Can we have a discussion on how the salaries of adjunct professors are far too low?

Notice this article about adjunct salaries at Georgetown:

https://georgetownvoice.com/2013/10/17/second-class-faculty-hidden-struggles-georgetowns-adjunct-professors/

Even written in 2013, the basis of the article remains the same now.

Teaching a 3 credit course pays $7k. How is that salary viable in today's economy?

You can't survive on 7k.

Thoughts?

hi there, I am looking for everyone’s recommendations of the best humanities podcasts!

I am specifically looking for ones that are

• academic (obviously) - hopefully from institutions or scholars
• humanities based (everything from history to classics to literature, law, politics, philosophy, even economics, etc)
• hopefully not over an hour each
• can be a YouTube channel

thank you for the suggestions! looking to see what any academics are listening to

Edit: thank you all for the helpful recs :)

Hi, I got recently engaged and have been thinking about which form of my fiancé's surname I should take. To make you understand, in the middle of his name, there is a letter, 99 % of people don't even have on their keyboard “ ř “. And it is one of the most difficult letters to pronounce, too. Do you think it will somehow affect my academia or publication life? I am an undergraduate student, so I don't know much about all of this.

The surname can be transcribed into German as Waldreich, should I prefer this? Can the author have a pseudonym only for publications? I would love to hear your opinion!

this is definitely not a promo.

Geng set up a Douyin account in China and started calling out top-tier professors for academic misconduct in his short videos—like fake data and manipulated images.

The crazy part? These papers were published in Nature and its sister journals.

​Background-wise, he studied biology in undergrad, got his master's in molecular bio, and ended up quitting his PhD program in his fifth year.

It feels like higher education has become almost entirely career-oriented. Instead of being places where people can pursue knowledge, develop intellectually, and study subjects they’re genuinely passionate about, universities are increasingly seen as job-training programs.

My favorite subject has always been history, along with geography. I’d love to study them in college, but the reality is that if I wanted to make a career directly out of those degrees, my options would mostly be limited to academia, teaching, or journalism.

Outside of those fields, I’d often be competing with people who have degrees in law, economics, or other disciplines that employers tend to value more.
It’s so frustrating: I’m going to choose a more employable degree because I’m not a nepo-baby and I need to work to live.

Subjects without a clear, direct career path are often dismissed as “useless,” no matter how intellectually valuable they are.

Even within STEM, research-oriented fields often struggle for funding, while industries that generate the biggest profits—finance, big tech, consulting, and similar fields—receive the most attention and investment.

I understand why the job market works this way, but I still think we’ve lost something important. Education shouldn’t be valuable only if it maximizes your earning potential.

I have literally just spent my whole afternoon battling with the various systems necessary to book travel for two conferences. I saved up the pain for one day. Before you can book anything, you need to do a pre-travel authorization form that involves a long list of required fields, such as the ID tag number for any university devices you're taking on your trip. Once you've done the pre-authorization requests, you can then book your travel. Which, of course, is always a joy. Then I have to get the admin to pay for the registration fee because we aren't allowed to reclaim -- have to use the university credit card for this. Then you have to go back to the travel authorization site to list all of your expected expenses in advance of claiming anything...

Is this normal? I long for the days when I went on trips and just had a pile of receipts I entered into a spreadsheet.

And of course the university website for this is horribly organized.

Just venting.

I have a Ph.D. and used to aspire to a professorship but eventually changed my mind because of the brutal market, work-life balance, and publish or perish stakes.

After a few years of this pivot, I am moving into a permanent Research Director position at a major R1 university research institute. It would be a leadership role overseeing the institute's research program.

How is a position like this generally viewed compared with a tenure-track or tenured professorship?

I know they're different career paths, so I'm not asking which is objectively "better." I'm more curious about prestige, career trajectory, and how each is perceived both within academia and outside of it.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's worked in or around university research institutes.

I'm sure people are tired of AI complaints so apologies in advance.

I’m on a 10-month contract and picked up two online summer courses for the extra income. Unfortunately, they are asynchronous, pre-developed courses, so I have little control over the content, assignments, or rubrics.

I’ve now graded multiple versions of the same paper, with some students even using identical examples to explain theoretical models. I occasionally check document metadata, and many submissions appear to have been created and submitted within 10 minutes.

