
The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb - jseliger
https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-University-Is-a-Ticking/246119?key=K9RMtIzWwk9f4WCspEIEE4f2Z-lnxGSx0oKzM1DwdJm3k4GsX_vNyb4T0h6JMHU-Z0ltWHRmS1BsTVBQZVhYYW9FLVFvZkNmS1JoOUI0MVNaeHk4bGhiemxHcw
======
musicale
Unfortunately labor supply vastly exceeds demand due to the pyramid nature of
graduate programs.

Given a massive oversupply of replacement workers ready to go at a moment's
notice, unionization seems unlikely to change anything.

Probably Ph.D. graduates should consider teaching at a university as a sort of
popular avocation like music, art, sports, or video games. Maybe you can make
some money at it if you are particularly skilled and lucky, but you will
almost certainly need a real day job in order to pay the bills.

~~~
fiftyfifty
This is why economics should be mandatory in most high school and college
curriculum: The laws of supply and demand apply to the job market as well. It
blows my mind that schools require things like 3 years of foreign language but
fail to teach their students anything about the market they will depend on to
support themselves the rest of their lives.

~~~
quickthrower2
When I was at uni the idea was you study whatever you like, and then there
will be a job at a big consultancy like Arthur Andersen or whatever waiting
for you because they'd take in anyone with any degree (who can jump through
their hoops) and then retrain them to do a job.

I was fortunate as although I didn't have the "communication skills" to land
such jobs (my hoop jumping skills were terrible), I did had tech skills so
plenty of smaller companies and government jobs were possible for me to get.

Anyway if this situation has changed, doing arty degrees should come with a
disclaimer that no job might be found as a result, and as such they are
hobbies. Doing a full time hobby for a few years at a cost to yourself should
be considered a luxury of the rich.

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Balgair
> Second, if Ph.D. students are training for but then leaving the profession,
> and if the humane, short-term solution to adjunctification is to close down
> or drastically shrink Ph.D. programs, then universities are effectively
> admitting that there is no future for those fields.

I think this plays right into other employment issues. There is a feeling that
employers will _not_ train you. Many STEM based employers that need highly
trained individuals (DoD, Pharma, data-science, etc) are outsourcing some of
that training to PhD programs. Thus far, the situation has been acceptable in
STEMy fields. But the PhD program is not structured to train the high skills
workforce (it just happens to be okayish at doing so) and that mis-match is
coming to a head.

~~~
chris2345
As a DoD employee....you are incredibly wrong. The DoD paid for my undergrad,
then paid me a full salary to get a masters, and they do the same for a PhD.
This is a very common thing for them to do.

~~~
austhrow743
That guy: DoD outsources training to PhD programs.

You: Wrong! The DoD actually outsources training to PhD programs.

~~~
wmf
The difference is who pays. This mostly matters for undergrad since graduate
school pays you.

------
maze-le
Maybe it's time for a "Secession of Scholars". The university as an
institution was founded by students and scholars alike -- as a mutual interest
group -- to study and advance the fields of law, theology and medicine. If the
scholars and students of a field go a radical step towards forming "mutual
interest groups" without overbearing bureaucracy and credentialism, a lot of
these institutions could redefine themself again.

This is probably easier said than done and only accomplishable in the
Humanities, as they don't really need multi-billion dolar equipment to do
research. This would also be a very elitist form of organization, since ...
yes professors, researchers and assistents must eat, have health/social
insurance and have time to conduct independent research. And the students must
have enough free time to actually study.

But how much worse can working conditions get? We as a society can value
knowledge for the sake of knowledge (and not to have "Prof. Dr. phil. habil."
attached to a name).

------
jurassic
I dropped out of my PhD as soon as I felt it was clear I wasn't on trajectory
to land in a tenure track role. It was a stressful and confusing time in my
life and not an easy decision, but one based on a clear-eyed view of the
economic realities ahead. I don't understand why people soldier on for literal
decades in a job when there is no hope of ever gaining reasonable pay,
benefits, or recognition. On an hourly-adjusted basis many of these people
would be financially better off doing just about anything else.

