The Graduate School Ponzi Scheme

[unræd]

Is mustard the only condiment you have back there, ComeBackZinc?

 

'Cause I could really use some butter for all this popcorn.

[Mattie Roh]

Summertime entertainment, such as it is, on GradCafe.

[TakeruK]

In my opinion, the first step towards a conversation about constructive changes need to be stirring up the emotions of the people involved/affected. Clearly, if all that happens is that a bunch of people get upset at a particular situation, then that won't result in any positive changes. But, if we restrict ourselves to only discussing constructive changes only, then we won't get people invested. I don't think it's a good idea to think "Well, I can't think of a better solution, so I guess I'll just accept it for now". In addition, even when conversations about change is happening, there is still a need for the "embrace a certain attitude towards the academy" type conversation. 

 

Maybe VirtualMessage is already "preaching to the choir", so to speak, when discussing this with TheGradCafe users responding to this thread. But I would say that the people who respond to threads are not necessarily representative of the people who are just here to read the threads.

 

I'm just writing this to defend the importance and necessity of convincing people to adopt a particular attitude/stance/emotion and that I don't think you have to propose a solution or something to do in order to provide useful and interesting discussions. 

[ComeBackZinc]

But see, here's the problem, for someone like me who's been engaging on this for years: there have already been a ton of essays published in exactly the same vein as that of VirtualMessage. Complaints like those aren't rare in the adjunct crisis/grad student crisis/academic labor crisis/etc narrative. They're the dominant form! They're ubiquitous! And I've been reading them for ten years. So my question is, how often can we write the same essays that get the same agreement from the same people and expect things to change? Part of what frustrates me is that VirtualMessage's complaints are so often treated as novel, around here, when in fact they're just par for the course. Anyone who engages on this issue has heard them many times. Sure: it's important to inspire people to feel particular things. But at what point does that duty to inspire a particular feeling end and a duty to actually articulate an actionable approach to achieving a better system begin?

[Roquentin]

While I vaguely recall a few bits of decent, long-buried commentary/advice in this thread, overall it reads as a heated contest to have the last word without saying anything new. It’s just a really fantastic snapshot of grad student/academic futility. Kudos, all!

[BooksCoffeeBeards]

Roquentin - you beat me to it. And so did ComeBackZinc.

 

As a NTT faculty member (MA in '09, adjuncted for a year to full-time NTT in Fall 2010), I've heard this same discussion ad nauseum.

 

Monthly.

 

For about....6, almost 7 years now. It was a huge topic of discussion when my graduate institution faculty members voted to unionize. 

 

I've yet to hear anything new, unless they address new statistics or new anecdotes from others about the same. damn. thing.

[delimitude]

 

 

 

That's what I've been calling a Ponzi scheme; if you have a better word for it, please go ahead and offer it, but that might require you to employ some logic. It's unclear to me how you move from acknowledging a systemic problem with the mass exploitation of labor to making this a matter of "personal misfortune." The nice feature of the Ponzi scheme analogy is that it recognizes the many suffering at the bottom as well as the few at the top who benefit from their exploited labor. Your comments remind me of Madoff's jailhouse interview when he criticizes his victims for being greedy; I'd think you would rather admire him for his competitive enterprising. When are members of this profession (especially the younger ones on here who seem to think divine providence will save them) going to stop making excuses for an inequitable and nasty way of doing business that is deceptively naturalized as a meritocracy? 