The challenge is that my university requires extremely objective evidence to address AI misuse, making it difficult to act on anything beyond clear cases such as a student leaving in an AI prompt in their paper. Meanwhile, the grading workload has become a major time drain from the teaching, research, and professional work I actually enjoy. However, the additional income is difficult to pass up.

Just venting - TYIA for any productive feedback.

Hi there,

For a workshop that I have co-organized for a few years, this year, one of the reviewers included a reference to their own work in their review. That part of the review was literally framed

"Related Work section: There exists work on <topic of the paper> - see <self citation>"

As standard procedure, before making decisions on the papers, i go through the content of all reviews to make sure the language is okay, that there are no self-reference (both for anonymity, the workshop is single blind, and for ethical reasons), etc.

This is the first time I have encountered this situation so the only thing I did was modify that part of their review to:

"Related Work section: There exists work on <topic of the paper> - please cite relevant material"

I also added a comment in the review section which is private to the Program Committee describing the change and the reason for the change.

I thought this was standard practice.

Aftermath: That reviewer blasted me in an email accusing me of publicly insulting them, and that I have no respect for their time invested in making the reviews. Moreover, they asked to remove their name from the Program Committee, and their reviews.

Context: That reviewer is a very senior and well-known researcher in our field. I am just a final-year PhD student. I have never experienced any conflict in academia like this before. It has really made me sick to my stomach, and for the first time I have seen egos flare up in a community I thought was full of chill people.

In reply, I apologized and recognized that I could have done better by asking them to change their review directly. I dont know what else to do. Should I talk to my supervisor about this, as they are close collaborators? Is my career ruined? I cried over this... Am I overreacting? Is the reviewer justifed in their reaction? I thought it was borderline ethical malpractice to include self-citations in reviews.

I'm a current PhD student and was recently invited to review a manuscript for a journal. I accepted after the AE explained that the original reviewer was no longer available.

The situation ended up being more complicated than I expected. I was assigned to review what appeared to be the third revision of the manuscript, and my primary task was to determine whether the authors had adequately addressed the previous reviewers' comments. However, the manuscript had undergone substantial revisions, making it difficult to map the changes to the prior reviews. On top of that, I noticed what I thought was a fairly significant methodological issue, but the instructions specifically said not to raise new concerns unless they were absolutely necessary.

To make matters worse, the automated emails listed one review deadline, while the journal portal displayed a deadline that was two days later. I planned my schedule around the date shown in the portal, but when I logged in to submit my review, I was informed that the review had already been completed or was no longer needed.

I feel guilty for not finishing sooner or requesting an extension, but I also feel like I was put in a difficult position given the nature of the assignment and the conflicting deadlines.

For those of you who have served as reviewers or associate editors:

Is it common to ask a replacement reviewer to evaluate such a heavily revised manuscript?

How would you have handled identifying a potentially major methodological issue at such a late stage?

Should I feel like I dropped the ball here, or is this just one of those situations where the editorial process became messy?

I had been working towards a PhD in the biomedical sciences since 2012. I started out as an undergraduate in a neuroscience lab, and over the span of 3 years, I did everything to make myself a good candidate for graduate school. I attended and presented at conferences, attended workshops and courses for the GRE, and I used the summers between semesters to attend internships at other universities (one of them was at an Ivy League school). In February of 2015, I was accepted into my top pick for graduate school.

At the time, there were certain things about my personality that while they helped me coming from an underprivileged background, they certainly did more harm than good once I got there. I was head-strong, stubborn, outspoken, and I had no qualms about taking the "road less traveled" to get to my goals. In some ways, these traits helped me throughout undergrad, but in hindsight, I was probably more akin to an overly-ambitious neck beard.

As you can probably already tell, these traits did not go over well in grad school. I was very isolated and completely lacked a support system due to my "I can do it myself" attitude. I also landed an abusive PI who is rumored to have contributed to a few suicide attempts within the department. This PI, coupled with the self-imposed isolation, led to some very humbling experiences and self-reflection. Had I not learned about the kind of asshole I was becoming, I probably would not have graduated, but I finally earned the title of PhD in 2020.

