Okay article, but it fails to notice the essential issue, which is money. There is probably nothing wrong with academia that could not be fixed with more money for the actual job of an academic institution which is teaching and research. Basically the governance of states that fund public institutions has been broken by decades of bad policies. The failure to fund public education is the foundational problem from which follows almost all the woes of the stratification system outlined.
The article notes the healthcare industry as a model which is a bad idea, since that same stratification system has been underway in the healthcare system due to the same problem---lack of money to support a public health system. The suggested solution, an intermediate degree between a masters and PhD to fix the problem or at least soften the effect is a poor solution because it doesn't address the fundamental problem. For decades the number of tenure track positions has been virtually frozen or increases have been kept to below a minimum necessary to cover the increase student population. At the same time funding sources have expanded to include all sorts of ad hoc arrangements to keep going under the endless hangling over state budgets and tax cuts. CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