 

I wasn't aware that my comments rendered me so clearly a Madoff sympathizer; otherwise, I would have thought twice about posting them. In any case, I'm not sure graduate students are being defrauded in the same manner that people were defrauded by Madoff (I think that's unfair to the academy and unfair to Madoff's victims). The job prospects for English PhDs are fairly clear and transparent, easily available, updated and published annually. In that sense, nobody is getting duped or deceived. There is no conspiratorial bait and switch. According to your vague logic, one could argue that even getting a BA in the Humanities in certain disciplines is a rip-off, as it does not offer a reasonable opportunity of securing a job in that field. But that is a different matter. Practically speaking, what are you suggesting people do? Do you think they should not apply to graduate programs? Apparently, my suggestion that they become better informed about the schools to which they apply, what they intend to study, and the job market surrounding those choices is not enough for you. There's a growing movement to unionize adjunct labor and improve adjunct conditions, but that seems off your radar, also. Many schools have graduate teaching unions that guarantee reasonable stipends, health insurance, partial dental, etc. (as mine does), and we could work towards broadening that movement. Yet I get the impression that your bitterness would return us to the bleak suggestion that the "Ponzi scheme" subsumes all of this. I agree that administrative jobs and salaries are out of control; that governance is falling out of the hands of faculty; that tenure-track jobs are being replaced by adjunct labor; and that graduate labor reproduces much of this. But I feel as though you are intent on a Kafka-esque upshot: no hope and no future for the graduate Humanities cat subjected to the institutional peril of the academy, stripped of agency and inevitably forced outside the gates, endlessly awaiting their sentence of work camp labor. Things need radical fixing and adjustment, but it seems as though you only want to tirelessly wave an angry and defeatist banner--and to what end, really, I'm not sure. 

Edited July 7, 2015 by delimitude

[VirtualMessage]

I wasn't aware that my comments rendered me so clearly a Madoff sympathizer; otherwise, I would have thought twice about posting them. In any case, I'm not sure graduate students are being defrauded in the same manner that people were defrauded by Madoff (I think that's unfair to the academy and unfair to Madoff's victims). The job prospects for English PhDs are fairly clear and transparent, easily available, updated and published annually. In that sense, nobody is getting duped or deceived. There is no conspiratorial bait and switch. According to your vague logic, one could argue that even getting a BA in the Humanities in certain disciplines is a rip-off, as it does not offer a reasonable opportunity of securing a job in that field. But that is a different matter. Practically speaking, what are you suggesting people do? Do you think they should not apply to graduate programs? Apparently, my suggestion that they become better informed about the schools to which they apply, what they intend to study, and the job market surrounding those choices is not enough for you. There's a growing movement to unionize adjunct labor and improve adjunct conditions, but that seems off your radar, also. Many schools have graduate teaching unions that guarantee reasonable stipends, health insurance, partial dental, etc. (as mine does), and we could work towards broadening that movement. Yet I get the impression that your bitterness would return us to the bleak suggestion that the "Ponzi scheme" subsumes all of this. I agree that administrative jobs and salaries are out of control; that governance is falling out of the hands of faculty; that tenure-track jobs are being replaced by adjunct labor; and that graduate labor reproduces much of this. But I feel as though you are intent on a Kafka-esque upshot: no hope and no future for the graduate Humanities cat subjected to the institutional peril of the academy, stripped of agency and inevitably forced outside the gates, endlessly awaiting their sentence of work camp labor. Things need radical fixing and adjustment, but it seems as though you only want to tirelessly wave an angry and defeatist banner--and to what end, really, I'm not sure. 

 

The academy has become Kafkaesque; you don't have to take my word for it. Go ahead and look at the Academic Jobs Wiki, especially the recent Humanities postdoc searches. There you can witness firsthand the total disconnect between people who have jobs and the many who do not. If you want to experience Kafka first hand, initiate an academic job search of your own.

 

The systemic problems young scholars are facing in higher education are both simple to identify and very difficult to solve. We need to invert the ratio of full-time TT faculty to NTT. Currently, around 75% of the faculty are adjunct. However, it seems largely impossible to find the will at the Universities to change this incredibly damaging labor situation because graduate students, tenured faculty and professional associations apply no meaningful pressure. I am not making the claim that there is no agitation, but I do not see the kind of remonstrance necessary to effect substantial change. This web forum has been eye opening for me because I now see that some ambitious graduate students try to use these problems to a competitive advantage by demonstrating their submissiveness to the foreman. In short, they think that screwing on their mealy mouth and getting with the program is a sign of their coming election to the tenure track.