~~~
chess93
I simply don't understand what is going to happen to all of the PhD students
that I saw when I was in university. I managed to escape the PhD trap and find
software engineering but I was extremely lucky. Had I gone to any other school
I probably would not be anywhere near as fortunate.

That being said, I worry about the people who go to PhD programs just because
that's what they are "supposed to do" or because they just don't know what
else to do. Especially the ones who lack social skills or lack "connections".
Many of my friends from college fall in to this category.

I don't even want to think about the people in the above category who get a
PhD at a "non-target" school.

~~~
jseliger
Most eventually find a real job or teach high school or (more rarely) marry
out of the problem. I was in one and those were the major paths out.

------
formalsystem
It seemed to me like when I went to grad school that a lot of students were
there for the freedom to explore their interests. They then quickly realize
that their freedom is subject to a bunch of constraints like the availability
of grants or the specific interests of your advisor.

And if you're going to be that constrained may as well get a job and make some
money while you're doing this.

Your salary as a PhD student is a joke but you're still an expensive asset as
far as your advisor is concerned because of your tuition which pays for stuff
like maintaining the campus, allowing you to take classes, your office etc..

However, I feel that most of those resources are useless as far as a student
is concerned. You just need to pay for rent and maintain a relatively
comfortable lifestyle. So something like $2,000 a month would be more than
sufficient for a student and is a tiny cost for an investor looking to have
interesting research published either as a paper or open source project.

The only real working relationship in a graduate program is the relationship
between faculty and student so maybe it's worth it for some of the wealthier
faculty to cut out the middlemen.

~~~
btrettel
After my PhD, I intend to work for a while in a "real job" while saving money
so I can eventually "retire" and go independent. Or something like that. The
costs for me (theoretical fluid dynamics) is pretty minimal as I don't need
expensive equipment or what not, so I think this is doable.

You're right about the constraints. Even when the constraints aren't there,
many academics are used to thinking that they are, so they seem blind to
possibilities outside of the constraints.

As an example of the latter, consider Scott Aaronson's discussion of a
quantum-inspired recommendation algorithm:
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3880](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3880)

On that page he wrote "On the Hacker News thread, some commenters are
lamenting that such a brilliant mind as Ewin’s would spend its time figuring
out how to entice consumers to buy even more products that they don’t need. I
confess that that’s an angle that hadn’t even occurred to me".

------
youeseh
The students are paying a lot of money, but the professors are getting
screwed. If we see the university as a 2-sided marketplace, then you'd think
that as the cost of doing business goes up, the number of merchants willing to
keep doing business would go down. This is not the case. And that is why
starting a university is such a good business.

~~~
weberc2
I wonder what is the economic issue that is driving this? Are students not
paying for quality of education? Perhaps they're shopping based on amenities
instead? Or perhaps the supply of professors simply exceeds the demand, and
the system is properly stabilizing itself?

~~~
coredog64
As you’ve identified, I think there is an amenities component to the cost
growth. As school gets more expensive, students expect more. My alma mater had
dorms that would make a roadside hotel on the interstate look like a luxury 4
star hotel. When I get the glossy magazine from the alumni association, the
fancy new dorms, Greek housing, and student union are front-and-center.

~~~
souprock
What I find weird is that dorms have mostly not improved in the one way that
would really matter: being private, including the bathroom. Issues with
roommates are severely harmful to being able to study. You risk fights,
disease, noise (early morning or late night even), and theft.

Everything else is secondary. It would be fine to save space in weird ways,
like the shower doubling as the entryway or the sink above the toilet or the
bed bunked over the desk. Even the best roommates are disruptive, and most are
far worse. Shared bathrooms are a horror show.

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mjevans
Yes this is bad. So is the lack of stable career jobs in other fields.

------
wallace_f
This is a rant, but I think our generation deserves the right to rant about
our overpriced educations, etc...

The current university model, the subsidies, the regulatory capture, the
administrarive state, etc, are all just part of the idea that everything can
be regulated and socially engineered by people who are smarter than others.
It's just modern day fiefdoms of lords and peons.

It's all a train wreck. Science has stagnated and everyone knows it despite
all the mental gymnastics we use to try and deny it. For many Americans, they
are the first generation to live with worse job, housing, work/life balance,
income security than their parents. We have escalating rates of suicide and
depression. We are the first generation of Americans to live under a
surveillance state.

To be honest, San Francisco and Seattle both look and feel far, far more
dystopian to me than Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei. Even more than Hanoi or Kuala
Lumpur, despite the fact they still struggle with deeply entrenched
corruption, infrastructure and human rights. And yet this problem in America
will be met with yet another round of bureaucrats and technocrats coming up
with a solution that is more and more of taxing and regulating our lives.

I'd rather they just give everyone basic income/healthcare and let them sort
it out on their own.

