| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang |
| 2013-11-27 |
| h/t Instapundit, Inside higher Ed In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece would later serve as a basis for a chapter in Levitt's (and Dubner's) best seller Freakonomics. [1] The title of the chapter, "Why drug dealers still live with their moms", was based on the finding that the income distribution within gangs was extremely skewed in favor of those at the top, while the rank-and-file street sellers earned even less than employees in legitimate low-skilled activities, let's say at McDonald's. They calculated 3.30 dollars as the hourly rate, that is, well below a living wage (that's why they still live with their moms). [2] If you take into account the risk of being shot by rival gangs, ending up in jail or being beaten up by your own hierarchy, you might wonder why anybody would work for such a low wage and at such dreadful working conditions instead of seeking employment at Mc Donalds. Yet, gangs have no real difficulty in recruiting new members. The reason for this is that the prospect of future wealth, rather than current income and working conditions, is the main driver for people to stay in the business: low-level drug sellers forgo current income for (uncertain) future wealth. Rank-and file members are ready to face this risk to try to make it to the top, where life is good and money is flowing. It is very unlikely that they will make it (their mortality rate is insanely high, by the way) but they're ready to "get rich or die trying". ...The academic job market is structured in many respects like a drug gang, with an expanding mass of outsiders and a shrinking core of insiders. Even if the probability that you might get shot in academia is relatively small (unless you mark student papers very harshly), one can observe similar dynamics. Academia is only a somewhat extreme example of this trend, but it affects labour markets virtually everywhere. One of the hot topics in labour market research at the moment is what we call "dualisation"[3]. Dualisation is the strengthening of this divide between insiders in secure, stable employment and outsiders in fixed-term, precarious employment. Academic systems more or less everywhere rely at least to some extent on the existence of a supply of "outsiders" ready to forgo wages and employment security in exchange for the prospect of uncertain security, prestige, freedom and reasonably high salaries that tenured positions entail[4]. Why is it relevant? Because the way to tenure track involves more than anything else (given modern specialization, nobody in your own university is an expert in your field) collegiality = ideological soundness. That is so-o-o-o true... |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 Walking towards the communal coffee (free range trees, beans collected from monkey shit) pot, I knew my cover was blown. Sometimes things just happen. So I turned to face them, crushing my Lucky underfoot into the newly (looks like old Oak) refinished floor. Seeing a first opening I took it: "This room stinks of Ikea". |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-11-27 22:36 |
| #3 P2k, you can't fool people about your sports qualifications. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-11-27 10:57 |
| #2 Tenure today is becoming a rare thing in academia. In the early 1900s, professors were held in high regard--before most of them went way left and beyond. I have a little trouble drawing the analogy between academia and drug gangs--there are not many parallels. Recently, I read a letter to the editor by a purple heart marine, a declared conservative with a Ph.D. He said universities are reluctant to hire conservatives--there's just no real diversity anymore. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2013-11-27 08:19 |
| #1 Odds any different in getting a tenured job in academia than getting a place on a pro sports team? Seem to recall the denunciation of high school and college sports as leaving the lads short in practical skills for life when the music stopped. Doesn't seem much different in spending countless years in pursuit of a doctorate in obscure and low demand studies to find one without practical skills for life when the music stops too. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-11-27 08:04 |