The Dish

A doctoral student writes:

The only reason why there’s a glut of PhD graduates without jobs is that the availability of full-time tenure-track professorships has declined. Why is that? It’s not because of demand. There’s no shortage of students applying and going to college. The problem is on the supply side. Instead of filling tenure-track jobs with new tenure tracks, large universities have switched to using adjuncts.

He says many universities have no good reason to cut tenure-track positions:

At a time in which endowments, enrollment, tuition, and campus-building (including cruise-ship-quality dorms) are on the rise, it’s an absolute canard to say that universities do not have the money to create full-time professorships.  For example, my school just announced that it is halfway to its $4-billion fundraising goal – to be added to its already multi-billion-dollar endowment – and it has opened or restored a new building almost every year that I have been here. Yet they say there is no money to expand the full-time faculty and are in the process of cutting enrollments under the justification of raising student stipends.

I am a sixth-year student on the verge of graduating. We were told the first year that the demographics of higher education – the fact that a large number of tenured professors were at or near retirement age – meant that we would have jobs available once we graduated. I have no doubt that these faculties are indeed retiring, but they aren’t being replaced.

The view from the other side:

I am a recently tenured professor of history at a liberal arts college; my previous experience includes a tenure-track position at a second-tier state research university. I agree with McArdle that part of the problem is the proliferation of doctoral programs at institutions that arguably should not have them. My previous employer provides a good example.

Even the very best doctoral students from that program have had to settle, by and large, for the types of exploitative positions that McArdle and others rightly decry, even though in my opinion they would have made very fine faculty members at just about any institution that might have hired them. One young woman had substantial teaching experience, had presented at several major conferences, published articles in two first-rate journals, and already had a contract from Oxford University Press to turn her dissertation into a book. It took her almost a decade to land a tenure-track position.

That points to deeper systemic issues. Having served on a number of faculty search committees, academia is no less prone to the lure of the brand name than the rest of society. More than once I have sat in a room when a colleague argued – vehemently – for an Ivy League candidate who clearly didn’t fit the job description at the expense of other candidates who did, even ones from other top-25 programs.

The tenured prof continues by identifying another problem:

Administrators at R-1 universities tend to allocate resources, and peers tend to rank programs (back to brand-naming, again) based on the number of PhDs a department churns out, often with little regard to the actual employment outcomes for the students themselves. A lack of administrative imagination and a lack of any sense of real responsibility to the students a university has produced is a cultural problem for which I am at a loss to answer.

Any responsible faculty member should worry more about making sure those who would embark on the journey (or enter the tournament, to use McArdle’s description) do so with their eyes wide open. It is the one thing we can do in the face of a variety of factors utterly beyond our control as faculty members.

A tenure-track professor sounds off:

While I recognize that there is a major jobs crisis in academia, I don’t think that McArdle grasps the consequences and severity of what she’s proposing. Reducing the number of grad students means reducing the number of graduate seminars. Academic disciplines are dependent upon grad seminars, because grad seminars allow research-oriented professors to put their research in the classroom in ways not possible when teaching undergraduates.

The way I see it, reducing the number of grad students would have to encompass an across-the-board de-emphasis on academic research. Yet most universities are going the opposite direction: research and publications are prioritized even above committee service and teaching. As for the needs of grad students on the job market? That is the lowest priority of all.

A self-described “physics graduate-school refugee” reminds everyone that the picture looks very different for budding scientists:

In the STEM disciplines, graduate students and postdocs can easily drop out of academia and quickly be financially secure in technology industries. McArdle’s assumption that graduate school is only preparation for academia or other long-odds tournaments does not apply in these disciplines.

Lastly, a reader emphasizes the personal benefits of doctoral study:

People do not get PhDs only to be professors. For many of them, even if they hope to enter academia, the enormous personal value they gain from the education makes the experience worthwhile. As for their careers: these people are not going to be unemployable, even if their professorships do not pan out. They have skills that are easily transferrable in other directions. As a long-time professor – now aged 63 and still a visiting prof on year-to-year contracts who must say yes to whatever my college asks me to do and is certain to be the first one out if the college finances go downhill  – getting a PhD was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Kevin D. Williamson visits Owsley County, Kentucky, which he describes as “not the land of moonshine and hill lore, but that of families of four clutching $40 worth of lotto scratchers and crushing the springs on their beaten-down Camry while getting dinner from a Phillips 66 station.” Among his many depressing findings:

[I]t turns out that the local economy runs on black-market soda the way Baghdad ran on contraband crude during the days of sanctions. It works like this:

Once a month, the debit-card accounts of those receiving what we still call food stamps are credited with a few hundred dollars — about $500 for a family of four, on average — which are immediately converted into a unit of exchange, in this case cases of soda. On the day when accounts are credited, local establishments accepting EBT cards — and all across the Big White Ghetto, “We Accept Food Stamps” is the new E pluribus unum – are swamped with locals using their public benefits to buy cases and cases — reports put the number at 30 to 40 cases for some buyers — of soda. Those cases of soda then either go on to another retailer, who buys them at 50 cents on the dollar, in effect laundering those $500 in monthly benefits into $250 in cash — a considerably worse rate than your typical organized-crime money launderer offers — or else they go into the local black-market economy, where they can be used as currency in such ventures as the dealing of unauthorized prescription painkillers — by “pillbillies,” as they are known at the sympathetic establishments in Florida that do so much business with Kentucky and West Virginia that the relevant interstate bus service is nicknamed the “OxyContin Express.” A woman who is intimately familiar with the local drug economy suggests that the exchange rate between sexual favors and cases of pop — some dealers will accept either — is about 1:1, meaning that the value of a woman in the local prescription-drug economy is about $12.99 at Walmart prices.

Dreher shakes his head:

What do you do with people like that? Many of us — conservatives and liberals both — are outraged at the idea that there is nothing that can realistically be done to ease their estate, to deliver them from this kind of grinding suffering. But what if, for some people, it’s true? What if the reality of the situation defeats idealism? What do you do then? Can you do anything that matters? I’m not asking rhetorically; I mean it.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJ6RfcDato%5D

Asawin Suebsaeng and Chris Mooney compile a list of movies that have been shown to influence people’s political views. Among their discoveries:

The Cider House Rules turned you pro-choice.

In the Academy Award-winning 1999 film (directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Tobey Maguire and Charlize Theron), Michael Caine portrays Wilbur Larch, an ether-addicted abortionist. The movie is set in Maine during World War II, when the state was under a hugely restrictive abortion ban. The compassionate doctor performs the procedure for young women in dire straits. When screenwriter and author John Irving won the Oscar for penning the film’s script, he thanked “everyone at Planned Parenthood” and NARAL at the end of his acceptance speech.

So it’s not too surprising that a 2011 study by Kenneth Mulligan and Philip Habel at Southern Illinois University found that the “fictional framing” of the abortion issue in The Cider House Rules made audiences more supportive of safe and legal abortion. “[P]articipants who were randomly assigned to watch [The Cider House Rules] were more favorable toward legalized abortion in the case of incest than those in the control group,” the authors wrote.

A reader puts the hiring of Sasheer Zamata – the fifth-ever black female cast member – into perspective:

Complaints about the lack of talent may be legitimate, since only about 10-15% of comedians are female. Assume that rate holds constant among the 12.6% of Americans who are black and you end up with about 1.5% of comedians being black women. With 137 cast members in SNL’s history, the 15 black performers and 4 black women is more or less what you’d expect if they simply cast the funniest applicant available. You could try to change the ratios to improve diversity somewhat, but at the end of the day you can only find so much elite talent from just 1.5% of any population.

Tanner Colby looks back at the history of black comedians on SNL. He separates them into three categories: “a) The disgruntleds, the washouts, and the walk-offs. b) The ones who stuck around. c) Eddie Murphy”:

The disgruntleds and the washouts are the largest group.

Black performers who joined the show, never found their niche, and typically left in very short order or on not-great terms. Most of these players—Yvonne Hudson, Danitra Vance, Dean Edwards, Jerry Minor, Finesse Mitchell—barely even lasted long enough to make an impression before fading from cultural memory. White cultural memory, at any rate. Two of these performers, Damon Wayans and Chris Rock, went on to great fame elsewhere after chafing at the racial confines of the show’s characters and subject matter. Wayans was famously fired after ad-libbing in sketches against the express wishes of an enraged Lorne Michaels, and Rock left after two seasons as a main cast member, having never hit the stride he would find later as a stand-up.