~~~
mjevans
I agree full healthcare for all is something we should have.

I'm also willing to consider something slightly short of basic income: a new
"new deal". Anyone that wants to work should be able to work. A job provider
of baseline resort. That would also be how minimum wages are set (the market
price is set by this job provision via some other process).

However consumer buying power should be part of active market control in the
form of regulations that discourage inflation by encouraging the market
towards positive equilibrium rather than cyclic loops of inflation and crashes
(which arguably we're still suffering from the lack of; there was no actual
correction in many areas during the last/current recession).

------
contingencies
I remember reading a (Golden Age fallacy?) account of the historical
university of Nalanda in India, which was an historic Buddhist center of
learning. It was not limited to religious and philosophical education, anyone
could lecture and anyone could interject. Free board was available for all
comers. It grew to become a well known international center of learning, and
at least that part is factual. There are parallels in many places (eg.
speakers corner in London, Greek and Roman popular history, etc.) but
apparently voices and the general public are apparently not scalable. Now we
have Youtube.

Amusingly, recently corrupt bureaucrats have attempted to re-instantiate
Nalanda. Despite gathering a huge amount of dirty money and land they've only
put through a handful of postgrad students, and already have weathered
multiple substantive allegations of corruption, sexual harassment, etc.

Perhaps people are the problem.

~~~
jaldhar
Nalanda, (and Vikramashila, Odantapura etc.) were Buddhist vihars
(monasteries) which have been retconned into “universities” in modern times.
Mind you the Western university grew out of Catholic Church institutions so it
is not completely far-fetched but there is a lot of wishful thinking involved.

Far from letting anyone lecture, an important office in those places was the
dvarapala (“gatekeeper”) This was a senior scholar whose job was to examine
applicants and only those who passed his tests were allowed inside.

------
DrPhilBruce
The number of earned doctorates in 2017, according to the NSF, was 54,664
([https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19301/](https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19301/)).
Approximately 50% of those graduates expect/want to teach at the higher
education level. The number of doctoral graduates who want to teach far
exceeds the number of positions, and colleges and universities are (logically)
taking advantage of that fact. Whether a college or university is for-profit
or non-profit, finance is always a core value. If they can hire part-time
adjunct faculty "as needed," with no expenses for benefits, the accountants
see no reason to hire full-time faculty. Additionally, by using primarily
part-time faculty, colleges and universities can select those individuals who
best fit student demographics and accreditation requirements, while also
making adjustments as needed. I am an associate/adjunct faculty member who was
full-time. The demands on my time and participation in non-paid activities is
still high. Many adjuncts work at several universities while maintaining a
full-time job elsewhere. There can be no loyalty in such a situation, so
everything breaks down to dollars and cents. Where I teach, adjunct faculty
are paid per class, and the rate has not changed in a decade. Highly qualified
faculty who tire of getting 2-3 classes a year, while being required to attend
quarterly "faculty" meetings, dealing with administration email proclamations
on a regular basis, are finally saying "enough is enough" and quitting.
However, the universities really do not seem to care as more and more
universities opt for the part-time adjunct model. This articles states this
issue is a "ticking time bomb," but I do not see that. Financial factors are
the driving force and accountants are making the major decisions, but they can
quickly adjust as needed as there as an excessive number of faculty who would
jump at teaching "just a little more."

------
coderintherye
"Studies have shown that the cost reductions associated with reliance on
contingent faculty members do not translate to greater savings or tuition
decreases, but that instead more money is spent elsewhere: on recruitment,
admissions, athletics, nonacademic student programming, and so on. In other
