Self-degradation sustains the adjunct economy, and we see echoes of it in journalism, policy, and other fields in which unpaid or underpaid labor is increasingly the norm. It is easy to make people work for less than they are worth when they are conditioned to feel worthless.
In his 2004 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Is Graduate School a Cult?” Thomas H. Benton wrote:
“Although I am currently a tenure-track professor of English, I realize that nothing but luck distinguishes me from thousands of other highly-qualified Ph.D.’s in the humanities who will never have full-time academic jobs and, as a result, are symbolically dead to the academy.”
Benton’s answer to his own question is yes, and he offers a list of behavior controls used by cults—“no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate,” “access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged”—that mirror the practices of graduate school. The author lived as he wrote: it was later revealed that “Thomas H. Benton” was a pseudonym used by academic William Pannapacker for The Chronicle of Higher Education piece—a publication said to employ more pseudonyms than any other American newspaper. The life of the mind is born of fear.
Some may wonder why adjuncts do not get a well-paying non-academic job while they search for a tenure-track position. The answer lies in the cult-like practices Pannapacker describes. To work outside of academia, even temporarily, signals you are not “serious” or “dedicated” to scholarship. It does not matter if you are simply too poor to stay: in academia, perseverance is redefined as the ability to suffer silently or to survive on family wealth. As a result, scholars serve as adjuncts in order to retain an institutional affiliation, while the institution offers them no respect in return.
Dispensable Automatons
Is academia a cult? That is debatable, but it is certainly a caste system. Outspoken academics like Pannapacker are rare: most tenured faculty have stayed silent about the adjunct crisis. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it,” wrote Upton Sinclair, the American author famous for his essays on labor exploitation. Somewhere in America, a tenured professor may be teaching about his work as a nearby adjunct holds office hours out of her car.
On Twitter, I asked why so many professors who study injustice ignore the plight of their peers. “They don’t consider us their peers,” the adjuncts wrote back. Academia likes to think of itself as a meritocracy—which it is not—and those who have tenured jobs like to think they deserved them. They probably do—but with hundreds of applications per available position, an awful lot of deserving candidates have defaulted to the adjunct track.
The plight of the adjunct shows how personal success is not an excuse to dismiss systemic failure. Success is meaningless when the system that sustained it—the higher education system—is no longer sustainable. When it falls, everyone falls. Success is not a pathway out of social responsibility.
Last week, a corporation proudly announced that it had created a digital textbook that monitors whether students had done the reading. This followed the announcement of the software that grades essays, which followed months of hype over MOOCs—massive online open courses—replacing classroom interaction. Professors who can gauge student engagement through class discussion are unneeded. Professors who can offer thoughtful feedback on student writing are unneeded. Professors who interact with students, who care about students, are unneeded.
We should not be surprised that it has come to this when 76 percent of faculty are treated as dispensable automatons. The contempt for adjuncts reflects a general contempt for learning. The promotion of information has replaced the pursuit of knowledge. But it is not enough to have information—we need insight and understanding, and above all, we need people who can communicate it to others.
People who have the ability to do this are not dispensable. They should not see themselves this way, and they should not be treated this way. Fight for what you are worth, adjuncts. Success is solidarity.
—Originally published April 11, 2013
The Political Consequences of Academic Paywalls
The suicide of Aaron Swartz, the activist committed to making scholarly research accessible to everyone, has renewed debate about the ethics of academic publishing. Under the current system, academic research is housed in scholarly databases that charge as much as $50 per article to those without a university affiliation.
The only people who profit from this system are academic publishers. Scholars receive no money from the sale of their articles, and are marginalized by a public who cannot afford to read their work. Ordinary people are denied access to information and prohibited from engaging in scholarly debate.
Academic paywalls are often presented as a moral or financial issue. How can one justify profiting off unpaid labor while denying the public access to research frequently funded through taxpayer dollars? But paywalls also have broader political consequences. Whether or not an article is accessible affects more than just the author or reader. It affects anyone who could potentially benefit from scholarly insight, information, or expertise—that is, everyone.
The impact of the paywall is most significant in places where censorship and propaganda reign. When information is power, the paywall privileges the powerful. Dictatorships are the paywall’s unwitting beneficiary.
Publishing as a Means to Freedom
In 2006, I wrote an article proving that the government of Uzbekistan had fabricated a terrorist group in order to justify shooting hundreds of Uzbek civilians gathered at a protest in the city of Andijon. Like all peer-reviewed academic articles, “Inventing Akromiya: The Role of Uzbek Propagandists in the Andijon Massacre” was published in a journal and sequestered from public view. In 2008, I published the article on academia.edu, a website where scholars can upload their works as pdfs on individual home pages. This had consequences beyond what I had anticipated.
