Spiritual compensation
The NY Times on the scabbing of PhDs:
The job would be on a “without salary basis,” as the posting phrased it. Just to be clear, it hammered home the point: “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”
The posting last month caused an immediate uproar among academics across the country, who accused the university of exploiting already undervalued adjunct professors, and suggested this would never happen in other occupations. Under pressure, U.C.L.A. apologized and withdrew the posting.
But the unspoken secret had been fleetingly exposed: Free labor is a fact of academic life.
They have to keep the bulk of their funds for the football program.
Very often, adjuncts and other contingent faculty are asked to do unpaid work that is presented not as free labor but as a way to hone their own credentials, according to union activists and some instructors who have received such requests.
Well of course the universities don’t present it as free labor. It’s a privilege to teach at UCLA for bupkis! You get bragging rights!
I’ve taught writing as an adjunct for over thirty years now. I call it being an academic wage slave.
I’ve persisted only because it suits my life of multiple pursuits–farming, writing, other jobs such as EMT–and also because graduate school taught me that a PhD in English is a travesty. Being exempt from department meetings and assignments is worth the hand-to-mouth, dinner out of a dumpster lifestyle (I’m exaggerating only a little).
Adjuncts in my state also have a union, which has gotten us health insurance coverage and a 403(b). Better than nothing.
You’d think the place that generates and markets advanced degrees would be the last place that wants to value the very thing it makes at literally zero dollars!
Thanks for the article link; I’ve been wondering what the heck that UCLA job was about.
Kevin Drum, in his usual contrarian manner, has been talking over the last couple of days about whether the US in minting too many PhDs. Another writer claimed yes, so Drum rounded up some statistics and said that PhDs are paid, overall, quite well in the US. After some discussion, he conceded that maybe the US has too many PhDs who are absolutely determined to enter tenure track in academia, but not overall. And he suggests that the large number of PhDs in certain fields who are eager to get academic positions are driving down the pay levels for adjuncts; an excellent point, I think.
I do think it would be good to look at field-specific numbers, and by not doing so I think Drum is missing some aspects of the issue, but the discussion on his blog has been interesting.
The comparisons with sports are interesting as well. Top-level revenue sports are mostly self-funding; some send a small amount of revenue to the school, but mostly the money goes to the athletic department, as is required by NCAA regulations. So, yes, schools are putting money into sports that could go into academics, but not so much the famous football factories. Lower-level revenue sports and non-revenue sports cost the school money. Athletes who are hoping for professional careers are supposedly also students, and supposedly get a college degree, the training for which should enable them to gain entry to a variety of jobs after college should their professional career goals not pan out. I don’t know that PhD students have that kind of backup plan, even supposedly; they are articulate people with good writing skills and the ability to work hard, but that doesn’t seem enough.
How is this even legal under the anti-slavery laws? Literally how is it legal to have a job (not internship or volunteering) without payment?
Sackbut, that’s fine for the top level revenue sports, but most college programs are paying more than they receive. They’d be better off focusing on top-flight scientific research, which actually is a money generator, though to be fair, not as much money as they pretend they earn from athletics. And they don’t have to pay the instructors millions of dollars. Academics work for much less. (Good salaries? Yes. Great ones? No.)
From what I can tell, most modern humanities departments probably should be on a ‘without a salary’ basis. It is a bit surprising that this UCLA position was for a Chemistry position.
Whoever the head of their marketing department is, they should be fired.
Apart from the fact that not paying people for work is, you know, pretty damn close to slavery, it advertises precisely what UCLA thinks a PHD is worth.
And if I’m a student who wants to get a PHD, do I want to get it from an institution that believes PHDs are worth less than nothing?