Bret Devereaux

...because the Pale Horse of the Business Model is federally subsidized student debt. 18-year-olds are not great at calculating long-term cost-benefit; offer them a fun time now for money paid in the future and most will take it. So more admin, more amenities, more debt. 18/xx

To be clear, basically none of this massive increase in tuition - and it is *massive* - goes to professors. Let me repeat that: BASICALLY NONE OF THIS MONEY GOES TO ANYONE WHO TEACHES. (rip your ears, I know). 19/xx

Instead - it's hard to get good data - but instructor pay has probably gone *down* over the same period. Not because professor pay has been cut, but because the teachers have been adjunctified under the business-model imperative to cut costs. 20/xx

75% - SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT - of university instructors are non-tenure track and more than half - *more*than*half* are adjuncts! (https://www.newfacultymajority.info/facts-about-adjuncts/ …). So the average *teacher* - not professor because most aren't anymore - gets paid LESS. 21/xx

Now you might ask - why the Business Model of Education? Well the answer is it goes back to our first horseman - legislatures looking to cut back on universities demanded this model as a way to cut costs and have continued to demand it even after the economy improved. 22/xx

Here's the thing: it's all a false economy. No, not that the economy is fake - it's fake savings. Like when you overbuy at the grocery store because everything is on sale - you haven't 'saved' anything - you've spent more. It's that kind of false economy. 23/xx

Not only does the amenities-admin-tuition inflation turn into a treadmill going nowhere, but adjunctification is just as bad for the core mission of the university. Because you are burning these adjuncts out at a fearful rate; overloaded and underpaid...24/xx

They often can't teach as intensively as TT faculty and they don't stay in the job long enough to get excellent at it. Teachers get better over time - so burning them out wastes experience. The result is inferior teaching, even though most adjuncts work hard! 25/-continues-