 

Getting pissed off and angry about the exploitation of labor is a precondition for fomenting change. Too much of the frustration is sublimated because people (graduate students, adjuncts, etc.) think that deference will win them gainful employment. It probably will not, and it certainly will not save this profession. The more voices that cry out, the better, and I cannot fathom why ComeBankZinc thinks that the genre of complaint is all used up (maybe it's because ComeBackZinc has been working on this issue for years--whatever that means--and hasn't attracted the attention ComeBackZinc clearly relishes, but one man's narcissistic disappointment isn't a reason to shun the stories of others).

 

Delimitude, I don't follow your point. The labor situation has changed radically in the last several years, and many of us were blindsided by it. But I'm guessing you also predicted the 2008 crash? Furthermore, there is still the suggestion at the top programs that jobs are obtainable if you publish and professionalize. Many entering students continue to be seduced by these implicit promises. I have seen this happen first hand, and I have seen the consequences for their careers. I do, however, appreciate your comments because I've just read "A Hunger Artist" again, and I now have a better sense of the career possibilities for my doctorate.

[unræd]

Can I say, as one of those newly entering graduate students this thread is nominally directed at guiding, that nothing about this thread has actually been at all helpful?

 

 

While I vaguely recall a few bits of decent, long-buried commentary/advice in this thread, overall it reads as a heated contest to have the last word without saying anything new. It’s just a really fantastic snapshot of grad student/academic futility. Kudos, all!

 

There is a useful conversation to be had about all these issues--the lack of jobs, the exploitation of contingent faculty labor, the fact that alt-ac is not the viable option it's often painted to be, the creation of narratives of "doing what you love because you love it" that are not only financially dangerous but that valorize that financial danger, and the blithe, self-delusional attitude that many applicants take to thinking that while things are bad, it'll be different for them, you'll see. Those are good points, and pace TakeruK, they have been made across twelve pages of this thread, for any and all future visitors and lurkers to come and see and read and digest as they consider graduate study and how to effect change in a broken academy. This is no longer that conversation.

 

I understand the argument--usually most cogently expressed by 1Q84--that no one has to pay attention to these threads, and that's true. But there should also be some thought given to what kind of community GradCafe wants its fora to be. And so, at the risk of "demonstrating [my] submissiveness to the foreman," a serious question for the mods:

 

A thread on rhet/comp recently got shut down when it was no longer productive, when the discussion descended from definitely heated but still interesting disagreement into bitter personal attacks, vitriol, and sarcastic spleen-venting that are better carried out through PMs or not at all. When and how do you decide a discussion has reached that point?

Edited July 7, 2015 by unræd

[VirtualMessage]

There is a useful conversation to be had about all these issues--the lack of jobs, the exploitation of contingent faculty labor, the fact that alt-ac is not the viable option it's often painted to be, the creation of narratives of "doing what you love because you love it" that are not only financially dangerous but that valorize that financial danger, and the blithe, self-delusional attitude that many applicants take to thinking that while things are bad, it'll be different for them, you'll see. Those are good points, and pace TakeruK, they have been made across twelve pages of this thread, for any and all future visitors and lurkers to come and see and read and digest as they consider graduate study and how to effect change in a broken academy. This is no longer that conversation.

 

I understand the argument--usually most cogently expressed by 1Q84--that no one has to pay attention to these threads, and that's true. But there should also be some thought given to what kind of community GradCafe wants its fora to be. And so, at the risk of "demonstrating [my] submissiveness to the foreman," a serious question for the mods:

 

A thread on rhet/comp recently got shut down when it was no longer productive, when the discussion descended from definitely heated but still interesting disagreement into bitter personal attacks, vitriol, and sarcastic spleen-venting that are better carried out through PMs or not at all. When and how do you decide a discussion has reached that point?

