>you are seriously contending that the majority of cleaners are better
>off economically than the majority of academics.
No. You are not getting my point. As I said in my first reply to you in this thread (& have since repeated), "if I cleaned houses for 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, in the USA or Japan, I would make more money than I do now." And term-employed adjuncts in America are in the same boat as I am. What's an economic incentive for my very extended education? Beats me!
>economic benefit is not solely
>determined by present income.
Most likely, though, I'd _never_ make as much as my father -- who was a unionized steelworker and is now retired -- has made, to take just one example. And my father never went college (though _not_ because he didn't want to)! Not only is my income low today, but my prospect of future economic well-being -- especially if it has to be extracted from a Ph.D. I may still earn (if I don't bow out, that is) -- is very poor. I read and write well in two languages (& I can read several others), and that's about the only skill of which I may boast; and it just so happens that I _had_ this skill _before_ getting into a graduate program in English.
Ph.D. programs in the humanities don't give you any economic benefit _unless_ you have a good fortune of landing a tenure-track job _and_ getting tenured. If you don't, economically speaking, your graduate years are negatives, not positives (though there still remains intellectual satisfaction): you are older (in your 30s or sometimes 40s); you haven't done anything to prepare for retirement; you are likely to have amassed a good deal of debt (student loans, credit card debt, etc.); and so on.
>i am an
>average academic and i am so much better off than a cleaner it's
>embarrassing.
I don't know how much you make (why not tell us?), but I _don't doubt_ that you make _so much more_ than a cleaner, and I can't think of _any_ good ethical or political _justification_ for _your_ making more than what a cleaner does. I can't think of any ethical or political or even academic justification for _your_ being tenured while Justin, Cathy, John, and other people who have been denied tenure are out of academic jobs. I suppose, therefore, that you are entitled to your embarrassment, especially since you insist. It's better, however, if you try to create a society in which no one in the world is exploited and everyone has enough, instead of simply feeling embarrassed.
> > 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)...
In the USA, _no one_ outside of academy is assured of tenure. The question is if the tenure system for academy is ethically or politically justified. I can make an argument that it isn't. I'm now inclined to think that it isn't, though I also believe that there exist some good arguments that it is. In any case, tenure will be a thing of the past, if the present trends continue.
>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
It is not "selfish" to recognize that chances of getting tenured, let alone promoted to full professorship, for anyone who entered into a Ph.D. program in the humanities in the recent decades have been very slim. That's just a fact. This recognition does _not_ imply that _you_ are as exploited as an unskilled manual laborer _at all_, though a good number of adjuncts are. BTW, exploitation of workers in the private sector and that of workers in the public sector don't mean the same thing in the Marxist tradition of analysis.
Yoshie