Walmartisation of academia

[energyresearch]

This post published in 'Hightower lowdown' about the "Walmartisation" of the aspiring academic made for a rather depressing read. Has the state of American academia already spread to other parts of the world? Would unionisation help, or is it merely a minor delay to the inevitable?

Maybe I should abandon the increasingly unrealistic dream...

For

Comments

[nzraya]

I think the article actually does quite a good job of saying that these conditions are ALSO bad when Wal-Mart or McDonald's impose them. The difference is that we already know how shitty Wal-Mart and McD's are as employers, whereas a lot of people (including the faculty and management/administration at colleges that rely on adjuncts) still think of colleges and universities as somehow nobler -- they're "non-profits," after all! And their mission is to spread knowledge and enlightenment, not sell cheap crap!

The other difference, of course, is that in order to obtain a PhD a person has generally given up 7-10 years of income duringwhich they could have begun saving for retirement and/or paying off college loans. Many even go further into debt while working toward the PhD, especially if they choose not to delay starting a family. (And many do choose to delay that as well, with non-trivial life consequences.) So whereas one can theoretically land a shitty minimum-wage job with no benefits at Wal-Wart without having first invested that decade of unpaid work, that's not true in academia. Hence it is not unreasonable to expect that there would be SOME compensation for that investment.

I agree that no one is "entitled" to their dream job just BECAUSE it is their dream, but adjuncts -- ALL adjuncts -- are doing work that the university NEEDS DONE, and it is in no way unreasonable to point out that they deserve to make what their work is WORTH (and not merely "what the market will bear because the system is so rigged and the economy so shitty that it's considered just dandy to pay $1000 per course").

[agentdanger]

Another difference is that students pay thousands and thousands of dollars for their college educations, often sinking deep into debt themselves. It may surprise them that many of the people teaching them get paid next to nothing.

The stereotype of professors as comfortable old hippies who enjoy total job security and excellent salaries for doing next to nothing just really needs to be smashed.

[gobsmacked]

On the other hand, this sort of story doesn't help the image of entitlement -
Oregon law professor loses it over proposal to donate faculty raises to students

[nzraya]

There will always be occasional assholes in any line of work. (In fact, recent experience on our condo board suggests that 10% of any group of humans = either total assholes or batshit crazy.) The trick is not to let the most obnoxious trees obscure the shape of the whole forest....

[gobsmacked]

This gentleman has the dubious distinction of making both lawyers and academics look bad in one fell swoop. Kudos to him.

[nzraya]

Srsly.

Yeah, a college education ain't no Big Mac / cheapass pair of pants made by orphans in a Chinese sweatshop.

Ah, I f%^&ing hate everything.

[trundle]

Yeah, a college education ain't no Big Mac / cheapass pair of pants made by orphans in a Chinese sweatshop.

...

So this? This is what I'm talking about.

[nzraya]

??

My point above was that Wal*Mart gets away with charging as little as they do because they rely on ACTUAL SLAVE LABOUR (in other countries), as well as extremely abusive and exploitative labour conditions within the U.S. If that's the race to the bottom you think academics should be trying to win, then...... ooookay.

Alternatively, perhaps we should be questioning those labour practices and trying to stop them.

[trundle]

I'm unclear where you're getting the idea that anyone in this thread is endorsing the current employment practices in academia (or, indeed, suggesting that we devalue academic labor even further).

[nzraya]

I'm not getting that idea, but I am getting the idea that you for some reason think academics deserve to be punished for aspiring to better working conditions, or for pointing out that -- while NO ONE deserves to be exploited -- there is an additional element of WTFery that arise when the exploitation is OF highly (and expensively) trained professionals, who supply an extremely expensive and sought-after product, BY institutions who claim to be nobly-intentioned nonprofits.

[trundle]

you for some reason think academics deserve to be punished for aspiring to better working conditions

What on earth are you reading? I haven't been cross-posting comments from my secret BDSM blog again, have I?

[nzraya]

Also, my point (in agreement with the comment I was replying to) was that Wal*Mart in fact charges very little. That is, the consumer gets a direct benefit from Wal-Mart's and McDonald's exploitative labor practices. That's obviously not the case in higher ed. I'm not saying "we academics do something so much more valuable than making jeans or burgers," I'm saying "we academics do something much more EXPENSIVE than making jeans or burgers." So the provider gets screwed AND the consumer gets screwed. So....yay?

[trundle]

Well, as long as people are getting cheap burgers out of the deal*, I think we can all swallow** our outrage on that front, then.

--
*Of course, this isn't actually true. Both Wal*Mart and McDonald's could afford significant wage increases without hiking prices at all. Nor are skilled laborers in fields with highly-valued commodities (iPhone and Foxconn, anyone?) generally better off. But I guess we can ignore that for a few minutes if it helps us ease our conscience because we think we're getting a good price!

**Pun intended.

[nzraya]

Apple is a pretty good analogy, actually.

[brittdreams]

The McDonald's thing is actually much more complicated that the Wal*Mart thing because of corporate vs. franchisee things. Having had an inside view of McDonald's operations from the franchisee's perspective, I can honestly say that there are some (many) that couldn't afford a significant wage increase because their (franchisee's) profit margins are much slimmer than people realize. Now if corporate lowered the slice they took, the rent they charged, etc., that would help franchisees since they're the ones paying wages. Anyway, I know this is a side point but it's one I find myself making because McD's corporate money is not the same as the wealth of whomever owns the McD's near you.

[biascut]

But universities mostly aren't for-profit (even where you have private universities, aren't they usually run on a non-profit basis?) Academics' working conditions aren't being driven down because someone somewhere is taking a larger chunk of the profits and passing less on the workers. In the UK at least, the downward pressure on salary and working conditions is mostly coming from the state, and the basic market reality of more people wanting to do the work than there are jobs. Unions and collective organising are basically ineffective in oversubscribed professions.