This is a big reason I want out of academia. It sucks to really care about something, put a ton of work into it, and get all of jack and squat in return because the higher-ups don't give a fuck and are only interested in making numbers get bigger.Ironically, the one cohort that utterly failed to benefit from the boom times was the professors, who are really the only people adding value and remain vastly underpaid. When the cuts come, they won’t come for the administration or the diversity staff. Academic programs will be the first to go, which raises some interesting questions about what the purpose of a university is.
My wife expressed a great deal of displeasure last night about one of her interns who, upon my wife spending a year pouring all her knowledge into, has decided she's gonna push out babies and be a housewife. The student is in a program that recruited my wife heavily as an instructor, only to offer her an equivalent wage of about $16 an hour, and then was upset and offended when my wife turned them down. They came back lamely with "well if you had more experience we'd pay you more!" Same school has gone from 150 applicants for 18 slots to 14 applicants for 18 slots in 5 years. They've effectively got three instructors; one of them delivers babies for a living, another has never so much as worked outside academia (and is a 2016 graduate) and the third trained as a dorm RA. Of my two professors at two different community colleges, two of them bitched about the fact that they haven't had a cost-of-living increase since 2012 and that the State sets salaries flat such that a professor in Podunk Washington makes the same wage as the professor in the heart of the second or third hottest real estate market in the United States. Both were bitter. Neither were great. One of those programs, despite having an average starting salary of $70k after two years of instruction, is at 60% of the level it needs to be at for sustainability. While I was there - a year - two other programs were taught out and ended. Meanwhile I have an employee that got a Master's in Public Health pretty much for the prestige. She didn't need it to practice. And when we hired her, she was delivering for Amazon for a living. With a $140k vanity degree. I ran a "how much money should you save" calculator when my daughter was born. I shot the moon - I figured "okay let's say it takes her an extra quarter or two and she's gonna do a private school outta state. How much should I set aside?" And the calculator, figuring my daughter's age, the rate of inflation in college prices and the current interest rates, suggested I start putting aside $850 a month because by the time my 8-week-old was 18, I should have about $1.4m set aside. Which, i quickly discovered, is three or four Subway franchises. Frankly it's a reasonable downpayment on a 10-unit apartment building and real estate SUCKS right now. The center cannot hold.
I miss being actively involved in clinical research. The theory and discussion is some of the most thought provoking and insightful I have ever heard. Passion for human wellbeing and the quest for knowledge abounds in everyone starting their career. Even my phlebotomy technicians were signed onto research studies, doing their own work with other teams on quality of patient care and the development of their craft. What I don't miss is the bundle of overinflated egos and paychecks that makes up the MD/PHD's who wind up at the heads of departments and subdepartments. I don't miss putting in 60 hour weeks so some rich old dude gets to drive a new Jag every year.