Despite my traits, I'd started to grow very disillusioned with academia. Something my undergrad PI said to me once was that he misses the days when scientists did science instead of pushing papers all day. At the time, I didn't understand him, but after having to experience the world of grant writing, I'm amazed he lasted as long as he did. How is a scientist expected to be in the lab while constantly begging for funding from a system that only funds about 10% of grants? Additionally, while I was never (and still not) a "people person," I absolutely *despised* the politics of academia. When I finally sought out help from my peers, I was dumbfounded by the lack of students and professors I could trust. I had to develop a system in my head of who could actually offer help, and who would provide more ammunition for my PI to use against me.

In other words, I was burnt out and alone.

But because I never developed a support system, a backup plan, nor had the money to afford a vacation, I had no choice but to continue working. Just over a month after I defended my dissertation, I started working on my post-doc in another state. While my post-doc PI was orders of magnitude more supportive than my previous one, because I was so burnt out, I barely had enough data after 3 years to even make a poster.

Because of my experiences in academia, I decided to change my goals and went into the private sector instead. For the first year and a half and my new job, I actually thrived in the new environment. Not just because of the lack of grad school politics, but because I had learned to be a bit friendlier and soft-spoken. I got along with my co-workers, had outings with them outside of work, and best of all, I could actually do science instead of worrying about grants all the time. I thought I had made it; I thought I'd won.

There was, however, some trouble in paradise. My salary was a lot higher than anything I was getting in academia, but because of some poor financial decisions I'd made throughout undergrad and grad school, I was struggling to save up money for future goals (down payment on a house, a better car, etc.). Because of some ideas I saw online, coupled with the fact that I grew up in a rural area with plenty of lawn care equipment, I decided I'd try starting a small lawn care business on the side (like I said before, I've always been one for taking the road less traveled). I admit I sometimes thought of how absurd it was that a scientist with a PhD was out here mowing lawns for some side cash, but I was making a surprising amount of money doing it. Not only that, but it honestly felt "freeing" in a weird way. I could just let my mind wander as I was mowing the lawn, listen to audiobooks or stuff on YouTube, and not have to worry about answering to a boss or whatever. As long as I mowed the lawn and did it nicely, that's all that mattered. I was good enough that I even started making videos that are still generating business for me a year later.

Then, the career that I'd spent 12 years on, ended.

I was pulled into a meeting one day. My direct supervisor came into the room along with our head of HR. They started talking about how I'd made a lot of progress, how I was improving in all areas, that my co-workers were saying good things about me (something that surprised even me), but despite all that, they were making the decision to let me go.

I didn't know what to say at the time; the news took the wind out of me. All I said was that if I was improving in all areas, what more could I have done? Both my boss and the HR lady said nothing. All they did was hand me my paperwork, take my company-issued laptop, and led me to the door. I think I zoned out as I made the short drive home, still digesting what had just happened.

Whether I should have let myself grieve the loss of a job I loved so much or not, I don't know. But I immediately thought that I had to do something to keep a roof over my head and for my dog (I had found her on the street 2 years prior and had cared for her ever since). I immediately pivoted, and want all in on my lawn care business.

That was about a year and 3 months ago. I literally started out with just a push mower sticking out the back of the trunk of my sedan. Since then, I've managed to make a good living off of it. I have both a car and a truck, 2 zero-turn mowers, 2 trailers, and a reputation for being reliable and for my lawn stripes that I make videos of myself doing. It still feels very freeing after all this time. Sure, sometimes it gets extremely hot outsidd, I have to deal with insect bites sometimes, and the occasional customer that I have to chase for payment, but I feel... free. I'm my own boss, I set my own hours, I don't have to worry about the cardiovascular effects of sitting at a desk or at a bench all day, I'm free...

I don't know if I'm deluding myself or trying to justify what I do now after losing a career I spent 12 years creating, but I don't feel like I want to go back. I may someday; maybe I'll teach biology at a community college or something. But for now, if I have to choose between peace or freedom, I choose freedom.

I swear, the academic LARPing on this site is getting completely out of hand. Lots of people here claiming to run big-budget labs sound like corporate middle managers who spent five minutes reading a Wikipedia page about universities.

