
Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars - tjalfi
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-homeless-sex-work-academia-poverty
======
khawkins
The fact that the article features an English professor is unsurprising. This
is a supply-side problem--liberal arts degrees are in relatively low demand,
but institutions continue to graduate students at unsustainable levels. No one
is telling the students that they're spending 4-12 years getting an education
which is worth less than what they're paying for it.

For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-arts
degrees are universities and schools. Even so, we're graduating people at
rates comparable with STEM fields. With so much supply, the price of the work
is driven far down.

[https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cta.asp](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cta.asp)

~~~
chrisseaton
> For the most part, the only jobs that hire for English and other liberal-
> arts degrees are universities and schools

This is such nonsense. Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as
you have a degree, and with an English degree you can apply for 90% of jobs.
You could graduate and go on to be anything from an advertising executive, to
a soldier. Most jobs don't care - it's technology that's unusual.

~~~
glonq
> Most jobs don't care what degree you have as long as you have a degree

Then why do they require a degree at all? What specific skills will a degreed
applicant have that a high school grad won't?

~~~
maccard
If you have a pool of applicants for a job, all with no relevant experience,
it's an easy filter. You filter out all the people who haven't proven they can
do something they agreed to do for 3/4 years.

~~~
nsxwolf
If that's all it is, there's got to be a way to come up with something that
lets someone prove they are willing to do something for 4 years, but only
costs maybe $250 a year.

~~~
bmarkovic
This is mostly a problem of the Anglo-Saxon world. In continental Europe, for
the most part, at least AFAIK, publicly owned universities are harder to get
in, harder to get a degree from, and valued much more in the job market. The
upside is that the education is subsidized by the government to the point of
being roughly that expensive.

I.e. one enrolls in a privately-owned, for-profit universities if they have
the money, but don't want to work their arse off to get a degree, or don't
have good enough grades from the secondary education to qualify for public
unis.

------
KirinDave
For those who have university degrees, this should be a difficult read. Next
time you say to yourself, "Sure, I went to college. I know that's a privilege,
but I worked hard there and made it because of my hard work and nothing else!"
Remember this article.

This isn't a new phenomenon, but it's a phenomenon that's becoming more acute.
Even if we ignore the adjuncts, the brilliant folks who taught us all what we
know subsist on less than half of the median wage for our professions, with
increasingly mediocre benefits.

These are the same folks who's amazing research work is powering our industry,
often with a 10 year lead time.

~~~
3pt14159
In parts of Europe there the expression: "That's Texas." It roughly means
"That's crazy." but with a 'Murica flavor to it.

Lately, I've been finding myself frequently thinking: "That's Texas."

Let me get this straight. Take a course load of 4 double semester courses per
year with 200 hours of class time total in the given year. Let's double it to
400 hours just to be safe to include exam marking and office hours. A single
student paying $30k per year is paying $75 / hour / student, or an annualized
salary of $150k / year.

True, you can't work all year round, but the average adjunct earns less than
_a single average student 's tuition_?! Where does all the money go? How is
the market so broken?

~~~
dave_sullivan
> How is the market so broken?

Student debt.

Look at the housing market: in the 70s you could buy a house for much less
because houses cost less because people didn't have more money to overpay.
With a thirty year explosion of the mortgage industry and the idea that anyone
should qualify to own a home, suddenly consumers had extra money to outbid
people on buying houses. This broadly increased property prices with no signs
of slowing (unless the money runs out, as per '08). All of that debt is
increasing people's ability to buy (raising demand, increasing prices) but not
increasing their ability to pay (suggesting some kind of time limit).

Now look at the education market: in the 70s, you could buy an education for
much less because people didn't have more money to overpay. The cost of
education was in line with normal market mechanisms. But with a thirty year
explosion of student debt and the idea that everyone should go to college and
qualify for loans if they can't pay for it, prices broadly increased.

The problem is, for many, there is no alternative. "I'm the first one in my
family to be able to go to college." "Not going to college makes it impossible
to find a job." "I have to get an education." When "No thanks, that's crazy,
I'll do something else" is not an option, prices are going to do crazy things.
Perfect example being healthcare costs.

I think "Don't go to college" is the best advice today. Learn to program
early, start working as a freelancer when you're 18 and graduate from
highschool. By the time your friends graduate from college with a bunch of
student debt and can't find a job because they don't have job experience and
employers want to hire people that know what they're doing, you'll be making
and saving a lot more money freelancing with 4+ years of experience under your
belt already. Experience is waaaaaay more valuable than degrees. Might as well
get it early.

~~~
coldcode
What a programmer centric view. 99+% of people are not programmers. You want
to be in any other STEM job you need a university degree(s). Almost any
reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual training and
education.

~~~
technofire
> Almost any reasonable paying job other than programmer require actual
> training and education.

Interesting; this contrasts with the claim of liberal arts graduates who
maintain that simply being competent critical thinkers is all that's required
for almost any job.

~~~
jogjayr
There's a big difference between having the skills for doing the job and
having the credentials for getting the job.

------
danso
It's fitting that the lengthiest non-anonymous example is the English teacher
at San Jose state. Her salary might seem normal in other parts of the country,
but it's very skimpy in San Jose/Silicon Valley/Peninsula

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=ellen+Pe...](http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=ellen+Penney+&y=)

For comparison's sake, here are what physical education teachers in Palo Alto
Unified make:

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-d...](http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-
districts%2Fsanta-clara%2Fpalo-alto-unified&q=physical&y=)

Here's San Jose Unified teachers (they don't seem to have P.E. in the job
titles):

[http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-d...](http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=school-
districts%2Fsanta-clara%2Fsan-jose-unified&q=teacher&y=2016)

Not singling out P.E. teachers or K-12 in general -- look up any Palo Alto
area job type (police, technicians, etc), and they're all in the same range.
And living in this area myself, I completely believe that scale of salary and
benefits is needed if you want employees who can live within 50 miles of Palo
Alto.

~~~
sjg007
Dang, better money than the average software engineer.

------
rayiner
If someone had written an article about struggling actors turning to sex work
and sleeping in cars, nobody would blink an eye. Acting pays little for the
same reason being an academic pays little. Lots of people want to do it, but
there is limited demand, hence only the really exceptional folks make any
money doing it.

Obviously, people shouldn't need to sleep in cars. But the answer to that is a
basic income. It's not treating a specific group of people specially just
because they have college degrees and are more relatable to the elite than
folks who work at Wal-Mart.

