Follow your bliss? Thoughts on the adjunct underclass and what to do about it.

Parents Forum
1

Yes, the prospects of an academic career are disturbing, particularly in the Humanities. However, for anyone who reads a minimum about academia in the media, there is absolutely nothing in recent articles (viz http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Great-Shame-of-Our/239148 or http://gawker.com/true-stories-from-the-educated-underclass-1773091759) that we shouldn’t know already. Sure, it is very bad, it isn’t fair, the system is rigged and exploitive, etc.

The question is, what can the aspiring PhD do about it? Changing the system isn’t a viable option when you are broke and looking for work. The answer, I think, is to have a backup plan, another potential career track in case the likely happens, i.e. that you don’t get your dream job. In other words, there are many jobs that prefer people with PhDs, be they in administration, NGOs, government, consulting, etc. A student needs to know about them and plan for them as well, however fun it is to pursue pure research with passion.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for young people pursuing their dreams. I think an education isn’t just about getting a job, that it can be enriching on its own, the spark for a lifetime of learning. But we need to be practical. “Follow you bliss” can turn out to be very bad advice. We as parents can help our children think through these backup options.

2

Unionize!

It’s already starting at some places, including Yale.

3

When I was 18 and coming out of high school I took a good, long, hard look at myself in the mirror. Neither one of my parents went to college. I was adopted and had two sisters that were also adopted. My dad spent 28 years in the navy (WW II generation) and lived off his pension. He had a few odd, assorted jobs after retiring from the Navy but he quit or the jobs ended otherwise and he spent the vast majority of his day sleeping and watching TV in between naps on the couch in the living room which served as his man cave.

My mom was an entrepreneur because she had to be. She catered, she did waitressing jobs, she had a little black book with phone numbers in it, her contacts came from the church or people she had met in her waitressing jobs, she also took care of elderly people (cooking, cleaning, domestic work) and one hundred percent of her work came from referrals. It was the gig economy before that was even a term. What she made she spent because my dad’s income pretty much provided for the household. My mom pitched in but I don’t either of them had a budget or kept track of anything.

My oldest sister moved out at 18 to get away from everything and so there I was coming out of high school without a plan or a clue. I went to a big high school in an affluent suburb but didn’t realize how lucky I was on that. A lot of the other kids were seriously wealthy and they would discuss places like Tulane and the Ivies and SAT’s and I had no idea what they were talking about. I had never even spoken to a counselor. My parents didn’t even bother to give me one sentence worth of advice. When high school ended, it just ended. I literally didn’t have any place to go or anything to do. I’d never taken a college entrance exam and didn’t have a clue how to even sign up for one or why I might need to take one. Out of that mess I decided that if I ever wanted to earn more than minimum wage in my life I needed to start thinking and thinking quickly.

I’m not whining either. There were other kids who faced real poverty and/or abuse and I didn’t have to deal with any of that. I had a job as a bar back at a really popular night club, I was a waiter during the week, and a bar back at night like Woody from Cheers. My best friend decided to go to the local CC so I decided to just copy what he did and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. It was cheap. I was earning college credits with my own money and I was living at home enjoying the food and the freedom. I’d tell my dad, my mom was usually out working, I was going out, and he’d just say good bye or wave. He never worried about where I was or what I was doing and he never told me when to be home. In an environment like that, I was lucky I didn’t end up on the wrong side of the law. I came up with one big conclusion. You had to figure out career first and work backwards to determine what college program might help you get into that career.

I also realized that if a bunch of people all wanted to do the same thing it would create a glut for that thing and most of those people would never accomplish their goals. Like move to Hollywood, which a lot of people wanted to do because it was cool and they liked the Oscars and so forth. I knew it was a dead end, at least for me. A lot of people wanted to be lawyers, like LA Law, back in those days but I didn’t think practicing law would be as cool as it was on TV where all the lawyers looked like models and spend 40-hours a week focused on one case. A lot of kids wanted to surf and live out by the beach and worry about career later. I felt like “following ones bliss” was fool’s gold. It sounded good in a Hollywood movie but real life isn’t a Hollywood movie. In my mind, as a young person, I felt like there was a big difference between work and fun. It was brilliant if you could combine both and get paid for it and “follow your bliss” but realistically you had to choose one or the other.