words, the hollowing out of the professoriate is not a viable strategy for
making the university cheaper, better, or more nimble; it’s devastating the
core functions of the university itself"

This sums up the core of the problem. Some here will argue it is a labor
oversupply issue, but I would argue it is a problem inherent to American
capitalism itself. Our universities have transitioned into a mindset of
"running like a business" and thus have adopted the common enterprise
mentality of constantly seeking cost reductions. These cost reductions come at
the expense of quality. I say this having spent many years working in
University administration. It is exactly as the author notes, the cost savings
merely get spent elsewhere in nonproductive ways, usually on more expensive
administration. You see this in for-profit enterprises as well as they mature
the pay inequality skews as executives take more of the profits.

"What’s the way forward? Treating nearly 75 percent of the professoriate as
disposable, ancillary to the mission of higher education, has become the
norm."

This is the way though of our current system, we treat employees as disposable
cogs in the machine. We outsource to companies who pay bargain basement wages
and produce low quality work destroying small businesses. We do this in the
name of efficiency, but we neglect quality.

I propose no solutions of my own, but agree with the author that some healthy
debate is needed on this issue.

------
TheOperator
I don't see how the status quo of adjunct professors can meaningfully change
so long as a lot of other status quos stay intacts. We're shoving objectively
stupid people through higher ed courses which are not designed to teach kids
skills that could finance the cost of said education. There is a NEED for
schools to shovel out low-cost low-quality brick and mortar education to meet
the demand for degrees that can allow you to have an actual careers.
Universites have long stopped being primarily about education or teaching you
practical skills and they're now primarily about certification. Thus adjunct
professors.

So long as the brick and mortar university remains a sacred cow I cannot see
the needle moving more than slightly. The current education system is so
batshit yet so entrenched into society it will take decades to resolve the
issues. You can't just moralize about how adjunct professors DESERVE more and
expect the situation to resolve itself when universities deliver less value
every year. Its literally not possible to take the status quo, replace the
adjunct professors with full paid ones and have the system be fiscally viable.
University provides too little value for the students or greater society to
tolerate such costs.

Adjunct professors are a symptom of a greater sickness.

------
woodandsteel
This is a great article. Let me add one more idea. This is that the
accreditation organizations get in the act and demand that universities
decrease the proportion of adjuncts.

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gHosts
I'm in a position where at one time in history it would have been a Grand Good
Idea to go off and do a Phd in Computer Science. (When I was a student, I
remember a bunch of guys who were at my age / stage that did.)

In that past age of the world long gone... I could have advanced the state of
a science in dire need of advancement, I could have done really interesting
cool stuff, I could have landed a lectureship and maybe a professorship. I
could have written a book or two. I could have even received industry funding
to do all this.

These days? Do a Phd in Comp Sc? You're joking.

I'd be in debt up to my ears, no guarantee of a better job at the end, endless
academic horseshit in between, and your expected gain from the book is less
than from cleaning toilets.

Then we wonder why the state of Computer Science as a Science is what it is.

~~~
chrisseaton
PhDs in CS don't accumulate debt, as they're paid to do it (I bought a house
while doing my PhD), are in huge demand and have no trouble getting relevant
industry jobs. I don't see what you're seeing at all.

~~~
gHosts
Which corner of the world are you're in?

Admittedly I'm not exactly in the center of the known world.

~~~
chrisseaton
This is how PhDs work and the opportunities they have at least in Europe,
Australia, Japan, North America.

~~~
gHosts
Just had a look at the available scholarships at the local uni and most would
barely cover the fees and as for buying a house, hah, not even if the fees
were free.

