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Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately labor supply vastly exceeds demand due to the pyramid nature of graduate programs.

Given a massive oversupply of replacement workers ready to go at a moment's notice, unionization seems unlikely to change anything.

Probably Ph.D. graduates should consider teaching at a university as a sort of popular avocation like music, art, sports, or video games. Maybe you can make some money at it if you are particularly skilled and lucky, but you will almost certainly need a real day job in order to pay the bills.

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Demand for the professor's product -- education -- has largely kept up with supply (c.f. rising tuitions). What's changed (the article contends) is the percentage of the professorship that is permanent versus adjunct.

The adjunct model is basically scamming everyone at an information disadvantage: for students, it inflates the perceived faculty-to-student ratio, even though many of those faculty are part time. For grad students, it inflates perceived demand for teachers because the total faculty market is growing, even though many positions are underpaid. And this is perpetuated for adjunct faculty, who are often told the position is a step towards tenure track, while universities move the ratios towards fewer permanent positions.

The article's suggestion, to rebalance towards permanent positions, would make true supply and demand clearer so the market can rationalize.

In general I don’t think education is their product. Their product is research and their ability to bring in high grant dollars is the source of their prestigious pay.

The recent explosion is numbers of students attending university requires them to expand the pool of teachers without a corresponding ability to expand their demand for grant winning researchers. Hence the lower average pay.

I would love to hear an expert in the field chime in on this, because I’m as armchair as it gets when discussing this ecosystem. Are there any high paying professors whose primary responsibility is teaching students only?

I'd argue that their product is credentialing.

If the product is actually education, there exists an opportunity to take all of these underpaid but overtrained adjuncts and all of these overcharged but undertrained students, match them up together, and put all existing universities out of business.

If the product is actually research, there exists an opportunity to take all of these underpaid adjuncts, hire them in a private research lab, and profit from their discoveries.

The fact that neither of these business models appears to be viable indicates that the true product is something adjuncts can't provide by themselves: social signaling.

Credentialing is the moat. The flywheel depends on critical mass in several cohorts believing that the credential is attached to a strong education.

You're right to separate those products, and that the high paid, permanent positions go to researchers. This contributes to the information imbalance in the education side of the market because universities trade on the reputation of professors who barely teach to attract undergrads who pay heavily for classes taught by adjuncts.

The choice to isolate these functions without clarifying the education proposition isn't a market equilibrium, it's a choice by universities to optimize their information advantage.

Isn't this common knowledge in academia?

It's common knowledge among PhD track and Post Docs, but that's the group after they've been scammed... the dreamers stay for the adjunct positions and perpetuate the oversupply and perception of possible demand.

It's a bit like the people who get scammed on Amazon by highly rated products that don't exist, but fail to rate/return or buy again anyway. There's more suckers born every minute.

> Probably Ph.D. graduates should consider teaching at a university as a sort of popular avocation like music, art, sports, or video games. Maybe you can make some money at it if you are particularly skilled and lucky, but you will almost certainly need a real day job in order to pay the bills.

There is no shortage of people entering PhD programs knowing full well how bad the job market is, yet somehow still convinced they will get a tenure-track job after they finish.

I spent some time in a history PhD program almost a decade ago. We all knew how bad the academic job market was. Yet all of the students were committed to spending the next ~7 years working toward a PhD so they would get a chance to compete in what they knew to be of the world's worst job markets.

At that point they had been in the academic bubble for so long that it didn't really make sense to consider life outside it, and they viewed academic work as part of their personal identity and could not imagine themselves doing anything else.

This is why economics should be mandatory in most high school and college curriculum: The laws of supply and demand apply to the job market as well. It blows my mind that schools require things like 3 years of foreign language but fail to teach their students anything about the market they will depend on to support themselves the rest of their lives.

When I was at uni the idea was you study whatever you like, and then there will be a job at a big consultancy like Arthur Andersen or whatever waiting for you because they'd take in anyone with any degree (who can jump through their hoops) and then retrain them to do a job.

