Links for 5/18/10

Tim Harford

New research by Giorgio Di Pietro looks at data from an unnamed UK university. Di Pietro compares candidates with identical – or very similar – test scores, but who (because of the arbitrariness of the dividing line, or because of the discretion of the board of examiners) are awarded a different class of degree.

The good news is that once your underlying scores are taken into account, your degree class seems to make no difference to your chance of a job or further place. The bad news is that no matter how hard you work from now on, your fate has probably been sealed already.

Megan McArdle

I have long theorized that at least some of the leftward drift in academia can be explained by the fact that it has one of the most abusive labor markets in the world. I theorize this because in interacting with many professors, I am bewildered by their beliefs about labor markets more generally; many seem to think of private labor markets as an endless well of exploitation where employees are virtual prisoners with no recourse in the face of horrific abuses. Yet this does not describe the low wage jobs in which I've worked…

It is common, of course--in academia. Until they have tenure, faculty are virtual prisoners of their institution. Those on the tenure track work alongside a vast class of have-nots who are some of the worst-paid high school graduates in the country. So it's not surprising to me that this is how academics come to view labor markets…

What puzzles me is how this job market persists, and is even worsening, in one of the most left-wing institutions in the country…

Eliza Woolf

At the age of 22 I’d had it with the nonacademic world of low-paid drudgery; it was the life of the mind or bust.

Fast forward to 2010 and I find myself somewhere closer to busting. After many years earning my history doctorate while working as a teaching assistant, hundreds of post-Ph.D. job applications and several futile trips on the global academic job market, a string of temporary postdoctoral fellowships, and a combined student loan and credit card debt large enough to buy a condo, I’m now neither naïve nor optimistic about my future employment prospects…
academia… has it crushed my spirit, emptied my bank account, and sent me in pursuit of anti-anxiety medication…

But I keep coming back for more…

Tim Ranzetta

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