~~~
Top19
I want to comment that academics provide such an incredible amount to the
world we live in.

In a time of bullshit thought leaders and companies like Equifax who will tell
you obvious lies, the academic discipline with its rigor, criticalness, and
policing against self-promotion is a kind of last-bastion for intellect in the
West. And even that is sort of cracking.

BTW one country has already tried the “you can only get useful degrees that
have immediately available needs route”. It was the Soviet Union, in which
everyone was an engineer, to such absurd levels Gorbachev got his degree in
“Steel Metallurgy of Ball Bearings”.

~~~
justabystander
> academics provide such an incredible amount to the world we live in.

This is true, but it's not terribly efficient about doing so. Much of it
provides little to no useful return, and some of it actively harms the world
we live in. If we wish to talk about the value of academics, we must honestly
look at the whole balance sheet. Value isn't just about revenue, but costs, as
well. And with rising tuitions and falling class quality, the ROI of a college
education isn't as high as it used to be. For students and for society in
general.

> the academic discipline with its rigor, criticalness, and policing against
> self-promotion is a kind of last-bastion for intellect in the West.

I'm really struggling to word this in a polite way without discarding facts
(sorry if I'm rude), but, what kind of fantasy led you to believe this is or
has been the standard for academia?

\- Academic discipline is more about knowing how to file papers and abuse TAs
and post-grad students for free work, rather than about following scientific
processes. There's been truckloads of articles lately about insufficient
scientific rigor on published papers - especially in the social sciences. The
glut of students, professors and information has lead to more noise than
signal. Self-referential theories get presented as fact, where papers
reference other papers still in peer review. Student thesis subjects are
encouraged to focus on the professors' work in order to increase citations and
prestige. Controversial papers are encouraged instead of scientific papers,
which has caused all sorts of problems in academic journals and the parasitic
journalists who write clickbait from them. And then there's the ever-present
massaging of data and discarding of any contradictory samples.

\- Self-promotion is absolutely huge in academia and has been that way for
decades. That's how "publish or perish" came to be a staple of the industry.
Not to mention the prestige factor in selecting mentors and advisors, politics
in academia between people at the professor level can get extremely vicious.
Elite oligarchies are as fixed in academia as anywhere else. And if they can't
teach, they just move into administration and promote themselves there.
Administration is probably the worst part of a modern educational institution
- full of waste and corruption. Like how Katehi got rehired at her chancellor-
level salary after a year's vacation after that pepper spray incident at UC
Davis. Academia is literally _infested_ with bad actors. Not to say there
aren't good ones, but the bad ones are especially well connected and hard to
evict. There's no policing against it except against the people who get caught
_before_ they're successful at entrenching themselves.

\- Critical thinking isn't even remotely a curriculum requirement anymore.
Many classes actively discourage critical thinking, and instead encourage rote
memorization or directed analysis instead. In some classes, if you dare to
challenge the narrative presented, you might receive Title IX sanctions for
your oppressive actions from students and professor. After which you'll then
be brought before a panel, denied representation and judged by a biased group
more focused on maintaining image and federal funding than on the truth. And
this might be from something as small as questioning the statistics or the
sample set from a study. Students are encouraged with safe spaces and other
policies that prevent them from processing or even seeing opposing viewpoints.
That is _not_ "criticalness". It's pandering.

\- Deceiving students in academia is also a thing. Once again, there's the
whole problem with _scientifically bad_ papers being encouraged, published and
referenced without peer review. These things make it in to curriculum and
don't get pulled out after a retraction. Some classes will teach you that you
shouldn't critique at all. Class books are often written by the professor to
supplement their income, and contain their own pet theories. They put out a
new edition every year with minor changes just so you can't buy a used book.
And you've obviously never sat through a lecture rant on the professor's pet
grievances. Lecture after lecture on the evils of western civilization from a
person who literally couldn't survive outside of it can really tire you out.
And honesty about career applicability for degrees is at an all-time low.
Partly because some of the people teaching you have limited career aspects
themselves and don't like to stare the facts in the face. Dishonesty about the
value of the information presented and its critical reception is kind of the
worst kind of dishonesty when you're charging someone a year's salary to
listen to it.

There are good things about a university education. And not every situation is
this bad. But it is not the ivory tower you're perceiving, and likely hasn't
been that way for the majority of your lifetime, if not all of it. The honest,
naked pursuit of science and truth always been the ideal, but rarely the
reality. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. But we've
got to be more honest and objective about problems in academia if we have any
hope of fixing them.

~~~
Top19
@justabystander wow your reply was long and very detailed and you put a lot of
effort into it.

Let me add one more point, and see if what I said merges with what you said.
If not I'm completely wrong.

A lot of books, like The Idea Industry by Daniel Drezner and also Science-Mart
by Philip Mirowski say that the cutting of university budgets since the late
60's has led to such an undermining of their stability that Academics have had
to engage in a stupid, pointless, survival battle of numbers, conformity, and
politics. I'm sure the politics was there beforehand, but they make a
convincing case that critical thinking and independent research is much more
possible when you're not afraid of losing your funding all the time / scared
in general about your job.

An additional point to this is that a lot of individuals see the cutting in
college funding as the GOP's revenge for the 1960's, because a lot of the
behavior of that era was seen as coming from college campuses. UCLA was
actually free up until 1967 when Governor Ronald Reagan began the process of
charging tuition.

So in conclusion, academia does have a lot of terrible things about it, but I
think say 60% of it is fixable simply with a better relationship and funding
style between universities and the government.

------
_Codemonkeyism
With companies no longer requesting university degrees, online learning (like
watching Harvard courses) becoming more popular and in some countries
university being outragous expensive, the future of universities is bleak
because people will stop going there. And that of acadamics teaching is even
worse.

