The Graduate School Ponzi Scheme

[Dr. Old Bill]

Personally, I don't regret having gotten my PhD. I think I would have regretted more NOT getting a PhD. And that's really what you have to weigh here. Would your life really be better without your PhD? Would you honestly have made more headway during the last seven or eight years without one? Because I honestly believe that if I had decided to not get my PhD, I'd always have wondered "what if?" And even if things had flourished in my professional life, I'm sure I would have always secretly regretted not getting my doctorate. But that's just my personality. I'm the sort of person who just has to know.

 

 

Just chiming in to say that your whole post is one of the best I've read on GC in weeks. I'm out of upvotes, but seriously -- thanks for sharing.

[InHacSpeVivo]

Just chiming in to say that your whole post is one of the best I've read on GC in weeks. I'm out of upvotes, but seriously -- thanks for sharing.

 

Agreed (I would have done two if I could have)

[kurayamino]

Agreed (I would have done two if I could have)

 

Yes, totally. I think it's the most balanced thing I've seen and I really appreciated being able to read it. Thanks for sharing lifealive!

[cordis]

lifealive, if your diss is considered very good, you should totally publish it as a book even if you phase out of academia...take a look at university press websites...it is obviously hard to publish a book, but it sounds like you are the sort who would get so much satisfaction from it regardless of professional outcome, and sounds like you should share your work with the world in book form.  Upvotes for you!

[TenaciousBushLeaper]

To the OP & to others, as an undergraduate who's about to finish up his BA I'm curious, if you could go back in time with the knowledge you have now, what would you have done upon graduation(with a BA or BS)? 

Edited March 30, 2015 by TenaciousBushLeaper

[fancypants09]

To the OP & to others, as an undergraduate who's about to finish up his BA I'm curious, if you could go back in time with the knowledge you have now, what would you have done upon graduation(with a BA or BS)?

One advice I got at the time from then PhD student friends that helped me: Only go if you are absolutely sure that this is the path you want to take. An MA or working in a completely unrelated field may help you gauge whether the PhD is the right path for you.

[CommPhD20]

I do wonder how much the outlook would change if something as simple (and somewhat unpredictable) as a run of election wins by Ds happened. We had two big things happen that hammered the academic job market - the 2008/9 recession and, on the back of that, a tidal wave of funding cuts to public universities. While the worst of the economic problems are over in the US, there is still a great deal of belt-tightening sentiment out there. Politics will dictate academic hiring just as much as economic trends - not that those two things are wholly independent.

 

There are, of course, other things that make simple predictions more difficult. Some foresee a college bubble of sorts due to the costs and massive debts; what effects would a "burst" have? Maybe schools would cut back on the enormous administration budgets, but I suspect they might rather cut programs and/or instructor salaries. Another issue with the sagging job markets is that it takes more than just a good year to fix the problem. If PhD production is going up, we have already built in the need for the job market (in # of jobs) to increase each year. The bigger problem is that, by and large, the people that lose on the job market don't typically just go away. Every year where there is a gap between job seekers and job winners, the pool of job seekers for the following year gets even bigger. Some will finally give up the search, but my guess is that the most realistic chance for a relatively quick improvement for the job market is a reduction in PhDs. And I think many being painted as pessimists here would see that as a good thing - the institution that lets people entertain this dream while simultaneously preventing it from being realistic can just as quickly bring stability to the market...but, of course, do they have incentive to do that?

[greenmt]

I do wonder how much the outlook would change if something as simple (and somewhat unpredictable) as a run of election wins by Ds happened. We had two big things happen that hammered the academic job market - the 2008/9 recession and, on the back of that, a tidal wave of funding cuts to public universities. While the worst of the economic problems are over in the US, there is still a great deal of belt-tightening sentiment out there. Politics will dictate academic hiring just as much as economic trends - not that those two things are wholly independent.

 

There are, of course, other things that make simple predictions more difficult. Some foresee a college bubble of sorts due to the costs and massive debts; what effects would a "burst" have? Maybe schools would cut back on the enormous administration budgets, but I suspect they might rather cut programs and/or instructor salaries. Another issue with the sagging job markets is that it takes more than just a good year to fix the problem. If PhD production is going up, we have already built in the need for the job market (in # of jobs) to increase each year. The bigger problem is that, by and large, the people that lose on the job market don't typically just go away. Every year where there is a gap between job seekers and job winners, the pool of job seekers for the following year gets even bigger. Some will finally give up the search, but my guess is that the most realistic chance for a relatively quick improvement for the job market is a reduction in PhDs. And I think many being painted as pessimists here would see that as a good thing - the institution that lets people entertain this dream while simultaneously preventing it from being realistic can just as quickly bring stability to the market...but, of course, do they have incentive to do that?

