[SportyandMisty]

A fascinating opinion piece in the NYT written by Brittany Bronson, an English professor at UNLV who also is a waitress at a chain restaurant near the Strip.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/19...professor.html

[yellowsnow]

That's reality! One of the last times I took a cab, my driver was a History Professor. In Vegas, the job you do has nothing to do with who you are!

[ScoopLV]

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that the jobs that pay well are out of most people's reach. A UNLV professor should be able to pay the bills -- unless he or she has an expensive addiction of some sort. This is, after all, a cheap town.

[yellowsnow]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that the jobs that pay well are out of most people's reach. A UNLV professor should be able to pay the bills -- unless he or she has an expensive addiction of some sort. This is, after all, a cheap town.

I wonder what a UNLV professor makes? But she sounds young. Probably an associate professor...the slave labor job of the academic world.

[BBMW]

I bet if she was an engineering or computer science professor, she'd probably make good money teaching. Why? Because the university would have to pay her that to get someone to teach a subject where expertise in that field is valuable.

Let's be honest here, there are many academic subjects that universities teach, where the only career path is academic. They have little or know use in the outside world. If you decide you've fallen in love with one of these fields, and want to make it your career, you need to realize you're going to have to sacrifice to do so.

This is much like if you choose to try to make a career in music, acting, dance, etc. There a too many people, many (and many more than are necessary) who actually may the talent to do the job, for the market to support all of them. So you have to suffer for your art, on the hope that you may possibly, one day break though, and realize that may never happen.

The universities used to carry these people. They've now realized that they don't have to give them tenure and real money to get them to teach.

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that the jobs that pay well are out of most people's reach. A UNLV professor should be able to pay the bills -- unless he or she has an expensive addiction of some sort. This is, after all, a cheap town.

[ScoopLV]

Originally Posted by BBMW

They have little or know use in the outside world.

I assure you, these courses have plenty of use in the outside world. Part of the "big picture" problem is that people immediately gainsay any discipline that doesn't immediately translate into an employable skill. They pooh-pooh philosophy, foreign language and art history courses -- which are exactly what people need to help make them interesting and well rounded.

Nobody is more dull than the person who knows all about STEM and absolutely nothing else.

[BBMW]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

I assure you, these courses have plenty of use in the outside world.

The course that she teaches might in a generalized sense. But the specialized skill she developed in order to teach the course, not so much. So there little or no competition for her skills.

Part of the "big picture" problem is that people immediately gainsay any discipline that doesn't immediately translate into an employable skill.

A skill is worth what someone will pay for it. If the only people willing to pay for a skill is an organization that want to teach it, well, what does that say for the value of that skill.

They pooh-pooh philosophy, foreign language and art history courses -- which are exactly what people need to help make them interesting and well rounded.

Nobody is more dull than the person who knows all about STEM and absolutely nothing else.

Being interesting and well rounded doesn't put food on the table. Being able to do something valuable, that not too many others can, does.

When higher education used to be cheaper, and college tenure track shorter, easier, and more assured, specializing in an interesting (to you) but obscure subject, on the presumption you could get a job teaching it somewhere might have made sense. Not any more.

[ScoopLV]

And that's why our civilization is going to hell in a hand basket.

Back when this country was still considered great -- we funded the arts; people sought education for education's sake; we looked at the big societal picture instead of the minutia; and a teacher could pay the bills without having to moonlight at Crapplebee's.

[Everdeen]

I think she is adjunct, but teaching a full load. That seems to be the new normal in academia.

It's funny. When I was teaching full-time with a second job, it was always another teaching job.

[C_A_Braun]

I have a friend who teaches in the UC system. Her education consists of: (B.A., Dartmouth College, MSc., London Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) specializes in nineteenth-century British and related literatures, with a special interest in the novel and mass culture.

Other than being a professor and teaching the following courses, what else can she possibly do in life with her degrees? True, she is also an author, but her book(s) are only read by those in her classes or those that have a similar education background.

The courses she teaches are:
ENGL 273, “Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, and the Frankfurt School” (F 2011, W2014)
ENGL 267, “Late Victorian Media Technologies and the Novel” (W 2011, F 2013)
ENGL 267, “Fictions of Victorian Sexuality” (W2004, W2010, F2012)
ENGL 193A-B and 172T, “Mysteries of the Nineteenth-Century City (W2012; F 2013)
ENGL 172T, “H.G. Wells in Context” (F2010)
ENGL 172T “Decadence” (S2008, F2009, F2014)
ENGL 125B, “The Development of the Novel: Nineteenth Century” (F2008, W2013)

Other than going on to teach these things yourself, why would anyone take any of the above and expect to get a degree and a good job outside of academia?