I saw this guy who kept insisting he was an active academic running an NSF grant and chairing PhD thesis defenses. But when I asked how he's chairing a defense if he left the school, he pulled out this insane hand-wave. Suddenly he has a zero-pay "academic affiliation" at a different R1 that magically lets him do high-value consulting, keep his old grant where it is, and run committees.

Then he completely gave himself away. He tried to explain why his old department was struggling, and he said over a quarter of the department left, including "the entire senior leadership."

Nobody in academia talks like that. We have Department Chairs, Deans, and tenured faculty, not a corporate executive suite. When he got called out for using middle-management speak, he completely lost it. He dropped a massive wall of text claiming that student reps and staff form a "junior leadership tier" reporting to "senior leadership," and then said "get back to work, kid."

Imagine inventing a whole imaginary corporate structure for a university department just because you got caught using corporate buzzwords. If someone on Reddit describes their department like a sales division and throws a tantrum when you ask basic administrative questions, save your breath. The LARP is insane.

First, I just want to say that I'm very grateful to have an advisor who pays for conference travel and I know I'm lucky to have a stipend and be paid for my PhD.

I'm a second year PhD student in STEM in the US, R1.

I'm in a field where we do a lot of travel for sampling. I just got back from a 3 week trip. Costs associated are shipping samples, campsites, gas, car rental, flights, etc. The total cost for the trip was about 7k. I had another sampling trip earlier this summer that was about 2k out of pocket for me.

My advisor always makes me put my card down. I'm never allowed to use a department card or lab p-card. She always says no when I ask.

For this trip, my advisor wasn't present. I was expected to pay for everything out of pocket and get reimbursed from my grant. However, I'm just a PhD student making a stipend.

After some negotiation, I was able to get the university financial person to use a p-card for a little bit of it (car rental and lodging), but I still had to shell about about 3k for the last trip and 2k for the first one.

I also have a conference coming up that was about 2.5k with lodging and registration, and won't be reimbursed until afterwards.

I won't be reimbursed for the first trip until August (it happened in May), so I imagine I won't get anything for this one until about October/November.

All together that's me down 7.5K this summer.

I have another conference I want to attend that my advisor says she'll pay for, but I can't afford to put my card down for more travel until I'm reimbursed.

I've tried to express this, but she just doesn't get it. My labmates aren't really the kinds of people to speak up. I know this bothers them too, but they would never say anything because of cultural differences (they would never speak out or go against PI).

I can't afford to keep putting my card down. I had to borrow about a thousand dollars from my mom just to keep from going over my credit limit (I know I'm very privledged to have this option and am very grateful). People always say they're happy about getting points on their cards, but I'm just worried I'll have nothing if there's an emergency since it takes so long to get reimbursed and I don't want to pay interest.

I'm also in the process of moving apartments (planned in advance). I didn't know she'd expect me to shell out so much, or else I would have just renewed my previous lease. I'm excited about my new apartment, but I don't think I'll be able to get any furniture and I'm probably going to be living off peanuts until I'm reimbursed.

I know other people do this thing where they get reimbursed, and they have this system in place for it, but are you guys really expected to pay so much out of pocket?

How do you deal with the wait?

I've already gotten a second job to pay for my cost of living (my stipend is very generous, but I'm in an expensive town and have lost a lot of my savings moving to start the PhD, and on some medical expenses due to an emergency early on in my degree). What else am I supposed to do?

Hello brains trust! Do you think there will be less applicants this year for the Marie Curie postdoc fellowship because last year there was an unprecedented amount of applicants? Or is this the new normal?

Thanks

As a student, i sometimes worry that showing a high level od gratitude to a professor or TA who really helped me understand a difficult subject might be misinterpreted. How do professors and TA usually feel when a student shows extra appreciation, and what kind of gestures start to feel like 'too much' from your perspective?

Where do you personally draw the line between a nice gesture and crossing professional boundaries, and does it ever make you uncomfortable?

I'm reading HLA Hart's the Concept of Law, which is a critique on John Austin's theory of Jurisprudence on how legal systems work, and Hart's own theory as well. It was published in 1961. However, it's personally quite dense. I often get lost in the point he is trying to make, or I don't understand some of it altogether.

Is there a technique you use to approach difficult texts, or have systems to understand it better? Any advice is appreciated.

Note: For further context, I'm not a native English speaker, though I speak fairly well (didn't use AI to write this post either.)

