Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Oh, those halcyon student days
CNN reports that the University of Austin is the U.S.'s top party school. According to the Princeton Review, "It topped the overall list -- its first time atop the Princeton Review chart -- by ranking second in the use of hard liquor, third in beer drinking and 13th in marijuana smoking."
I have a question: are these rich kids getting hammered, or poor kids drinking to forget? When I was in Detroit last, I saw a party store - a decrepit, squat, single storied building with a brick facade hidden behind iron bars. I never got to go inside, but apparently it sells liquor, not party favours, and the cashier sits behind a solid wall of bullet-proof glass. As I said to a friend, poor people don't always take their poison calmly.
Part-ay.
I'm feeling a certain affinity to the lumpens of Detroit - though not, I suspect, to the middle class brats of American schools. I just got my job contract for the first year of my PhD. I have no problem sharing actual figures, as you'll see.
I'll make $1,085 a month. From that, I'll pay $575 a month in rent, get $400 deducted automatically for tuition (they wanted to deduct $467), leaving me $110 a month to pay for phone ($35), food ($100 if I'm lucky) and transportation ($80 if I cycle a lot.) Which leaves me a grand total of $-105 per month.
That doesn't count the $67/month debt I'll owe the university at the end of term. It doesn't count buying books, deoderant, a toothbrush. God forbid I see a $4 movie at the rep cinema on occasion.
I feel sorry for anyone who robs me - by rights, they'd end up giving me money instead.
Cute, but can he afford it?
For the 'privilege' of education, I have to shell out hundreds of dollars a month. I'm not getting it back; grad students wind up an average of $20,000 in debt. That seems awfully low for four-six years of living in the red - I bet it's higher. Getting a PhD isn't a ticket to a plum job, either; tenure is extremely hard to get, many PhDs work years as contract faculty; given they're only paid for class time, that works out to $11 an hour. You can't even pay interest on a debt at $11 an hour. I made way more as a secretary.
I find it telling that society values secretaries more than PhDs. There's a lot of exchange-value attached to administrators: they make large organizations run efficiently (or at least they're supposed to), providing key institutional supports for profit-making or state regulation. I'm highly critical of 'arts' PhD work in general, but it has a huge intrinsic value: it's about exploring society and culture, not making money. It has use-value to somebody, but precious little exchange-value, and that's where I see this immiseration as insiduous.
That degree in Anthropology makes you eminently qualified to shear my corgis!
Over the past decade, tuition has more than doubled. Result: either rich students attend, or poor students do and have to go into debt. They have to choose fields or projects that have money. The arts aren't funded; science & engineering are, so the enterprising student will go where the money is (not that humanities majors will start power engineering - they'll just drop out.) Result: businesses gain control over higher education. Students have to make themselves marketable, or else. University becomes a means to provide technical workers for the capitalist elite.
I attended an info session with a university president once; she said she was going to make grad school 'free' through partnerships with major private corporations. (She wanted to raise undergrad tuition significantly.) Major corporations will fund things that help the bottom line; even their hands-off, 'prestige' programs will absorb their biases (having just come from a corporate-funded department, I know of what I speak.) The message: toe the line, help us rule and profit better, or get out.
Why are the Young Republicans so anxious to censure leftist profs? All they have to do is wait, their precious free market will do it for them.
By next year at this time, if I'm blogging about teaching English in SE Asia, you'll know why. In the meantime, I feel like partying.
It's OK kids - I'm a grad student!
I have a question: are these rich kids getting hammered, or poor kids drinking to forget? When I was in Detroit last, I saw a party store - a decrepit, squat, single storied building with a brick facade hidden behind iron bars. I never got to go inside, but apparently it sells liquor, not party favours, and the cashier sits behind a solid wall of bullet-proof glass. As I said to a friend, poor people don't always take their poison calmly.
Part-ay.
I'm feeling a certain affinity to the lumpens of Detroit - though not, I suspect, to the middle class brats of American schools. I just got my job contract for the first year of my PhD. I have no problem sharing actual figures, as you'll see.
I'll make $1,085 a month. From that, I'll pay $575 a month in rent, get $400 deducted automatically for tuition (they wanted to deduct $467), leaving me $110 a month to pay for phone ($35), food ($100 if I'm lucky) and transportation ($80 if I cycle a lot.) Which leaves me a grand total of $-105 per month.
That doesn't count the $67/month debt I'll owe the university at the end of term. It doesn't count buying books, deoderant, a toothbrush. God forbid I see a $4 movie at the rep cinema on occasion.
I feel sorry for anyone who robs me - by rights, they'd end up giving me money instead.
Cute, but can he afford it?
For the 'privilege' of education, I have to shell out hundreds of dollars a month. I'm not getting it back; grad students wind up an average of $20,000 in debt. That seems awfully low for four-six years of living in the red - I bet it's higher. Getting a PhD isn't a ticket to a plum job, either; tenure is extremely hard to get, many PhDs work years as contract faculty; given they're only paid for class time, that works out to $11 an hour. You can't even pay interest on a debt at $11 an hour. I made way more as a secretary.
I find it telling that society values secretaries more than PhDs. There's a lot of exchange-value attached to administrators: they make large organizations run efficiently (or at least they're supposed to), providing key institutional supports for profit-making or state regulation. I'm highly critical of 'arts' PhD work in general, but it has a huge intrinsic value: it's about exploring society and culture, not making money. It has use-value to somebody, but precious little exchange-value, and that's where I see this immiseration as insiduous.
That degree in Anthropology makes you eminently qualified to shear my corgis!
Over the past decade, tuition has more than doubled. Result: either rich students attend, or poor students do and have to go into debt. They have to choose fields or projects that have money. The arts aren't funded; science & engineering are, so the enterprising student will go where the money is (not that humanities majors will start power engineering - they'll just drop out.) Result: businesses gain control over higher education. Students have to make themselves marketable, or else. University becomes a means to provide technical workers for the capitalist elite.
I attended an info session with a university president once; she said she was going to make grad school 'free' through partnerships with major private corporations. (She wanted to raise undergrad tuition significantly.) Major corporations will fund things that help the bottom line; even their hands-off, 'prestige' programs will absorb their biases (having just come from a corporate-funded department, I know of what I speak.) The message: toe the line, help us rule and profit better, or get out.
Why are the Young Republicans so anxious to censure leftist profs? All they have to do is wait, their precious free market will do it for them.
By next year at this time, if I'm blogging about teaching English in SE Asia, you'll know why. In the meantime, I feel like partying.
It's OK kids - I'm a grad student!
