Thank you for sharing this dark reality. Earning a PhD with the goal of becoming a tenured professor has become an economic treadmill in purgatory for many brilliant scholars.
Brilliant scholars? We don't need brilliant scholars. Bcuz they can analyze poems and old irrelevant novels, that is useless to the economy. It does not produce value, art and poetry. Only intellectual enjoyment. To base a career upon this is ridiculous.
When you see the only worth of education as being how it translates to getting a job, you commodify everything, put a price on it, and relegate humanity itself into being only a commodity and dismiss all that makes like worth living. Let me guess. You have an MBA. Profit, profit, profit, the only good. "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?"
Many English professors are required to teach basic writing and rhetoric as well as their specialty classes in analyzing "poems and old irrelevant novels". Furthermore, having students write papers on poems and "old irrelevant novels" is a way of teaching students how to think critically and express that critical thinking in y'know, written words. As to "value, art and poetry" many English professors are poets or novelists who years from now may be remembered as authors of valuable "poems and old irrelevant novels". Finally, think about the historical "value" of "poems and old irrelevant novels": reading obscure Victorian novels, for example, gives 21st century students valuable insight into the customs, mores, and values of the past and allows them to reflect on our current historical moment by comparing present to past and understanding that "the past" as well as the present are both "history".
This was my life for 27 years. I was discarded like yesterday's trash, as I was becoming disabled. Now my family is trying to survive on my husband's adjunct pay, which is far less than mine was. Then you get the department chairs who say "I don't want adjuncts working for us who do this for a living." I can no longer work, so I can freely say fuck her!
Too many doomed adjuncts obviously didn't want to learn anything difficult or technical - being a English literature or art teacher is not very important to the economy. They wanted to have the warm fuzzy and conceited ability to call themselves a scholar, a doctor. I have no sympathy for anyone who gets in trouble as an adj bcuz they didn't know the career outcomes. Poor life planning due to willful ignorance or arrogant overestimation of luck and intelligence leads to ruin like this
Or, they are women who dared to have children. Plenty of adjuncts have marketable skills, but the US is basically anti-family when it comes to the profit motive. Or the universities are luring in way too many people with graduate degrees, creating a surplus army of labor. You speak like a white man who came from a position of privilege. You also fail to see how the universities have McDonaldized academia, so they can cut costs. Also, from observation, it's been the most unethical, backstabbing individuals who manage to get full-time, tenure-track positions. They believe themselves to be superior, simply because they got lucky, or knew somebody who could get them one of the dwindling number of full-time positions. On top of suffering from rampant narcissism, full timers have also become even more schizoid, because even in those plum positions, the demands on them to achieve tenure can be both unrealistic, and unethical. For example, full-time positions are awarded in economics departments to people who will revamp the curricula to favor presenting a corporatized analysis of economics. Gone are the courses that analyze the social consequences of a rampant plutonomy and plutocracy. Instead, you get hedge fund managers whose purpose for existing is singularly selfish, and dangerous to the economy of the entire world. (See the documentary, "The Inside Job.") Same thing goes for sociology departments, which are increasingly being replaced with criminal justice departments and curricula. At the universities I taught at, most of the courses geared toward, once again, analyzing the social consequences of greed-based economic policies, have been eliminated from the curricula. You can delude yourself by thinking your shit doesn't stink, and you will never be victim of the corporate takeover of colleges and universities. Or maybe you are a despotic administrator (or hope to be one) with a 6-figure salary. Most people who have worked in academia, as well as students, know the type. People like this do a lot of damage to students in the name of even public colleges and universities reaping profits.
@@decimated550I hope you never have to experience this kind of suffering to which you so casually condemn others. If these subjects aren’t essential, then why are universities and colleges still teaching them? Why do adjunct professors teach all the required general education courses? It’s not that these courses aren’t needed, it’s that universities don’t care about laborers or human life and schmucks like you don’t either.
I spent zero dollars on my PhD. I got a salary ($16,000) every year for 4 years plus all fees covered. If you have to pay for a PhD you might not be good enough to begin with.
J P It depends on what discipline your PhD is in. If it's something non-marketable such as English, Philosophy, or most liberal arts field, then yes it's not impossible to obtain scholarships. However if your PhD in for an in-demand field such as STEM, getting scholarships would be a daunting challenge. And this is assuming you're getting your PhD from reputable not-for-profit education institutions and not diploma mills like University of Phoenix, DeVry, etc. Expecting to get a full-time scholarship to be a medical doctor? HA HA HA, get serious! We're in America, so let's not get our hopes up now lol!