 

In English Lit., that cutback in admissions has been happening for the last couple of years, at least.  

 

I agree that national politics matters here, and politics very much matter at the state level, as should be clear from recent kerfuffles in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina.  The work that humanities departments do is happening in public, whether humanities departments would prefer that or not.   

Edited March 30, 2015 by greenmt

[wetheplants]

I really appreciate seeing this thread, guys! I've always been sort of on the fence about how much I particularly cared about teaching - I'm also a fiction writer and figured that a bestseller or two might land me the kind of professorial job opportunities that others would be competing for. 
This is really helpful to read though. I haven't really done any teaching, and I'm debating between which masters program I should pick right now. I'm leaning towards BC's, which is funding me (although funding isn't mandatory for me, as my parents are willing to pay for whichever program I think is best) and they also have TA/TF positions available for the second year. Maybe I should determine how much I really like the teaching aspect before I sink myself into a PhD program after this...!

[VirtualMessage]

To the OP & to others, as an undergraduate who's about to finish up his BA I'm curious, if you could go back in time with the knowledge you have now, what would you have done upon graduation(with a BA or BS)? 

 

It is hard to say. Maybe a funded Masters or no graduate school at all? I discounted the idea that I could have a good career without a graduate degree, and I think that is one of the biggest mistakes I made after college. To be a professional you do not need a graduate degree. The connections and work experiences that are crucial for advancement are the most important, and those are the things frequently sacrificed by spending 7-10 years in a doctoral program. If you're passionate about the humanities and want to continue your studies, I think a funded MA is the way to go. Or if you're independently wealthy and the academic job market is unimportant, you could do a doctorate. If you want a profession and a good income, I think it is best to avoid the humanities doctorate. I know others on this thread find this advice very disagreeable, but I have seen the rhetoric of dreams land people in very difficult financial and personal circumstances. I hear incoming students to the doctoral program talk frequently about professionalizing and are spoon fed nonsense about professionalization. The irony is that there increasingly is no profession. Sure, there are still Universities, conferences, journals, books, and all the other trappings of what seems to be a profession. Often, what these people do not see (or do not want to see) is how their labors and dreams are funding it without any real hope of enjoying the security or income of their betters. Those investments--sweat and emotion-- made in good faith with almost no hope of return are why I think doctoral education is a Ponzi scheme in the most fundamental way.

[ComeBackZinc]

It is hard to say. Maybe a funded Masters or no graduate school at all? I discounted the idea that I could have a good career without a graduate degree, and I think that is one of the biggest mistakes I made after college. To be a professional you do not need a graduate degree. The connections and work experiences that are crucial for advancement are the most important, and those are the things frequently sacrificed by spending 7-10 years in a doctoral program. If you're passionate about the humanities and want to continue your studies, I think a funded MA is the way to go. Or if you're independently wealthy and the academic job market is unimportant, you could do a doctorate. If you want a profession and a good income, I think it is best to avoid the humanities doctorate. I know others on this thread find this advice very disagreeable, but I have seen the rhetoric of dreams land people in very difficult financial and personal circumstances. I hear incoming students to the doctoral program talk frequently about professionalizing and are spoon fed nonsense about professionalization. The irony is that there increasingly is no profession. Sure, there are still Universities, conferences, journals, books, and all the other trappings of what seems to be a profession. Often, what these people do not see (or do not want to see) is how their labors and dreams are funding it without any real hope of enjoying the security or income of their betters. Those investments--sweat and emotion-- made in good faith with almost no hope of return are why I think doctoral education is a Ponzi scheme in the most fundamental way.

 

I agree with most of this. I would just say that I am someone who is not independently wealthy and who did want a profession and a good income and went to a PhD program. I'm also someone who was and remains very plugged in and engaged with the academic job market and went in knowing how tough the market is. I still went for a couple of reasons. One, because rhetoric and composition still enjoys a sizable labor market advantage over English generally, although as I have been pointing out, that advantage has  been significantly eroded since 2008. Second, because I have another life in non-academic publishing which has helped me survive grad school financially and has given me some professional opportunities now that I'm finishing. Third, because I'm finishing a PhD in 4 years and with minimal loan debt, something that I knew I could accomplish going in. 

