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The pyramid is a nice clean analogy up to the full professor level, but universities are far more than their faculties. US universities are hybrid creatures, half academic and half administrative, and the latter arguably make more and matter more in terms of universities being corporations (which they are). Deans, presidents, and boards are not just a handful of people, they are surrounded by barricades of administration which exhibit a far more sprawling, amorphous, and irreversible mess.

across the country? Across the world!

Agree with the whole thing, except for maybe the end. You can definitely go to graduate school to get your Masters. Just don't continue with academia, and leverage your masters to get into the corporate world. I've seen it done time and time again!

You forgot, below the Adjuncts you have all the exploited PhD and Master TAs teaching all intro classes.

Only go to grad school if you're popular enough to enter the private sector way off the ground.

Truth. Academic Truth is nonsense. The University System is a pile of Marxist Bovine Crap. (I was an Adjunct). You must learn to speak Crapanese (DEI CRT Speak) or 'dei' trying. My pronouns are Fuq/You. (I lived out of my car under US 1 and I-95 because I could not pay rent, eat, and pay tuition simultaneously). Here's a truth: I am convinced most 'Scholarly Work' has elements of faked data and plagiarism. How 'bout another truth: There are more 6 figure DEI CRT Administrators than Teachers at most US Universities. Of those esteemed faculty, 30% are Marxist Foreigners replete with Mid-East Jew Haters. It took 12 years but this is what I have learned: #1. BS Degree = The Bull Shit Degree. #2. MS = More of the Same. #3. Ph.D. = Piled higher and Deeper. #4. I know very little and the truth in the Universities is chimera. #5. Universities are a waste of time and money, send your children to Tech Schools. #6. The Private Sector is vastly superior for peace of mind and wealth creation.

It’s always the same old people at the conferences and young PhD has no job opportunities

one day this dude will realize that all of the work system is a ponzi scheme.

The supreme art of chasing after academia position (to a full professorship) is to deceive the enemy without doing any actual research work. In the practical art of academia chase, the best thing of all is to infiltrate the enemy's university academia system whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. For one hundreds Chinese scientists to become assistant professors in one hundred universities is not the acme of skill. To deceive the enemy with research publications without doing actual scientific work is the acme of skill. If you know how the enemy's university academia system works and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred submitted research papers.

It isn't just a ponzi scheme, it's a cult. 2:30 is a perfect encapsulation for why the replication crisis is so bad & why certain dogmas as taken as literal scripture by most modern academics, both in the humanities & natural sciences. I made my channel in my senior year of my Zoology undergrad after I had to take a course on Evolution to graduate; if the average person truly knew the level of indoctrination that academics need to go through just to jump these hoops they would never trust another scientist again.

Of course, it is a scam if a) There are four sides: you the PhD student, your supervisor, the "University" and the "Government", in this case the "Government" is being scammed because they allowed government research funding trickle down to the "University" in which the "University" gets a sizeable portion of it, they (both the "University" and your supervisor) do not care about the research output, you the PhD student is just being used to scam money off the "Government", in other words, you are just being used to write and publish junk, useless and rubbish research papers for them (your supervisor and the "University") to show to the "Government", so that they can perpetuate the scam cycle on the "Government" again and again. b) You the Phd student is being scammed (likely to happen, if you are a foreign PhD student in other countries), that if your new research findings turned out to be very very very interesting (worth winning Nobel prizes), they (your supervisor, the "University" and the "Government") will collude together to steal or plagiarize your intellectual work and then kick you out of their PhD program.

I've been in the workforce for a long time. Pay is largely based on what you physically have to do and how crappy it is. Like if you have to unload trucks in cold weather for example. I've noticed with lots of professional jobs that the pay isn't that great, although you have to be pretty educated to get them, because the jobs are very cushy. And I imagine that's how Universities and similar places justify paying academics so little. Because in other lines of work, the work will stop if wages aren't brought up to a level that makes doing the job worth it. Because no one will do it. Workers in academia don't seem to have that leverage with pay because the jobs are cushy, the positions are limited, and it's highly competitive to get one of those jobs.

I'm not even on the pyramid yet 😭

Yes

Everything's a ponzi scheme. How is this different from millions of wannabe musicians vs a handful of global superstars, or millions of wannabe entrepreneurs vs a handful of billionaires?

Thank you so much for your useful videos, you are one of inspiring people on TH-cam😃

Adjuncts in New York make 70 dollars an hour. That’s hardly poverty

Can i, do those tests in the uk?

This is a pretty bleak summary that doesn't give some important context: 1) There are too many PhDs, and a lot of people go to grad school without a plan or a real interest in teaching. If you are in a PhD program only because you don't know what else to do with your life, get out. And if you are in a PhD program that doesn't fully fund you and support your job search, really GET OUT. 2) There are teaching-track positions at a lot of 2 and 4 year schools that completely skip the tenure stream/research pressure and pay a living wage. Many people are very happy as Teaching Profs. 3) A lot of people are "location picky" and refuse to teach at rural or less prestigious schools; many excellent universities have trouble filling positions because they are not in trendy locations. In other words, there are a lot of spoiled middle class kids who grow up believing they are ENTITLED to a fancy academic job on an ivy-covered campus, which is not the same thing as working to become an educator and scholar who lives in a normal town. 4) Tenured profs have to do a lot of service and admin work that "lower" teaching faculty don't have to do. 5) While everything in this video is true to a certain extent, there are a lot of ways to succeed in an academic career, and by and large people who genuinely want to teach (not just wear elbow patches and live a performative academic life) and have real skills can find jobs. Tl; dr: It's supposed to be hard, and if you are in it for the wrong reasons, it gets a lot harder.

