In his new book, Campus Confidential: How College Works, or Doesn’t, for Professors, Parents and Students, author Jacques Berlinerblau explains why he thinks the tenure system is falling apart, and why many PhDs are leaving the world of academia for better employment.
“The American academic enterprise is all upside down, and we have a peculiar incentivisation system, he says, "whereby the most accomplished professors, as measured by their research accomplishments, spend the least time in the classroom with undergraduates.”
Meanwhile, he says, non-tenured faculty are overworked and underpaid.
"The average adjunct professor in the U.S. gets $2500 a course. A quarter of contingent faculty in the U.S. are living at or beneath the poverty level. They have no job security... They have no tenure protections."
On this edition of River to River, host Ben Kieffer talks with Berlinerblau about the issues he sees in higher education today, and what prospective students and parents should be aware of during the college selection process.