 

But most importantly, because for two years I looked for a job in the so-called real world. I applied all over. I was willing to take almost anything. I submitted over a hundred applications. I slogged myself through round after round of applications. For hundreds of hours of effort, I earned seven telephone interviews, four in-person interviews, and ultimately two offers. Neither of them offered benefits, and neither of them offered more than $30,000/year in pay, for long hours and intellectually deadening work. So I went and got my MA and now my PhD, and the last six years have been the most rewarding and enjoyable of my life. Despite being poor.

 

What I want very much is to be able to say both things at once: that everything VirtualMessage writes above is pretty much correct, and also that going to grad school was the best decision of my life.

[_kita]

But most importantly, because for two years I looked for a job in the so-called real world. I applied all over. I was willing to take almost anything. I submitted over a hundred applications. I slogged myself through round after round of applications. For hundreds of hours of effort, I earned seven telephone interviews, four in-person interviews, and ultimately two offers. Neither of them offered benefits, and neither of them offered more than $30,000/year in pay, for long hours and intellectually deadening work. So I went and got my MA and now my PhD, and the last six years have been the most rewarding and enjoyable of my life. Despite being poor.

 

 

This... I worked in group homes: schizophrenia, developmental disabilities. I was punched at, hair pulled, kicked, bit, etc. Because that's the work you do with a B.S. in psychology. The pay rate is terrible, and, despite having benefits, I couldn't make ends meat. I just knew that if I ended up in the hospital (with a job that may put me there) at least I was covered!

 

The M.A. is good, but really I'd be playing the same bloody game all over again. So the humanities for me, IS, the way to go.

 

Again though, they want you to have experience, that in the Ph.D. program may not come your way. Make SURE you are getting that experience in. You might still be trapped, but atleast you'll meet some more criteria jobs may want you to have. For instance, summer camp teaching jobs, summer research programs, etc. It may not be a *lot* but it's something. It won't make you get the job payment bracket academic jobs boast, but again, it might atleast get you employment. Maybe not at a college, but your then credentials for other jobs as well.

[__________________________]

Reluctantly bumping this thread wondering if anyone has checked out Franco Berardi's new book, "Heroes" (Verso, 2015), where he describes the conditions of "semio-workers" and "cognitarians," whose general condition is characterized by precarity, self-exploitation, the fractalization of work time, and the transformation of language into a prodctive commodity:

"Language is captured by the networked machine and turned into an essentially productive activity. Herein lies the trap: people are encouraged to consider their linguistic competence as factors of economic competition, and to manage and invest in them as such. Creativity, expressiveness, affection, emotion -- the human soul, in other words -- are considered to be productive factors and consequently, they are evaluated according to standards of productivity. Exploitation, competition, precariousness, redundancy are not perceived as the effects of a conflictual social relationship, but are internalized as deficiencies of the self, as personal inadequacies. The unceasing rstructuring of the organization of work is perceived as humiliation and brutality.

"Only non-involvement and the ability to remain extranesous, to refuse any identification with one's job and one's working condition, oonly a radical rejection of the ethics of responsibility, might offer workers the possibility of navigating a way out from this productivity blackmail [debt might also be seen as a type of "productivity blackmail].

"[...] cognitive workers have been lured into the trap of creativity: their expectations are submitted to the poductivity blackmail because they are obliged to identify their soul (the linguistic and emotional core of their activity) with their work. Social conflicts and dissatisfaction are perceived as psychological failures whose effect is the destruction of self-esteem." (166-67)

When I read this just now, I immediately thought of things I've read/learned from threads like this and wondered: is this perhaps the direction academic labor is headed -- a fragmentary, abstract labor of adjunct pay calculated by credit hours justified by a superficial link to an increasingly outmoded link to a profession that I'm not sure can really be purged of this expectation that your soul be identified with your labor?

Reading shit like that really hits this idea home for me: for my own health, an education in the humanities should be divorced from my expectations and goals related to work; my love of literature should have nothing to do with my need for a paycheck. Which is probably what a lot of you have been trying to communicate for a while -- if, at times, the ideas have lacked the proper vocabulary (which is only barely, I think, starting to be developed). I really recommend this book as a useful critique of the relationship between mental health and the current state of global capitalism as well as for describing the kind of exploitation and psychological frustration expressed by certain inndividuals in this thread.