At the time my article was published, hundreds of Uzbeks had fled across the border to Kyrgyzstan, from where they were relocated as refugees to Western states. Among these Uzbeks were witnesses to the shooting in Andijon as well as people who were accused of being members of Akromiya—a loose collective of devout Muslim businessmen who were known for their financial acumen, charitable initiatives, and profound piety, all of which the government of Uzbekistan found threatening. The men of Akromiya—an appellative coined by an Uzbek propagandist after alleged leader Akrom Yo’ldoshev—bore no resemblance to the violent Islamic extremists depicted in Uzbek state literature.
Over the next few years, many Uzbeks linked to the Akromiya controversy began petitioning for political asylum. Because they had been labeled Islamic terrorists by the Uzbek government, they faced an uphill battle in the Western legal system. My academic article became a piece of evidence in many of these asylum cases, including one from the United Nations Refugee Agency, which cites the copy available at academia.edu. Because I made my work open, it helped keep innocent people from being deported to a country where they would be jailed or killed.
“Shielded from the People Who Need It Most”
When we talk about academic research being shielded from the general public, we forget that the general public includes non-academic experts to whom such research is directly relevant—such as lawyers, doctors, journalists, policy officials, and activists. Academics love to complain about superficial reporting or uninformed policy, but their own system denies professionals the opportunity to add depth to their work. With database subscription fees running to tens of thousands of dollars, even prestigious organizations cannot afford to penetrate the paywall.
I regularly receive requests for my academic articles, and I always comply—as do most of the academics I know. Contrary to popular perception, most scholars want their work to be read. But for every researcher plaintively tweeting that they need a paywalled pdf, there are many for whom tracking down barricaded knowledge seems too much trouble. Instead,
they rely on what resources are available. This means that a lot of academic research, some of which could have profound political implications, is ignored.
After the suicide of Aaron Swartz, many academics published their papers online and linked them on Twitter under the hashtag #pdftribute. They did this to honor Swartz’s fight to make information available to more than the academic elite. Critics have argued that this action is essentially meaningless, as it fails to address the career incentive of the professoriate, whose ability to advance professionally rests on their willingness to publish in journals inaccessible to the public.
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The specialization that makes academic work seem obscure or boring to a general audience is also what makes it uniquely valuable.
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This is a valid point—for Western academics. For the rest of the world, it is irrelevant. When an activist needs information about the political conditions of her country, she should be able to read it. When a lawyer needs ammunition against a corrupt regime, she should be able to find it. When a journalist is struggling to cover a foreign conflict, she should have access to research on that country.
One could argue that non-academics sources suffice, but that is not necessarily the case. The specialization that makes academic work seem obscure or boring to a general audience is also what makes it uniquely valuable. Academics cover topics in depth that few cover at all. Unfortunately, their expertise is shielded from the people who need it most.
Academic’s Incentives Verus Society’s Needs
Shortly after #pdftribute launched, a friend asked me whether she should post her articles online. She is an assistant professor who studies an authoritarian state. She has published a number of articles in paywalled scholarly journals. For this, she will probably get tenure.
My friend spends her free time educating the world about the conditions of this country through social media. She does not hoard her data. Instead she does everything possible to make it available to anyone who needs it. This ultimately included joining #pdftribute and publishing her articles online. For this, she could potentially get in trouble.
My friend knew she had to do what was right. As a scholar of an authoritarian regime, she understands that one of the greatest weapons of dictatorships is their ability to control information. She has witnessed firsthand the importance of accurate statistics, of open sources, of censored stories told. She knows what happens when those resources are denied.
Information is power, but information is also freedom. With that freedom comes responsibility. Scholars can no longer question whether their work is relevant to a broader audience, because in the digital age, that audience is simply too broad. All scholarly work is relevant to someone—and the impact can be profound. Whether we allow that impact to be realized remains to be seen.
—Originally published January 18, 2013
The Immorality of College Admissions
On October 6, New York magazine published an article on the demise of “ethical parenting.” A new generation of parents were encouraging cheating, doing their children’s homework, bribing powerful officials, and sabotaging their children’s rivals.
“Parenthood means you cannot possibly behave as though society’s rules and norms apply equally to all,” writes the author of the article, Lisa Miller. She describes a social order in which the ends are believed to justify the means, regardless of who gets hurt. Miller attributes the rise of unethical parenting to a declining economy: “The accoutrements of middle-class stability and comfort feel like they’re slipping away, even to those of us living smack in the middle of them.”
What Miller never explicitly says is that every act of lying, cheating, and cruelty she describes is directed at one goal: getting a child into a prestigious college. Nothing else drives the immoral behavior depicted, making one wonder—is it the parents who are unethical? Or is it higher education itself?