The internet will cut all middleman, and teachers being the middleman between
you and knowledge, or gatekeepers to degrees. If people do not add value - and
empty classrooms show many teachers do not add value, in my theoretical CS and
math classes professors only wrote proofs on the blackboard for 1.5h and then
left - the internet elimates you.

~~~
adjkant
Many courses and students benefit from learning in person across many
subjects, CS included. Sometimes it's the push they need, sometimes it's the
value their classmates bring, sometimes it's the value the professor brings.

Online courses are great, but they don't replace everything. I don't think the
future of universities is bleak. The explanations above considering that we
have a surplus of Ph.D.'s seems to be a lot more likely of a cause to this.
Simple supply and demand.

~~~
visarga
> Online courses are great, but they don't replace everything.

The MOOCs don't work well because they are 100% virtual. What they need is a
bit of in-person, human touch. I'd like to see a system where online courses
are being supervised by "educational coaches" who are not necessarily experts
in the field, but experts in motivation and maximizing results.

Imagine a remote location, where there are no universities. A number of people
could take completely different online courses there, monitored by the same
coach. The role of the coach is mostly to witness the effort of the student
(great for motivation) and counsel the student as to how to apply his effort
most efficiently. The coach could help organize local study groups as well, if
there are enough students. Technical questions could be handled by online
forums and the MOOC staff. The training of the MOOC counselors could be a MOOC
course itself, to spread the system organically.

~~~
njarboe
I imagine the MOOCs could replace intro courses where classes are currently
over 100 students. For smaller specialized classes at the upper undergraduate
levels (and K-12 with its lower class size) a good teach modifies how they
teach depending on specific students and the class over all. We have had a
mass system of learning without a teacher for 500 years. The printed book.

------
jacquesm
Reminds me of the former Eastbloc countries where you will find scientists as
janitors and living in terrible conditions. Not that people who are not
scientists don't live in terrible conditions but you would never expect a
maths or physics professor to be unemployable.

Even here in NL there are niche websites that pretend to be dating sites but
that actually are sites where students are hooked up with 'sugar daddy's'
effectively prostituting themselves to be able to finish their academic
education.

This is a hot topic in the news here right now.

~~~
yardie
Don't even need to go east. Cuba is that way right now. Bartenders, cab
drivers, and prostitutes with PhDs.

~~~
gipp
Don't even need to go anywhere.

[https://gizmodo.com/5671062/there-are-5000-janitors-in-
the-u...](https://gizmodo.com/5671062/there-are-5000-janitors-in-the-us-with-
phds)

------
wfo
Say it with me friends and colleagues,

Union.

This is the future for all of us, when programming becomes commoditized just
as teaching has. When our salaries are pushed to the bottom. We are not
owners, we are not capitalists, we are not bosses, we are people with a skill
you can learn on the internet and a corresponding talent for it.

Either a) this will happen to us as programmers, b) we have credentialing and
gatekeepers to keep supply low c) we have a union to collectively bargain, or
d) radical changes in the government save us from this fate.

In the U.S. (d) seems impossible. Programmers as a group seem to be virulently
opposed to (b). So choose, unions or barbarism.

~~~
comicjk
The word "barbarism" is quite an exaggeration.

Teaching salaries are low relative to education level because lots of people
are socially pushed toward teaching (obvious example: many people's mentors
are teachers). Programming doesn't have this dynamic.

I'm not opposed to unionization - I joined the new grad student union when I
was getting my PhD. But I think you should focus on programmers' specific
problems, like long hours and low vacation time, not on problems from other
jobs which have low relevance.

~~~
wfo
We aren't there yet, things are still much better for us than teachers, yes.
But I'm proposing we do something about it _now_ , while we are in demand and
have power instead of waiting until it gets that bad.

Programming and teaching are similar; they are prestige positions (for now)
that mark you as one of the professional class, people who do them are by and
large hugely passionate and would be unhappy if forced to do something else
(many programmers I know started before school because they loved it, do it in
their spare time, etc). Passion in capitalism gets taken advantage of and
exploited, since _dispassionate_ economic assessment is how a 'rational' actor
works in economic models; passion is a weakness from the perspective of wealth
accumulation and economic success. The thing that links the fields in my view
is passion.

------
qaq
The explosion of administrative staff is crazy universities keep cutting
teaching positions and increasing admin.

~~~
empath75
It seems like there should be a market for low overhead small schools with
high paid teaching staff.

~~~
chibg10
Right? I've thought about this as well. My guess is that:

1) Nearly all university students are making their decision when they're 18,
so a lot of them are mostly interested in non-academic aspects of their school

2) It seems really hard to actually start a new university. Anecdotally, every
university I can think of is quite old.

3) This is probably related to (2). The benefits of universities aren't really
dependent on good professors. The advantage of top schools in both educational
progress and student outcomes can probably mostly explained by signalling,
filtering out weak students before they arrive, university culture, and
networking. None of this has much to do with professors.

~~~
dabockster
> filtering out "weak" students before they arrive

This has a huge effect on pushing schools to the top. You can take a public
institution (eg University of Washington, since they're notorious for this),
put an artificially high bar on entering a program (eg UW CSE since, again,
notoriety), and take in all the public money you want while only admitting the
top 10% of students. The school is happy for the brain blast, the state is
happy to fund a "prestigious" university, and the people are happy to fund so
many smart students attending their university instead of another. Everyone
wins, right?

Wrong. One of the many problems with this technique is how a university
quantifies what is considered a "weak student". Is it low test scores? Bad
entrance essay? No planning on the part of the student? Whatever Pearson Hall
or McGraw Hill will set on their outsourcing offerings? It's a giant can of
worms in terms of what individual strengths and weaknesses are, and how they
can either enhance or limit academic performance.

