In Faculty Job Market, Poor Pay Also a Factor

Attributing the shrinking of the tenure-track market between the years 2000 and 2020 to a superabundance of doctorates inaccurately omits that the demand for quality college teaching has exploded, as university enrollments have grown by millions, due in large part to the exciting influx of first-generation and nontraditional college students. American universities across disciplines have met the growth of first-generation and nontraditional college students with educators paid poverty wages, which render them largely inaccessible to their students, as they are understandably consumed by their own fight against food and housing insecurity.

Advising newly minted doctorates to abjure teaching, in effect, means remaining silent in the face of the millions of college students subjected to educators living in the conditions of poverty that obstruct and interfere in every aspect of campus life.