Physics graduate here, got a comfortable job in the government that requires only highschool diploma with some extra training, even that is better than many academics, I still want to do research but I am not going to destroy myself to be another paper printing machine.

I’ve been calling this a pyramid scheme for 10+ years, and I’m just some dumb country bumpkin that managed to get a BA in history. Glad I realized before going to graduate school.

You alluded to a major aspect of the academic pyramid scheme that ties together much of the current dysfunction in universities (especially R1 and R2 institutions). Many of these schools have far too many Ph.D. programs, and bring in far too many students. As you noted, the competition for tenured positions is fierce, so these Ph.D. programs are glutting the market. Now, this has important ramifications. First, as you noted very clearly, this creates a glut of Ph.Ds and Ph.D. candidates who can't get a full-time job. But it also allows the senior faculty to live a life of ease. Senior faculty are the ones who teach their 'boutique' graduate courses to four or five students; no undergraduate survey courses for them, no grading dozens of papers each week, those tasks are left to the adjuncts. So it's a brilliant model: maintain too many and too large Ph.D. programs to allow senior faculty to teach only the best students and very few of them at that, create an army of desperate academics who want nothing more than to work in the area they love, and then force them to teach the frosh and soph courses that are 'beneath' the full profs. And how do I know all of this? I'm 40 years post PhD and have been tenured for over 30 years. I've served as dean of two colleges and been the vice-provost of my univ. I have seen first hand how this pyramid scheme works, and it is harmful to the people and mission of a university. Your video is well done and deserves wide distribution.

Absolute truth.

Problem is overcapacity and a limited market for Academic Status Positions. Higher Academic Educations are a commercial product in many countries and generally a University Income creator whether it is privately or publicly funded. However the production of scientific papers is not a commercial product, it can only be used indirectly to secure funding for a period. The economic outcome lies in connecting scientific knowledge with some commercial business and make a product somebody will buy.

If you go into academia, you better do it as an administrator, not an instructor.

Please like and subscribe when you finish quietly weeping....

It's a scam

I don't know who this is, but he is a genius! Such truth about academia. So many pious, self-important hypocrites. Well-done. Keep up the good work. It reminds me of the South Park episode from 6 years ago on the Southern slave owner consulting the university president for tips on handling slaves. In this case, the university slaves were the athletes, but it could apply to the lower tier academic employees. Thanks very much.

Spot on, unfortunately.

To me, the cardinal failure of all those who decry the "mixing of the races" is that they have no understanding of *_hybrid vigor._* There have been so many idiotic, and dangerous, ideas that men made up before our understanding of genetics (beginning in the late 1920's) started to show those ideas to be farcical and completely groundless. BTW, *Eat more (free-range) eggs, and grass-fed butter! -Your brain needs the cholesterol!*

Interestingly, there are University departments in the US who have their own "journal," to provide an easy way to "publish," so that their assistant and associate professors can expand their CV's continually, and the full professors' names can be tacked on, as a _quid pro quo_ in tenure grants.

Totally agree. In Australia we call adjunts by a worse name, casuals.

Is this the same in all countries?

You forgot to mention the involuntary childlessness.

By all means, get an advanced degree if there's a field you love to learn about or if your prospective job field requires it. But do not go into academia, especially not as an adjunct, unless your family already has all its necessary income and you're just teaching on a lark because you're semi-retired or bored. It's been like this for decades. It is political, petty, and silly (doubly so with the advent of political correctness and now "wokeness"), and it absolutely does not place scholarship or teaching first. Universities are money-generating concerns that care about pumping out degrees, about football, donors, etc. If you have any illusions of academia being some noble ivory tower where people learn for the sake of learning, you will be disabused of that notion very quickly and painfully.

That’s it I’m not going into academia

👏👏👏👏👏

Where is pyramid main thing? Lower tiers should directly give their money to upper tier. What you described is corporate system. It's the same in 99.9% companies/industries. You should go to school so you can understand what you are saying.

This is how college teaching is structured, but kids, go to college so you can get a “good” education 😂

short answer yes long answer no

Bill Gates is at the top!!! He has the college's do his thinking and steals the results!!!

Why didn't I know this 10 years back

Be smart. Do not let school (academia as well) get in the way of your education.

Knowing how tough the process is makes me respect my professors more.

Love your comment: The department hated me, so they made me a Dean. How true! They look for someone who ass-kisses the President and Vice Presidents and oppresses the faculty members. So much for academic freedom of expression ..

You forgot the part-time instructors/lecturers 🤣

I am watching this video as I begin my PhD journey 😅

This was my direct experience as well, and exactly why I never pursued an academic career.

Perfect.

Come on, it´s been 20 years now.. and I bet you email are full of junk, spams and unecessary stuff.. it´s billions of people gathering that. Don´t be too hard on Gmail.