is awful to have to give up what you’ve worked hard for to find a way to live. But without substantial changes to the system of higher education, there are not going to be enough full time jobs for all of these people. In fact, it would likely take shrinking institutions (and some of them may close) to offer more jobs at the full time level, which would ultimately only serve to shrink the market on open positions.

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      PoodletimeJustActSurprised
      5/31/16 1:19pm

      Actually, not so much. Full-time professors are often given time to have office hours, to do research, and even given lower course loads at similar pay scales so that they can perform administrative tasks. And the number of students who need to be taught is unlikely to drop. If the adjuncts are being paid more, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be fewer of them — it depends on what happens with the student population. And I think a lot of the commenters on here who are echoing the Economics Parrot, “Supply and Demand! Supply and Demand! Rawk! Rawk!” are missing the point: as the cost of college keeps rising and rising, the pay of those doing the bulk of the teaching has fallen and fallen. This means that today’s college students are being taught by folks who are less qualified, less well-rested, less able to be present, and who have no loyalty to one particular institution. This is bizarre, and supply-and-demand does not explain it. Telling the more qualified adjuncts to go and find other work will simply mean that less and less-qualified people will be teaching college students, at the same high rates of tuition. It simply exchanges those who are being exploited (today’s adjuncts) for others who are also being exploited (tomorrow’s adjuncts), but who are more desperate or less qualified. It’s a structural problem, and it needs to be solved in a structural way.

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      JustActSurprisedPoodletime
      5/31/16 1:28pm

      And I think a lot of the commenters on here who are echoing the Economics Parrot, “Supply and Demand! Supply and Demand! Rawk! Rawk!” are missing the point: as the cost of college keeps rising and rising, the pay of those doing the bulk of the teaching has fallen and fallen.

      The number of students attending college in the coming years is going to decline. It is a very simple economic concept to understand: there will not be demand for more faculty if we have fewer students to educate.

      Colleges will shutter their doors, Universities will lay off staff, and the market will shrink. We do not need more adjunct professors - in fact, we already have a glut of folks with PhDs and not enough positions. The “structural” problem you’re railing about? We have too many people with a specialized skill for a market that simply doesn’t need them. On top of that are inflated costs for running these institutions (which primarily come from full time benefits), which will not decrease any time soon either.

      Colleges and Universities simply do not have anywhere to “cut” that would be sufficient to create enough full time positions or to raise the salary of these adjuncts to levels that would work. That’s because the vast majority of colleges and universities are actually state run, or are small private institutions that do not have a sufficient endowment to do so.

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    ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:58pm

    It’s a crooked system led by a majority of administrators who frankly look at colleges not as institutions of higher learning but moneymaking schemes who are downright resentful of educators who might imagine that college could do anything more meaningful than create wealth. (Many of the administrators are failed academics themselves.)

    Counterpoint: Those “administrators” are the ones who actually have to think about how to solve the fact that states, often times because of constrained balance sheets, have been very steadily reducing support for state schools.

    There’s very little evidence beyond whiney anecdotes that “administrative bloat” is a big problem at state universities, where the vast majority of students and adjunct faculty are at.

    Yes, it’s all a money game, mostly because of that dwindling state support and because not many big money donors want to give money for general operating expenses at a state university.

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      accesscodeReburnsABurningReturns
      5/31/16 1:12pm

      Administrative spending has increased nationwide by over 235 percent since 1975. Yeah, don’t be telling me administrative bloat is a myth.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsaccesscode
      5/31/16 1:19pm

      Is that on a nominal or real basis? Do you have a link? Here’s a link to a study that I am basing my ideas on.

      http://www.demos.org/publication/pu…

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    ShyWicklowHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:38pm

    Wow. This again, really?

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeShyWicklow
      5/31/16 12:50pm

      It’s almost like it’s an ongoing problem or something...

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      ConnorShyWicklow
      5/31/16 12:57pm

      They said the same thing during the Civil Rights Marches back in the day. Not a good look.

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    ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 12:53pm

    I am six years out of grad school at USC film school with school debt higher than many mortgages. At a certain point it feels like a scam...

    It is a scam. The whole fucking industry is a scam.

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      DubayaTeeEff╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and Boke
      5/31/16 1:02pm

      A degree from USC in film is pretty much intended to be for people from very privileged backgrounds. That’s where art and the study of it started out, that’s how the institution is priced, and unless you’re ready to be a camera man on a set filming commercials or one of the few working on big hollywood productions or tv sets your film degree pretty much has to be a hobby. Taking out loans to get the degree sounds a lot like depending on making it as a professional football player or movie star: insane.

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeDubayaTeeEff
      5/31/16 1:04pm

      Because they already have industry connections and a job waiting for them because of nepotism, yes. It’s a fucking scam.

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    ThrumbolioHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 1:02pm

    Seems like a good time to reiterate that one can do far more with a humanities degree than shackle themselves to a broken, inadequate higher education system.

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      fluxusvalentineThrumbolio
      5/31/16 3:03pm

      Again, couldn’t agree more!

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    DisinterestedPasserbyHamilton Nolan
    5/31/16 2:29pm

    Given that academia isn’t a “growth industry” (Do we somehow need lots of new more professors for some reason? At my school, it seemed like the professors just stayed in until they died) at what point do you just say you’ve backed the wrong horse and go into something else? It seems like really high risk for a slight chance at getting in.

    I’m sorry these people were sold a bill of goods by their schools but I think it’s time for a lot of these people to get out while they can.

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