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    BurningSpearHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:36pm

    So the cost of tuition has risen steadily and the portion of that used to pay faculty has clearly declined. Where is all that money going?

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      ExtremeModerateBurningSpear
      6/21/16 1:40pm

      Student services. Those ineffective diversity departments, underutilized academic success centers, and lazy rivers all cost money. That’s one of many issues with public higher education - so much overhead and fluff.

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      kamla deviBurningSpear
      6/21/16 1:42pm

      sports sports sport SPORTS university presidents SPORTS

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    Portlandnative1984Hamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:33pm

    175k in debt? 😞

    It makes me sick, but I just don't know why he would get himself that far in debt without a guarantee of a good/high paying job.

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      ThenSAPortlandnative1984
      6/21/16 1:45pm

      He honestly would have been better off buying $175K worth of lottery tickets.

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      CharitybPortlandnative1984
      6/21/16 1:45pm

      It kind of ties into the whole “stop lying” theme. I think a lot of people in the current generation were given unrealistic visions of job prospects by their mentors and counselors, and that is a big part of what has to stop I guess. Unions is the biggest thing, but secondary to that should be more honesty and compassion from undergrad and PhD advisors.

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    ReburnsABurningReturnsHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:49pm

    So much university money is spent on administrative and bureaucratic salaries—an entry level enrollment specialist job at my institution pays about 10k more per year with benefits than I earn with my advanced degree.

    I wonder if he has ever actually tried to give serious thought to why an “entry level enrollment specialist” makes so much more money than an adjunct faculty member.

    I wonder what would happen if this guy’s college just said “Fuck it! we don’t need to pay enrollment specialists $27,000 a year to do their jobs!” I’m sure it would be nothing bad or detrimental at all.

    The nice, convenient thing about using the whole “administrative bloat” generalization, or some derivation thereof, is that it allows you to avoid actually looking at the specific jobs that any given “administrator” does.

    That’s helpful because evaluating the need for administrative jobs is not elegant or intellectually stimulating. It’s very down in the weeds and rooted in much more earthy considerations like practicality and regulation than befits the delicate intellectual constitutions of people like, say, individuals who have their MA.

    If you can just write it all off with some handwaiving and a very broad sort of scoffing at “administrative bloat”, that is just so much nicer. I mean, who’s in favor of “administrative bloat”? No one in their right minds of course. Bloating is uncomfortable, after all.

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      ghostandgoblinReburnsABurningReturns
      6/21/16 1:52pm

      Actually a lot of people are quite fine with administrative bloat, like the people who end up running the small fiefdoms they build.

      It’s a problem that private corporations started to tackle in the 1970s as the giant conglomerates the CEOs built turned out to be little more than paeans to their own egos. Sadly it seems universities have not dealt with that yet.

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      ReburnsABurningReturnsghostandgoblin
      6/21/16 1:57pm

      Well, maybe, but where’s the actual evidence that this is really the problem at universities, especially state schools.

      If a private schools’ administrators want to build a community of useless fools who serve only to fellate their own egos, I don’t really care. But has that happened at state schools? Growth in administrative cost alone is not the bar here. Schools have a ton more students than they used to. The financial aid process is both more complicated and increasingly more critical to many students trying to go to school. Overhead naturally has to grow in that environment. Has it really grown so much faster than the student population?

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    CnslrNachosHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:53pm

    “And some days I actually review my life insurance policy’s suicide clause”

    Fuck...

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      XkjacobCnslrNachos
      6/21/16 2:46pm

      I know these testomonials sound bleak, but really they are highly qualified for numerous positions as long as they have at least a masters.

      “I have so much student debt”

      -neglects to tell you there are many debt forgiveness programs

      “I get paid shit to teach”

      - neglectd to tell you 50k+ a year eith debt forgivenesd in certain cities for highschool teaching.

      “My degree is useless”

      I mean... it isnt a mystery on college campus With useless degrees. I was a music major and a touring musician. Guess what? Getting a degree would have been dumb, so i switched to business.

      I think what we are seeing is the C stringers of academia who decided not to opt out. They cant write books, cant decide to double (or even quadruple) their income by teaching highschool students and are flooding their own employment market driving their wages down.