------
happy-go-lucky
> an adjunct professor of Romance languages

> precarious academic jobs

> a teacher of English composition

> teaches history

> teaching English composition and critical thinking

> began teaching English composition

> published a poem

> with one novel under her belt, is working on a second

I see a pattern. I think those jobs are not much in demand.

~~~
scandox
> Romance

> Critical Thinking

> English composition

> poem

> history

The good things in life are unpaid

~~~
lucozade
> The good things in life are unpaid

At the risk of being somewhat obtuse: poetry, English composition and history
can be exceptionally well paid. Ask Taylor Swift, JK Rowling and Hilary Mantel
resp.

Now, if you mean poetry, English composition and history that no-one is
particularly interested in reading, well. I would have to agree with you.

------
SubiculumCode
A friend of a friend is an adjunct. His college has put him and 20 other
adjuncts into a single classroom to serve as their offices..open floor plan?

When students come in to talk, they must do in a room filled with other
students and adjuncts. As we know, these conversations often include quite
personal details. After complaining to the dean, the dean responded something
to the effect, "I realize that you don't have access to the big picture, so
let us worry about the big picture and feel assured that this is necessary."

Outrageous.

------
petra
One thing i didn't understand from the story: those are smart people,
motivated people, with good people's skills. All the things our economy loves.
Why don't they say "fuck it" and change profession, to something more decent ?
it would be hard, but is it possible ?

And i say this without judgement, just out of curiosity.

~~~
sgt101
Because they have a vocation - to help young people to become educated.

This is a socially productive vocation that we should capitalise on as a
society, to exploit it is demeaning for all of us and eventually destructive
of our social fabric.

------
troupe
It seems more and more people value "going to college" over "getting an
education." This leads to a focus on all the niceties around the college
experience rather than the actual education. When the education isn't the part
that is being valued, the professors aren't going to be valued.

------
javaPro
Academia, has become a big business, it's no longer about the actual academics
but keeping the gigantic snowball moving, gathering snow as it rolls until
finally it crashes in the bottom of the hill.

I hope the admins and boards of the colleges and universities get hit worst.
This isn't the fault of professors or their tenure, this is a greedy and
disgusting late-stage-capitalist culture that has completely warped academia.
The entire administration of academia and the groups associated with it are
parasitic burdens on society.

------
GuiA
_“I feel committed to being the person who’s there to help millennials, the
next generation, go on to become critical thinkers,” she said. “And I’m really
good at it, and I really like it. And it’s heartbreaking to me it doesn’t pay
what I feel it should.”_

Sadly, there are more people with that kind of deep calling and sense of duty
to the next generation willing to put it above a better salary than
universities need, so as long as that will hold true, universities will be
able to get that highly educated labor for very cheap.

I have several friends who are adjuncts making barely more than I used to make
as a grad student, and who are living in borderline poverty (fortunately for
now they are young and dependent-free, so it's not too much a sacrifice). I
can very much relate to them, as I miss teaching terribly - but I refuse to
give cheap labor to what many US universities have become, ie investment firms
with an education themed PR front
([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/business/dealbook/harvard...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/business/dealbook/harvard-
endowment.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbusiness&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=14&pgtype=sectionfront)).

~~~
conjectures
This. It should be pointed out that for individual decision making for someone
in this situation that opting out may not only improve their own prospects,
but also benefit those still hanging on in this career.

------
thearn4
How does the academic bubble in the U.S. break? Knowing quite a few career
adjuncts, I have to wonder if their situation will only be getting worse.

~~~
Overtonwindow
Reform the tenure system and place caps on university administrators pay.

~~~
vkou
Tenure's not the problem, the problem is that in their academic career, a PHD
will produce X new PHDs. Where X is substantially greater than 1. Until this
is fixed, it doesn't matter if academic jobs are for life, or are contracts
that get renewed (or not) every 8 hours.

This pyramid scheme was fine while demand for PHDs was increasing (By
industry, and growth of academia), but now its really not (Industry doesn't
want to pay, academia can't grow anymore). Universities must start greatly
restricting their grad school programs. Of course, this will absolutely kill
the practice of using underpaid grad students to do research... And would have
to be offset by public increases to research spending.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I will say that those who can do research probably dont become adjuncts, but
continue as a researcher on soft money or go in industry. The more liberal
arts, philosophy, turn to adjunct positions.

~~~
BeetleB
>I will say that those who can do research probably dont become adjuncts, but
continue as a researcher on soft money or go in industry. The more liberal
arts, philosophy, turn to adjunct positions.

I know a bunch in engineering and medical fields who are adjuncts. It's not
rare. They do get paid a lot better than liberal arts ones, though and often
get benefits as well. But they're situation is as precarious - they could get
cut any semester.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Seems surprising that such can't find a position outside of academia. I am
cog-neuro so a little more bound.

~~~
BeetleB
I'm sure they can, but they usually either like what they're doing and are OK
with the pay, or have other constraints (do not want to leave the city, etc).

------
paapi__gudiya
What is the inherent value that lecturers offer anyways? All the material they
teach in classes has been available online for the last 20 years. It makes
sense (going by market needs) that they have been driven to such levels of
poverty.

