frantzfanon

There is a vast oversupply of people who want academic careers vs. the number of currently-existing tenure track jobs. In most fields (CS is somewhat different since industry is so attractive, so often even teaching faculty receive tenure), almost all of the teaching is done by contract workers and adjuncts. So the need for labor is there, just not the funding to give everyone secure jobs.

If public funding returned to higher levels and the number of tenure-track jobs was increased, then the oversupply would not be quite so bad. This is a sector-wide change that graduate worker unions could push for at each of their individual institutions, especially if they worked in tandem with the unions representing adjuncts. Graduate workers have a lot of power since they can gum up the graduation pipeline and piss off wealthy parents and donors.

Of course it is a band-aid solution since the system is fundamentally pyramid-shaped.

"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. The sympathy I felt for Kō, the menial at my grandmother’s in Korea; the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog they kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother’s—all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart.

Oh how I want to… to give my life, to give everything, in the struggle for this wretched class of mine!"