Maggie's Farm

Thanks, Bob Sykes, for mentioning the post at Carpe Diem about the effects of demographic changes on CIVPART. I recall seeing a similar post elsewhere, but couldn't remember where. And as one can see from the chart linked by Douglas2, the curve had already flattened out in the 1990s during Clinton's presidency after having steadfastly climbed for three decades, perhaps presaging a reversal in direction. At the same time, corporate profits have also climbed. This is what a global outsourcing of jobs and earnings can do to a manufacturing economy: the profits are earned elsewhere and the jobs follow the profits. A word to the wise college undergraduate who is not taken in by OWS bs: if you want to have a regular well-paying job some day, then perhaps STEM courses would be a better choice for you than gut courses in faux xxxx-studies.

From the Chronicle of Education article sourced at DC:

As for why scholarly organizations don't think about Ph.D.'s being on food stamps, he says the answer is obvious.

"Everyone thinks a Ph.D. pretty much guarantees you a living wage and, from what I can tell, most commentators think that college professors make $100,000 and more," he says.
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I call total BS! Everyone in higher education---and I mean EVERYONE---knows about the low-paying jobs of adjuncts and the difficulties they face. The tenured faculty DEPENDS on and CONDONES the all too common academic sweat-shop system now manned by grossly underpaid adjuncts and teaching assistants. It's how the tenured faculty gets release time so they can stay OUT of the classroom. Have no illusions: tenured faculty, with the connivance of the administrator class, are as predatory a group as the most rapacious corporate barons and Wall Street 1%-ers that academics are always railing against. The college tenure system is an invidious caste system that even in India would not be tolerated, yet it continues to thrive in academia. This is the rotten core of higher education in the US. Obama and the Dems like to talk about fairness? Fine, I say let them start with reforming the closed system of higher education to eliminate the vestiges of wage slavery there, and then they can start on reforming industry and the rest of American society.

Re: Megan's Choice

Megan and Obama's Julia should do what makes them happy as long as no one else has to pay for their indulgence. As long as I'm not paying for their choices, it's none of my business whether they
choose art over commerce or vice versa. My problem with today's 20-something "children" in the OWS movement is that they think I owe them a living and should be forced to pay for their bad life choices. Do whatever you want kiddies, just don't come to me to validate and pay for your decisions.