I was fortunate as although I didn't have the "communication skills" to land such jobs (my hoop jumping skills were terrible), I did had tech skills so plenty of smaller companies and government jobs were possible for me to get.

Anyway if this situation has changed, doing arty degrees should come with a disclaimer that no job might be found as a result, and as such they are hobbies. Doing a full time hobby for a few years at a cost to yourself should be considered a luxury of the rich.

Basic economics, first aid, dealing with cops/law, basic nutrition - these should be mandatory subjects for all students, would benefit them and the society in the long run

Teacher unions will get upset about such realities like supply and demand :p

Labor demand is a funny thing. It's clear that there is want, need, and opportunity for services, and yet so few employers, all in pursuit of goals so tightly constrained as to exclude the majority of wanted, needed services.

Why, after all, would I pay workers to improve the lot of the poor? And how, after all, can the poor pay workers at all?

And so we see all talent funneled into a few employers' projects; often wholly detrimental ones, such as peddling fructose, and nearly always tangential to the talent's personal goals, priorities, and passions.

> Given a massive oversupply of replacement workers ready to go at a moment's notice, unionization seems unlikely to change anything.

Perhaps, then, a union of the unemployed.

Why are people so incredibly keen to teach at universities that they'll put up with these conditions? I don't think these positions even come with the usual up-side to the bad conditions - getting to do the research you're passionate about. Do people just enjoy teaching so much? It seems genuinely that a job at McDonalds would have better pay, conditions, stability, and respect.

Because they've invested 5-10 years of their lives in a doctorate, publications, and connections that are specifically aimed at an academic position and very little good for anything else. Adjuctships are a holding pattern that allows you to still be "part" of the academy and thus leaves the tenure track dream alive, however tenuously. Leaving is admitting that your whole career, and probably sense of personal identity, has to be discarded and rebuilt from scratch in your mid 30s.

I think you’ve hit a key psychological insight. And they have a choice to also push through an existential Sunk Cost fallacy.

I spent the first 11 years of my professional career in the Navy flying airplanes. It was a niche skill set. When I left, I had the airlines available, by I would’ve been bored to tears in the job.

So at 35 I started over in a new career. It’s been challenging - but there is a future. I’m 6-8 years (at least) “behind” my colleagues.

The choices we make have consequences. And if you have your health, you can always choose to change your course.

You could spent nine more in the navy, retired with a pension, and got a cushy DoD/government job (assuming you wanted to live near a base or government contractor)

True. Even better is flying for the airlines and taking a reserve flying gig to get the reserve retirement. Wasn’t for me.

Flying that won't bore you to tears:

1. service to antarctic bases

2. water bombing forest fires

3. test pilot for a Navy contractor

4. dirt airstrips in Alaska, with animals on the runway and weather

5. dirt airstrips in Lesoto, short and high altitude

6. Zero Gravity Corporation (commercial "vomit comet")

I'm sure there are relevant industry jobs for people no matter what their PhD is in.

I admire your optimism.

https://gizmodo.com/there-are-5-000-janitors-in-the-u-s-with...

That's the sort of cargo cult mentality that has been fueling abusive work relations in higher education.

"getting to do the research you're passionate about. Do people just enjoy teaching so much?"

Yes! I look at research as a boring, stressful pain-in-the-butt, and I love teaching my students. I am contingent annually, but full-time with benefits, and I would not want to be on the publish-or-perish track. Teaching smart kids hard stuff is what I am passionate about.

The vast majority of people employed as professors or lecturers at university are there because they want to do research, and teaching is the compromise that lets them do it. They definitely do not want to be teaching. Most people try to find ways to reduce their teaching schedule to make time for research.

One reason: some can make $150K+ (some can even make $500K+). If you get a coveted post, then you could end up with a high salary and the freedom to research what you would likely research in your free time anyways.

Also, if you move from professor to administrator you can make $300K+ with arguably fewer work hours and responsibility.

What surprises me is that there aren’t institutions that take advantage of this in a different way — by paying significantly higher salaries and health benefits, attracting the top 1% of adjuncts with skills like teaching and mentorship, then advertising that as a differentiator for students.

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