Sorry for the autobiography but it gets me to my point. The OP is right. If you are a PhD or an adjunct you can’t change the system the best thing you can do is find work outside of academia and hope that you can eventually get that tenure track job. Working as an adjunct FT at multiple colleges, which is the norm, might be an economic necessity if one is a purist and refuses to do anything but teach, but it will probably doom that person to a lifetime of being an adjunct. You can’t wait until you are stuck in that rut. You must assess the job market BEFORE you select the degree. Colleges should limit access to programs to prevent gluts in the labor market but they rarely do. It is very difficult for anyone at any age to assess the job market 10 years in the future but that is what I think must be done.

4

By the way OP, I think college should be used for vocational training. To go to college and only get personal enrichment out of it misses the point, I think. Maybe 50 years ago that was fine but if you are a lower class or middle class kid and you don’t get practical, vocational skills in college you might’ve missed the train and will be left standing at the station with your suitcases by your feet. Maybe, fifty years ago, while half the population worked in field or coal mines or in other menial jobs if you were one of the lucky ones with a college education you could parlay that into a career. Eighty percent of the population, I think, has some college credits now. It isn’t all that special now. The old attitudes about college not being vocational need to change. At least IMHO.

5

@GoNoles85 , fascinating autobiography. I wonder if we grew up as neighbors in sunny So Cal. This idea worries me too. I had zero plan in my youth. I am very lucky I married a sensible, good man. I got a degree and never did a thing with it until pretty recently, to be totally honest. I had a career of sorts, but along came children, etc…

Having a career that will allow my daughter to make a living is a real concern. She is a humanities kid all the way. We told her she can study what interests her, within reason. She is a freshman, and has no major yet. We have explained to her all of our concerns, and that with her very expensive education, we have expectations that she will major in something that will have a job at the end of it. I can totally see her being a lifelong academic, but this abuse of adjuncts really scares me. I want her to have a career, and be an adjunct professor on the side, if there is such a thing.

6

@GoNoles85 I liked to hear your story. What career did you choose? I agree that higher education should have a vocational element and that counselors should cover practical issues like that with students.

7

@Lindagaf

I think there can be a career for the Humanities kids, even if they do not have power GPA’s from elite schools, its great if they do, but I am speaking about the “normal” kid. If she has language skills (bi- or tri-lingual) that could work somehow or if she is good with people maybe something in sales. If you are thinking something that relates to her academic training maybe something related to the travel and leisure industry or maybe something creative or marketing related. You know the drill, have her get a Linkedin page and network. You have to get your name out there and know people. I wasn’t a real out going kid. My strategy was ask one of my friends. I wasn’t the source of anything so if she is introverted you’ve got to work against that somehow to widen her circle of friends and not just meet people but make quality connections with people. I mean, after all, how many “friends” does anyone really have? I don’t mean friends as in the FB type I mean people you actually spend time with.

@alciblade

Accounting. I spent one session at a random university because I wanted to start at my intended school in the fall. To register for classes we all had to go into the gym and there were people literally running around from table to table trying to find classes. I literally stood in the middle of the gym completely confused as to what the rush was. But that is what happens when no one is guiding you or giving you a heads up. I think that is one of the main reason I am so involved in my kids choices. I don’t want them to be as confused as I was. I was a Poly Sci major for one session because you only needed a 2.0 GPA to get into the program. At the time, that was about what I had. I had to memorize the counties in my state as one assignment which I felt like was a BS thing to know so when I got to my real university I wanted something that for sure would lead to a job. Accounting.

Accounting.

Finance/Banking

Marketing/Sales/Advertising (Esp. using social media)

Engineering

Medical related

Physical Therapy

Nursing

Computer Sciences

Etc.

