Inside Higher Ed reviews Marc Bousquet's How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation, which, as I've noted in the past, also has a blog.
Holding a doctoral degree in many ways represents a “disqualification” from academic work, Bousquet writes, because these degree holders’ post-Ph.D. employment is working as an adjunct without the possibilities of working on research, having health insurance or enjoying job security — which they may have (in varying degrees) as grad students.
He explains: “Degree holders frequently serve as university teachers for 8 or 10 years before earning their doctorate.... Many degree holders have served as adjunct lecturers at other campuses, sometimes teaching master’s degree students and advising their theses en route to their own degrees. Some will have taught 30 to 40 sections.... During this time, they received frequent mentoring and regular evaluation.... A large fraction will have published essays and book reviews and authored their departmental Web pages. Yet at precisely the junction that this ‘preparation’ should end and regular employment begin — the acquisition of the Ph.D. — the system embarrasses itself and discloses a systematic truth that every recent degree holder knows and few administrators wish to acknowledge: in many disciplines, for the majority of graduates, the Ph.D. indicates the logical conclusion of an academic career.”
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