      I say this because within 3 months of my graduation I knew all of the preceeding. My job market was flooded, I specialized and changed industry. I tripled my income. Because I was willing to compromise.

      If someone thinks suicide is the proper response,to having better available job prospects than I do currently,jesus christ grow the fk up.

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      ParaFiniteXkjacob
      6/21/16 4:18pm

      “I think what we are seeing is the C stringers of academia who decided not to opt out.”

      So you think that if academics were more talented then adjuncts would get compensated batter and treated more fairly and/or universities would start opening up more tenure lines?

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    festivusaziliHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:45pm

    Did you get any positive responses that weren’t published, or were they universally negative?

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      crouching tigerfestivusazili
      6/21/16 2:00pm

      I’d be curious to hear the answer to this also.

      There are probably a few (traditional) adjuncts out there who are experts in their field or domain, and who aren’t professors but who get brought in to teach a class here and there that otherwise wouldn’t expose students to said expert. That’s the historical role of adjuncts, not what we’re seeing in these narratives.

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      ProfKewziefestivusazili
      6/21/16 2:44pm

      I teach in the chemistry department at a small liberal arts school in the Pennsylvania. All of our adjuncts are either retired or have full time jobs and pick up one course for extra money or because they like teaching. We also have them only teach lab courses that are already prepped for them so they spend minimal time outside of class, maybe just doing some grading. I just finished my first year in my tenure-track position and, while I already knew I was fortunate to have gotten my job, reading all of these posts has made me appreciate it, and my department, even more.

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    NoOnesPostHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:20pm

    This country man...

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      DubayaTeeEffNoOnesPost
      6/21/16 1:34pm

      Still better than Afghanistan. Low bar, but there’s a whole list of places that is sucks to be right now way worse than to be an adjunct in the US.

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      NoOnesPostDubayaTeeEff
      6/21/16 1:35pm

      oh cool, thanks for the info

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    Myrna MinkoffHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:47pm

    This is only tangentially related, but I think it further illustrates the point.

    I’m a freelancer and I was prospecting some places that might need some freelance editing work, just because I always like to have a Plan B to make a quick buck during any slow periods. Stumbled upon a few agencies that cater to the self-publishing book crowd and/or people who want their reports/thesis/etc. proofread. Their whole schtick is that they offer low cost, fast-turnaround services. They *only* hire PhDs.

    Which made me realize there are enough desperate doctorates out there reliant on the cash from proofreading dreck, at top speed, for what probably amounts to $10-15/hr. to justify such a business and such low rates.

    I’m picturing them all drunk, all day long.

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      ParaFiniteMyrna Minkoff
      6/21/16 3:55pm

      Confirmed.

      - Soon-To-Be Desperate PhD

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      Myrna MinkoffParaFinite
      6/21/16 4:02pm

      I can send some links, if that will help. :(

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    IanHamilton Nolan
    6/21/16 1:34pm

    These are all little parts of the bigger war on education waged by small-government, science-denying, child raping conservative douchebags.

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      DidYouReallyRespondToMyComment?Hamilton Nolan
      6/21/16 2:16pm

      I’m full-time at a community college. We have unions for all faculty, including part-time. They’re paid less than I am proportionally for their teaching load. On the other hand, every semester at the beginning students try to transfer into my classes from part-timers’ sections, usually citing the first day sturm und drang from the instructor about absolutely no late work, no absences, etc. I suppose that’s how they manage their classes given the low pay, multiple jobs, blah blah blah, but our job is to support students and get them through, not tell them “no one gets an A in my class.” (Yes, I hear that a lot.) Seriously, part-time sucks, but it’s not changing until a lot of folks leave the job market. I worked part-time when I was finishing my dissertation, but if I hadn’t found a full-time gig I would’ve sold real estate or anything else. If you have so many classes that the students’ experience suffers, you need to move on.

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        Murry ChangHamilton Nolan
        6/21/16 2:43pm

        “How is it possible that in my own lifetime college education has gone from stable professorial teaching assignments to a mish-mosh of adjunct-taught courses strung tenuously together into barely cohesive programs that are cheaply funded?”

        $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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