AbsurdBeats

End o’ semester, so: grading.

Still, two academy-related bits:

1) I do hope this dude gets kicked out of school. I dunno about prison—a bomb threat is serious matter, even if made for trivial (unprepared for exam) reasons—but when you mess with other students’ attempts to study when you couldn’t be bothered to do so yourself, you don’t deserve to be a part of that particular academic community.

2) Yes, yes, yes! Universities which take in far more graduate students than they know will ever get decent jobs are selfish, irresponsible, and only adding to the crisis in higher education employment.

One of the commenters noted that

This is a problem that is not going to be addressed by actions of universities. They need to organize and form actual professional societies like every other professional group that wants to have power over their field.

A nation-wide contingent union isn’t a bad idea, and the observation of another that fewer grad students won’t necessarily stop the process of “adjunctification” ain’t wrong, either.

But right now universities are feeding off the low-paid labor of grad students who are far more likely to end up as low-paid adjuncts than the relatively well-paid tenure-track professors for whom they work.

Whatever the motivation for reducing the number of grad slots, it’s a small mercy to those would-be students who won’t get sucked in to a “career” of cobbled-together courses, uncertain freelance gigs, and no dental plan.