 

Thank you for telling us what the conversation has become, and that it should end. I can't tell you how terrifying it is for me that educated people--literature and writing scholars no less--advocate to censor conversations on a web forum because they have some heat. But again, this would be another example of the guiding ethos found among junior members of this profession who seem to have more delicate sensibilities than the man of feeling. God forbid people express some anger and frustration and passion when they're being tread on in a profession where it would be sudden death to voice those emotions. Can I propose some censorship guidelines for the moderators? Supposedly the people here are intellectuals capable of writing at a high level. Can we ban the adolescent use of GIFs and feel-good gimmicks to stress the importance of academic discourse among academics?

 

PS: Please erase most 18th century periodical literature from the archives. I don't like the community that Addison and Steele promoted. It was too mean.

Edited July 7, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[Romanista]

 

PS: Please erase most 18th century periodical literature from the archives. I don't like the community that Addison and Steele promoted. It was too mean.

 

The idea of banning makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps a trigger warning would be better? 

[ProfLorax]

A thread on rhet/comp recently got shut down when it was no longer productive, when the discussion descended from definitely heated but still interesting disagreement into bitter personal attacks, vitriol, and sarcastic spleen-venting that are better carried out through PMs or not at all. When and how do you decide a discussion has reached that point?

Good question. The mod team doesn't always operate as a team, so that decision I made solo. I decided to shut the other thread down when it became personal attacks between two people who could have easily carried the conversation to PM. This thread, while it exhausts me, seems to be engaging more people. I've been pretty happy ignoring it for now but can shut it down if it crosses the line again.

 

Can we ban the adolescent use of GIFs and feel-good gimmicks to stress the importance of academic discourse among academics?

[unræd]

Thank you for telling us what the conversation has become, and that it should end. I can't tell you how terrifying it is for me that educated people--literature and writing scholars no less--advocate to censor conversations on a web forum because they have some heat.

 

You're welcome, VirtualMessage.

 

If you read my post you'll see I was asking for clarification of the moderators' policies given that the other thread was shut down. I didn't say "this conversation should end," I was asking where the line was that that conversation crossed but this one apparently doesn't; I frankly didn't see much of a difference between the two. ProfLorax's point that the other conversation was just between you and CBZ, whereas this one is broader, makes some sense.

 

My issue isn't with your anger, VM, and I don't mind heat with attendant substance. Hell, you and I even agree on a hell of a lot of things, and I like a lot of your helpful posts elsewhere on the fora. My issue is entirely that every time someone disagrees with you on this thread or on the virtues of rhet/comp as a field, you belittle them and the straw man argument you say they've made instead of engaging what they actually said. You alienate even the people who agree with you; ComeBackZinc was, in the early days of this thread, one of the posters telling others that your perspective and experience was valued and should be heeded.

 

It doesn't make me uncomfortable, my poor little feelings don't get hurt, and I don't need a trigger warning because somebody's being mean to strangers on the internet. I just don't much see the point.

Edited July 7, 2015 by unræd

[ExponentialDecay]

Oh well. It's not like there's some kind of prize for resisting the temptation of endless troll threads.

VM, by Kafkaesque do you mean Kafkaesque, ie a system that is frustrating because you are not privy to its internal logic? If so, then you have to agree with delimitude's point, that you're only angry because you're not with the in crowd.

Whilst I agree that many schools exploit NTT faculty and am horrified at the embarrassing situation of the humanities in the list of governmental priorities and in the public conscious, I fail to see, but may I be forgiven, where the great injustice lies. I mean, let's get real, literary scholarship is completely gratuitous. That is not the same as saying that it is useless - only that, in a socioeconomic order aimed at material gain and producing or helping to produce things, it's hardly surprising that the humanities are not in demand. By good old Papa Marx, use value and exchange value are not the same thing, but it's exchange value that determines how much you are getting paid for your shit. Certainly, the current state of humanities academia is partly due to bad management and bad rhetoric, but even taking those away, there's only so much you can do with what you're given, and the humanities aren't given much.

