Serfs of Academe

Because some people want to live in a world where we as a society can value things like medieval poetry and have thriving ecosystems around that.

There's a seemingly endless line of people willing to enslave themselves to a broken system rather than fold and turn into a Dominos manager like the system wants.

I'm conflicted but tend to agree. The other day as I was reading some academic job market horror story on Twitter, it occurred to me that this is the market's way of saying we have too many candidates! Go away! It's like you have a train full of people, and new people are continually trying to embark, even though it gets harder and harder for each new person.

In the long run, medieval poetry PhDs probably will end up in well-paying (if less inspiring) jobs like running pizza restaurants - but don't underestimate the awfulness of the short-term.

I understand the gist of what you are saying but consider this. Are there enough pizza management positions to absorb the number of adjuncts? I don't think so and I know you were just using Dominos as an example. If the set of all underpaid, abusive adjuncts suddenly entered the marketplace what consequences would there be? Are there enough positions? Would more less intelligent people be unemployed or have their wages decrease?

Overall, though you are right. There is way too much participation in graduate school in relation to the job market for those skills. However, this fact does not justify treating people poorly and this is where labor market regulation comes into play. Unfortunately we Americans, in the form of our elected officials, have decided that such regulation is too burdensome.

PhD students tend to adopt the value system of their advisors mentors and others at their university.

Advisors value academic careers, partly because that is usually the only thing that they know, and look down on PhDs that go into industry or change fields as failures.

Advisors are also judged on the academic success of their graduates, who ideally go on to famous careers at notable universities. There is a branch of academic politics that governs how advisors place their best students where they will reflect well on them.

The net result is that graduate students have few mentors advising them on the possibilities outside of academe. The "failures" are left to make it on their own.

My guess is that it's not just about being smart. Running a restaurant (=managing people), is quite a different beast than studying or teaching medieval poetry. The few people I know that have chosen to pursue an academic career aren't exactly happy to take on a challenge, tackle new problems as they arise and lead a team.

Sadly, running a franchise business can become quite abusive too.

Not just PhD programs, but also masters programs. Especially for foreign students because not only is the pay a factor, but also their visa status can be held over the student's head until one more* paper is published.

*it's always "just one more"

... and this is almost entirely due to the lack of recognition of the employee status of Ph.D. candidates as junior researchers.

That is, the assumption that payment somehow naturally goes from the Ph.D. candidate to the university rather than vice-versa.

Luckily, there has been a very positive development in this front a few years back - 364 NLRB 90, Columbia University vs UAW:

https://columbiagradunion.org/wp-content/uploads/NLRB-Case-0...

Word about these problems has been out for ~20 years if not longer: https://www.chronicle.com/article/So-You-Want-to-Go-to-Grad/... and yet people keep going. Grad school will change when people stop going.

I think this is generally excellent advice - and for one reason beyond the obvious 'don't get crushed by massive debt'.

In many academic fields, there are many more new PhDs than there are available careers. Just think - in order to maintain a steady academic state each tenured professor needs to turn out only a couple of trained successors over their whole career. But it's common to have several at any given time, and generating dozens of potential academic replacements over the course of a career is not unusual.

Competition at the postdoc level is grim, and it gets even more brutal if you try to get on the tenure track. To succeed you normally have to be both excellent and lucky.

The competition for PhD funding is a first signal as to a prospective student's place in the career race. It's also a very cheap signal: you get it up front rather than investing several years of your life and then finding out you can't find a post, or falling into a cycle of underpaid and overstressed adjunct appointments resulting in burnout and resignation.

So if you can't get PhD funding, you should also be asking yourself 'am I well placed for five years time?' The answer isn't always 'no', but it should prompt some serious thought.

I had all tuition covered and a guaranteed stipend for 4 years. I was also assured that there would be other ways to replace the stipend after those 4 years, with a last resort being to sustain myself by TAing classes. In the end, I took 7 years, largely because there was no money outside of TA work and that took up so much time I had serious difficulty maintaining a good rhythm to make progress in my research. Not to mention that the money was so little I had a lot of extra stress in life just making ends meet. And as someone in STEM, I was easily on the more comfortable end of the spectrum as regards funding opportunities and teaching responsibilities.

I am therefore very excited by the unionising efforts of graduate students across the US in recent years. I find it particularly admirable, given how much extra time and effort such organising takes and which the students are bringing forth in full force despite all of their day-to-day burdens. It's far from an easy task, as the administrations of these institutions are definitely prepared to play dirty.

That was standard advice fifteen years ago, when I was in this situation. I imagine it's more true today.

(I'd argue that even if you have a trust fund, you shouldn't go if they won't fund you. The not funding you is a vote of no confidence in you.)