I read a much longer article about this, and I wish I knew where it was, but the oversupply problem is far more pronounced in the humanities, where the average time to graduate is peaking towards 10 years, yet all the PhD confers is the ability to teach, where we know there are few jobs. I think that such a system is, in essence, exploitative.
The problem is far less in Computer Science, where your skills transfer over to The Real World relatively easily, and companies like Microsoft and Google value them. This means the potential job pool is much bigger.
As a CS PhD student, of course I feel underpaid. Universities have reached a point where they can convince students that what they are doing is being paid for being taught, which must be a great deal, right? However, everyone else calls this "on the job training" or "starting at the bottom of the ladder" and they get paid better for it. However, I think about the benefits I get (work when/where I like, use whatever language I like, nap when I like, release all my work as open-source, never feel like I'm waking up to "work", don't have to worry about mundane but potentially catastrophic life things like health insurance), and it does even out somewhat.
Given that there is an oversupply problem in the humanities, why don't humanities professors get paid substantially less than science professors? In my experience, there seems to be little difference in pay between humanities professors and science professors.
The problem is far less in Computer Science, where your skills transfer over to The Real World relatively easily, and companies like Microsoft and Google value them. This means the potential job pool is much bigger.
As a CS PhD student, of course I feel underpaid. Universities have reached a point where they can convince students that what they are doing is being paid for being taught, which must be a great deal, right? However, everyone else calls this "on the job training" or "starting at the bottom of the ladder" and they get paid better for it. However, I think about the benefits I get (work when/where I like, use whatever language I like, nap when I like, release all my work as open-source, never feel like I'm waking up to "work", don't have to worry about mundane but potentially catastrophic life things like health insurance), and it does even out somewhat.