The only value universities offer is that one can meet other like-minded and
driven people at universities. If some other social structures can offer the
same, i.e. a place where one can meet such people, universities will be
obsolete too. The only question is when? And are there any organizations out
there that already offer such services?

~~~
sgt101
If the value that your lecturers offered to you was that they stood there and
recited course material then you are right. Also your university has done a
bad thing.

For me the value of lecturers is that they respond to the needs of the group
they are teaching and to the individuals on the outliers of the group. That
interaction is what changes the educational trajectory of students from
fail->pass and from pass->excel.

I find it hard to harden my heart to the idea that people who work to do that
should be ill rewarded for the effort.

------
Wintamute
The value of a college education has been vastly inflated. People have
associated a college education, often in nebulous useless subjects, with
upwards social mobility but the truth is most should never have gone to
college - i.e. side step the debt, headed directly for work or vocational
training and got a 4 year head start in the job market. It's sad when people
wash up like this, and the fault isn't theirs, rather they've just been sold a
false promise. Taken together with the free speech and ideological eco-chamber
issues we're seeing on campus, along with the crazy town crippling debt, my
prediction is we're going to start to see a rapid devaluation in the cultural
collateral of a college education. Or at least in the national ambition for a
democratised universal college education for all.

------
technofire
While I'm not trying to be gratuitously harsh, I ask what have any of the
adjunct lecturers in this article really contributed to the world? Not much in
my opinion. You don't need someone with a doctorate to teach a student
critical thinking. These people are living in a fantasy land and are mentally
ill; who becomes homeless, putting any children they have at financial risk,
or lives in a car or a dilapidated mobile home with no shower, and doesn't get
the clue that what they're doing is stupid and that they should get a real job
and start working up the ladder? Can they not get a real job and teach evening
classes as adjuncts like many of their peers do at community colleges across
the country? Oh no, they're "dedicated to scholarship" and have "taken a vow
of poverty." Give me a break. These people have superman complexes. We should
stop glorifying them and glorifying academia. Lectures came about back when
most people were illiterate and printed books were scarce and that was the
most effective way to get the knowledge out to the students. We have books and
a literate populace now, and of course the Internet. The United States is one
of the only places that glorify and sentimentalizes higher education so
acutely; visiting students from other countries have remarked that
universities here are basically vacation resorts for rich people. Modern
academia is a joke.

------
semi-nontechncl
I was an adjunct for a year at a well-known arts college in the US. Some
programs were made up almost completely of adjuncts with only one or two full-
time professors. Since this was an arts program those adjuncts were working in
the field. While it was good for students to have professors who were working
professionals, it does mean that those professors are less invested in the
program as a whole and since they aren't full-time/ tenured they don't have a
lot of sway to influence the program since they can easily be fired.

On the other hand, the program I taught in was made up almost exclusively of
full-time professors who were basically tenured. Many of the full-time
professors were really great, but a lot of them hadn't created any real
professional work in their field in a very long time. The tenured professors
had been teaching at the school for decades, some for forty years. I quickly
left the school the school when I realized I would have to wait for someone to
die in my program before I would find a full-time teaching position.

My conclusion after teaching for a year as an adjunct was that: 1) Adjunct
teaching is basically a side gig that you do outside of your full-time job 2)
All the money the school was bringing in is going to administration or
facilities/buildings, which are constantly growing 3) Full-time professors who
finally retire will be replaced with adjuncts, which consolidates the
administration's power. 4) College feels outdated to me. Teaching a bunch of
students to use photoshop in a classroom is really inefficient compared to
video tutorials where everyone can learn at their own pace and rewind the
video as needed. 5) College is way too expensive, especially for students
pursuing the arts who may struggle after they graduate.

------
shams93
Yeah my first girlfriend was adjunct faculty and was escorting to get her food
being a starving student myself I wasn't in a position to help her out. That
was 1991 I can't imagine how bad it is today.

------
TeMPOraL
Students exchanging their body for a place to stay during university years
seem to be a commonplace thing today. I guess economic hardships move upwards,
so it's time for university staff too.

------
eric_b
I'm surprised to see adjunct's make so little. When I was in school the full-
time professor's salaries were public (since it was a public university). They
were all making over 100k/year, and this was some time ago. Many were high
100's or low 200's.

Even the lecturers were pulling in 70k or more, and this was in a midwestern
state with low cost of living.

Why do the adjunct's put up with this? You can make more being a high school
teacher, and get better benefits. Is it because the adjunct approach is the
best way to get in to a full time position? If I recall, the tenure-track
"associate" profs at my university did not go the adjunct route, but perhaps
things have changed?

Anyways, disheartening that tuition is through the roof, and many instructors
are being paid subsistence wages.

~~~
searine
The difference between an adjunct and a full professor is the difference
between a Temp and a rockstar developer.

Adjuncts are a cost for the university, their salary is a liability on the
budget line. Professors are a net positive. They have high salaries but they
bring in millions of dollars in grants and attract talented students who can
be paid worse than adjuncts (and teach classes).

Adjuncts are space fillers. When a university can't goad a professor, post-
doc, or grad student to teach the 101 class they farm it out to a Adjunct.

The skills needed to teach the entry level courses are basic, so there is a
wide field of individuals who can fill that role. As a result the pay is not
great.

~~~
scott_s
Agreed, but with one disagreement: professors in science and engineering bring
in millions of dollars of grants. Those in the humanities tend not to bring in
nearly as much grant money.

------
laughfactory
What intrigued me most about the article was that it played the whole "adjunct
professors get paid like shit because university funding has fallen
dramatically." The truth is that this is nothing new: adjuncts have always
been paid peanuts and treated poorly. What is new is that universities have
realized that they can hire a fleet of adjuncts for cheap, and have them do
most of the teaching. It's a cost minimization strategy which leaves them more
money for sports programs and hiring more bureaucracy (and more expensive star
researchers). Modern universities survive under the auspices of existing to
teach and nurture young minds, but they're as much of a big business as any.

Sadly, most of my great professors in college were either adjuncts or
associates. I.e., poorly paid.

------
falcolas
Six courses, $40,000 in pay; about $7,000 per course.

If we make a few rough assumptions based on the $1500 rent figure, and 3
credits average, the college is probably charging around $1,000 per credit,
with a 30-40 person attendance per class.

So for one of those courses, the college is pulling in an estimated $90,000,
and paying $7,000.

Huh.

~~~
dvvc
That's way too much for an adjunct. The article refers to 6 courses per
semester, so she's probably pulling 12 per year at around $3k per course
(assuming she's not teaching in summer).

Just so you have an idea, 4 courses per semester amount to what would be a
full time job (if done right). In my experience most adjuncts / instructors
have to teach up to 6 courses per semester, which results in them either being
overworked, or doing a shitty job at teaching.

Not that this invalidates your conclusion, I find the difference between what
the school charges versus what goes into the teachers' salary mind boggling.

------
TheMagicHorsey
How come nobody asks whether what these people are teaching is actually useful
stuff. I mean useful in the sense that someone would voluntarily pay money for
it with full knowledge of the benefits.

I have not been impressed with the colleges in the Bay Area and Sacramento.
Except for some programs in the UC system and Stanford, the vast majority of
educational programs seem to be run for the benefit of administrators. Neither
the teachers nor the students reap many benefits.

