Showing posts with label adjunct exploitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adjunct exploitation. Show all posts

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Urban Outfitters offers employees opportunity to work for free!

Hey, you don't get a chance to do that everyday!

Well, actually lots of folks do. The publishing industry and the advertising biz are chock full of unpaid interns. Then there's the 70% of university faculty known as "adjunct professors" who are working for something right next to free.

So I guess Urban Outfitters isn't exactly tilling virgin soil here.

But, I suspect it's gonna work out swell for them. Lots of employees will be keen to show their commitment to the organization. After all, who can be against "team building?"

Only somebody just begging to be "outsourced," that's who...

This is more or less the other bookend for those folks who proclaim that raising the minimum wage would hurt poor people.

Be a team-builder; work for free!

Those black folks on the plantations weren't slaves; they were team-builders!


Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Still think you want your kid in university?

Latest stats reveal that over 75% of all undergrad courses in the US are taught by "adjunct professors."

That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. There's plenty of other stats out there proving the superior efficacy of adjuncts over the tenured folks.

That rings true. Who do you think puts more of an effort into their teaching gig; the tenured six-number guy who never again needs to give a shit, or the hapless wannabe-tenured lecturer who is carrying a six-number student debt load, but is toiling away in Adjunct City for Walmart wages.

At least the Walmart guys get some benefits.

And it's not as if the tenured folks are smarter or better educated. Both they and the adjuncts come out of the same institutions with the same qualifications.

So I suppose that the answer to the question posed in the title will depend on WHY you want your kid in university.

If they're focused on a professional program with decent prospects, it's still worth the candle. One of the most expensive programs in America is the Wharton MBA. It'll take at least $120,000 a year to get your kid through there, but the median starting salary of a Wharton grad is $120,000. You can see the pay off coming not too far down the road.

If, on the other hand, they plan to study sociology until they become a sociology professor, prepare them, and yourself, for the never-ending purgatory of Adjunct City.

In fact, you and Junior are going to be far better off if you can talk them out of university altogether and into a career in plumbing.

And they'll be contributing something useful to society.