@@ess8765 It's not free if you could be making much more. And the failure to maximize your earning potential has a lifelong impact, with consequences (in the U.S.) for social security benefits, etc.
Yes she is. I've had the privilege of knowing Dr. Patton since we met at JHU in 1996. She's one of the most honest, transparent, brilliant and passionate people I've ever met, and I'm proud to be able to call her a friend.
I love you Stacey! You wrote the most compelling and accurate article about me. Keep up the great work! P.S. Could be homeless again soon if San Francisco Public Schools does not pay me $30,000 from teaching on front lines of Covid last year.
thanks. i too went to college when i graduated hs (at the bottom 5 percent of my class), and what they don't tell you is people like me are unlikely to graduate in even 8.5 years. and it's true in my case... it's been 8.5 years since hs and i'm (finally) on my last semester. it really does feel like i'm stuck and in purgatory. to make matters worse I've been applying to jobs for about 6 months now and i'm not finding anything in my field of computer science, despite all these claims of labor shortages.
And many universities will NOT promote an adjunct. I'm living it as an African American woman. MORE SO being black and a woman. I work multiple jobs throughout the year. I refuse to get any aid. This is why I work multiple jobs.
Be honest. As a female and a black American, you are MUCH more likely to get hired for a faculty position than a white male in America in 2019. Look at the disproportionate breakdown of women and blacks/Hispanics (far higher than their demographic numbers would indicate they should be), and you will realize you’re at an advantage. You shouldn’t be, but you are.
Sometimes, it's hard to sympathize. I feel like there is a certain type of stubbornness and almost hubris with some people where they feel like they are born to be brilliant scholars/professors instead of looking for other opportunities in industry where pay is much better. Is being a professor really their only option and if so, why?
Universities and colleges need to offer these courses, of which many are general education requirements. It’s not that adjunct faculty aren’t needed, it’s that the administration has rationalized the casualization of academic labor. They pay adjuncts less because they can, not because their labor isn’t needed. They have simply found a convincing line of propaganda that people like you have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. There will always be idiots who think their bosses and industries wouldn’t casualize or do massive layoffs if given half a chance. I am sure that you will live to eat your words. If you’re in the tech sector, you may have already realized how short-sighted your viewpoint was. By the time they come for your job, it will be too late for you to think about how you should have stood up for labor rights.
The horrendous reality of adjuncts is only matched by their horrendous choices in life. Grow a pair. Leave the system. Take some pride in the years of hard work you put in to get that dissertation. If you don't have a PhD (or you aren't about to finish one, don't even wonder why you are not on the tenure track). I haven't even defended my doctoral dissertation yet and have a tenure track asst prof job in a pretty damn nice university. I'm in the humanities. I'm gay, fat, ugly and and i'm an immigrant on a visa. Please!!! Stop whining. If you don't value to hard earned education, who will?
You may be gay, fat, ugly, and an immigrant on VISA. But guess what, you're not black or a woman. So someone has you beaten in respect to pity-fest lol!
They probably hired you because you’re a toady with uncontroversial, derivative scholarship who licks administrative boots like it was part of your job duties.
I'm tired of hearing about Mary Margaret Votjtko. If someone finds year after year they aren't moving up, they should go elsewhere. If she never married and had no partner to share bills with, that is not the unversities fault.
+decimated550 Probably they go somewhere else because they are afraid that people like you will occupy their places, undermining educational system even more. I think they have a point.
+decimated550 Probably they do not go somewhere else because they are afraid that people like you will occupy their places, undermining educational system even more. I think they have a point.
DECIMATED550 does NOT know the difference in universities (plural) and university's (possessive). DECIMATED550 is NOT literate thus has NO business bad-mouthing adjunct professors!
