You were planning that as a fallback, right?
You were planning that as a fallback, right?
If you receive low wages in the private sector, it might be an indication that you're not providing much value, and that your time and effort are probably better spent in some other endeavour. It could also be an indication of some artificial or temporary misallocation of resources. The same goes for high wages. You could be providing genuine value, or your profit could be due to some intervention or other.
In the meantime, people who can't make a living doing teaching shouldn't teach. Or they shouldn't do it as their day job. At the very least, they shouldn't demand other people subsidize their choices.
This attitude is common, confusing, and misses the point.
The point is that when universities spend obscene amounts of money on administration and fancy facilities while side-lining actual teaching, we all lose. Students, Ad Junct Faculty, and the taxpayers who place trust in these institutions. The issue isn't that "anybody should be able to teach", but rather than "those who do teach should be compensated well, so that we have good teachers in the universities we subsidize".
If universities were being squeezed and cutting costs aggressively (as opposed to the exactly opposite), your attitude might make more sense.
If you cut half the ad juncts, the school would absolutely be forced to go on a hiring spree for new FTE teaching positions, just to perform its most basic function.
In the status quo if half the ad juncts left the market, the supply wouldn't decrease. Bean counting schools would just lower their edu standards for ad juncts. Not hypothetical -- you can see this effect at schools in small towns.
This is something you should have figured out before borrowing money for grad school. If there's truly no outlets commensurate with the debt, that's a powerful signal you should pay attention to.
Which brings up rule #2: if you can't convince someone to pay your way through grad school, don't borrow for one.
Did that make economic sense? Homo economicus math said yes. I still say yes. But I sure would like that $1000 a month back.