This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house.
I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
It's possible to devote too much time and energy to education, i.e. diminishing returns.
Academia is, in essence, a multi-level marketing scheme that produces more of itself, and will (if given unlimited resources from other areas of society) expand until it takes all resources simply replicating more of itself.
Many poor countries have enormously bloated education sectors.
No it isn’t. You’re implying education = higher standard of living, more jobs. It doesn’t.
One man can make a video lesson and teach millions, so more educators doesn’t mean more educated.
You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad. Yet UCLA doesn’t operate on 1:1 ratios.
Finally, what makes you think there will be less educators? Very likely UCLA can rely on the rich and nerdy people who are willing to subsidize their own careers. This already happens in many fields.
Really finally, this is a shit practice. I’d like to see an audit of where the money goes such that the most student focused educators become last in line to get paid.
> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.
Anything beyond it isn't bad, per se, but it is less optional.
> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.
A here does not imply B. If it did then the natural conclusion is that the world only needs one singular educator.
In reality there's a sliding scale where more students to a given educator results in lower quality education, but a greater number of educated. The art is balancing these concerns.
It is if you want to continue educating new physicists.
'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.
> Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
There are plenty of people who would be totally happy to step into this professor's shoes at his current rate of pay just to have a position in academia. We have too many PhDs—there are more people who want a position in academia than academia can support.
We're not faced with the prospect of not being able to train a next generation of physicists, but there's a real possibility that the next generation doesn't view academia as the ideal place to be—the physics equivalent of Broadway. If that happens, fewer people will put up with low-valued positions and a dangled tenure carrot, and the college job market will adapt.
In the meantime we're not going to solve the problem of academic jobs being overvalued by the workforce by artificially inflating pay for the lucky few who landed an academic job at all.
Of course you are correct, nobody is ever promised anything like the ability to fulfill their dreams or to live a decent quality of life. But maybe the universities could pay them a living wage for teaching six classes a week.
$70k is a living wage in Los Angeles; he his homeless by choice. To be clear, I’m not saying he is not underpaid. He might need a roommate and to live in a crappy apartment and not in Westwood to make it workable, which does not seem fair for a PhD teaching physics. But it’s not homeless level.
When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops.
Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing.
> the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing
I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, even a brand new (i.e. young) one, not have their own place? I realized that I didn't have a good reason to justify the status quo (where a home of your own is out of reach), only that it was the status quo, and the thrust of my old position really just came down to something akin to the old saw that Hardship-<X> is good for you because "it builds character"—even though I'd never really found that argument persuasive when I'd encounter it elsewhere. (Just like the old retort "life's not fair", it seemed I'd only ever encounter it from someone in the process of actively trying to screw you over while trying to paint your indignance about it as unreasonable.)
Not saying everyone should expect the works, but I can't exactly fault anyone who would be content with a 12x10 kitchen attached to an 8x10 office that doubles as a bedroom but isn't able to have it. And that's without even addressing the fact that we're likely talking about a situation where you're losing all this money on something you didn't even get equity for!
I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement.
And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything, even after that time my housemate attempted to clean their vomit off the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning with the communal Roomba. I guess that was hardship of a sort, but hardship creates friends and memories — I don’t think I built an ounce of “character”, but I had a hell of a time.
> Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy)
k. So you're not against strawmanning.
> And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything
That's good for you, I guess. Are you acquainted with Rob K. Henderson and what he calls "luxury beliefs"? Or abfan1127[1]? It's easy to discount having "a quiet place to study"[2] if you've never been harmed by not having it and your response to your roommates' youthfully stupid hijinx involves grins and not grief.
It is also that US is mostly filled with either very large single family homes or apartments in areas where rents are generally always high. A focus on efficient, individual space that is like 400 sq ft. dense studios but which actually translates into lower rent (e.g. 2500$ in the example to somewhere 1000-1500$ is needed). A lot of reforms and time needed for this.
This is one of the things I miss about Tokyo: there are plenty of small apartments there at relatively affordable prices. I personally would rather have a 400 sq ft unit to myself than to live in a shared house or apartment.
It’s not always easy living with roommates (I don’t like it myself), but we all have to make choices. Unless we’re wealthy, we can’t have it all. For many people it’s either roommates or a long commute, and I know people who have roommates and a long commute since that’s all they can afford. It still beats homelessness.
OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets.
I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Yes, it may not be enough to meet some arbitrary standard, but it's insane to say that the alternative is being homeless. This is just a spoiled rich kid who isn't making enough to keep their previous standard of living. There's tons of working class people in that same community getting by on way less than 70k who aren't getting articles written about them.
You've done a bit of a bait and switch, "fulfill their dreams" and "decent quality of life" are two very different standards. One, sure, we're in a society and sometimes that calls for sacrifice, the other, if we can't promise a decent life we shouldn't be surprised when people break the contract and act in ways that hurt the common good.
i don't think i've done a bait and switch and generally don't actually know what you mean by saying that i have done so. my point in that sentence was simply that nothing is promised by life. society does have norms and people do have values. i never said that i don't understand (nor did i intend to imply or portray that i don't) why people would act in ways that are not to, or hurt, "the common good". it is clear why someone who doesn't feel like their life is comfortable when they are trying to better "the common good" would act against that same common good in order to get some peace or enjoyment out of their own existence.
