reparations & exploitation

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Mon Mar 19 14:09:34 PST 2001



> >i am aware how exploited junior level academics are in the
> states,
> >and that many of them remain 'junior' and 'casual'. but i would
> have
> >thought we were comparing comparable forms of employment -- so
> full
> >time cleaners should be compared to fulltime academics and casual
> >cleaners to casual academics. going into the law is a bit
> different
> >to turning to cleaning in terms of income.

to which yoshie replies:


> Wasn't the question an "incentive" for "undertaking extended
> education"? I'm saying that salaries of the majority of academics
> in
> the USA -- who are either un-tenured or not even on the tenure
> track,
> much less promoted to full professorship -- compare unfavorably to
> most occupations that demand comparable or much less education.

you are seriously contending that the majority of cleaners are better off economically than the majority of academics. yes doing 'arts/humanities' PhDs is a poor job qualification or guide to future income in comparison to say medicine, law or engineering. but this is absurd. do you seriously want to be held to the inference that people would be better off economically planning their career as a cleaner than an academic? this is garbage, we both know it is. i am an average academic and i am so much better off than a cleaner it's embarrassing. so when i was a fractional lecturer or even worse a sessional tutor (comparable to what you keep referring to) yes i was much worse off than now. so why did i not go off and become a cleaner or even something else better paid but still whitecollar? surely i don't have to elaborate on that? economic benefit is not solely determined by present income.


> There exists practically *no monetary incentive* to study Art,
> Dance,
> Theater, English, History, Philosophy, Classics, Journalism, etc.

read any bourdieu at all? go on, quote some at me...


> As of now, the nationwide attrition rate in Ph.D. programs (= the
> rate of grad students abandoning degree programs) is 50%
>...

that figures you're quoting are utterly recognisable to me, but it is sheer selfish blindness to pretend therefore that there are absolutely no incentives for studying these non-vocational courses. how about we compare that 50% to the amount of people entering a cleaning career at a comparable age who cna be assured of life-long employment with an increasing salary and plenty of fringe benefits (a fair comparison to tenure)...

i know how hard it can be, and that it's not a fair system, but it's abominably selfish to pretend its exploitation of just the same kind (let alone worse) as exploitation of unskilled manual labour

catherine



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