The Persistence of Exploitative Academic Labor Markets

by Will Wilkinson on May 17, 2010

Megan McArdle asks why, despite the fact that academia is the most left-leaning sector of our society, academic labor markets are so lousy.

What puzzles me is how this job market persists, and is even worsening, in one of the most left-wing institutions in the country.  I implore my conservative commenters not to jump straight into the generalizations about how this always happens in socialist countries; I’m genuinely curious.  Almost every academic I know is committed to a pretty strongly left-wing vision of labor market institutions.  Even if it’s not their very first concern, one would assume that the collective preference should result in something much more egalitarian.  So what’s overriding that preference?

Here’s one multi-part guess: (1) academia is a sticky status hierarchy, (2) academic jobs have a larger consumption component than most jobs, creating  (3) increasing rents from tenure.

What I mean by (1) is that once one has bought into the academic status framework, it’s hard to escape it. Graduate school is basically an extended period of socialization into the conviction that academia is more exalted than just about anything else.

What I mean by (2) is that many people who have been so socialized have a preference for working in academia so strong that they are willing to forgo lots in salary, benefits, and security in order to secure employment, however tenuous, in academia. The high demand for these jobs, and the large supply of those qualified to do them, creates a competitive buyer’s market for academic labor, bidding down salaries, perks, etc.

What I mean by (3) is that increasing the supply of adjunct jobs relative to tenured jobs creates a rising status premium for the tenured and reduces their responsibility for the least desirable elementary courses. Left-leaning tenured profs will object to these developments if asked about them. They will support adjunct unionization, rail at the administration, etc. But generally they won’t lift a finger to do anything about it since they’d be worse off if the system changed. Furthermore, if your progressive credentials are impeccable, you can easily brush off charges of hypocrisy. If necessary, it is always possible to use the situation as an illustration of the fact that exploitation is structural and outside any one individual’s control. A pity, really.

  • Left-leaning tenured profs will object to these developments if asked about them. They will support adjunct unionization, rail at the administration, etc. But generally they won’t lift a finger to do anything about it since they’d be worse off if the system changed.
  • musa
    Some interesting points by Will that I hadn't thought of before. Some other issues that haven't been addressed here or in the comments.

    1. Increasingly lower faculty teaching loads are related to the fact that teaching is usually not the primary work expectation for faculty (its research).

    2. The dropping of major requirements, I suspect, has less to do with faculty not wanting to be "locked in" to certain classes, but instead, an arms race-to-the-bottom with other majors. More student majors means more department money, and a dept. wouldn't want to scare away a potential major with too many required classes.

    3. Relative to the years of schooling required, faculty salaries are quite low, and the security of tenure is supposed to be the trade-off.

    4. More adjuncts and less tt-faculty mean less full-timers to do all of the burdonsome department service. So there are some obvious downsides to limiting the supply of tt-faculty lines.
  • Every last word of this post is just made up. You're just inventing straw academics out of your seething resentment towards them, just as McArdle does. It's pathetic, and motivated by a seething resentment towards-- what, exactly? Look I'm sorry that the academy didn't bend over and acknowledge your greatness when you were in school, I really am, but stuff like this is embarrassing.

    You don't have the slightest idea what the average academic leftist says, does or thinks. Not the slightest idea. And here, you make no reference to evidence, as per usual. You know a few posts up, how you complain about straw libertarians? Why doesn't a similar notion register here? Of course you're going to get praise from your usually coterie, but then you do on every post you write. But this post is an embarrassment. It is 100% evidence free. It is 100% argument through assertion.

    Where is your self-critical process? You never stop disappointing me, and you never stop impressing yourself.
  • Sure there is evidence: for example, the enduring appeal of Marxism or Marxism-derivatives in academia. Or the pattern of belief by faculty.
  • agauntpanda
    Look I'm sorry that the academy didn't bend over and acknowledge your greatness when you were in school, I really am

    I don't think this is true.
  • Get a hold of yourself, man!
  • thehova83
    well, it's easy to understand the supply side of this job market. But the demand side is more puzzling.

    Knowing how brutal the academia job market is, why do so many people jump into the field anyways?

    I think it all comes down to prestige. I remember talking to my parents about becoming a high school history teacher. After all, it's much easier to find a secure and well paying job track in K-12 than academia. Regardless, my parents were horrified. While K-12 educators are lauded in public, the profession is often looked down upon in private.