The career offices for many programs practice deception to hide the ball when
it comes to the prospects of alumni of their programs. Many programs teach a
curriculum that is irrelevant to employers, and when challenged claim they are
"teaching you to learn". What a hollow fucking claim. How do we test that
claim? They are teaching us to learn INDEED! Why don't they teach themselves
how to teach something useful first!

As a Senior in college I TAed an intro engineering course at an Ivy League
school. A couple decades later a friend of a friend, who was dean of students
at a for-profit, needed a teacher at the last minute for a subject I'm an
expert at, and so I helped her out by teaching a night class after work, two
days a week, for a semester.

The latter experience was eye-opening. Most of my students should not have
been there. They were paying $25,000 a year or more in fees. They were hardly
prepared to tackle high school material, much less 4th year college material.
The for-profit institution was happy enough to continue taking their money
while delivering nothing tangible. Most of the teachers there were living hand
to mouth themselves. Some of them former students. It was a scam through and
through. Nothing useful was being taught. There were no employers lining up to
hire these kids.

Basically, federal student loans are being funneled to "teachers" that should
probably not be teaching, because they don't have anything useful to teach.

We have to shed this societal delusion that it costs $25,000 per year to read
books in a room with a person leading the class. It does not cost that much.
It should not cost that much. This is doubly true if the books being
read/taught are non-technical.

We really need a Universal Basic Income. Most of the people involved in this
educational industrial complex are just unemployable. Let's not allow them to
pass on the same unemployable skill set to another generation because they
need to have a salary to live. They should just be paid off and it should be a
separate exercise from education.

~~~
vkou
> How come nobody asks whether what these people are teaching is actually
> useful stuff. I mean useful in the sense that someone would voluntarily pay
> money for it with full knowledge of the benefits.

The same can be asked about sugary drinks, and cable news television.
Fortunately, since all of those things make a lot of money, nobody ever
questions whether or not those things should still be sold.

------
aklein
Worth a read: [https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-
larr...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-larry-
summers-blog-secular-stagnation-twitter-421a69ed84c8)

In particular:

"SUMMERS: Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. The
place to start is, General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975.
They’re about the same size to within a factor of two, they’re about the same
number of buildings, they operate on about the same calendar, they have many
of the same people or some number of the same people in significant positions.
The main thing to say is that, for something that’s all about ideas and for
something that’s all about young people, the pace of innovation in higher
education is stunningly slow. We’re still on a system where the break is in
the summer. The reason we’re on that system is that when everybody went to
pick the plants, that was the natural way to organize school, and it’s still
going that way. The potential action in higher education is probably heavily
through distance learning and artificial intelligence in learning technologies
of various kinds because, if you think about it, the unique capacity that
online education has is that, on the one hand, they’re huge economies of
scale. Once the lecture’s filmed, 100,000 people can watch it at the same cost
as 100 people watching it."

Not a favorable trend for the subjects of this article.

------
BeetleB
This may be unpopular, but:

1\. She has more than $200K in student loan debt which is her doing. I've met
many who do not want to take responsibility for their student loans - they'll
prefer to go to schools whose tuition is over $40K/yr over schools that are
under $10K/yr. And then they'll insist on going for several years to a grad
school without funding (hence more loans). I always tell people: If you cannot
get funding for grad school (or at least after the first year of grad school),
then get out or change schools/departments.

2\. When I was in grad school, no matter how much people gave advice, most
grad students refuse to consider their ability to earn money based on the
degree they are pursuing. The few wiser ones in liberal arts would work
towards gaining marketing skills (often in software, but not necessarily) and
did fine. Same goes even for tech fields - consider if what you're doing a PhD
in will get you a job.

I do agree there is a problem with exploiting adjuncts, but adjuncts also need
to own their station in life. Over 15 years ago, when I was in school, I knew
adjuncts who were struggling as much as is shown in the article (having to
travel to different towns to teach in multiple schools to eke by), so this has
been a known issue.

------
dv_dt
With a glut of underpaid adjuncts in a waiting pattern to become professors,
and huge tuitions, it makes me wonder how difficult it would be to start a
small university.

------
emodendroket
This is the predictable result of our turn to seeing the academy as a consumer
product and vocational school meant to train white-collar workers.

------
jseliger
Universities treat adjuncts like they do because they can:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-
adjunc...](https://jakeseliger.com/2016/02/25/universities-treat-adjuncts-
like-they-do-because-they-can/) . When adjuncts stop accepting offers, prices
will rise. I'm puzzled that more liberal arts profs don't teach high school:
[https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-
befo...](https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-
start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-
opportunity-costs/).

I teach as an adjunct because I like teaching and have a real job, so it works
for me. But I worry about many others, especially the ones who are thinking
about going to more grad school because they don't know what else to do.

------
rossdavidh
Clearly unsustainable. One thing I don't see examined is, if we fix this by
giving colleges some reason to employ full-time profs instead of multiple
part-timers, this would make those jobs middle class jobs but actually reduce
the number of spots available. Which might be the right thing to do, but won't
help most of these people.

~~~
lmm
Well, it might help them if it was the kick they needed to leave academia. As
the article concludes, for many of these people the problem is that they keep
chasing the dream of being an academic, long after the reality is that it's
not a livelihood that can support them.

------
akeck
So, where's the $150K per student in tuition going?

~~~
ceejayoz
Fancy dorms, athletic facilities, big houses for the university president,
endowments...

~~~
sixQuarks
true, the highest paid employee at most large universities are the sports
coaches.

~~~
greedo
Most coaches are paid out of profits from sports, not from tuition.

~~~
ecshafer
Most Athletics programs do not return a profit, so this is demonstrably false.

Source from ncaa: [http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-
center/news/athlet...](http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-
center/news/athletics-departments-make-more-they-spend-still-minority)

------
mrleiter
It is fascinating how no top rated comment tackles the inherent ethical issues
of sex work.

------
drderidder
It's sad that in an academic workplace you'd be better of as a janitor than a
prof. The facilities workers where I studied were unionized and seemed to
manage alright. The abuse of part-time positions is such a scam.