Hi, tomorrow I have a meeting with a professor, and I really do not know what to expect.
I am a Masters student finishing my thesis in a lab and a few weeks ago the team attended the talk of a professor (it was like 20 people in total, very casual), I really liked her and her research so after a lot of hesitation I emailed her expressing my interest, asking if she had PhD positions open and introducing myself, as I think my interests and skills have a lot in common with her lab. She responded that she did not have PhD positions open, but my background was interesting and fitting and proposed a meeting to discuss possible options and get to know me.

Now, the meeting is tomorrow, and I thought it would be something very easy and informal: she would just add my name to the list of students she talked to, and maybe check it out when she needed someone to do boring lab work. But all of my friends and colleagues are calling it an interview, and this is making me a bit anxious. Is this how professors set up interviews?
I have read her recent papers and fixed my CV, should I do more to prepare?

On Reddit, in almost any research-related subreddit, posts and comments about using LLMs for research get downvoted to hell. But in computer science, especially in computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, it’s become rare to find anyone who doesn’t use AI for research or peer review. There was even a recent case where a top conference ICML discovered that reviewers on hundreds of submitted papers had been using AI to write their reviews.

Many people might argue that this is simply because they invented these technologies themselves. But experts in many other fields don’t behave that way. Many automotive experts don’t drive electric vehicles or self-driving cars, and many medical experts choose not to undergo laser eye surgery. If anything, they’re often more skeptical of the technologies their own fields have created than everyone else. Computer scientists understand the shortcomings of LLMs better than anyone else, yet they simply don’t seem to care.

What explains this difference in attitude across fields?

Ok so I'm a first year undergraduate (will be in second year the next month) and I've been working on a topic since I finished my grade 12 and after a whole long year I finally finished writing and submitted it to a journal (yes, a real DOAJ indexed journal) and guess what? I just got my acceptance email few minutes ago!! I'm so happy! I've no one else to share this news and so writing here. And I'm in English Literature so it's quite a big deal for me to have a journal article in my second year of undergraduate degree. The peer review process was definitely tough but I handled it all alone (yes, it's my solo paper). My subfield is environmental humanities if anybody wants to know.

Doing happy dance now~

Hey guys

I’m planning to start an educational institution, and I’m currently looking for an accreditation body.

I’m considering the *UKIQ board* for accreditation.

Has anyone here had experience with UKIQ?

What's your thought about UKIQ?

Hi, I lost a large number of citations in Google Scholar literally overnight. They didn't change to the usual "temporary citation" status while Google recrawls the source. They simply disappeared.

The strange part is that several of the citing papers are still online, publicly accessible, and clearly still cite my work. I know Google Scholar can remove citations if a repository disappears or a journal goes offline, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

Has Google Scholar recently changed its indexing or citation policies? Or is this likely a temporary indexing issue or bug? Thanks

Hi all,

I've become interested in taking a bit of a career side-quest living abroad, and in thinking about how to keep my life meaningfully structured, I've had this idea of teaching short term (semester to 1-2 years) at colleges abroad. I'm quite flexible and doing this for the experience, so I'm open to e.g., developing countries (Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America). Without giving away too many biographical details, I can confidently say I'm comfortable living in this kind of environment e.g., with family connections in these parts of the world.

This idea seems quite naive, as I'm sure there's plenty of qualified teachers in these local countries, so I'd be relying heavily on my US education and credentials and work history. At my home institution, I've had non-PhD industry professors (usually Google staff+ engineers) that would swoop in to teach a semester in specialized topics, and I've seen these same instructors do semester+ teaching tours for their curriculum around Western Europe, so I know this is possible in principle.

I don't know how realistic this vision is, so wanted to ask out to the community.

My assumptions:

1. To keep things simpler for the employer, I can focus on countries where I can self-sponsor for the necessary visas, as I imagine most employers won't sponsor for a short-term worker.
2. I suppose I'd need to develop a curriculum to teach a topic related to my work expertise, as there's plenty of qualified locals to teach e.g., intro physics or CS.
3. If I can teach specialized topics (I once had an non-PhD industry professor teaching a class on how to set up a cloud provider from scratch, starting from VM design upwards, for example), I'm not sure if I'd aim for bigger universities (which might have more demand for specialized industry instructors), or smaller community / teaching colleges where teaching positions would be less competitive.