[1Q84]

"Language is captured by the networked machine and turned into an essentially productive activity. Herein lies the trap: people are encouraged to consider their linguistic competence as factors of economic competition, and to manage and invest in them as such. Creativity, expressiveness, affection, emotion -- the human soul, in other words -- are considered to be productive factors and consequently, they are evaluated according to standards of productivity. Exploitation, competition, precariousness, redundancy are not perceived as the effects of a conflictual social relationship, but are internalized as deficiencies of the self, as personal inadequacies. The unceasing rstructuring of the organization of work is perceived as humiliation and brutality.

Reading shit like that really hits this idea home for me: for my own health, an education in the humanities should be divorced from my expectations and goals related to work; my love of literature should have nothing to do with my need for a paycheck. Which is probably what a lot of you have been trying to communicate for a while -- if, at times, the ideas have lacked the proper vocabulary (which is only barely, I think, starting to be developed). I really recommend this book as a useful critique of the relationship between mental health and the current state of global capitalism as well as for describing the kind of exploitation and psychological frustration expressed by certain inndividuals in this thread.

 

Really good points. Reminds me of Paolo Virno's thoughts on affect in 'late' capitalism:

 

 

Paolo Virno, for whom the classic “sentiments of disenchantment” that once marked positions of radical alienation from the system of wage labor—anxiety, distraction, and cynicism—are now perversely integrated, from the factory to the office, into contemporary capitalist production itself: “Fears of particular dangers, if only virtual ones, haunt the workday like a mood that cannot be escaped. This fear, however, is transformed into an operational requirement, a special tool of the trade. Insecurity about one’s place during periodic innovation, fear of losing recently gained privileges, and anxiety over being ‘left behind’ translate into flexibility, adaptability, and a readiness to reconfigure oneself.” Here we see how capitalism’s classic affects of disaffection (and thus of potential social conflict and political antagonism) are neatly reabsorbed by the wage system and reconfigured into professional ideals. Nothing could be further from Fredric Jameson’s more widely known thesis about the “waning” of negative affect in our contemporary moment. Instead, Virno shows how central and perversely functional such affective attitudes and dispositions have become, as the very lubricants of the economic system which they originally came into being to oppose.

 

Sianne Ngai's Ugly Feelings, which is one of my most favorite theory books in the past ten years, works off Virno's assumption and thinks about Bartleby as either a manifestation or focal point of all these "minor affects" (envy, irritation, anxiety, 'stuplimity', paranoia) that can be seen as disruptions in capital's use of people's affect as "lubrication." Very awesome book!

[VirtualMessage]

Reluctantly bumping this thread wondering if anyone has checked out Franco Berardi's new book, "Heroes" (Verso, 2015), where he describes the conditions of "semio-workers" and "cognitarians," whose general condition is characterized by precarity, self-exploitation, the fractalization of work time, and the transformation of language into a prodctive commodity:

"Language is captured by the networked machine and turned into an essentially productive activity. Herein lies the trap: people are encouraged to consider their linguistic competence as factors of economic competition, and to manage and invest in them as such. Creativity, expressiveness, affection, emotion -- the human soul, in other words -- are considered to be productive factors and consequently, they are evaluated according to standards of productivity. Exploitation, competition, precariousness, redundancy are not perceived as the effects of a conflictual social relationship, but are internalized as deficiencies of the self, as personal inadequacies. The unceasing rstructuring of the organization of work is perceived as humiliation and brutality.

"Only non-involvement and the ability to remain extranesous, to refuse any identification with one's job and one's working condition, oonly a radical rejection of the ethics of responsibility, might offer workers the possibility of navigating a way out from this productivity blackmail [debt might also be seen as a type of "productivity blackmail].

"[...] cognitive workers have been lured into the trap of creativity: their expectations are submitted to the poductivity blackmail because they are obliged to identify their soul (the linguistic and emotional core of their activity) with their work. Social conflicts and dissatisfaction are perceived as psychological failures whose effect is the destruction of self-esteem." (166-67)

When I read this just now, I immediately thought of things I've read/learned from threads like this and wondered: is this perhaps the direction academic labor is headed -- a fragmentary, abstract labor of adjunct pay calculated by credit hours justified by a superficial link to an increasingly outmoded link to a profession that I'm not sure can really be purged of this expectation that your soul be identified with your labor?

