Post by jphil on Jan 20, 2009 12:19:29 GMT -5
So a lot of bloggers are talking these days about life outside of academia. I suppose there's a groundswell of unlucky job seekers that are beginning to consider or even implement Plan B.
I suppose the recession this year will cause many more people to implement Plan B than usual. But the fact that TAs, adjuncts, and visiting profs play an ever increasing role in the education of undergrads indicates that more and more of us will be forced into Plan B eventually. (Unless, of course, you want to make a living as an adjunct or an itinerant visiting prof.)
The fact is that there are too many graduate students. We're hired for our (incredibly) cheap labor, and there's no promise that we'll ever be promoted from university lackey to respectable human being.
And the fact is that there's no foreseeable pressure for universities to hire more full time professors. Philosophy departments make most of their money teaching Intro and Critical Thinking classes to non-majors. Do universities really need highly qualified professors for that? Does the level of education -- in classes like that -- really differ that much between a VAP and a full professor? So why wouldn't universities continue to lean on grad students, adjuncts, and VAPs for this lion's share of the teaching duties?
The only way I could see this changing is if students started to demand that they be taught by tenured or tenure-track professors. But I just don't foresee many non-philosophy majors -- who endure their required intro class -- suddenly being moved to action on our behalf.
But hey, maybe Obamessiah will create a new heaven and a new Earth and wipe away all our tears. Maybe I just gotta have faith in hope and change. Less sarcastically, maybe his plan for the govt to subsidize the tuition of millions of college-aged people, and the inevitable rise in tuition rates that this will cause, will actually allow enriched departments to hire more full-time faculty.
I suppose the recession this year will cause many more people to implement Plan B than usual. But the fact that TAs, adjuncts, and visiting profs play an ever increasing role in the education of undergrads indicates that more and more of us will be forced into Plan B eventually. (Unless, of course, you want to make a living as an adjunct or an itinerant visiting prof.)
The fact is that there are too many graduate students. We're hired for our (incredibly) cheap labor, and there's no promise that we'll ever be promoted from university lackey to respectable human being.
And the fact is that there's no foreseeable pressure for universities to hire more full time professors. Philosophy departments make most of their money teaching Intro and Critical Thinking classes to non-majors. Do universities really need highly qualified professors for that? Does the level of education -- in classes like that -- really differ that much between a VAP and a full professor? So why wouldn't universities continue to lean on grad students, adjuncts, and VAPs for this lion's share of the teaching duties?
The only way I could see this changing is if students started to demand that they be taught by tenured or tenure-track professors. But I just don't foresee many non-philosophy majors -- who endure their required intro class -- suddenly being moved to action on our behalf.
But hey, maybe Obamessiah will create a new heaven and a new Earth and wipe away all our tears. Maybe I just gotta have faith in hope and change. Less sarcastically, maybe his plan for the govt to subsidize the tuition of millions of college-aged people, and the inevitable rise in tuition rates that this will cause, will actually allow enriched departments to hire more full-time faculty.