Any of the professional fields. If you can get your child interested in any of those things that should work. By the way, often when someone says or suggests that college is not or shouldn’t be purely vocational they also believe you can’t or shouldn’t use return on investment (ROI) to evaluate the effectiveness of your college investment. My response to that is why not? ROI works perfectly for any investment including college. If you spend $5 or $6 per year for the first two years at a CC and then TF and spend $20 or so for year 3 and 4 and lets say $25 for grad school you might’ve invested $75 for the whole thing. If you have Educ IRA’s or 529’s or your child gets grants or awards you can reduce the investment accordingly.

So lets say you’ve invested $55K net.

The return is the increase in earnings with the degree as compared to what you would have earned without the degree. Since you don’t know what you would have earned without the degree you must estimate that amount. or the sake of discussion, if you earn on average $70 or $75 from ages 25 to 55 and maybe $80 or $90 from ages 55 to 67 and if the average person without a degree earns $40 a year you could come up with a reasonable estimate for the numerator and use ROI.

8

Here is an interesting article about college programs that focus on career skills. It also uses the term “middle skills” that I keep hearing a lot about. Not all kids are cut out for that $175,000 a year power job and there is nothing wrong with an $80,000 a year job. The article points out that a shocking 45% of recent college grads are unemployed.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sponsor-content/2017/01/a-working-education?sr_source=lift_amplify&cid=20172hp

9

Go- the statistic quoted is 45% of recent college grads are Underemployed- a statistic which is subject to a lot of maneuvering, but nonetheless, is NOT the same thing as being unemployed.

A kid who graduates with a BA in biology and is taking a year to work in a childcare center with kids with disabilities while he or she studies for the MCAT’s get counted as “underemployed”. You do not need a BS in biology to hold that job. I know many young grads doing a variant of that program.

10

I stand correct. TY @blossom. I should have double checked because 45% seems kind of high given that the national unemployment rate is below 5%.

11

Every kid working as a “gofer” at a TV production company, a receptionist at a talent agency, or an aide in a nursing home gets swept up into that “underemployed” category, even though for many new grads, those are the time honored (and paid) entry level jobs in those fields, despite the fact that they don’t require a Bachelor’s degree. The cardiac care nurse who took care of my mom (a highly paid specialty at a world class teaching hospital) worked as a nursing home aid after graduating and before passing her boards (the necessary step to actually working as a nurse).

12

The humanities develop important vocational skills, like reading, writing, speaking and research. The influx of kids whose economic needs dictate very specific career goals that can be accessed immediately after graduation has indeed changed the perceived purpose of college, but some feel this is misguided, not only because college should be “for learning,” but because in the long run, the narrower the college vocational goal, the narrower the career choices over time.

As for PhD’s and going into academia, it is one option, yes. Aside from the economics of being an adjunct, there is also a whole lot of moving around involved for newly minted PhD’s. A grad cannot always get a job, even as an adjunct, in a location that suits him or her either.

But I do think that for some, the studies themselves are so valuable, regardless of what they end up doing for work.

13

I think the entire Gen Ed curriculum, just about, should be moved to high school which would not only make high school more valuable but would allow people to get professional/vocational skills in college right off the bat.

I think it is good that high school have some vocational training too but, and maybe I am wrong because I am thinking back to my high school days, high school seemed like a waste of time in many respects. I don’t think post secondary Ed should be purely vocational either. Liberal Arts can be represented either as parts of the required Gen Ed or as electives. I think I should have had my kids do more duel enrollment, AP and college credit stuff while in high school. I missed the boat on that one. I think the more partnerships between the high schools and the CC or U’s the better and I am not just talking about articulation agreements. I am talking about making high school more relevant by allowing the students to get college credit while in high school as much as possible and/or bringing middle skill and/or vocational programs to the CC’s and/or high schools.

I think what I just described might get its funding cut in the current federal budget which should be interesting to see if it gets funded and at what level or not. But, rambling now, the more that colleges and high schools can do to partner with industries, careers, professions, the better without making college completely job training. It is a balancing act of sorts. You don’t want to make high school or college kids robots but you do want the colleges to make sure that the skills they are getting are valuable in the labor market.