    I'm sure there are non-monetary benefits for entering academia. I bet the chicks dig it.
  • Dbrauti
    In a faculty meeting , we once raised the issue of lowly-paid temporary faculty as a problem we should address. There were rousing speeches and a swelling of support. Our dean then said: "I have one pool of money for faculty salaries. An increase for temporary faculty would come out of the tenure-line and tenured faculty salaries." This pretty much silenced us. We moved on to other business.
  • bjk
    Faculty have accepted less teaching in exchange for stagnating salaries, a de facto raise. If you look at teaching "loads" over the last few decades, they've been going down, at least for tenured faculty. If you want more tenure lines, either salaries go down or teaching loads go back to the old levels.
  • Barry_D
    Yes, an obvious explanation is that the people *running* academia are not so liberal/left-wing, when it comes to money and power. These people are not the professors, but the administration.

    Please note that such patterns repeat in entertainment, which is predicated on having an endless supply of (almost literally) 'fresh meat'.

    In other fields, such as corporate law and high finance, the high starting salaries are really fictional, once one factors in (a) massive student loan debt from very expensice law/MBA programs, (b) the cost of living in places like NYC, and (c) the 80 to 100 hour workweeks. For practical purposes, those fields have massive numbers of low-paid, insecure entry level workers doing scut work - the suits just make them look more professional than grad studens/adjuncts.

    And in the end, the observed phenomon might simply be that really, really powerful economic forces are capable of overcoming the preferences of people involved in a system.
  • horsecow
    I think an important factor that is not mentioned here is how universities use grad students as de facto instructors to lower labor costs. It's obviously cheaper to pay a 20-something a pittance to teach Rhetoric 101 than to give someone with a PhD a permanent job, but this creates a problem for the job market when all those 20-somethings in turn get their PhDs. The best thing thing that could happen to the job market (in the humanities at least) would be for graduate programs to restrict their admissions. Unfortunately, the economic interest of the university as a whole militates against that. Another tack would be for people in the field to proclaim as loudly as possible that grad school in the humanities is a really, really bad use of your time, at least in terms of getting a job.

    There's something to the tenure part of it, too, I would guess. The supply of people competent to teach college courses is just too high, and realistically, wages ought to fall, but I imagine tenure locks in a wage level (and wage increases). It's akin to a unionization insider-outsider dynamic, as Will indicates.
  • bill woolsey
    Perhaps it is just the level of my university, but my impression is that most faculty support more tenure track slots.

    If you are asking why tenured faculty don't advocate pay cuts for tenured faculty so that there is more money to pay for more slots, so that adjuncts can fill them, then I suspect the answer is that they instead prefer that society cough up more resources rather than spread around the current level.

  • "I suspect the answer is that they instead prefer that society cough up more resources rather than spread around the current level. "

    Sure, but considering that universities are wealthier on average than the rest of society, that seems like someone insisting that they'd prefer that the rest of the world cough up more resources to support the USA rather than spread around our current wealth. It's not egalitarianism at the university or local level, it's imperialism.

    Granted, I think that there's a factor where academics suffer the same problems of envy by comparing themselves to other smart people who went to top colleges and took well-paying jobs, instead of comparing themselves to the actual average American or average human being. Still, it's strange that academics on the one hand put so much stock into wanting to remain in academia and thinking it the pinnacle of human endeavor, yet still harbor secret doubts about status and envy. Didn't Nozick argue that many (esp. wordsmith) academics were left-wing precisely because they felt that the monetary rewards didn't match the status that they thought they deserved?
  • Here is one thing that may be relevant: I have noticed many times that academics are actually not opposed to laissez-faire, nor do they like lots of rules and regulations. Rather, they believe in lots of rules and regulations for other people, whereas they favor laissez faire for themselves. As the years go by, most majors have fewer and fewer required courses. Why? I think it's because a requirement imposed on students is in effect also imposed on the faculty: if the students have to take the course, the faculty will have to teach it (over and over). They don't like this sort of constraint, so they get rid of it.

    So what I am thinking is that if there is some reason why the market, if not interfered-with, will produce a certain result, academics will be little inclined to interfere with it, because this would mean placing constraints on their own (hiring) behavior. To paraphrase Leona Helmsley, constraints are for little people.
  • Phil K
    Yes, surely the "free reign for me and regulation for everyone else" condition is unique to academcia.
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