Reading shit like that really hits this idea home for me: for my own health, an education in the humanities should be divorced from my expectations and goals related to work; my love of literature should have nothing to do with my need for a paycheck. Which is probably what a lot of you have been trying to communicate for a while -- if, at times, the ideas have lacked the proper vocabulary (which is only barely, I think, starting to be developed). I really recommend this book as a useful critique of the relationship between mental health and the current state of global capitalism as well as for describing the kind of exploitation and psychological frustration expressed by certain inndividuals in this thread.

 

The problem with the "I am doing my PhD for the love of literature argument" is that there is no way to divorce your participation in academic labor from the Ponzi scheme. I love art, but my years in the academy have taught me that much of what you learn in graduate school is about cultivating professional habits that often have very little to do with love; in fact, they frequently work against passion, creativity, and conversations unburdened by "professionalization." I do love teaching and research, but the structural exploitation of labor has turned these endeavors into a financial and personal hardship that benefits the top. The rhetoric of love has enabled mentors and the University to shamelessly ask for uncompensated labor in the classroom and on the page. The University has a bottom line, and the dollars become appallingly and painfully obvious when you begin to look around at the exploitation of labor that is ubiquitous in American higher education.

Edited April 12, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[ComeBackZinc]

The problem with the "I am doing my PhD for the love of literature argument" is that there is no way to divorce your participation in academic labor from the Ponzi scheme. I love art, but my years in the academy have taught me that much of what you learn in graduate school is about cultivating professional habits that often have very little to do with love; in fact, they frequently work against passion, creativity, and conversations unburdened by "professionalization." I do love teaching and research, but the structural exploitation of labor has turned these endeavors into a financial and personal hardship that benefits the top. The rhetoric of love has enabled mentors and the University to shamelessly ask for uncompensated labor in the classroom and on the page. The University has a bottom line, and the dollars become appallingly and painfully obvious when you begin to look around at the exploitation of labor that is ubiquitous in American higher education.

 

Yes but, and again I find a lot to agree with you, what you're describing is the structure and function of capitalism. The entire economy is based on the exploitation of labor. The entire economy asks you to instrumentalize and commodify yourself and what you love. The entire economy shamelessly asks for uncompensated labor, as the reach of email and the smartphone compels us to work long into the night. What you're describing is what capitalism is.

 

I don't excuse any of the academy's participation in these things, and they're as bad as you say. But they are system-wide, and someone going out and getting a job in the "real world" will not find the conditions any better. I'm increasingly convinced that you're someone who went into the academy with a series of illusions about it that were inevitably dashed. I don't pretend that no on in the academy perpetuates those myths, but I find it blindingly naive to think that what you're describing isn't an inherent function of capitalist society.

[kurayamino]

Yes but, and again I find a lot to agree with you, what you're describing is the structure and function of capitalism. The entire economy is based on the exploitation of labor. The entire economy asks you to instrumentalize and commodify yourself and what you love. The entire economy shamelessly asks for uncompensated labor, as the reach of email and the smartphone compels us to work long into the night. What you're describing is what capitalism is.

 

I don't excuse any of the academy's participation in these things, and they're as bad as you say. But they are system-wide, and someone going out and getting a job in the "real world" will not find the conditions any better. I'm increasingly convinced that you're someone who went into the academy with a series of illusions about it that were inevitably dashed. I don't pretend that no on in the academy perpetuates those myths, but I find it blindingly naive to think that what you're describing isn't an inherent function of capitalist society.

God. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's rail against the inequities of capitalism by becoming more educated rather than slamming our fist and saying academia is it's own unique problem. It's really not. As with any market, there are periods of boom and bust. That's the thing we should be upset about, not higher education itself.

[dazedandbemused]

Yes but, and again I find a lot to agree with you, what you're describing is the structure and function of capitalism. The entire economy is based on the exploitation of labor. The entire economy asks you to instrumentalize and commodify yourself and what you love. The entire economy shamelessly asks for uncompensated labor, as the reach of email and the smartphone compels us to work long into the night. What you're describing is what capitalism is.

 

I don't excuse any of the academy's participation in these things, and they're as bad as you say. But they are system-wide, and someone going out and getting a job in the "real world" will not find the conditions any better. I'm increasingly convinced that you're someone who went into the academy with a series of illusions about it that were inevitably dashed. I don't pretend that no on in the academy perpetuates those myths, but I find it blindingly naive to think that what you're describing isn't an inherent function of capitalist society.