14

This article in “Inside Higher Education” (from 2016) shows the trends in post-PhD employment in different disciplinary areas: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/04/new-data-show-tightening-phd-job-market-across-disciplines

When my wife asked my sophomore son, who was then majoring in economics, whether he might want to pursue an academic career, his response was: “Academics is boring.” What a put-down on his dad!!! But it expressed the kid’s interest in a less cloistered work career than I’ve had. He didn’t pursue a doctorate, or any other advanced degree, and instead went into the economy and used his talents in statistics, financial analysis, and writing, combined with his avocation for sports and politics, to define his own career track. While his career is unusual, his thinking about careers was reasonable given his personality. He’s a risk taker, a bit of a gambler. And it paid off.

Changes in college and university economics (funding sources) are responsible for the PhD career problem. The expanded use of adjuncts, and now online courses, has reduced the willingness to offer careers – tenure-stream employment – to those who hold PhD’s. The sharp reduction in STATE funding of universities has forced public universities to change how they staff a lot of their activities. When I was a department chair (15-20 years ago), I resisted the requests by my dean to hire adjunct faculty to cover our undergraduate teaching. My basic rationale: a PhD is a RESEARCH degree; our department is a research department at least as much as a teaching department; our operating budget depends on our ability to gain external funding (grants and contracts) to support faculty research, post-docs, and graduate student training.

And so I only wanted to hire PhD’s in the “tenure steam,” i.e., in positions that allowed them to progress along a track (heavily weighted toward research) to eventual tenure, if their performance merited it. Training of future PhD’s (i.e., graduate teaching) was a significant component of that progress. But evolving higher-ed economics has undermined my argument. On-line and off-campus instruction (“distance learning”) now brings in a lot of money and a significant proportion of a department’s annual operating budget; when I was a chair is brought in zero. In term of production costs, income from student tuition in on-line courses is really cheap. We don’t need as many PhD’s on our staff to produce a given number of undergraduate student credit-hours as we used to.

15

Recently I met a young couple at a party. One had studied Anthropology at a reputable LAC on the east coast. The other had studied Latin American studies at a not particularly distinguished public university. Both were gainfully employed, doing interesting, fulfilling work that was only tangentially related to their majors. They were not attempting the academic route but they did pick “impractical” majors that are often associated with going into academia. Neither ended up as a barista and both earn respectable salaries and are supporting themselves.

While an anecdote is not data, I do believe that if one is flexible, resourceful, and had developed strong analytical skills, you can follow your intellectual passion and obtain gainful employment upon graduation.

I also see increasing numbers of PhDs teaching at selective private secondary schools, which is by no means a bad life.

16

@GoNoles85 What you describe - general ed in high school and some vocational ed there as well - is the situation in many European countries. My daughter went to grade school in France, where gen ed is quite strong; they also have a track for vocational ed once high school begins. It is similar in Germany and the UK. This enabled her to go to a British university, which starts with a major picked and ends at about the level of a US Master’s degree.

17

^ The European/Asian systems (sans Scottish, to a degree) is good for those who know what they want to pursue early in life.

Most teenagers don’t (or don’t have to skills to) even if they think they do.

18

I’m strongly in favor of cutting costs for higher education. If that means MOOC’s and testing then do it. I am not, however, in favor of making higher ed free. I think PK through 12 should be free and after that you should pay for it if you use it. The governor in my state proposed a $10,000 bachelor degree. Nothing changed and some people laughed at him at first but I’ve come 180 degrees to agree with him on that. Governors, congressmen and women find some way to force U’s to get the cost down. That alone would solve most problems.

I don’t think core curriculums should go away but it is intriguing to have the entire curriculum based on electives. Something has to be done about grade inflation. I’m not sure what. That is a difficult one to solve.

19

To get back to the OP’s questions, the best way to win the PHD game is not to play. The lost time, the poor job prospects, and lousy return on investment are well documented, and have been in place for at a generation or more. This is clearly to blame on the past generation of tenured professors who allowed way too many PHD candidates that the market can bear enroll.

20

^ Yet so many students pursue PHDs.