This is probably a very naive question, but could somebody explain how education is becoming so expensive in the United States and yet there seem to be so few tenure-track positions available? I understand that the number of Ph.D.s has grown quite significantly in the last few decades, but so has the cost of attendance of almost all colleges. The number of tenure-track positions, meanwhile, hasn't caught up at all.
I'm still amazed to consider that the college I attended, had I not received scholarships, would have cost me $50,000/year to attend in total. Yet I can't actually think of a single faculty member in the department I majored in who attained tenure while I was there. I do remember somebody joining with a Ph.D. from Harvard, having studied under a renowned mentor, for a non-tenure-track and low-paying "lecturer" post. This greatly talented person, naturally, is now gone, presumably at some other transient and low-paying post elsewhere. I just looked up one of my professors, who was a brilliant topologist and knot theorist doing a postdoc, and was surprised to find she's abandoned academia and is working as an analyst in oil & gas now.
I'm still amazed to consider that the college I attended, had I not received scholarships, would have cost me $50,000/year to attend in total. Yet I can't actually think of a single faculty member in the department I majored in who attained tenure while I was there. I do remember somebody joining with a Ph.D. from Harvard, having studied under a renowned mentor, for a non-tenure-track and low-paying "lecturer" post. This greatly talented person, naturally, is now gone, presumably at some other transient and low-paying post elsewhere. I just looked up one of my professors, who was a brilliant topologist and knot theorist doing a postdoc, and was surprised to find she's abandoned academia and is working as an analyst in oil & gas now.