Supply and demand, the pay would increase if there was no one willing to take the job. Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
> Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage...
I think you'll find that there's a lot of overlap in the group of people who think this guy should be paid more and those who want more pay for the people you named.
> I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
I'm not sure I'm prepared to cosign on the idea that the guy saving me a trip to pick up my own dinner is producing the same value as the guy educating the next generation of physicts.
And then might the society be worse off for lacking the physics/scientific advancements by not supporting adequately an an individual to remain on the scientific path.
I'm of the mind that if we had the best in the field educating the next generations and compensated them well that we would end up with better qualified graduates. It seems like this would be the result at all levels of education, really.
In America we are doing the opposite, and then wondering why the results are sub optimal.
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.
> should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.
The problem is that everyone has different ideas about what helps society.
At least the current system, where people are compensated based on supply and demand, people actually want what's being produced. In contrast to the old soviet system where top down production decisions mean that what's "best for society" is of no use to pretty much anyone except those people who needed to fill their quota.
> The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much
The problem is not that those people are underpaid.
The problem is the morass of regulation that prevents people building enough housing where they want to live, which keeps the cost of housing high.
And look - I get it - most of that regulation is there for a reason: it's popular. People like it. People like having rent control, or limited increases in property taxes. People in single family houses like not having apartment buildings go up next door to them. People like seeing green space on office campuses. People like mandatory parking requirements for homes and businesses.
But ultimately, a high cost of living is deeply corrosive to society, and all the little perks that come from these regulations just aren't worth it.
> All forms of structuring society are "regulation"
If you're going to count the emergent structure that forms from voluntary cooperation as "regulation", the word loses its meaning.
> Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.
Sure it does.
Laws aren't self-enforcing: the the thing that makes laws "real" is violence (or the threat of violence) backing them up.
For those who are unable to avail themselves of remedies under the law - typically because they're engaging in illegal behavior - they can skip the law bit and move straight to violence.
Basically every criminal organization or individual operates in this manner.
I'm not saying it's nice to live this way - I very much like living in a place with a (mostly) functioning legal system. But Capitalism very much does exist without private property law.
In the age of precision psychological influence and constant bombardment with low grade mind control, Capitalism is trash. To the most rapacious, the loudest, the most insidious go the spoils. If we're gonna keep the current system we need to slam the ban hammer on advertising and marketing with righteous fury.
> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services.
Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is axiomatically fair?
A lot of people always act tough until toughness comes to hit them in their face. People usually forget that we all live on the chopping board and it is a matter of high probability that eventually we all get some sort of chop.
The end result of this is that only people who are independently wealthy or who can’t make the private sector work for them end up as profs, which seems like a worse situation for society.
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Why should that employer's dreams take primacy over anyone elses?
The answer: there isn't a reason why. All semblance of economic activity is based on a fiction. That fiction has been guided to structurally elevate a subset of people's wishes and motivations over everyone else's, including yours. And you're totally okay with that state of affairs. Useful idiot much?
Can at least applaud the guy for sticking to his principles. Sometimes society needs a good nut kick to realize it's destroying itself. That it collectively takes so many ruined lives to do so is the true tragedy of our times.
Academia is exploitative. The financial incentives are a symptom of the bigger problem. Is university career training for industry or for an academic track? It is not made clear to people entering the system, and is often murky to everyone years into a degree. There is encouragement for education for its own sake, there’s encouragement for education for a high paying career, and there’s encouragement to merge these two and enter academia in a professional capacity. There’s often a mountain of undischargeable personal debt behind it.
What people are typically not told is that financially stable academic positions are either political or hard to come by. It’s like professional sports: you can be a pro and just short of top notch and you’ll be playing in the minors for your career, making pennies. This could take the form of endless low-paying postdoctoral gigs, or the crown prize, an associate professorship with little or no benefits and a salary that just lets you scrape by.
In the meantime you are expected to pour your heart and soul into the endeavor. There is some reward in that but it is fleeting, and once you have committed to a career path the momentum to change tracks can be a real obstacle. Academia will suck you dry and demand more. Unless you end up with a tenured position at the end of that, it’s not sustainable unless you have another source of financial backing, like a spouse with a “real job.”
The US doesn’t really value education. Those who do are idealistic or exploitative, sometimes both. You’re buying into a deeply dysfunctional system and should at least go into it with eyes open.
As another commenter noted, this person could likely easily go into the private sector and earn multiples of their salary. Also $70k is smack on for median salaries in LA. This person chooses to work in academia. He is not being exploited. Presumably he finds it more fulfilling to do what he does currently. And good for him. But that’s a luxury. Nothing in life guarantees your dream job and your dream salary.
McKeown should be paid more, without question, but he is a lecturer, not a faculty member. His title and appointment is not as a "Professor". [0]
This is due to the hierarchical ranking system of academic institutions. McKeown's qualifications may be the same as his more highly ranked colleagues, but the tiered system which rewards research does not pay as much for lecturers whose primary assignment is to teach.