------
ohyes
First off, I think this is a sensationalized article. My friends with liberal
arts 'academic' degrees are finding jobs. Not always professor level jobs,
some of them are teaching high school, others are adjuncting, one writes
contracts for the DoD (her degree was in creative writing).

'College professor' is currently a middle-class job and it has been for a long
time (since before I was born at least). What we have in this article are
stories from people who are in the middle class and hit a bump in the road,
and never recovered economically. This can happen to anyone, including you,
the silicon-valley start-up STEM uber-programmer.

It is just bad luck and highlights the lack of a societal safety net. In
short, this is a shock piece describing something that is very common in the
USA. It is shocking simply because our mental image of a 'College professor,'
is a well-to-do clean-cut person in a tweed jacket scribbling on a chalk-
board. You don't think to yourself 'homeless prostitute,' (the examples were
clearly very specifically picked). The contrast is intentional.

This isn't to detract from these people's plight. It is certainly a real one
(maybe an example of one of the most real things that can happen to a person).
The majority of us are a couple of unfortunate life events away from making
the decisions that these people had to make. Lose your job and have an
expensive illness at the same time, you'll pretty much be there. These people
started behind because of massive college debt, for the most part, but it
doesn't change that we're all close to this.

I'm disheartened that this is being reduced to in economic terms 'a supply-
side problem,' under the assumption that the economics of supply and demand
actually apply to a person who is (for all purposes) not making a living wage
and in debt to their eyeballs. It's bullshit if a person is employed 60+ hours
a week and they aren't able to properly feed clothe and house themselves (and
their family, for that matter). It doesn't matter what the job is.

Honestly, it's bullshit that we have homelessness and hunger at all. At what
point do we have a serious conversation in the west about attempting to become
a post-scarcity society? I don't think we even know what is involved to make a
society like that tractable.

------
jsonhero
You might be better off just throwing your college fund into bitcoin. The
financial risk is about the same at this point.

~~~
troupe
Most people can go to a junior college and get a two-year degree debt-free
between working a part-time job and non-loan financial aid. Transfer into an
inexpensive 4-year school to complete your undergrad degree and if you are
careful you can graduate with less than $5,000 of debt...maybe no debt at all
depending on how much financial need you have and how valuable your skills
are.

I don't think that skipping college and putting the funds you have into
bitcoin is anywhere as risk-free as going to college in the scenario I
outlined.

------
rabboRubble
The academic job market is topsy-turvy. Tenured professors should be paid
_less_ than adjunct professors. The adjunct professor who takes on future
income uncertainty should be paid more to represent that income uncertainty
risk. If the job market was functioning correctly and in a perfect world,
salaries would be so.

------
tinduck
We should move more research to lower cost cities like Memphis or Detroit that
have affordable housing. In addition, we need to prioritize funding to our
middle tier Universities.

I don't understand how people expect us to subsides wages in high cost cities.
It's not the only problem, but we do have a prestige issue.

------
kevmo
> “I live paycheck to paycheck and I’m deeply in debt,” she > said, including
> from car repairs and a hospitalization for > food poisoning.

While there are many iterations, it is always this same story. Medical debt,
job loss, and/or divorce precede something like 90% of consumer bankruptcies.

------
noonespecial
Academia is one place where a UBI would make a huge difference. These are
people who obviously do what they do for motivations other than a paycheck.
Organizing society so they don't have to live in their cars in church parking
lots to do it would be an unalloyed win.

------
dxbydt
am not sure if this article and the recent naval tweetstorm are in any way
pertinent to stem. i understand the value of phds in romance lit & english &
so forth is zero. but in a stem phd, the timelines are 4-5 years, the
educational content is substantially rigorous , seriously cannot be acquired
by self-study of textbooks or youtube vids, and job prospects outside of
academia are 200k+ in the bay area, thanks to the resurgence of
computationally hard careers like ml/ds/ai . it is definitely worthwhile to
pursue grad school in stem; worst case you can always fall back on react 24 or
jquery 48 or whatever shitty version is out 4 years from now.

------
bjd2385
I don't understand why this is such a big story. It's not localized to
academics.

~~~
hi41
It is newsworthy because the educators who give society sacred education are
having to prostitute themselves to have a roof over their head.

------
gozur88
If you can't make enough money to survive doing what you do, you should
probably look at doing something else. It's not like someone smart enough to
be a college lecturer can't possibly learn a different skill.

------
kazinator
In the 2011 Japanese film _Koi no Tsumi_ , actress Makoto Togashi plays a
university professor who works as a prostitute. (Not even remotely out of
poverty though, but rather depravity or something like that.)

------
ycmimi
They should go to china to teach English. There is a very high demand of
native english-speaking teachers. I bet they will have a much better life than
in US.

------
hi41
This story breaks my heart. How come our society has come to a place where it
has placed such a low value on education and the educators?

------
pdimitar
> _“Most of my colleagues are unjustifiably ashamed,” she said. “They take
> this personally, as if they’ve failed, and I’m always telling them, ‘you
> haven’t failed, the system has failed you.’”_

While I sympathize with these people and I know in my heart they are treated
unjustly, I still cringed at this quote.

Was there a US president coming at your graduation and promising you a bright
future if you pursued your academical ambitions? Were there crowds of
businessmen coming there and assuring you all that you will get funding until
the rest of your life?

I'd reckon no.

Let's put it bluntly: you failed to adapt and now it's finally coming to haunt
you, and you most likely ignored many signs along the road. I know it's easy
for me to talk being a programmer, and we are gonna be in demand for quite a
while still. But I wasn't always well-paid. In fact, most of my career has
been spend with very toxic employers, colleagues and freelance customers. At
certain point of my life, I realized I had to make tough and big changes --
changes I was not emotionally okay with but I knew I had to do them because
otherwise I'd end up on the street. And I did. And it hurt _a lot_. But I am
not threatened by living on the street for a long time now. And years later, I
am now proud of myself for having the courage to recognize it was time to move
on from a few toxic / non-constructive areas of my older life.

