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Comment by refriedbeans3 | Hacker News Reader

It already is happening. So many graduates see the higher level of skill they have and the joke of a salary that adjuncts make and 'nope-ing' out into industry. Academia is going to starve itself of it's best performers by low pay and horrible standards for adjuncts and tenure track positions alike.

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Yeah, that's the smart thing to do, especially when there's strong demand for their skills, like from silicon valley. Heck, that would make a great plot for the show of the same name:

PP is looking to academia to hire and they informally offer a candidate "100", by which they mean "$100k/year", but (they later find out) the heavily underpaid post-doc took to mean "$100/day", and they debate whether they should write up the offer letter with the lower amount.

This. The fix for the pay issues is for the over supply to go away. If we attempt to legislate or worse, unionize the field, we will just end up with many who want to work with no job as requirements will spell out exactly who gets employed and how, effectively locking out any who cannot get on board.

I still of the opinion that the university system needs a good hair cut. They are able to rake in billions of federal dollars for student loans and unlike the medical care field where federal money also goes no attempt is made to course rates. As in, if you want students on federal loans this is what you can charge per course hour for this course.

The problem with the market-based approach is that the oversupply won't go away anytime soon. Right now there is a surfeit of chemists on the East Coast from the Dow-Dupont merger that added to the surfeit from the pharma crisis that started fifteen years ago and hasn't really ended.

What exactly is wrong with the union-based approach (the AMA works rather nicely for physicians), and why can't the US have a proper science policy?

The AMA does work rather nicely for physicians, but it's less clear that it works nicely for patients. There's a strong argument to be made that the USA suffers from a chronic undersupply of physicians, and that certainly boosts doctor pay but it comes at the cost of patients having to pay higher prices for poorer quality service.

The AMA also has the advantage of being an incumbent. If we were to hypothesize a similar national organization for American academics that was attempting to follow a similar strategy, their first problem would be how to generate the artificial undersupply that allows members of its profession to enjoy such a favorable job market in the first place. I'm guessing anything that accomplishes that goal more quickly than waiting for a market correction would, would end up being a pretty painful experience for the large number of folks who find themselves forcibly shoved out of academia.

From what doctor's have told me, the AMA exists to serve itself and the few conducting research.

Yep, the general sentiment among doctors is that they've failed to advocate for themselves both in the public sphere and government. Comparisons are frequently drawn between themselves and nursing groups who have lobbied very successfully for both expanded scope of practice and better workplace conditions.

Unions are most valuable for laborers and society when labor is fungible. Assembly line work, for example, really really ought to be unionized for the benefits of the worker, society, and probably the employer comes out a bit ahead too (expectations are set, wage negotiation is simplified).

Academic research is very not fungible. If you think there's a 10x programmer, there's a 50x scientist, a handful more at 10x, and the median (yes,median) "nominal" scientist is probably -2x.

A unionized system will protect the -2x and the 50xs, being treated equally to these idiots, will drop out.

I'm all for free association, if scientists want to unionize, that's up to them, but the broader social consequences will not be pretty.

But adjuncts aren't doing research are they? They're teaching the courses that the research-level staff don't want to do.

Yes, you are correct, and I think there is a good case for unionizing adjuncts, I just got lost in the post above mine, and forgot about op.

The median scientist undoes the work of two 1x-ers? Seriously? Could you elaborate on your basis for saying that?

Unions are not for academic researchers. Unions are for adjuncts teaching composition, or calculus, or chem 101. If you don't think someone who is hired on a Tuesday to teach a semester-long class starting on a Wednesday is an interchangeable commodity... well, suffice it to say that people hired as adjuncts to teach composition/art history/algebra/precalc/calc/mechanics are viewed entirely as commodities in any city large enough to have cheap housing.

Students will definitely come out ahead if their teachers have time and space to 1) read the syllabus before showing up to class, 2) prepare for class, 3) hold office hours, and 4) store graded materials. Things a student can't reliably do if the teacher is a poorly-treated adjunct: a) get a letter of recommendation (no time!), b) dispute a grade the next semester (tests aren't stored on campus!), c) have comfortable office hours (meet in a hallway, sitting on a floor, because there is no office!).

Sorry the post immediately above mine referenced researchers, and I forgot about op. I think there's a very good case for unionizing non-research adjuncts.

I have a PhD in CS and seriously considered staying in academia. I really enjoy teaching, so I would have been okay with making less than I could with an industry job. But it's not the pay that pushed me to industry, but the shitty contracts you get. I don't want to change cities or even continents every two or three years. There are no permanent positions available at all and even five year contracts are very rare.

Given a stable‡ industry market wage job, would you ever become a part-time adjunct based on your enjoyment of and passion for teaching?

‡ Presumably perceived by you as equally as permanent as a five year academia contract.

> There are no permanent positions available at all

This is a lie.

https://eecs-search.eecs.mit.edu

https://www.seas.harvard.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-resear...

https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/employment/2016_tenure_track.whtm...

I found those in 20s

If true, that sounds like a market correction. We may lose some good talent in the process, but it would likely lead to better long term outcomes.

Markets don't know how to judge the value of science. Its main product is a non-excludable good -- you can't know if a train of experimentation or thought will ultimately be important until long after you have shared the results, but sharing thought/results almost entirely removes your market leverage. Therefore, the market says the value of science is... nothing. Which we've collectively decided is pretty obviously not true, so we fund science through the government, but that still doesn't give us any way to judge the value we're getting in return. Are we funding it too little? Too much? There's no way to tell the bang we're getting for our buck, we're just guessing(footnote). That guess determines the demand for scientists. Market corrections in the academic labor market target that guess, not any underlying market truth, so it's hard to say whether they're good or not, no matter how much of a True Believer in markets you are.

Contrast to, say, video game programming, where the market forces pushing people away from those jobs do represent a fundamental truth that isn't obviously baloney: there are more people who want to program video games than society needs/wants to program video games.

* Given the set of things that market forces tell scientists they should be doing instead of science, I'm pretty sure we're dramatically underfunding them, but that's certainly debatable.

There is no market for academic basic science (like Philosophy, pure Maths, Astrophysics, heck even theoretical Economy) so... I do not think it has relation to a market.

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