Ellen Cleghorne [seen in the above video], the only black actress to last more than one season before Maya Rudolph, may have had the rockiest tenure of all. Hailing from the black housing projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn, Cleghorne endured the show at the height not just of its whiteness but of its frattiness, going up against the sophomoric boys club of David Spade, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, et al. After four seasons on the show, Cleghorne notched just one entry in the entire index of Live From New York, a reference from Molly Shannon simply noting the fact that Cleghorne was, in fact, part of cast.

Carolyn Edgar hopes that SNL’s 0ther new black women have a real impact:

The addition of [LaKendra] Tookes and [Leslie] Jones to the “SNL” writing staff is a positive sign that, despite the clumsy way “SNL” has handled criticism of its hiring practices, the show is looking to do more than just silence its critics. The importance of diversity in the writing room cannot be overstated. As wonderful as Kerry Washington’s recent guest host turn was, the Miss Universe sketch  – in which Washington played Miss Uganda, relying on broad African stereotypes and a terrible Ugandan accent – might not have left the writers’ room had writers of color been there. One of the most damning critiques of “SNL” is that it is stale and unfunny. If Tookes and Jones are permitted to have full voice in the writing room to offer a diversity of perspectives on comic situations – and are not dismissed as mere “diversity hires,” the show as a whole will be better off for it.

Beinart appreciates that the GOP is at least starting to focus on the problem of poverty but he’s still far from impressed:

[T]aken together, the new Republican anti-poverty speeches have a depressingly theological quality. They usually begin with a catechism: Washington can’t effectively fight poverty. “After 50 years, isn’t it time to declare big government’s war on poverty a failure?” Rubio declared in a warm-up video for his speech. “What Detroit needs to thrive,” added Paul, “is not Washington’s domineering hand but freedom from big government’s mastery.”

Rarely is serious evidence offered for these assertions, because they are not statements of fact; they are declarations of faith. In truth, there’s ample evidence that some Washington programs significantly reduce poverty. A 2011 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, for instance, found that Social Security “reduces deep poverty” among the elderly and disabled “almost to zero.” In 2011, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps) together lifted almost 10 million Americans above the poverty line. That doesn’t mean Washington doesn’t waste money. But by denouncing federal-government programs per se, folks like Paul declare an entire category of anti-poverty tools illegitimate. It’s like beginning a speech on national defense by affirming your doctrinal opposition to tanks.

Sharon Parrott criticizes Rubio’s block-grant proposal:

[N]o block-grant proposal has ever been designed for these programs that provides a full, prompt, counter-cyclical response; a block grant simply cannot do that.  As a consequence, under the Rubio proposal, hardship would inevitably rise in many areas during recessions — likely by substantial amounts. The Rubio proposal also would wipe away important protections in current law that ensure, for example, that all poor children have access to nutrition assistance and health coverage.  States could shift federal funds from less popular groups to groups with more political clout, such as from very poor families to families with moderate incomes. In addition, block-granting key safety net programs could very well lead to funding cuts over time.  Politically, it’s much easier for policymakers to shrink a block grant that supports a vast array of purposes spread across 50 states — and claim that states can compensate by improving efficiency or rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” — than to cut specific types of assistance for specific groups of people such as low-income children, seniors, or people with disabilities. The history of recent decades bears this out.  Funding for most major block grants focused on low-income households has eroded in inflation-adjusted terms, often by large amounts.

Jared Bernstein argues that Rubio’s plan would undermine the whole point of the safety net:

“Revenue neutrality” may sound technical and inoffensive, if not fiscally sound, but what it really means is the safety net will be unable to expand in recessions.  Let’s see the details, but typically under these arrangements, states will be unable to tap the Feds for unemployment benefits, nutritional assistance, and all the other functions that must expand to meet need when the market fails.  This would be a huge step backwards, essentially enshrining poverty-inducing austerity in place of literally decades of policy advancements to meet demand contractions with temporary spending expansions.

Pareene thinks the GOP’s poverty agenda is a scam:

Poverty is … a subject about which it’s incredibly easy to bamboozle most of the mainstream political press. You can get swell coverage merely for saying you care about the poor, as Paul Ryan recently has. Because political reporters are unable and unwilling to analyze policy, and curiously reluctant to speak to anyone who can, you can also claim any program at all will lessen poverty or help the unemployed. And for Ryan, “caring about the poor” is a good way to reestablish Seriousness: He becomes one of the Few Serious Republicans with plans to help the poor. Poverty is a better subject for this act than most other liberal issues — like, say, the environment — because Republicans are at least allowed to acknowledge that it is bad that some people are poor.

