ELynah Forum

I posted same thing in the off topic forum right after you.  Sorry.  I will try to delete that.  If can't, maybe someone can figure out how to redirect it here.  My point was:

QuoteDon't know if this goes in the hockey forum or here, but Dryden wrote an op-ed in the WSJ today.

It was very well written and a good story about the mid-70s Flyers and their intimidating tactics. But then he got political with claims about Trump. Regardless of the political stance, to me it brings kind of a sour feeling that a Canadian--a Canadian politician especially--needs to get involved in US politics.

Actually, though, even if he were American, I would be uncomfortable with this. Athletes have the same right to speak as the rest of us, but I like to separate my sports/entertainment from my politics.

Don't know if this goes in the hockey forum or here, but Dryden wrote an op-ed in the WSJ today.  

It was very well written and a good story about the mid-70s Flyers and their intimidating tactics.  But then he got political with claims about Trump.  Regardless of the political stance, to me it brings kind of a sour feeling that a Canadian--a Canadian politician especially--needs to get involved in US politics.  

Actually, though, even if he were American, I would be uncomfortable with this.  Athletes have the same right to speak as the rest of us, but I like to separate my sports/entertainment from my politics.



EDIT: there is already a post about this in the hockey forum.  I can't seem to delete this or move it over.  If someone knows how, please feel free to do so.

I really believe you are just stubborn at this point, Kyle.  No need to agree with me, but I think you are being intentionally obtuse.  Also, your tone gets quite obnoxious as you keep writing.  I'm not sure why you are so animated and aggravated.  ELF is great because people don't take too much too personally compared to other internet sites.  Please don't get so upset.  It's not worth it.

Your question seems to me to be irrelevant.  I can say, though, that an instructor needed by the school (whether she does significant research or not) should be paid a wage that incentivizes future generations to continue to take on these tasks in the future.  As you say, people will stop becoming academics if this doesn't happen.  

Let's take IC, for example.  They most likely NEED someone to teach Shakespeare classes.  They most likely NEED someone to teach introductory biology.  They most likely NEED someone to teach basic linear algebra.  If they do not have faculty who are currently willing, able, and available to teach these classes, tehy need to hire new faculty.  currently, a common practice is to bring on an adjunct (say a grad student or recent PhD from Cornell) or a visiting assistant professor (someone who has not yet found tenure track employment) or a lecturer (typically either one of their own grad students given a job, a spouse of a local professor, a Cornell grad student who is given a real job for a semester or two).  What I believe tehy should be doing is biting the bullet and hiring someone as a real faculty member.  When they hire someone, they are more likely to get better service for their students because the new instructor will have incentives to care, they are building a better community of scholars at their school, and they are not contributing to the decline of lifestyle of academics.  Most importantly, if they hire someone as a real facult member, they will incentive future generations to pursue higher learning and scholarship and instruction.

To acquiesce to yoru question, somewhat, I would say that $60,000/yr plus benefits would probably be a sufficient minimum for an IC starting assistant professor in math, biology, or English.  That is not very much at all.  If IC finds that someone lacking a PhD is sufficient to satisfy its customers (students) then I don't see why such a person would need to make less than a PhD.  I jsut don't think IC would find it acceptable to have too many non-PhD recipients.

It is true that schools value scholarship and research above teaching.  However, they hire adjuncts and contingent faculty to fill teaching positions.  My argument is that this is wrong.  They should be filling teaching positions with real faculty members.  (Note: the vast majority of schools don't hire for research or scholarship very often anymore either.  Hiring of tenure track faculty is just way down across the vast majority of schools).

I don't know you, Kyle, only what you write here.  

Most colleges do, in fact, need to hire experts with PhDs in the particular subjects.  While less presitigious schools used to hire masters recipients a couple decades ago, it is tough for even them to do so now.  When Cornell started, man faculty only had bachelors degrees as was the norm.  Soon after there was a movement towards PhDs.  Now students and their families expect instructors with PhDs.  There are exceptions like grad students acting as the teacher or in literature or language where PhDs are less common.  In most fields, though, and at most schools, PhDs are required as teachers.  These PhDs need not continue scholarship, but they need to have that basic credential for the most part.  That's waht the MARKET requires.

And PhDs do leave the academic job market, as I wrote, but it continues to hurt many of them including those who left the market.  The fact that people can always look for a job in some industry is not sufficient to make the hiring system acceptable in our society.  This is why we have labor unions.  I happen to be quite libertarian, but even I see a need for labor unions for rare instances like this.  There is something very wrong going on, and we are capable people from pursuing advanced learning, scholarship, and instruction.  That could have serious negative consequences if we don't fix it.

