The Academy

It's been my experience that those who don't work in higher education have no idea what this world is like, though nearly everyone is sure they do, and wants to tell us all what we're getting wrong and why us in our Ivory Tower need to be schooled about politics and economics and how our fancy ideas would play out in the real world (because, as we all know, college professors don't have paychecks or power bills, we don't raise kids, our cars don't break down, our rent never comes due, we've never volunteered for a political campaign or served on a committee, we just sit about penning sonnets and thinking deep thoughts in a fine Utopian landscape, with now and then a lovely forty minutes in a rustic classroom, where we stroll about, chalk in hand, declaiming sonorously whilst fourteen undergraduates listen with rapt attention, absorbing with unquestioning diligence our every syllable).

Dr. Crazy, adding to an on-going debate on the wicked job market and the idiocy of those who would enter graduate school in such a market, speaks a more realistic version.

(My favorite graph:

I am entirely against the idea of equating education with job training. I know that's how it works in the corporate economy of contemporary universities, but I think it's disgusting to do so. And also really short-sighted and stupid.)

(Via Bardiac.)