 

Yes, exactly. Honestly, (and not to step on any toes) I think that if the reason you're getting a PhD is because all you've ever wanted is to read and discuss literature, and become the professor you once had in college, you're in for a rude awakening. I don't think that's healthy, or even normal, but it's an attitude that I ran into a lot when applying, and it's one that I encounter whenever I interact with people in other programs. Maybe it's because my program is a constant stream of "this is how you become more marketable," but I've always viewed academia as just another job that I am good at and would rather do than other things. Is it my dream job? No. My dream job is being a rich person. But since that's never going to happen, I'm doing something for six years that is personally fulfilling to me and is unlikely to lead to my long term ruin. 

 

 

Reading shit like that really hits this idea home for me: for my own health, an education in the humanities should be divorced from my expectations and goals related to work; my love of literature should have nothing to do with my need for a paycheck. Which is probably what a lot of you have been trying to communicate for a while -- if, at times, the ideas have lacked the proper vocabulary (which is only barely, I think, starting to be developed). I really recommend this book as a useful critique of the relationship between mental health and the current state of global capitalism as well as for describing the kind of exploitation and psychological frustration expressed by certain inndividuals in this thread.

 

I think you're taking the right tack. The rhetoric of academia, and I think of millenials in general, is that you should be doing what you love and that work is its own reward. Except, that will never be true and that point of view is basically, as ComeBackZinc said, just capitalism at work. I haven't read that, but I'm putting it on my list now. Also, if you're interested in critiques of structural systems, I highly recommend Time Binds by Elizabeth Freeman. It's about queer temporality, but her take down of chronobiopolitics really helped to shape my view on how much use-value I'm willing to let academia get out of me.

[VirtualMessage]

Yes but, and again I find a lot to agree with you, what you're describing is the structure and function of capitalism. The entire economy is based on the exploitation of labor. The entire economy asks you to instrumentalize and commodify yourself and what you love. The entire economy shamelessly asks for uncompensated labor, as the reach of email and the smartphone compels us to work long into the night. What you're describing is what capitalism is.

 

I don't excuse any of the academy's participation in these things, and they're as bad as you say. But they are system-wide, and someone going out and getting a job in the "real world" will not find the conditions any better. I'm increasingly convinced that you're someone who went into the academy with a series of illusions about it that were inevitably dashed. I don't pretend that no on in the academy perpetuates those myths, but I find it blindingly naive to think that what you're describing isn't an inherent function of capitalist society.

 

Generalizing the problem as the woes of "capitalism" abstracts the exploitation of labor and obfuscates the specific structural problems found in the academy. Again, what we need is an honest, open, and probing conversation about the details of this exploitation. However, more often than not I find the faculty trying to displace culpability for decisions that implicate them (as much as we like to blame politicians, administrators, etc.), including the decision to remain silent in the face of these problems in spite of the protections they enjoy with tenure. Instead, we see the kind of offended responses that populate this thread. You want to talk about naiveté? Let's talk about "theorizing" a labor problem that regards the exploitation of actual people—many people. You would think that people on the verge of entering the "profession" would want to have a pointed conversation about these systemic problems that threaten the entire enterprise of higher education. Instead, what I see here is a recurrent effort to deflate and diffuse these concerns, using rhetoric usually promulgated by the University President's Office. The fact of the matter is that nearly 75% of labor in the academy is contingent, that tenure is actively being eliminated, and that various disciplines such as English are in real jeopardy. You need to address the particular labor problems in order to move to the universal-- not the other way around. I know it's difficult to confront these realities, but one way or the other your work at the University is going to either exploit labor or suffer from it.

[ComeBackZinc]

1. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's a labor crisis in the contemporary university.

2. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's exploitation in the contemporary university.

3. I see literally no one in this thread who questions the deprofessionalization of the professoriate in this thread.

4. "The faculty" is not a monolithic bloc and describing them as such does not help us in the structural or in the particular.

5. Yes, it's important to describe and criticize the labor crisis in the university; in fact, many faculty members are among the most strident and vocal in doing so. Sure, there's also faculty members who are part of the problem, and they deserve criticism, and I have made that  criticism, publicly, many times. But there is no question that the ultimate culpability lies in the hands of politicians and administrators. That's not displacement; that's a fact, a plain fact about who holds power in the contemporary university. It just doesn't fit in your ongoing psychodrama, which you are busily inflicting on the people here every da  y.

