[nnntrn]

"It's just the structural dynamics of a society that transitions from a long phase of fast growth to an indefinite phase of maintenance. It's not anybody's fault, not really, and there isn't much you can do about it."

In the case of academia specifically, it is a very intentional strategy: full-time tenure-earning faculty constituted about 45% of the workforce in 1975 compared with less than 30% now; the gap has been made up by adjunct and other part-time lecturers, typically earning about $2500 per course.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-ever...