Do people not know that the humanities, and academia in general, don't pay? Do people go into this without a plan B? I mean, this wasn't news 50 years ago, and it isn't news now. The baby boomer economic boom is over (moment of silence for those graduated in 2008-2009), the new economic reality is a lot harsher, but in the humanities, it was always pretty bad. Are you seriously complaining that you were somehow blindsided by it going from bad to badly bad?

[VirtualMessage]

That isn't my reading of Kafka. The problem isn't a total failure of knowledge; it's the problem of being subjected to the judgments, desires, and whims of others for which knowledge has no power. The injustice is that young, capable people are being recruited by graduate programs for a profession that cannot provide gainful employment. And yes, people who attend top programs have repeatedly been told by their mentors that if they publish in top journals and win top fellowships and teach top classes that they will find a job, especially if they have a top project. The point I continue to stress is that merit has gone out the window, and that there aren't even decent jobs for many of the most well-qualified applicants. Instead, there continue to be more and more shitty positions with dog chow for the hungry. That makes me mad. There's no lack of demand for our profession. Many students need to be taught, but our profession has failed to protect its most vulnerable members. Where's your anger? If I'm the jerk for belittling and straw manning and just being a big meanie troll, what do we call people like you-should-have-known-this-wasnt-a-real-profession ExponentialDecay, who seems to relish the idea that academia has become a perverse hunger games? "Calvinist" seems too pious.

[empress-marmot]

I'm not exactly excusing my ignorance here, but I had no idea that this stuff was going on until about...hmm, a year ago. In my defense, I come from a blue collar family, and I've always been told that education is the door to opportunity, or something like that. I suppose I'm the stereotypical sheltered child. I didn't even know what adjunct faculty were until I TA'd for them in undergrad, and even then, I unknowingly bought into the myth that they were adjuncts because they weren't good enough to get a better job. That's how my advisers treated them, anyway. 

 

While I can't excuse my ignorance or terrible-if-uninformed thoughts about others, I can understand why the veterans on the GradCafe are tired of fielding this discussion over and over. The GradCafe is often the first step prospective applicants make towards graduate school. For people like me, it's our first wakeup call. Cue shock, denial, anger, etc. 

 

I don't think I qualify as a forum veteran yet, but in the future, I'd like to recognize conversations like this and steer them in a more productive direction. I think it would be useful to say "Here's what the rest of us are doing--come fight for a better university with us." 

[ExponentialDecay]

Without revisiting the texts, which I admittedly hadn't seen for a while, I struggle to find in Kafka these others you are talking about. I was under the impression that, given none of Kafka's protagonists ever reach some corporeal entity that enacts judgment (I refer here to The Trial and the short story that inspired it, the name of which escapes me at the moment), Kafka is talking not about others, but about a self-sufficient, self-enforcing system - a no one, so to say. This is also the impression I get from his Letter to Father. I recall that famous passage where he tells his father that he does not blame him, because they both were subject to forces outside their control (these forces are, from what I have read of the criticism, cultural and social). As such, without resorting to some speculation regarding what the author really meant to say by his blue curtains, I would argue that attributing Kafka's worldview to an upset at being subjected to the whims of others is a surface reading.

Anyway, let's get back to our chickens. "Has become"? The gist of my post was that academia always was. The pockets of time when some humanities disciplines were comparatively booming were the exception due to circumstances, not the rule. Without a doubt, many students need to be taught. Tenure? Salaried research into the finer points of Kafka? Nothing to do with teaching. Maybe humanities academia needs to be restructured so it doesn't follow the STEM model anymore, and become devoted to teaching composition classes to freshmen. Then you're going to see a lot more non-TT appointments, since instructors in the use of the subjunctive don't need political protection, and 4/4 loads, since you're not gonna be needing all that time to do research anymore. As it is now, with the R1s and the 0/1s and the high salaries, a high-employment humanities academia is untenable. Non-humanities academia is also untenable, but a number of those PhDs have better industry prospects, from working in outreach to quantitative finance. I think there is a limit to how much the general public will care about something that doesn't make its material situation better. Time has shown that the liberal arts model doesn't work on a wide scale. Maybe tenure doesn't either. In the alternative model, see Europe and Britain, most people essentially adjunct their entire careers. What I am trying to put to you is that humanities scholarship is a road to poverty because of the nature of humanities scholarship. You can sit here complaining about it all day, but that 's how it is.