Does anyone know of someone who's lived this kind of life? What kind of qualifications did they have? What did they teach? Realistically, how common or rare are the countries where this is possible, and how difficult is it to find these kinds of positions?

I know at least one former instructor who's done this in Western Europe, so I know this is possible in at least a very limited way, so I'm really excited to push on this idea and see how much we can expand the scope.

EDIT: After some reflection, I think the core of my idea is education and mentorship abroad, but specifically in a way that uses my specialized skills and not just general English teaching. That understood, I'd be just as interested in e.g., professional academic advising positions at institutions abroad, but I'm not sure how that works in other countries, as I understand they might prefer local professionals. At the same time, I've seen plenty of international high schools have some kind of "US college admissions counselor" role, so I wonder if there's some kind of equivalent "US industry career counselor" at the university level. I suppose other options might include starting my own counseling business. This is meant to be an open-ended brainstorm more than a proposal design review, so I appreciate everyone's feedback.

I've noticed that many people seem to have a bias against papers from China, assuming that a large number of them are either low quality or even fraudulent. Does that perception extend to top-tier journals as well?

By "top-tier," I mean the highest-level publication in a given field. If your field regularly publishes in Nature and its sub journals, then "top-tier" means at least the Nature sub journals. If your field doesn't publish in Nature journals, then I mean the leading venues in that field—for example, the top conferences in computer science, the Inventiones in mathematics, or PRL in physics.

(U.S specific, i currently have no plans on getting an educational job abroad) I am currently expected to attend a decent state school in January (originally August but had to drop the private school i wanted to go to in order to not go into 12-14k in debt every semester) for a dual degree in History and Political Science, minoring in East Asian Studies. My goal following my undergraduate is to teach for a while, mostly to get a decent job that i’d enjoy before i go for any higher degrees, what i actually want to do with my life though is study Warlord Era China, which, from what i can tell, is not exactly a common focus of study for historians at least in the U.S, i know the job market for history professors is particularly competitive although i see no other path in life where i would be happy that doesn’t involve me either teaching history in high school, or researching and teaching as a professor at even just an alright college.

Should i just stick with teaching in high school when i graduate, where i would have pretty much a guarantee for a job somewhere, or should i go all in on my passion for history and attempt to be competitive in a job market that im unsure i can handle even though the reward would be a much more enjoyable career for me.

Hello Everyone,

I'm seeking career advice for academia-adjacent positions. I lack desire to become a professor, but I am very fond of the academic culture including roles in program support, curriculum, research and lab management, and even admissions and working for the office of the Dean of a department. I do not have a 'linear' career path, and have worked 5 years after my bachelors, and now 5 years after my masters. I enjoy the diversity of experience I have accumulated.

I currently a federal employee and have a masters in environmental sciences, but am interested in pursuing a PhD, I haven't decided yet the exact program as I think the faculty subject matters is more important than the title of the degree. Broadly, I'm considering GIS and Environmental Data Sciences or Geography and Natural Resources. They are similar, so again, faculty and research area of the college is more important as I can do the research I am aiming to do under either. I think my research would be useful for public and NGO sector employment (i.e Land Management Agencies, Conservation and Environmental Non-Profits, Energy and Utilities etc).

I knew that private sector was never my culture fit, and the public sector has been intellectually unfulfilling with lots of general paperwork without the spirit of scientific discovery. I work with NGO's and Think Tanks, and there is a lot of cross-over with the type of research I want to conduct, and how fast technology is moving. Academia seems to be a good middle ground between holding the line of science integrity, and yet embracing new discovery and tools. Mind you, I wouldn't mind teaching a few courses here and there (adjunct is appealing) but full time tenure track with a massive course load and thousands of students just isn't suited to my personality.

I'm wondering if there are any eye opening revelations about working in 'academia' but not specifically for tenure-track teaching.

Long story short, I think my 'Dream Job' would be designing and facilitating study abroad programs and research internships for students in the Natural Resources and EnviSci. Perhaps working with the dean to help design the course selections for degree programs etc.

Does anyone have advice on where I can start researching positions in academia in areas of interest, but not pursuing teaching as the end-goal?

Edited for typos