i'm sorry about that error. sometimes i'm typing on a cell phone and it's too fatiguing to check. I know english perfectly, i catch errors like a computer. Just that time I didn't. The real issue is the problem of becoming a professor. Most professors want to get on the gravy train but overestimate their chances. Others are truly deceived about the value of a life of the mind. Poetry equals poverty. Poetry does not return on the investment in an English degree. Please all you intellectuals, get a blue collar job that is hard and requires technical skills, so that you can make you and you r family a lot of money. Poetry? do it in your spare time. You might have a glowing love of poetry but your kids will be stunted by the poverty you doom them to. Become a lawyer or truck driver or X ray technician. But many professors have a secret or not so secret disdain for such professions. I know many truck drivers and they are more useful to the world than all the poetry professors and departments of literature. They move stuff which people eat and use. Who cares about The Great gAtsby, that annoying unrealistic story. I'll listen to a friend teach me how to troubleshoot my car than a rumpled, aged professor carrying on about Shirley Jackson's "My Life with RH Macy", a supposedly clever, witty story. A lot of professors and wanna be professors have made a terrible, expensive choice which just plays into the hands of the utterly corrupt educational system. All that money that's in it shouldn't be there. Everyone goes to college for free (stolen from taxes) and/ or from loans and all the mediocrities bring the average down, down. Kill student loans for humanities! only allow loans for STEM and business! no one needs to pay $60k for gender studies, becuase i'm helping them pay for it and i don't want to do that any more. zzzz im done
decimated550 Some of these people seem socially inept. If they are not lucky to find a cushy professorship to shield them from the real world, they simply cannot function. Who would stay in the position that Mary did for all those years unless they are somehow maladjusted?
I doubt they'll make any more at Home Depot. What they should be doing is looking at private sector opportunities related to their field. I was just on another video where one of the commenters suggested going into corporate training rather than public teaching.
@@blaisetelfer8499it’s not as though you can just go into the corporate world. There is a bias in industry against academics; even if they acknowledge that our skills are transferable, they also think we won’t be a good fit for company culture and will be unpleasant to work with. Career transitions take, on average, 6-12 months.
Thank you for sharing this dark reality. Earning a PhD with the goal of becoming a tenured professor has become an economic treadmill in purgatory for many brilliant scholars.
Brilliant scholars? We don't need brilliant scholars. Bcuz they can analyze poems and old irrelevant novels, that is useless to the economy. It does not produce value, art and poetry. Only intellectual enjoyment. To base a career upon this is ridiculous.
How about physics? Local college eliminated physics from the curriculum (able to do so because NO full time physics professors, all adjunct.
When you see the only worth of education as being how it translates to getting a job, you commodify everything, put a price on it, and relegate humanity itself into being only a commodity and dismiss all that makes like worth living. Let me guess. You have an MBA. Profit, profit, profit, the only good. "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?"
Many English professors are required to teach basic writing and rhetoric as well as their specialty classes in analyzing "poems and old irrelevant novels". Furthermore, having students write papers on poems and "old irrelevant novels" is a way of teaching students how to think critically and express that critical thinking in y'know, written words. As to "value, art and poetry" many English professors are poets or novelists who years from now may be remembered as authors of valuable "poems and old irrelevant novels". Finally, think about the historical "value" of "poems and old irrelevant novels": reading obscure Victorian novels, for example, gives 21st century students valuable insight into the customs, mores, and values of the past and allows them to reflect on our current historical moment by comparing present to past and understanding that "the past" as well as the present are both "history".
@@decimated550 4 years late, but this ignorant comment deserves to be called out. You sir/madam, are an empty shell.
This was my life for 27 years. I was discarded like yesterday's trash, as I was becoming disabled. Now my family is trying to survive on my husband's adjunct pay, which is far less than mine was. Then you get the department chairs who say "I don't want adjuncts working for us who do this for a living."
I can no longer work, so I can freely say fuck her!
Too many doomed adjuncts obviously didn't want to learn anything difficult or technical - being a English literature or art teacher is not very important to the economy. They wanted to have the warm fuzzy and conceited ability to call themselves a scholar, a doctor. I have no sympathy for anyone who gets in trouble as an adj bcuz they didn't know the career outcomes. Poor life planning due to willful ignorance or arrogant overestimation of luck and intelligence leads to ruin like this
Or, they are women who dared to have children. Plenty of adjuncts have marketable skills, but the US is basically anti-family when it comes to the profit motive. Or the universities are luring in way too many people with graduate degrees, creating a surplus army of labor.
You speak like a white man who came from a position of privilege. You also fail to see how the universities have McDonaldized academia, so they can cut costs. Also, from observation, it's been the most unethical, backstabbing individuals who manage to get full-time, tenure-track positions. They believe themselves to be superior, simply because they got lucky, or knew somebody who could get them one of the dwindling number of full-time positions. On top of suffering from rampant narcissism, full timers have also become even more schizoid, because even in those plum positions, the demands on them to achieve tenure can be both unrealistic, and unethical.