That said, aside from the ensuing 13 pages, I think this thread is a valuable asset to this forum.

Edited July 7, 2015 by ExponentialDecay

[echo449]

How is it untenable? How has the liberal arts been shown to be untenable? America spent ~50 years running a pretty solid higher education system, more or less, and that hasn't begun to struggle because the amount of tenured humanities professors crashed the system. Why do you say that this was an unstable situation from the start?
 

[VirtualMessage]

Without revisiting the texts, which I admittedly hadn't seen for a while, I struggle to find in Kafka these others you are talking about. I was under the impression that, given none of Kafka's protagonists ever reach some corporeal entity that enacts judgment (I refer here to The Trial and the short story that inspired it, the name of which escapes me at the moment), Kafka is talking not about others, but about a self-sufficient, self-enforcing system - a no one, so to say. This is also the impression I get from his Letter to Father. I recall that famous passage where he tells his father that he does not blame him, because they both were subject to forces outside their control (these forces are, from what I have read of the criticism, cultural and social). As such, without resorting to some speculation regarding what the author really meant to say by his blue curtains, I would argue that attributing Kafka's worldview to an upset at being subjected to the whims of others is a surface reading.

 

 

I prefer find-and-replace reading:

 

Before the Tenured by Franz Kafka

 

Before the tenured sits a member of a search committee. To this search committee member comes a adjunct from the country who asks to gain entry into the tenured. But the committee member says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The adjunct thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the committee member, “but not now.” At the moment the gate to the tenured stands open, as always, and the committee member walks to the side, so the adjunct bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the committee member notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly committee member. But from room to room stand committee members, each more powerful than the other. I can’t endure even one glimpse of the third.” The adjunct from the country has not expected such difficulties: the tenured should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the committee member in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The committee member gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes adjuncty attempts to be let in, and he wears the committee member out with his requests. The committee member often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and adjuncty other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The adjunct, who has equipped himself with adjuncty things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the committee member. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the adjuncty years the adjunct observes the committee member almost continuously. He forgets the other committee members, and this one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the tenured. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud, later, as he grows old, he still mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the committee member he has come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the committee member. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the tenured. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the committee member. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The committee member has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things to the disadvantage of the adjunct. “What do you still want to know, then?” asks the committee member. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the tenured,” says the adjunct, “so how is that in these adjuncty years no one except me has requested entry?” The committee member sees that the adjunct is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

Edited July 8, 2015 by VirtualMessage

[ExponentialDecay]

I am currently compiling sources to support my argument in response to your previous question, but I saw this and just had to say that it was absolutely beautiful, and that I am profoundly gratified that our conversation has thus inspired you.

Edited July 8, 2015 by ExponentialDecay

[Romanista]

 

It doesn't make me uncomfortable, my poor little feelings don't get hurt, and I don't need a trigger warning because somebody's being mean to strangers on the internet. I just don't much see the point.

 

I was being sarcastic about the trigger warning. That topic has shown up often in the CHE recently.

[TonyB]

Anime-inspired avatars are one of my triggers.

[echo449]

Eh, you know what, nevermind.

Edited August 1, 2015 by echo449

[VirtualMessage]

If last year's MLA job list was "carnage," then what should we call it this year? I vote for "unreal." Because you'd think it didn't exist based on the silence from all quarters of the professoriate. Guess how many jobs are currently listed in English studies for all areas, including many Creative Writing and Rhet/Comp positions?

146

#Nofutureforscholarship, #Radicalindifference, #Ivegotmine, #Thegradstudentskeeponcummin, #Holyexception, #Adjunctdestiny, #Hopeychangeyacademe

[1Q84]