The writing has been on the wall for a LONG time that the educational jobs are
on the decline. At least for 15 years now. _(No I won 't cite studies; I am
talking about a general feeling related to the tone of many news stories over
the years, plus tens of anecdata from people in the area I happen to be well-
acquainted with, including my brother.)_

I will not make this into USA bashing but I can't help but notice that many
Americans are finding themselves helpless after believing in "the system"
their whole lives. Same goes for people I knew in Germany, UK, France,
Netherlands and Sweden.

This is much less so in Eastern Europe where I am from (although it still
happens to quite a lot of people; percentage-wise though, it feels like
they're much smaller group compared to USA).

You have to believe more in your own abilities and trust less "the system".
The system has been devised to help keep things in a relative order and
nothing much else. The system doesn't stay awake at night, worrying if you
will end up homeless. That's one of the harsh truths in life that many people,
and a lot of them much older than me, refuse to accept and live their lives in
accordance with.

~~~
SilasX
I agree with your general point, but:

>Was there a US president coming at your graduation and promising you a bright
future if you pursued your academical ambitions?

Yes, it's pretty typical for a prestigious public official to speak at
graduations and say basically that.

~~~
pdimitar
I stand corrected.

I still think that a public official holding an inspirational speech doesn't
hold any value though, out there in the material world. It's sad that many
people believe in this propaganda of sorts and integrate it as one of the
mottos in their lives. :(

------
iamgopal
Why tons and tons of online course are not making any difference to how
University works ?

~~~
daxorid
Online courses don't offer the all-important experience of getting obliterated
at fraternity parties, nor do they deliver the critical piece of paper at the
end.

So long as diploma issuance is still tightly controlled by the educational
cartels, MOOCs will make next to zero difference.

------
balls187
Yet another case for universal basic income.

------
Afforess
This is the result of entirely understandable forces, with no solution in
sight. High school students (and their parents) select Universities based on
status first (or second), and education quality nearly last. Worse, this is
entirely sensible. There is an implicit understanding better ranked
Universities are a prerequisite for higher-status jobs, moving up in the
economy. Employers making the decision to favour high-status graduates is also
rational: with a glut of credentialed applicants, _why_ would you choose a
lower-status candidate when an equally good high-status one was available?
That's leaving money on the table.

Every part of this slow-motion disaster is explainable. Every individual actor
is making the best choice available to themselves. And yet, Moloch wins.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

~~~
moduspol
It wasn't always this way, though. Tuition rates outpacing inflation has only
been over the last few decades.

You're right that each actor is making (more or less) rational decisions, but
federal subsidies for student loans are what throws a wrench into the mix.
Previously, the decisions were all the same, but consumers had much more
limited capital and were far more price sensitive.

Now they can get bigger loans much more easily, and sure enough, they're
willing to pay higher prices. The less the consumer knows / cares about the
price of something, the faster that price will increase. See also: health care
in the US.

------
pwaivers
There is only one academic who turned to sex work in this article right?
Unless I missed some one else the article mentioned. This is a very specific
example and paints with a broad paintbrush.

~~~
showmetherec
Are you arguing life for adjuncts is improving?

~~~
dqpb
It's reasonable to ask why the title is plural - "academics turn to sex work"
\- while the anecdote in the article is about a single person turning to sex
work, and then there is no other information about how common this is.

The closest it gets to statistics is:

 _Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living
in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college
academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to
work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance
programs such as Medicaid._

Which says literally nothing about how common it is for adjuncts to turn to
sex work.

On the other hand, I would argue that it is unreasonable (or at least
intellectually dishonest) for you to ask: _Are you arguing life for adjuncts
is improving?_. Obviously the OP is not arguing that. Your intent with this
question is to shame the OP for asking clarifying questions that might weaken
the articles case. If you were intellectually honest, you would be in favor of
accurate information.

~~~
danso
I think it's safe to say that there is probably more than one adjunct who is
doing sex work (somewhat based on my experience of having read this type of
story before in the past years). But I agree that the headline and framing of
this story deserves scrutiny. I don't think it's coincidence the way that the
first sentence in your excerpt ("Sex work is one...") is immediately followed
by a sentence that alludes to a statistic ("A quarter of part-time college
academics") that ends up being unrelated. The close juxtaposition of the
sentences could easily be misinterpreted as "25% of adjuncts are doing sex
work").

------
kutkloon7
The things that are priorities in the USA have always puzzled me. Students pay
an absolutely insane amount of money for an education that is very mediocre.
It is clear that the American education is failing. About half of the
population voted for a man who does not believe in science. But somehow, the
main priorities for universities seems to be enforcing diversity and gender-
neutral pronouns?

I am not saying that thinking about this is wrong, there is just a deep
disconnect with the realities that people live in, and many people seem to
have a problem viewing things from another perspective.

------
ProTurist
Tuition and fees keep going up, but the quality of education is heavily
determined by the quality of professor. We aren't getting the best professors,
because somehow despite record profits for universities, their pay doesn't
seem to go up. An adjunct professor, which I personally know people who have
been adjuncts for 10 years, average $42k. That's so ridiculously low as every
university that I know of is having huge buildings erected.

------
amalgan
This is the number one reason for endowment reform. Many universities have the
GDP of small countries tied up in endowments, but cry poverty when state and
fed budgets are cut.

Unlocking endowments will free up money so that universities can be held
accountable for tuition and salaries.

------
dogruck
Market dynamics at work.

Reminds me of Bukowski:

Born like this

Into this

As the chalk faces smile

As Mrs. Death laughs

As the elevators break

As political landscapes dissolve

As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

------
nickpeterson
Obviously the answer is to tear down colleges and erect large statues of
President Trump. Made of copper.

~~~
sctb
Would you please comment substantively, like the guidelines ask? It helps us
have the kind of conversation we're here for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
wehadfun
I would like to know which universities these people work at. Are they Billion
dollar universities or are these lower tier schools. Regardless schools care
more about money then education and enslave their students in debt, send their
athletes on the road for week missing class, and literally pimp out there
professors.

