Money, money, money
Yes, I just quoted an Abba song. I also wanted to quote Pink Floyd (“Money, get away!”) but instead of talking about the excesses of money here, I want to tackle the total lack of money — ie: poverty — in academia. (Side nerdy note: monetary policy people, I know I’m not actually talking about money!). But academics need to reckon with more than just poverty. We need to deal with the overall undervaluing of the blood, sweat, tears, time, and sacrifice by junior scholars, and not just dismiss it as a “part of the job” or “that’s just what you have to do to make it”.
As a child, I remember my immigrant mother telling me that in America, it was impolite to talk about money, politics, and religion. I’ve always been happy to discuss politics and religion, but I continue to have a strange relationship with money. By strange, I mean I hate talking about it. I hate even thinking about it. I currently have what seems like a long, half-completed list of financial adulting that I’m avoiding, and I never thought I would say I’m avoiding tackling the list by writing!
It’s time for us in academia to get real and honest about pay. I don’t mean in a vague “I’m paid really poorly” kind of way but a specific “in grad school, I made $16,000 per year” way. And I want to tie that to many of our willingness to tolerate poverty wages, precarity, and abuse for a job “we love”. All we have to do it look at Academic Twitter for the state of this conversation.
This thread below spread like wildfire throughout the academic twittersphere a couple of weeks ago for its total lack of recognition about the fact that most PhDs will not get tenure track (TT) jobs, most “professors” are adjuncts, and so on and so on. Regardless of this prof’s well intentioned “hey colleagues, don’t leave!” pleas, it points to a bigger problem in academia: that some how loving one’s job can somehow make up for the total lack of stability, pay, and benefits for the majority.
I love being a professor, too, but sadly, love doesn’t pay my bills, sustain life, resolve precarity, put down roots in a place, undo intense inequities in academia, prevent the bloating of postdocs as a rank, Visiting Assistant Professorships, adjunctification, and the seemingly perpetual holding pattern of contingent academia. And let’s be real: when you’re faculty, how much are you really getting to do the parts of the job you love that brought you there in the first place?
As the recent University and College Union (UCU) strike in the UK underscores, any sort of livelihood gains from the recent past keep getting eroded. At a recent teach-in, some of our UK colleagues on strike told us about how UK higher ed justifies its abysmal pay through promising a good pension… but now universities are cutting pensions by about 35% even as workloads increase, pay is cut, and jobs become more precarious.
I’m not interested in debates about “oh, well, at least they can strike” or “oh, well you can just move somewhere else” or “oh, well, pay in N. America is so much better”. While true, these arguments take away from how academia is in crisis everywhere. For people who truly love their jobs, who show up everyday for their students and colleagues, we deserve more than to be some calculus in a business.
Ok, so why do I want to talk about money? Last summer when I was waffling about my career choices, I was telling everyone that I wasn’t an academic for the money so I could make it through another year at postdoc pay. It’s true, I am not an academic for the pay. However, I also need to live. Both can be true, and sometimes you gotta stop the self-flagellation and admit you need better pay to live, pay your bills and debts, and have a comfortable life!
This month is my six month anniversary at my new job, and I’m already getting my first raise. I got *ONE* 1% raise in six years of grad school. That long list of financial adulting that I’m avoiding stems from needing to drag myself out of grad school poverty and debt, as well as to start saving for my future (because God forbid, this country would have a public pension). I finally feel some kind of financial stability to be able to live comfortably (I reserve critique of Seattle’s wild housing market for a different time) and afford the life I want, and quite frankly, deserve. We all deserve these things.
I find it a travesty that grad students are paid so poorly and for such wildly different, but no less intense, workloads. In the first few years of grad school, I made about $15,500 for a 9 month contract. If I remember correctly, after taxes and so forth, $850 per month was deposited in my bank account every month. That’s right, non-academics, we get paid that little for 75% of the year and yes, I worked more than 40 hours a week. It’s a fallacy to say we get summers off. It’s when we get all of the writing done that we didn’t get done during the year AND we make $0 so it’s also time for us to get second jobs. Sure, I went to grad school in the Midwest, which is cheaper, but the main conclusion I underscore is that we should ALL earn more year round instead of battling over who made the least.
For my postdoc, I was paid $55,000 a year, got an extra $15K research and speaker money (but doesn’t pay my bills!), and had an employer sponsored retirement account! I felt so rich until I realized where I lived (who knew New Hampshire was so expensive?!) and started paying my bills. I also lived everyday knowing that this position was coming to an end after three years. On the one hand, I was engaging in deep comparative suffering: “I’m so lucky to have a three year postdoc. Others aren’t so lucky”. On the other, I skeptically sipped on the proverbial coolaid, being told that I was special, that I got a postdoc with an acceptance rate of .03% so it was only a matter of time before I got that TT job, and also that I’d never have it so good on the TT. I was sucking up the low pay and precarity for the long game of a stable, “well paid”, TT job doing the work I love.
Then it came down to the wire. I had interviewed around to no avail until I was offered another fancy postdoc. You’d think that fancy postdocs would pay well but they don’t. I was offered a $60,000 stipend plus $5,000 research/childcare money. Ok, sure, that sounds like an upgrade buuuuuutttt I found out that the stipend gets paid out to you in full and it was up to you to figure out your taxes.
At the same time, I applied for some non-academic jobs. Similar to the academic job market, I applied to about 50 jobs, only got one interview, and one job. Throughout that process, I thought to myself: “I’m just going to see how far I can go… I just want to see what’s out there”. But when it came down to decision making time, I realized that, like any relationship, love just wasn’t enough, especially for a job that will never love you back. I was being offered more than any Assistant Professorship I knew of (and that I was never going to get). I got a pension (those exist in America still?!), my employer pays my healthcare premium, I am overtime eligible, I get to live where I want, I don’t have to hustle on the job market again unless I want to, and the list goes on…
To respond to the nay-sayers and the inner critic saying “well, your job isn’t perfect”, you’re absolutely right. It’s still a job. But my employer and I don’t expect it to be my life. No job is perfect, but what I can say is that my mental and physical health is so much better (I wish I could talk to my therapist and let her know…), my evenings and weekends are my own, I can go on vacation, and I can pay off my debts. Moreover, I’m slowly figuring out how to keep my academic life alive and I don’t mind doing it because: 1. my projects are passion projects; 2. I am paid well enough that I don’t mind doing these other things “for free”. Honestly, the stability of knowing I didn’t have to make myself vulnerable only to be shredded to pieces on the job market, move next year, or be hustling for money and healthcare constantly is enough for me.
It’s true, I wasn’t on the road to being a prof for the money. But at what point are we avoiding hard questions when we are taught to feel, and end up internalizing, a kind of martyrdom that makes the poverty wages and unlivable working conditions a necessary precondition for the promise of a unicorn TT job? I just came to realize that the TT job I wanted didn’t exist. Call me naive for thinking that the TT job I wanted could exist, but I came to realize that I would not continue to make huge sacrifices for academia, especially not to stay in poverty and indebtedness. So based on my changing priorities in life, I chose more pay and benefits for a differently stimulating job. I had to tell myself that it was ok to want more pay, better benefits, and good living and working conditions. I wasn’t failing my students or my colleagues for wanting those things for myself. And you know what? All of them have been so overjoyed for and supportive of me. I don’t regret one bit letting go to explore how I could stitch together my own path.
Here’s to getting what we’re worth and paying it forward to our future selves.
