Things have certainly changed. And, not for the better. Last week, I ran a series about wages in America. (I also have a Kindle and a paperback with even more such thoughts available for your reading pleasure.) Corporations are not paying living wages, expecting the middle class to subsidize their profits by providing the funds for food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid for their low-paid staff. It is obvious this is true, since the middle class and the lower class provide more than 1/2 the total federal receipts, with corporations barely providing 10%.

And, this situation is hitting the most academically gifted of our citizenry too!  The NSF reported that slightly more than 1/3 (35%) of doctoral recipients can’t find teaching positions. And, given the fact that existing professors are staying on staff longer- and universities need to cut costs- only about 1/2 of our PhD graduates can expect to be hired in a tenure-tracked position.

Now, if you are a STEM graduate, the odds are you can find a position within industry. (That song?   MIT, PhD, M-O-N-E-Y… It used to be a T-shirt, too, but Disney was not happy with that product at all…) But, for those graduating with humanities PhD’s, then 43% are without a chance of a teaching position- and industry has little use for someone who can spout medieval history facts. Yet, some graduates are finding work in lobbying groups (oh, wait, “think tanks”), providing research for various political positions.

The problem is two fold (at least). First- do we need to graduate all these humanities PhDs? Oh, I know that’s a contrary position- but aren’t we already taking law schools to task for flooding the market? Why not our esteemed humanities institutions?

Secondly, is it counter-productive for universities to allow 75, 80, or 85 year old professors have full-time teaching positions and salaries? (My unscientific research shows that many of them are only teaching 1 course, anyway.)

Just so you know, I’ve had some FANTASTIC teaching experiences with such professors. But, back when I was in grad school, they were few and far between.. Now, we have many, many more.

Which means the university can’t hire new profs- because they need to justify the salaries of their existing profs. So, new blood, new discussions, new points of view don’t reach the ivied halls- and that’s one of the key processes universities are supposed to provide their students.

My undergraduate alma mater (ok, it has been subsumed by NYU- four decades after NYU promised to never offer engineering degrees, so the state of New York would bail them out [their med and law school funds were not shared with the rest of the university]) is trying something new. Brooklyn Poly (sorry, I won’t call it the NYU name) has incubators for its PhD candidates- with space, legal services, and marketing. (I think that it may also be part of that New York initiative of no taxes for 10 years to entities moving to or starting up in certain regions of the state.)

It’s these kinds of programs that we need to encourage- as well as more teaching positions, if we want to keep our technological edge over the rest of the world…