Finally, Patrick J. Egan explains why formulating a Republican poverty agenda is so difficult:

[T]herein lies the problem for Republican leaders seeking to claim ownership of the poverty issue: their voters aren’t particularly concerned about poverty.  Every January since 1997, the Pew Research Center has asked Americans to rate a series of issues as national priorities for the upcoming year.  …  Year in and year out, Democratic voters don’t just prioritize fighting poverty more than Republicans; it’s generally the issue on which Democratic enthusiasm is most likely to be higher — by 20 to 30 percentage points — than Republican enthusiasm.

This commitment gap between the two parties’ rank-and-file members will be difficult to close.  To begin to do so, GOP leaders like Ryan, Rubio and Paul will need messages that appeal to one of their toughest audiences when it comes to caring about poverty: Republican voters.

Earlier Dish on the GOP’s anti-poverty push here and here.

New guidelines from the DOE seek to reduce zero tolerance policies. Jeff Deeney applauds:

As a social worker I’ve worked both in public schools and in the criminal justice system, so I’ve seen what it’s like at both ends of the pipeline. I remember arriving for the first time at the probation department and immediately thinking that it was uncannily similar to the public high school I worked in just before I took the job. The metal detectors, the barking security demanding removal of items of clothing and access to bags, beeping wands waved around in people’s personal space and the long line of black and Latino men and women stretching out the door all could have been transplanted from one institution to the other.  The bigger picture, from my perspective, concerns America’s continued struggle to get beyond its racially based fears and the impulse to monitor, control, discipline and punish black and Latino men for even the smallest infraction or else chaos will break loose in our cities. It starts as early as the first day of elementary school and for some will last until they get off parole. It makes one wonder how much of the problem we’re creating through the solutions we’ve crafted.

The guidelines are meant to address the disproportionate impact of over-discipline on black and disabled students. Nicole Flatow has the numbers:

One in five black boys have received an out-of-school suspension, according to 2012 Department of Education data. And black students with disabilities are three times more likely to be expelled, a punishment that sets kids in zero-tolerance systems up for later criminal punishment.

Other regional statistics tell a similar story. In Chicago, for example, three-fourths of kids arrested in public school were black. This disparate impact perpetuates a cycle of criminal justice over-exposure that follows many African Americans throughout their lives and yields astronomical incarceration rates. Research suggests almost half of all black males are arrested by age 23. Years of zero tolerance and over-policing policies have manifest themselves in data: an estimated 49 percent of all young black males now enter the job market with an arrest record, as well as 44 percent of Hispanic males. These arrests not only impose obstacles to a lifetime of success; they also clog the criminal justice system. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, a juvenile county chief judge in Georgia lamented that one-third of cases before him were students arrested not because they posed a threat, but because they “make adults mad.”

Walter Olson, however, sees these guidelines as part of a pattern of government overreach:

The letter represents the culmination of a years-long drive toward imposing tighter Washington oversight on school discipline policies that result in “disparate impact” among racial or other groups. Policies that result in the suspension of differentially more minority kids, or special-ed kids, will now be suspect — even if the rate of underlying behavior is not in fact uniform among every group. (Special-ed kids, for example, include many placed in that category because of emotional and behavioral problems that correlate with a higher likelihood of acting out in misbehavior. Boys misbehave more than girls.) If the policy helps speed the correction of some overly harsh, mechanical school policies, both under the zero-tolerance rubric and otherwise, it may have some positive side effects. But the disparate-impact premise is a pernicious one that’s sure to create many new problems of its own.

Scott Shackford is also unimpressed:

[U]ltimately, this looks like a bunch of guidelines that will lead to the formation of school committees (funded with federal grants, perhaps?) that put more rules into place that will be pointed to the next time an official does something stupid like suspend a kid for chewing his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun. Can anybody provide an example of American jurisprudence where the institution of additional rules resulted in less callously managed punishment? Why should we expect any different from schools? What really needs to happen for significant change is that school districts need to be worried about the consequences to them for poorly managed school discipline. That’s why the Department of Justice’s emphasis on racial discrimination and the possibility of sanctions or lawsuits is so prominent – the DOJ has a stick to beat school districts with should they not comply. As for the “zero tolerance” nonsense, giving parents more choice and power on where their children attend school can serve as a useful pressure point to encourage school administrators to put an end to their petty tyrannies.