For example, full-time positions are awarded in economics departments to people who will revamp the curricula to favor presenting a corporatized analysis of economics. Gone are the courses that analyze the social consequences of a rampant plutonomy and plutocracy. Instead, you get hedge fund managers whose purpose for existing is singularly selfish, and dangerous to the economy of the entire world. (See the documentary, "The Inside Job.")
Same thing goes for sociology departments, which are increasingly being replaced with criminal justice departments and curricula. At the universities I taught at, most of the courses geared toward, once again, analyzing the social consequences of greed-based economic policies, have been eliminated from the curricula.
You can delude yourself by thinking your shit doesn't stink, and you will never be victim of the corporate takeover of colleges and universities. Or maybe you are a despotic administrator (or hope to be one) with a 6-figure salary. Most people who have worked in academia, as well as students, know the type. People like this do a lot of damage to students in the name of even public colleges and universities reaping profits.
nebula1400 I'm sorry for your situation but you sound brilliant. Maybe u should consider writing a book about your experience?
@@decimated550I hope you never have to experience this kind of suffering to which you so casually condemn others. If these subjects aren’t essential, then why are universities and colleges still teaching them? Why do adjunct professors teach all the required general education courses? It’s not that these courses aren’t needed, it’s that universities don’t care about laborers or human life and schmucks like you don’t either.
Thank you for sharing the stories of these Adjuncts. This is incredibly important and I'm grateful that you are getting this message out.
that's crazy. Professors who spend thousands of dollars for a Phd, and make minimum wage
Hank Moody Nobody forced them to spend that thousands of dollars for a PhD to begin with.
I spent zero dollars on my PhD. I got a salary ($16,000) every year for 4 years plus all fees covered. If you have to pay for a PhD you might not be good enough to begin with.
J P It depends on what discipline your PhD is in. If it's something non-marketable such as English, Philosophy, or most liberal arts field, then yes it's not impossible to obtain scholarships. However if your PhD in for an in-demand field such as STEM, getting scholarships would be a daunting challenge. And this is assuming you're getting your PhD from reputable not-for-profit education institutions and not diploma mills like University of Phoenix, DeVry, etc. Expecting to get a full-time scholarship to be a medical doctor? HA HA HA, get serious! We're in America, so let's not get our hopes up now lol!
PhD is free. You get sponsored to research
@@ess8765 It's not free if you could be making much more. And the failure to maximize your earning potential has a lifelong impact, with consequences (in the U.S.) for social security benefits, etc.
This woman is so smart. I wish I could tell her. She's simply brilliant.
Yes she is. I've had the privilege of knowing Dr. Patton since we met at JHU in 1996. She's one of the most honest, transparent, brilliant and passionate people I've ever met, and I'm proud to be able to call her a friend.
I love you Stacey! You wrote the most compelling and accurate article about me. Keep up the great work! P.S. Could be homeless again soon if San Francisco Public Schools does not pay me $30,000 from teaching on front lines of Covid last year.
thanks. i too went to college when i graduated hs (at the bottom 5 percent of my class), and what they don't tell you is people like me are unlikely to graduate in even 8.5 years. and it's true in my case... it's been 8.5 years since hs and i'm (finally) on my last semester. it really does feel like i'm stuck and in purgatory. to make matters worse I've been applying to jobs for about 6 months now and i'm not finding anything in my field of computer science, despite all these claims of labor shortages.
Thank you.❤ i’m glad I was smart enough to get out after being in it too long. I loved my students. I did not love the corporate model.
And many universities will NOT promote an adjunct. I'm living it as an African American woman. MORE SO being black and a woman. I work multiple jobs throughout the year. I refuse to get any aid. This is why I work multiple jobs.
Be honest. As a female and a black American, you are MUCH more likely to get hired for a faculty position than a white male in America in 2019. Look at the disproportionate breakdown of women and blacks/Hispanics (far higher than their demographic numbers would indicate they should be), and you will realize you’re at an advantage. You shouldn’t be, but you are.
You need to quit like I did. I know it's hard because you don't know what the next step is but by staying you're are just prolonging the inevitable.
@@Z_Victory_Z I think she thinks she a victim like it is 1960.
Yes, so sad about the older European American woman, who fell dead.
American dream is dead.
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
Sometimes, it's hard to sympathize. I feel like there is a certain type of stubbornness and almost hubris with some people where they feel like they are born to be brilliant scholars/professors instead of looking for other opportunities in industry where pay is much better. Is being a professor really their only option and if so, why?
