Academia is not a meritocracy…and other lessons I’ve learned as a scholar abandoned by the academy

Someone (probably on Twitter) once said that academia is like a bad relationship where the aspiring academic gives and gives and never gets anything in return. Countless PhD holders sacrifice everything to “succeed” in academia, with success defined as attaining a tenure-track job, a position that guarantees you at least seven years of job security, good benefits, and institutional support to conduct research. (No matter that you might be a wonderful teacher or have published a whole book — if you don’t have a TT job, you’re a failure.)

Then, of course, there’s the question of securing tenure, a rigorous process conducted around the sixth year of employment for which you have to submit a record of your publications, letters of support by colleagues, and evidence of being a good teacher (as determined largely by highly subjective student evaluations that often display not only gender bias, but may even constitute legal discrimination!) and of providing service to your department, institution, and professional society. Institutions vary widely in their rates of tenure, with the University of California system known for supporting their faculty so that the majority of them gain tenure, and the Ivy Leagues notorious for not tenuring junior faculty. If you don’t get tenure, your academic career is all but over, as any other institution at which you might apply for a job will know you’ve been denied tenure and likely view you as damaged goods.

I’m providing ample detail about the career trajectory of an academic because the process is so very opaque to outsiders, and because academia is so exclusive and insular: if you become an insider by getting a tenure-track job, you must do everything to maintain your insider status, which includes an extraordinary amount of gate-keeping and politicking. You also must never openly critique the status quo by, for example, speaking up for the huge and ever-increasing army of adjunct faculty.

The issue of adjunct/contingent labor in higher education has been discussed extensively, but here’s a snapshot of an adjunct’s miserable existence: you’re hired for one semester or quarter to teach one or more classes for a flat rate of anywhere between $2000 and $6000 per course, depending on the institution and location. As a concrete example, I taught a summer session course at UC Berkeley in 2013 for $5000 for a six-week class that met two hours a day…