Kyle, I think you are a little too stubborn on this supply/demand issue, and you seem to think that we live in a free market in the US.  We don't at all when the market is controlled by regulation, licensing, and pseudo-governmental boards.  

I would never say that PhDs are forced to stay in this job market, but to say they should just leave it is ignoring human psychology and the constraints of age/inexperience in the greater job market.  It is a big decision for a person in her late 20s or 30s to simply give up on a career for which she trained for many years, and it is difficult to suddenly enter a new job market in a field in which one likely has no experience.  In most cases, having a PhD hurts the chances of getting an entrly level job more than it helps.  Neverthelesss, a great number of PhDs leave academia every year, sometimes for college administration and sometimes for related fields, but often for entirely new fields.  

It is not a natural conclusion that becasue employers won't pay reasonably they don't need the employees.  In this case, the employers do desperately need expert academics, because tehy are the only ones who can teach.  However, they have realized that through a concerted effort by almost every school (individually or in collusion) they have managed to drasticaly drop the pay scale.  This happens in large part because Academia has discarded the value of teaching in favor of scholarship as you said and, more commonly, in favor of administration.  Why does an administrative assistant who makes photocopies get paid more than a PhD who teaches popular courses (see my post above)?

You can espouse supply and demand ideas, all you want, but the schools are an intermediary between the supply (PhDs) and demand (students), and the intermdiaries have distorted the market to take advantage of teh academics.  I don't believe in government intervention, but I do believe that schools should be held accountable at least in public opinion.  The best solution would be collective bargaining like they are trying at IC.

No, it is not traditional supply and demand at all.  There is ever greater demand right now.  While supply has risen because of more PhDs and fewer retirements, these PhDs are still getting work teaching.  I just wouldn't call it jobs. They work as adjuncts (again making about $2,000 per course) or contingent positions.  The schools still need them to teach and tehy are still teaching. A decade or two ago, these teachers would have been tenure track faculty. The schools just realized that since the whole industry has decided to pay so little, they can all get away paying so little.

In this case, the consumers (students) are paying more and more for the product and buying it at greater numbers each year.  The retailers (schools) are making more and more off of this explosion in sales at higher prices.  But the retailers (schools) have decided together to pay much less to the distributors.  In the retail industry, there would be an anti-trust or collusion claim.  I have no idea if universities have actively colluded to lower the wages for instructors, but the result is the same.

Since the retailers (the schools) are sanctioned by pseudo-governmental accrediting boards, the manufacturers (the academics) can't really offer their product directly to the consumers.  A few academics have tried this online, but it is limited because it does not offer a diploma.  The pseudo-governmental accrediting boards make the system an UNfree market.  

I'm generally not big on organized labor, but this is what it is meant to combat.  If/when more academics unionize, the situation may change.  Of course, that would likely lead to other unforseen consequences as it always does.

As I said before, it is difficult to argue that PhDs who entered grad programs prior to 2008 or 2009 made bad decisions when the industry was entirely different until they started looking for jobs.  It was the 2008 crash that convinced schools to utilize adjuncts and contingent faculty more than tenure track, and most schools have not since returned to offering real long-term jobs in any numbers.

I would take Swampy's argument one step further in this particular case.  Swampy, if this is not what you mean, I apologize.

In the case of academics, we know that their special ability to understand and then presumably instruct in higher level education is actually needed and wanted.  There are more undergrads in the US over the last decade than ever before.  There is a huge need for college level instructors.  Teaching higher ed is not equivalant to manufacturing buggy whips.  Unless we say that buggy whips are in ever higher demand, and they must still be produced the same way, but the buggy whip retailers have managed to pay only a miniscule fraction of what they used to pay while still charging consumers 3-5% more every year.

Also, while there may be some oversupply because too many people received PhDs, many of these PhDs can and do obtain work teaching in colleges.  The problem is that this work is often adjunct (meaning paid a couple thousand dollars per course) or contract-based (lecturers, visiting professors, etc).  Adjuncts cannot live off what they make teaching alone, even if they hustle and manage to teach 4 or 5 courses a semester across various campuses and online.  The best case scenario for an adjunct who teaches 10 courses a year (an unreasonably high number) is about $25,000 a year.  And the students suffer, because the adjunct can't and won't care about them.  For lecturers/visiting professors, there is no job security.  At will employment means you are employed until you're not.  Contract teaching jobs mean you are employed until the end of the semester or the year.  Then you need to find something else.

