point-counterpoint
so first there’s this: “A Ph.D. Should Result in a Tenure-Track Job, Not an Alt-Ac Job,” which an acquaintance of mine shared on Ze Facebook recently:
While no one is going to argue against supporting degree holders who search for nonprofessorial employment, there’s little evidence that they actually need more of this help. My cohort of graduate school activists in the mid-1990s was already perfectly aware that folks with doctorates who went the nonprofessorial route generally had low unemployment and good jobs. According to the MLA and AHA surveys, that hasn’t changed. These folks have consistently found excellent employment without placement help from their professional associations.
man. and here i thought we were in full crisis mode about whether or not people should actually even go to graduate school. apparently if you GTFO once you’re lettered-up, you can just about pick good jobs off of trees.
rather ho-hum about some kinds of work, ain’t we? this same article demands a lot of changes that universities will probably never make, for the sake of keeping the current imaginary “Ph.D. - to - Prof” pipeline running smoothly. funny. if nonprofessorial employment is so easy-peasy, why is it such death to suggest it and such a non-issue to even deeply consider these “folks”?
and of course there’s this picture, which has gone the rounds a few times:
(the answer, btw, is COLLEGE SPORTS DUH, at least partly. this image really needs to also list what the average college football coach makes. cause sonnnnn they make bank.)
as counterpoint: “What Can You Do with a Humanities Ph.D., Anyway?”
[W]hy are humanities Ph.D.s outside academia so invisible? One reason is that within academic departments there is a culture of stigmatizing doctoral candidates who take non-academic posts, making them less inclined to stick around and contribute to debates about the future of the field. When I spoke to Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA, she said, “There is a discourse of failure and shame that intimidates Ph.D.s and makes them feel not good enough if they don’t get an academic job.” This dynamic is a byproduct of a value system that prizes intellectual pursuits over business and industry. “Some dissertation advisors are prejudiced against many jobs outside academia that Ph.D.s pursue and find highly satisfying: They cannot imagine a ‘life of the mind’ unless you become a scholar,” Feal explained.
a “Life of the Mind” for 5K a course. cause UGH, what do you want to be, a failure? profess or perish, yo!
so um, okay.
i am ALL ABOUT some solidarity ish when it comes to any kind of employment, and college instruction is absolutely in a mess. but... c’mon, y’all. adjuncting is a sucker job. anybody who’s done it knows this. you might as well make a living selling Tupperware. fuck the kids, and fuck how much you love teaching ‘em. there are already plenty of fresh, hungry idiots ready to work too many hours for too little pay and tell themselves “i’ll make it!” - i know, because i’ve been that exact idiot. but if it’s a sucker job, don’t be a sucker. you do know what a strike means, right? it means you REFUSE TO WORK UNTIL CONDITIONS IMPROVE. and shitty companies, when their workers strike, they hire scabs, people who will do the work with no changes made (or maybe even for less), so the exact same system rolls on unabated. and universities are companies, and adjuncts are scabs, and the more you crow on social media about how much you loooooooove teachin’ them kids their college lit and oooooh how it fulfills something in you, the more things don’t change. you’re a scab. go ahead and share that picture. you’re not striking. you’re scabbing. i know you still got a stack of papers in your teaching bag that you have to grade.
tl;dr: the reason people with terminal degrees who work outside academia don’t bitch about either academia or work is because they have jobs... unlike some Ph.D. and MFA fools still for some reason trying to knock over all the milk bottles in the University Midway long after their grace-jackassery-period. i mean, i quit teaching, and i’m still broke-ish, but i’m better off in just about every way now that i don’t try for academic jobs.