6. People who are entering the profession (and I'm not sure what your scare quotes prove, other than that you escalate meaninglessly when pushed back against) are having that conversation. We have it all over the internet, and have, for years. We have it here all the time. The fact that you don't get to dictate every aspect of that conversation does not mean it doesn't happen. We are not here to serve the needs of your ego.

7. Putting capitalism in scare quotes does not diminish the plain reality that I'm describing, which is that almost every aspect of the academic labor situation you deride is a product of the system in which it is embedded and is not reducible to a morality play which pits those mean faculty members against our hero VirtualMessage.

8. No one is "theorizing" anything; we are talking about the real world, and many of us are doing so in a profoundly less romantic and more concrete manner than you are. 

9. Labor issues are political issues and structural issues and material issues. Reducing them to a meaningless whinge about personal morality and the naivete you are so addicted to observing in others does nothing for anyone.

10. Things are bleak. Progress is possible. Both of those things are true. What is necessary is for people to formulate a plan to try to secure that progress. I see some of that from some faculty members. I see some of that from the people here. I see nothing resembling a plan from you. I just see bitterness and recrimination that plays out in the most emotional, least constructive terms possible.

11. I don't mind naivete. I don't mind cynicism. But your brand of naive cynicism is tiresome and narcissistic and personally I've had quite enough of it.

[VirtualMessage]

1. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's a labor crisis in the contemporary university.

2. I see literally no one in this thread who questions that there's exploitation in the contemporary university.

3. I see literally no one in this thread who questions the deprofessionalization of the professoriate in this thread.

4. "The faculty" is not a monolithic bloc and describing them as such does not help us in the structural or in the particular.

5. Yes, it's important to describe and criticize the labor crisis in the university; in fact, many faculty members are among the most strident and vocal in doing so. Sure, there's also faculty members who are part of the problem, and they deserve criticism, and I have made that  criticism, publicly, many times. But there is no question that the ultimate culpability lies in the hands of politicians and administrators. That's not displacement; that's a fact, a plain fact about who holds power in the contemporary university. It just doesn't fit in your ongoing psychodrama, which you are busily inflicting on the people here every da  y.

6. People who are entering the profession (and I'm not sure what your scare quotes prove, other than that you escalate meaninglessly when pushed back against) are having that conversation. We have it all over the internet, and have, for years. We have it here all the time. The fact that you don't get to dictate every aspect of that conversation does not mean it doesn't happen. We are not here to serve the needs of your ego.

7. Putting capitalism in scare quotes does not diminish the plain reality that I'm describing, which is that almost every aspect of the academic labor situation you deride is a product of the system in which it is embedded and is not reducible to a morality play which pits those mean faculty members against our hero VirtualMessage.

8. No one is "theorizing" anything; we are talking about the real world, and many of us are doing so in a profoundly less romantic and more concrete manner than you are. 

9. Labor issues are political issues and structural issues and material issues. Reducing them to a meaningless whinge about personal morality and the naivete you are so addicted to observing in others does nothing for anyone.

10. Things are bleak. Progress is possible. Both of those things are true. What is necessary is for people to formulate a plan to try to secure that progress. I see some of that from some faculty members. I see some of that from the people here. I see nothing resembling a plan from you. I just see bitterness and recrimination that plays out in the most emotional, least constructive terms possible.

11. I don't mind naivete. I don't mind cynicism. But your brand of naive cynicism is tiresome and narcissistic and personally I've had quite enough of it.

 

 

Narcissistic, naive, psychodrama? You forgot to mention my penis envy. I have laid bare my vulnerability by stating my feelings in the context of my experience within the profession. Furthermore, I have responded to the substance of various posts by offering claims that appreciate their content. For example, in my previous post, I suggest that you need to attend to the many different manifestations of "capitalism" rather than generalizing all institutions/structures/etc. as the same. That you need to assault and pathologize my character to posit your bullets reveals the irony that keeps manifesting here: the same smug, managerial logic and self-satisfied evasion that excuses the abdication of responsibility found among many academics. I'm not going to stoop to throwing insults back at you. But I will offer a challenge: Know thyself.  It's imperative that prospective students know about the toll this "profession" exacts. I use scare quotes to offset the fact that this is not a profession for the many people suffering under the bleak conditions that continue to be obfuscated here. If their severity were acknowledged, you wouldn't be blowing smoke trying to assail a stranger on the Internet; you would be offering the details you criticize me for failing to report. But I have reported them, if you'd bother to read rather than project. The realities I've outlined are unavoidable, and they are painful. So painful, evidently, that you cannot actually address them in any greater detail than assuring us how obvious they are—so obvious that you need only to mock them. Instead, you must distract from the substance of the concern by shining light on the madwoman who "everyday" embarrasses the dream. If you were the good liberal your indignation suggests, you might find value in the personal pain expressed. However, your polite vision of these problems insists on a soft-spoken, blunted language that would have us keep pretending that we are all colleagues in this collective struggle. The fact of the matter is that adjunct labor benefits full-time labor, and the vast majority of the people who enroll in graduate programs are destined to become that adjunct labor. I do not see or hear the majority of full-time faculty advocating against this structure in their words or their deeds.