So we have a need for instructors (so many college students in over 2,000 US colleges) and we actually do have work for the instructors.  However, instead of hiring the highly trained academics, most American schools have switched largely to the adjunct and contingent system.  Since almost all schools have done this, they can all get away with it because there is no where else for most academics to get work.  One could argue the PhDs should drop out of the industry and try soemthing else.  Many do after a few years.  However, many others struggle along or rely on spouse's income to make up for it.  The argument that they should not have entered academia is a little misinformed, because the academic job market did not truly hit this level of depression until after the 2008 crash.  Only in the last 2 years have we really seen new PhDs who maybe should have known better.  

Many lesser ranked schools used to hire people with masters degrees to instruct only 15 or 20 years ago.  Now, they can often find adjuncts with PhDs from decent schools and with fairly impressive scholarship.  The industry has created this unbalance by their unwillingness to pay and hire.  It is not a supply and demand issue.

The market does not work like we're taught on a supply/demand curve.

Let me just add to me very long post above that I agree, Scersk, that a lot of STEM professionals are getting a bad deal these days.  We have laws about H1B visas.  If these laws are not being broken, they are being bent.  Salaries for engineers must increase more.  Also, older engineers who get laid off have a very hard time finding new employers who sufficiently value their experiences.

Nevertheless, the situation in even the most distressed STEM fields is better than that for the vast majority of young academics.

Sorry if I used imprecise terms, Scersk, but what I should have written is that almost no schools outside of the community college and junior college systems care about teaching.  I have multiple examples of early career academics at different types of institutions who ask the department for copies of their own course evaluations months later, only to find the original envelopes are still sealed because no one in the department ever looked at the reviews.  And yet the department decided to bring back/not bring back those academics without ever considering the evaluations.  Similarly, when a department does decide to send in a more senior faculty member to observe a lecture, it generally comes at the end of the year after future hiring decisions have been made for non-tenure track, and the observer is generally an academic with no training in education.

Schools don't care about instruction quality.  They just don't, because it does not matter to their business model.  Good teaching does not increase donations or grants.  Good teaching does not increase application numbers or quality of applicants.  Good teaching does not really increase prestige in US News or Times Higher Ed rankings.  When parents or students pay tuition, they are not paying for instruction.  Tuition is paid for the credential that comes at the end and all related career advancement opportunities.  Very few people--parents and students included--care about instruction quality in the end.

As for the economic reality of academics being similar to other professions: this is untrue.  Very few professions work this way.  Academics go to school after college for about 4-7 years and then often have postdocs, fellowships, etc.  The universities try to increase the number of grad students, because that provides them with cheap labor for teaching and research, but they don't care that these grad students can't get jobs when they graduate.  

Unlike doctors, lawyers, nurses, academics do not have their value increased by government regulations requiring that all instructors meet certain standards of competency.  Therefore, sometimes unqualified or immoral people take jobs from the well-trained.  (I could name names of famous "professors" who are former terrorists, famous criminals, or just people who once wrote a book but lack real expertise, but if I did so I'd risk insulting political sensibilities on both sides).  

Tenure has also done great harm to the younger generation of academics.  Many older academics see no reason to retire, because they make the top salary they can, they teach jsut a few classes they have taught for many years, and they often work with the assistance of TAs.  Many older tenured professors, especially at the mid-range schools, are actually surpassed in accomplishment by the much younger non-tenure track academics at the same schools.  The older professors just benefited from better much job markets in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  Eventually these older professors will die, but it will be too late for the current younger generation.  Moreover, the movement away from tenure and even toward more adjuncts, means many fewer overall opportunities for new academics despite the fact that more undergrads are in college than ever before.

The craziest part is the lack of value the schools put on the new instructors.  Here's a true story about an SEC flagship state school humanities department from just a couple years ago.  Someone I know well was hired right out of a PhD program to be a visiting assistant professor for one year.  She was tasked with creating and teaching 2 brand new courses per semester and expected to do research and publish though she had no research/travel stipend.  She was paid $40,000 and expected to move 1,000 miles with her family, but the school did not pay her moving expenses.  She was willing and eager to take the position as a step in her career.  She knew what she was getting into, and it was her choice to enter into this relationship.  She did not blame them.  But then she got to the department of about 2 dozen faculty members and found out that there was an administrative office with 5 administrative all making more money than she did.  One administrator had only two jobs: she scanned documents and xeroxed documents for the department.  Even the photocopy lady made more money than the young academic who had spent 6 years in graduate school, was one of only a handful of experts in the world in her very relevant field, and who was being tasked with teaching some of the more well-attend classes in the department.  Teaching is supposed to be the main role of a university, but teaching is not valued.  Making photocopies is more valued.

