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Comment by danharaj | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how the most essential work in society is under constant pressure of debasement. Feeding people is considered an ignominious job. Teaching people too is constantly debased. Now it's affecting higher education. The neoliberal transformation of capitalism decouples the value of goods and services from their value to humanity and instead pegs them against markets. Markets no longer merely transmit information about value. They are the definition of value. This is the ideological difference between liberal free market capitalism and neoliberalism; at least the former paid lip service to the idea that truth and value are ours to define. Not so. Capital determines value.

Universities are capitalist entities. They are trying to compete and appreciate in value for their shareholders. The market has replaced whatever value systems justified universities in the past.

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Erm... isn't the actual root cause of the problem raised in TFA the opposite of debasement? Namely excess supply of people who're willing to go into academia to "do the most essential work in society", whatever the terms, as a sister comment from an insider pointed out? If the perceived value of being in academia was low enough, the market would force the universities to treat adjuncts better.

Also, aren't most or at least a great many of the most famous universities non-profits, competing for donations instead of trying to maximize shareholder value? I hear that in for-profit education, the average student is treated better and so is the average lecturer (you want to please your students whose money feeds you and you want to attract lecturers whose primary motivation is financial and who're good enough to please your students, so the for-profit institution kinda has to treat both well to survive.) Somebody living off donations, on the other hand, only has to please people donating the money (and someone living off taxes only has to please government officials), while pleasing either students or the teaching staff is no longer essential.

(I don't have firm or specific opinions on how higher education should be run, in general, just commenting on your points.)

Debasement here refers to the educational experience. That doesn't happen at all institutions but it certainly appears common. Debasement at for profit institutions is obvious to anyone paying attention. Those schools are more frequently than not diploma mills using student aid to extract $$ from the federal gov't. That's evidenced by aggressive marketing, FTC actions, weak admissions policies, low rates of graduation and frequently poor job placement prospects.

Debasement at the non-profits and state institutions is running them to the benefit of the administrators, buildings, athletic departments, and even endowments (i.e. alumni development) at the expense of the educational experience. None of that is germane to education. Profit or non-profit doesn't matter.

Debasement at state institutions is also legislatures and governors slashing budgets so they can cut taxes to the detriment of the entire institution and students. The administrators and athletic depts can and do lobby effectively but generally faculty and students have little voice in state gov't.

All of these tend to make the experience of students and faculty members worse than it might be otherwise. So yes, the oversupply of prospective faculty plays a role but it's only one of the drivers. There are close analogs in the exploitation of post doc researchers and let's face it student athletes.

> Erm... isn't the actual root cause of the problem raised in TFA the opposite of debasement? Namely excess supply of people who're willing to go into academia to "do the most essential work in society", whatever the terms, as a sister comment from an insider pointed out? If the perceived value of being in academia was low enough, the market would force the universities to treat adjuncts better.

this eerily sounds similar to the kind of logic i was rejecting. this is an appeal to the logic of markets and the assumption that they are efficient to derive truth. this is exactly neoliberalism. at least in old school liberalism we could acknowledge markets' shortcomings via externalities and the idea of market failure! Otherwise i think the sibling comment is a good response.

Neither your comment nor the comment you cite replies directly to mine - meaning, neither of you addresses the question what happens if people refuse to work for universities at the current level of compensation (perhaps some do not have a better option right now, but those who studied STEM certainly do.) I claim that comp will have to go up, boom, problem solved. Where am I wrong? What other solution would you propose that cannot be circumvented by the employer as long as the employees are willing to help circumvent it, for the same reasons making them willing to accept a raw deal now?

Instead, your comment in particular rejects what I said because it's "neoliberalism." All I said was that employers will tend to give you shit as long as you take it, be it for-profits, non-profits, government or individuals. I don't think that's quite the same as denying externalities or market failure or generally arguing about neoliberalism and other abstract concepts at a great distance from the issue at hand.

In concrete terms, I believe the someone quitting a bad job or not taking it in the first place is better off than someone who does take it and then broods about the debasement brought about by neoliberalism or whatever the supposed root cause of their condition is. In other words, my angle is more productive than yours as a basis for action.

I think the most essential-seeming jobs are "underpaid" because such jobs are (by their very nature) fulfilling, and people value that. If someone with the same qualifications would rather teach for $x than administrate for $x+20k, then naturally we end up with administrators being paid $20k more than teachers.

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