Miller’s article is one of many trend pieces showcasing how parents sacrifice both their integrity and their bank accounts in the quest for college admission. The New York Times alone has run dozens of articles on high schools that cost $40,000 per year, preschools that cost $43,000 per year, and SAT tutors who charge $35,000 per student.
The luxurious world depicted in these articles is unfamiliar to the average American family, which makes $52,000 per year. One might wonder why the struggles of wealthy parents are covered so closely when they represent such a tiny percent of the population. That is, until you look at who comprises the entering classes of America’s “need-blind” universities.
Faux Diversity
“Diversity” is a cherished value of American schools—so long as that diversity does not include students whose families earn less than the tuition fee. Elite universities favor those willing to pay to play—and play again until they win.
Only 3.8 percent of American families make more than $200,000 per year. But at Harvard University, 45.6 percent of incoming freshmen come from families making $200,000 or more. A mere 4 percent of Harvard students come from a family in the bottom quintile of U.S. incomes, and only 17.8 percent come from the bottom three quintiles.
“We admit students without any regard for financial need—a policy we call ‘need-blind admission,’” Harvard’s website proudly proclaims. Harvard charges $54,496 per year for tuition, and room and board, but waives the fees for families making less than $60,000 per year.
This would be a laudable policy were Harvard admitting low-income students in any significant numbers, but they are not. Instead, they fill their ranks with the children of the elite portrayed in Miller’s article—elites who drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on private schools, exorbitant “enrichment” activities, and personal tutors that almost no American can afford.
Harvard’s admission is “need-blind” only in that it turns a blind eye to actual need. Like many universities, it increases its number of aid recipients by inflating its price tag. With its tuition higher than the median U.S. household income, students from families making $200,000 are now deemed poor enough to qualify for financial aid.
“You can afford Harvard,” the admissions site boasts, noting that 70 percent of students receive assistance. They neglect to mention that this 70 percent represents some of the wealthiest people in the country.
This is not to say that a family making $100,000 or even $200,000 does not merit financial aid to attend Harvard. They do, but only because Harvard charges obscenely high tuition, despite having an endowment of over $30 billion. Their price tag functions as a social signifier and a “go away” sign, a sticker designed to shock—and deter.
Harvard is but one of many U.S. universities whose admissions policies ensure that the entering class is comprised of the ruling class. Studies by the New America Foundation note that most merit aid goes to wealthy families, and that “merit aid policy is associated with a decrease in the percentage of low-income and black students, particularly at the more selective institutions.”
While universities like Harvard keep out the poor by redefining wealth as poverty, others practice more blatant discrimination. At George Washington University, students who cannot pay full tuition are put on a wait list while wealthier students are let in. In 2012, less than 1 percent of wait-listed students were admitted.
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What they are defending is a system in which wealth is passed off as merit, in which credentials are not earned but bought.
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Like Harvard, George Washington had advertised itself as “need-blind” until revelations of its admissions process came to light. It now defines itself as “need aware”—a phrase which implies they are aware of need, but seemingly unconcerned with fulfilling it.
Wealth as Merit
Defenders of elite universities argue that the poor are not a target of discrimination, but are simply less qualified for admission. They point to lower SAT scores, a dearth of extracurricular activities, and lackluster standards of achievement
at impoverished public schools.
What they are defending is a system in which wealth is passed off as merit, in which credentials are not earned but bought. Aptitude is a quality measured by how much money you can spend on its continual reassessment.
Students whose parents pay tens of thousands for SAT tutors to help their child take the test over and over compete against students who struggle to pay the fee to take the test once. Students who spend afternoons on “enrichment” activities compete against students working service jobs to pay bills—jobs which don’t “count” in the admissions process. Students who shell out for exotic volunteer trips abroad compete with students of what C. Z. Nnaemeka termed “the un-exotic underclass”—the poor who have “the misfortune of being insufficiently interesting,” the poor who make up most of the U.S. today.
For upper-class parents, the college admissions process has become a test of loyalty: What will you spend, what values will you compromise, for your child to be accepted? For lower-class parents, admissions is a test failed at birth: an absence of wealth disguised as a deficiency of merit. In the middle are the students, stranded players in a rigged game.
It does not have to be this way. Imagine a college application system in which applicants could only take standardized tests once. Imagine a system in which young people working jobs to support their families were valued as much as those who travel and “volunteer” on their parents’ dime. Imagine a system in which we value what a person does with what he has, instead of mistaking a lack of resources for a lack of ability.
Imagine a system in which a child’s future does not rest on his parents’ past.
A higher-education system that once promoted social mobility now serves to solidify class barriers. Desperate parents compromise their principles in order to spare their children rejection. But it is the system itself that must be rejected. True merit cannot be bought—and admission should not be either.
The View from Flyover Country Page 10