~~~
tcpekin
Technical PhDs are funded positions via grants, you most likely cannot just
search for available scholarships. Very few technical PhDs are on
scholarships, as they're usually more complex than just being funded by your
advisor. The typical large research school stipend is 28-35k a year post tax
paid as salary (ie tuition is already covered, etc.).

------
roenxi
The incentive structures around US education look perverse and horrible.

Consider the amount of money locked up in the major American institutions [0].
It just seems improbable that the money is going to be well managed in a
system where literally sitting around all day talking about philosophy is an
accepted, hopefully encouraged, activity. In that environment the words 'well
managed' lose all meaning, the only metric is results a generation or two
after the fact.

Then there are the people who go into the system; people who reasonably were
born into a wealthy family, went through a good educational institute, learned
at a good university then spent a great deal of effort pushing thorough to a
professorship. There are going to be many individuals who are completely
buffered from having real-world experience in an environment where safety is
not guaranteed. Furthermore, the population of a university campus is going to
have a large portion of clever but underdeveloped and inexperienced students
floating around in it.

So there is an environment where the administration has every incentive to
become corrupted by money and the faculty have no guide-rails to prevent the
formation of really disconnected world views. It is a testimony to the raw
drive and intelligence of the people involved that it all hangs together at
all.

There are more Americans being processed through environment [1]. Talking
about the conditions of the professorship is an important facet, but it is not
wise to isolate that from its place in the greater system - the direction is
that most people are going to be university educated and the overall system
probably doesn't have the sort of governance structure that can cope with this
slow influx.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment)

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-
attai...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-
of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/)

------
adamnemecek
I legit think that trade schools for programmers are a good idea.

~~~
contingencies
There are thousands of them in India.

------
purplezooey
Sorry, blame state governments the past 2-3 decades. They've mostly been doing
budget cuts and things similar to prop 13. College is viewed as discretionary,
vs. cutting k-12 when there's not enough state money to go around, so it's
taken much of the hit. That means less tenured faculty. You can vote your
preference in your state elections next time.

------
dannykwells
I wonder to what extent MOOCs have contributed to this crisis. It used to be
that to get advanced training of any kind - credentialed or not - you had to
go to university, and this helped a lot of subpar universities survive. Now
for advanced training it is becoming easier and easier to go online and those
programs benefit from scale (you can have classes of 10K people, etc.)

That to me would put a crunch on middle or lower tier institutions, which rely
heavily on teaching and which don't offer a degree worth much more than an
online credential. In that scenario, you would expect these schools to go for
the short term "survival" scenario vs. the long term "thrive" scenario, and in
fact, that is what we see - lower tier schools with big sports budgets, fancy
gyms, nice cafeterias, etc., staffed entirely by adjunct faculty.

Overall, the selective pressure against these lower tier universities might
not be a bad thing. As those die out (which I believe they will), it could
result in a good set of schools all which provide a strong, general education,
and an equal, respected set of online institutions which can provide
credentials for those who do not want the more traditional path.

~~~
blueboo
> advanced training of any kind - credentialed or not - you had to go to
> university

not true. from music, to plumbing, to software, to fiction writing...

meanwhile the training MOOCs provide is hardly equivalent to a bachelor's
degree in CV-terms let alone curriculum.

Meanwhile, for example, a Data Science in Python nanodegree may very well be
better prep for an industry job than a statistics bachelor's, but the two were
never going to be equivalent.

~~~
maze-le
>> Meanwhile, for example, a Data Science in Python nanodegree may very well
be better prep for an industry job

That is the root of the problem isn't it? IMO No institution should train you
for a job in the industry except the industry. Also, higher education (post-
college) should not discredit themself to be an apprentices-program for any
industry -- it is not what they can accomplish anyhow since the requirements
change faster than the institutions can adapt. A university has lost all of
its meaning if they do not work to further the field itself, but for the ever-
changing demands of the economy.

------
naveen99
> 83 year old French teacher being underpaid as an adjunct...

Strange