This is not a political issue.  The cut in non-tenure track (generally adjunct) faculty is directly related to federal government mandates, primarily the health insurance law.  Whether you call it Obamacare or ACA, it has been named by the schools as the reason they cut the ranks and/or hours of non-tenure track instructors.  This isn't politics.  It is fact, no matter which party or politician you support.

Cornell is one of the better schools when it comes to the percentage of instructors who are tenure track.  It is estimated that over 76% of faculty at Cornell is tenure track.  This is likely mostly due to Ithaca's remote geographic location, away from a large enough supply of highly trained PhD experts.  However, that still leaves almost 24% of the instructors a non-tenure track.  That includes visiting professors on one year gigs that generally pay very little with almost no chance of long-term employment.  It is not easy to move to Ithaca for a low-paying one year job.  It also includes adjuncts, only a small portion of whom are brought in from industry/practice, and most of whom are PhDs with excellent qualifications who work for just a couple thousand dollars per course per semester.

I am not an academic, but there is no profession that has felt the negatives of economic upheaval in the last 10 years like young academics.  We still value higher education and throw money at it, largely because of the unlimited student loan system (which is also due to government statute that practically prohibits default on student loans).  Schools build more and hire more and more administrators for higher and higher salaries.  Yet schools find new ways to hire fewer faculty and pay less.

I love Cornell and root for its teams, but Cornell is quite guilty of this too.  When I get a call from some Cornell student asking for money, I tell them no.  Even with our poor investing performance recently, Cornell's endowment is about $2 billion, right?  Cornell builds and builds.  Cornell hires more and more administrators.  Cornell raises tuition, now to $50,000/year before room and board.  Yet the one thing they do not value is teaching and who teaches the students.

One more thing.  While I agree with Swampy mostly, I have seen significant evidence that neither teaching evaluations nor teaching observations are valued at all at major universities.  They generally don't care about teaching ability at all.  For tenure track faculty, departments care about research and (for sciences) grant receipts.  For non-tenure track, departments generally care that they can argue that the hire has the expertise to teach the class(es) and can teach in the right schedule.  Teaching ability is almost never considered at real universities.

OT

Quote from: snert1288I will just say the Kevin is damn lucky the Giants won because he would make a very nice scapegoat...GO GIANTS!!

On the NFL Network's Sound FX last night they made it quite clear that the holding call was bogus.  First, the head ref questioned the ref who threw the flag, because he didn't agree.  Then after they made the call and pushed the ball back, the refs continued to question it amongst themselves.  Coughlin (predictably) went nuts.  Finally, the refs asked Wilfork (the supposed victim of the hold) later in the game if it was a legitimate hold, and he said no.  Wilfork admitted that he fell spinning out of the block and said, "it was a bad call."  Boothe's teammates and coaches knew it was a bad call.  He never would have been considered a scapegoat for that.

The false start was a legitimate penalty.  Smart move by the patriots to move suddenly laterally, causing him to flinch even though no one on their D line encroached.

Most true fans are now quite thankful to have him on the team.  Many, if not most, have been asking to move him back to center, because with Baas in there the run game has been terrible.

Is Walters not playing?  Has he been replaced as the regular punt returner?  SD has Crayton returning punts against Jets, and he's been terrible.

Also, according to Mike Garafalo at the Star-Ledger, fans are wondering why Boothe doesn't take David Diehl's starting spot at left guard when Chris Snee returns to right guard after the bye this week.  The reporters even asked the coaches about it.  I think it was Coughlin who said that Boothe is too valuable as a backup because he can play all five positions with no notice.

I did a fantasy football team for the firs time, because some friends needed another team to make it even.  I think it's a stupid hobby (no offense), so I couldn't help taking the opportunity to pick Bryan Walters as the last pick.  Wouldn't surprise me at all if he becomes a decent slot receiver, though.  He seems to catch the the ball when it comes to him and supposedly he runs good routes.  If he is willing to get hit, he has all the traits needed at that position.

Now if only I could have found a way to draft Kevin Boothe.