[kijin]

There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread about what one another is saying. sparsevector said that colleges are not oversupplied, because there's a lot of demand for them. wtvanhest replied with a comment that sounds as if colleges are oversupplied, when in fact his evidence suggests that teachers are oversupplied. That's off-topic. So I was trying to point that out, and now you're repeating wtvanhest's argument that teachers are oversupplied. That's not a bad argument in itself, and I'm not downvoting you (HN doesn't allow me to downvote replies to my own comment) but it's still off-topic in the context of sparsevector's argument above.

[wtvanhest]

I downvoted his comment while trying to upvote it. (android phone is hard to use hn on) which is probably why it went grey.

I am talking about professors since that is what the article is about and completely not worrying about colleges since that is off topic.

The entire point of the article is that a person who decides to get a PhD in history should be paid because they went to school for 4 years. To me, that concept is ridiculous and people don't get to be paid a lot for what they want to do in the absence of basic economic theory.

Too many professors, not enough demand = low pay. It sucks that person made that choice, but there are plenty of secretarial jobs which pay above poverty level which someone with a PhD in history could get.