Universities and colleges need to offer these courses, of which many are general education requirements. It’s not that adjunct faculty aren’t needed, it’s that the administration has rationalized the casualization of academic labor. They pay adjuncts less because they can, not because their labor isn’t needed. They have simply found a convincing line of propaganda that people like you have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. There will always be idiots who think their bosses and industries wouldn’t casualize or do massive layoffs if given half a chance. I am sure that you will live to eat your words. If you’re in the tech sector, you may have already realized how short-sighted your viewpoint was. By the time they come for your job, it will be too late for you to think about how you should have stood up for labor rights.
Their knowledge is not in high demand.
voice so sooth..
The horrendous reality of adjuncts is only matched by their horrendous choices in life. Grow a pair. Leave the system. Take some pride in the years of hard work you put in to get that dissertation. If you don't have a PhD (or you aren't about to finish one, don't even wonder why you are not on the tenure track). I haven't even defended my doctoral dissertation yet and have a tenure track asst prof job in a pretty damn nice university. I'm in the humanities. I'm gay, fat, ugly and and i'm an immigrant on a visa. Please!!! Stop whining. If you don't value to hard earned education, who will?
You may be gay, fat, ugly, and an immigrant on VISA. But guess what, you're not black or a woman. So someone has you beaten in respect to pity-fest lol!
They probably hired you because you’re a toady with uncontroversial, derivative scholarship who licks administrative boots like it was part of your job duties.
We're little better than SERFS.
I'm tired of hearing about Mary Margaret Votjtko. If someone finds year after year they aren't moving up, they should go elsewhere. If she never married and had no partner to share bills with, that is not the unversities fault.
+decimated550 Probably they go somewhere else because they are afraid that people like you will occupy their places, undermining educational system even more. I think they have a point.
+decimated550 Probably they do not go somewhere else because they are afraid that people like you will occupy their places, undermining educational system even more. I think they have a point.
DECIMATED550 does NOT know the difference in universities (plural) and university's (possessive).
DECIMATED550 is NOT literate thus has NO business bad-mouthing adjunct professors!
i'm sorry about that error. sometimes i'm typing on a cell phone and it's too fatiguing to check. I know english perfectly, i catch errors like a computer. Just that time I didn't.
The real issue is the problem of becoming a professor. Most professors want to get on the gravy train but overestimate their chances. Others are truly deceived about the value of a life of the mind. Poetry equals poverty. Poetry does not return on the investment in an English degree. Please all you intellectuals, get a blue collar job that is hard and requires technical skills, so that you can make you and you r family a lot of money. Poetry? do it in your spare time. You might have a glowing love of poetry but your kids will be stunted by the poverty you doom them to. Become a lawyer or truck driver or X ray technician. But many professors have a secret or not so secret disdain for such professions. I know many truck drivers and they are more useful to the world than all the poetry professors and departments of literature. They move stuff which people eat and use. Who cares about The Great gAtsby, that annoying unrealistic story. I'll listen to a friend teach me how to troubleshoot my car than a rumpled, aged professor carrying on about Shirley Jackson's "My Life with RH Macy", a supposedly clever, witty story.
A lot of professors and wanna be professors have made a terrible, expensive choice which just plays into the hands of the utterly corrupt educational system. All that money that's in it shouldn't be there. Everyone goes to college for free (stolen from taxes) and/ or from loans and all the mediocrities bring the average down, down. Kill student loans for humanities! only allow loans for STEM and business! no one needs to pay $60k for gender studies, becuase i'm helping them pay for it and i don't want to do that any more. zzzz im done
decimated550 Some of these people seem socially inept. If they are not lucky to find a cushy professorship to shield them from the real world, they simply cannot function. Who would stay in the position that Mary did for all those years unless they are somehow maladjusted?
I am black and I think that this woman is talking pure nonsense...everything in the corporate world is evil. I would never hire her!
Okay, then try to debunk her arguments.
Too bad......get a job that you can do better at like Home Depot.,,,,,,,,stay poor.
How do those bootstraps taste?
I doubt they'll make any more at Home Depot. What they should be doing is looking at private sector opportunities related to their field. I was just on another video where one of the commenters suggested going into corporate training rather than public teaching.
@@blaisetelfer8499it’s not as though you can just go into the corporate world. There is a bias in industry against academics; even if they acknowledge that our skills are transferable, they also think we won’t be a good fit for company culture and will be unpleasant to work with. Career transitions take, on average, 6-12 months.