[ComeBackZinc]

Yes, but as the rest of us have already established, VirtualMessage, you are not the cosmos.

[goldfinch1880]

glad we could resurrect this oozing flesh wound one last time before everyone goes home

 

[TonyB]

The zombie gif is an apt one... we all think, on some level, that WE are the ones who will be able to get one of those "good jobs" in academia that are supposedly so (increasingly) few and far between, just as we all think we'd be one of the survivors adventuring our way through the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. Every overweight person thinks they're going to be the one to lose all the weight one day. Every poor capitalism-loving Republican thinks they're the one who's going to one day strike it rich.

 

The bottom line is that there are more people in grad school than there are substantive jobs in academia. Academics don't retire, and new hires are overwhelmingly being brought on part-time. This is not a system that can sustain itself. To my mind, any institution that avoids hiring tenure-track faculty, while admitting grad students on anything other than a fully (and generously) funded basis, is ethically suspect. In fact I'd go so far as to say that they shouldn't admit any more non-funded grad students than they'd be willing to hire on a full-time basis themselves.

 

Now, of course, there will always be those who will STILL go to grad school, just as there will always be folks who pursue useless liberal arts degrees when they'd be better off getting an HVAC certification (or something), from an employability perspective. But that doesn't mean "the system" is thereby obligated to give these people enough rope to hang themselves. It also does no good to put the problem down to nebulous concerns of economic and political philosophy -- capitalism vs. socialism, etc. -- or to excuse the policies of school administrators based on the flimsy notion that "all organizations in a capitalist economy inevitably exploit their workers," however true that might be.

Edited April 15, 2015 by TonyB

[__________________________]

Really good points. Reminds me of Paolo Virno's thoughts on affect in 'late' capitalism:

 

 

Sianne Ngai's Ugly Feelings, which is one of my most favorite theory books in the past ten years, works off Virno's assumption and thinks about Bartleby as either a manifestation or focal point of all these "minor affects" (envy, irritation, anxiety, 'stuplimity', paranoia) that can be seen as disruptions in capital's use of people's affect as "lubrication." Very awesome book!

 

Also, if you're interested in critiques of structural systems, I highly recommend Time Binds by Elizabeth Freeman. It's about queer temporality, but her take down of chronobiopolitics really helped to shape my view on how much use-value I'm willing to let academia get out of me.

Thanks for the recommendations!  I will definitely check out these books.  Paulo Virno is someone I've been wanting to check out... Semiotext(e) is coming out with a translation of his book on speech acts soon: http://semiotexte.com/?p=1473

 

Fwiw, I didn't mean to "resurrect" this thread for more arguing, but simply to throw out a book  recommendation/idea that I read that reminded me of this thread, which I remember as reducing itself to semantic arguments largely because, I think, there was a lack of useful vocabulary for describing the situation (causing miscommunication, tenuous comparisons, and even bitter and annoyed arguments).  I too think it's useless to blame "nebulous concerns" but I do think it useful to try and find a vocabulary for describing the very real economic and psychological strife (on both the collective and individual levels) that are brought about by the environment we live in and are getting ourselves into.  I don't think people's observations of "because capitalism," while not the most articulate, are simply diverting blame so much as implying that we, as budding little overly analytical academics, tend to be so focused on blaming the area we are most involved with that we overlook the fact that the negative trends we're pointing out here aren't all unique to just academia.  I.e., academia isn't the only sector characterized by a shrinking job market and expectations of a certain degree of self-exploitation.  Hence the book recommendations.  To try and start putting it in the perspective of something larger.  But whatever.  Perhaps this isn't the place for this sort of conversation.

 

Pecunia delenda est.  ;-)