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Yes, I agree with the OP who noted the frequent warnings about doing humanities doctoral degrees without being payed in total to do it. However, higher education is full of all of these dark patterns where people get looped into something, and gaslit into accepting certain conditions under some promise that it's temporary, etc and so forth. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not. The real scandal to me at some level is that the administration isn't just paying some livable wage with benefits, and so forth. If it's more expensive, pass those costs to the students and see if they pay for it. If not, don't string people into it as a career. Politicians constantly call for there to be some sort of costs to universities in terms of return on investment, with demands that degrees be paid as a percent of future wages, etc. But often the problems are more straightforward, with universities burying the true costs on the supply side. It's very similar to the textile industry, or fishery industries, where you get a nice-looking affordable shirt, and all the horrors involved in its production are hidden from society. Add in administrative largesse and it all becomes frankly immoral. I suspect if universities just paid people as they should be paid, with benefits, at the faculty levels that are necessary, and charged a true price, people would respond in kind. Higher education is a disaster at the moment. Sometimes we get news coverage of what matters, but often it gets wrapped up in tangential distracting political debates. Fraud, abuse, and corruption are the norm. It's not just the humanities either. |