Yes, lecturer is a low level academic position, using the word "professor" to describe him is inaccurate, even though he has a Ph.D. If he is teaching one class, it likely isn't even a full-time position.
Academics are also typically paid a 10-month salary (the "academic year" he mentions), if they teach summer classes that is separate "summer pay." At research universities, part of a professor's salary is also funded by research grant awards they win.
“Technically, I am homeless. I do not have a place of my own. I’m not on any lease,” he says.
That is not 'technically' homeless, or any other kind of homeless. If it was, millions of adults who move back home with their parents would be 'homeless.' Millions of spouses who aren't on the lease or deed would be 'homeless.' Millions of roommates, too -- which is, in fact, what this guy actually is.
I sympathize that the guy is in a tough spot, $70k a year is not a lot to live on in LA. But this kind of self-victimization is not helpful, Professor.
(Brit here). I'm not saying it's a huge salary at all but $70k is around $4500/mo after tax. If his rent was $2500, that leaves $2000 for everything else, which doesn't seem to equal homeless? Paycheck to paycheck probably I guess. What am I missing?
Maybe universities should provide housing for the lower paid teaching staff. In the case of UCLA they have on-campus housing and nearby UCLA-owned apartments for about 13000 people. Let's say they expanded that by 5%. That would be housing for 650 people.
They have around 5500 faculty members and 31000 staff members (although both of these numbers vary quite a bit from source to source), but many of the faculty are in research positions not teaching positions.
UCLA is usually reports to have a student to teacher ration of around 19:1 and around 45000 students, which would suggest about 2400 teachers, so my proposed 5% housing expansion would let them offer housing to about 1/4 of the teachers.
It would probably have be high density housing, much like typical undergraduate housing, but that should be fine. All the people in it would be doing very similar jobs, likely on very similar schedules, and with similar requirements for their home environment. The more similar you are to your neighbors the higher density can go before people want to start killing each other.
My university's dorms suffered from no AC, black mold, cockroaches, and yearly floods. I couldn't imagine if teachers and TAs had to live in such slums in addition to being given such inadequate pay.
Providing housing is just treating a symptom - universities should fix this by paying their staff enough so they can even afford rent.
It says he is a lecturer. Unfortunately lecturers are not well payed. My understanding is lecturers only teach and don’t bring in research grants. Tenured professors are a different story.
For some reason his videos keep showing up when I watch Youtube Shorts even after I've clicked the various buttons which should suppress them. At some point, people started pointing out the problems in his argument, and he'd... post trolling videos with him responding. And the videos are just static snapshots of twitter exchanges.
Any sympathy I had for him disappeared when he started attacking folks making good points.
70K salary in Los Angeles - Gross $5,833/mo, filing single, including federal, state, fica, state disability gives a monthly take home of $4,447
So find it hard to believe he is "homeless", seems to be more by choice. And if the take home after paying rent is still too high, do like most others do - get a roommate to share expenses.
Yeah, seems obvious getting a roommate would be the answer here. I'm not sure if that's not as culturally acceptable in LA as here in NYC but there are people in their 40s and beyond who have roommates.
It's culturally acceptable to get a roommate in LA - especially to live in a neighborhood like Westwood.
Furthermore, he could live 20 minutes away in another neighborhood instead of Westwood - which is LA's version of Lower East Side in NYC - and get a 1bdrm for $1800-2400.
This is truly out of touch, because so many Los Angelenos have a combined household income at or below $70,000 yet are able to raise families and live a middle class life in LA.
This does not mean that lecturer pay shouldn't be increased - lecturers in humanities fields at UCLA get paid WAAAAY worse than $70k, and would fight to get that kind of a salary alone.
Low pay isn't the problem. There's nowhere $70k shouldn't enable you to afford rent. Setback requirements, and single use & single family zoning are the problem.
> There's nowhere $70k shouldn't enable you to afford rent
You can afford to rent a 1 bedroom on a $70k salary in Los Angeles - not in Westwood (the bougie neighborhood that UCLA is located in), but take the 405 and commute from the Valley.
He should get the message that they don't need him there. He should quit and get a real job in industry that pays 100-200k. It may require him to move, but not be homeless.
All of UC's pay is online at https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/
If you search for administrator (although dean might be a better term?) you will see folks like the head of the Hammer Musuem, which is affiliated with UCLA, makes gross $437K. Her job title is Academic Administrator VII (the highest level in that job type). Similarly, the Dean for UC Extension (basically a night-school for UC) makes a similar salary. Other Academic Administrator VII make "much less"- all the way down to $26K or even $0.
As an anecdote, let me explain how the game is played. I had two different postdoc advisors at Berkeley. Both were tenure-track professors with good publication records. The first one negotiated her own startup package (starting professors get lab money and lab space to get started) and ended up with a small collection of rooms (3) on a crowded floor, with terrible IT infra. She eventually convinced the facilities manager to give her an IT room (nothing quite like watching your advisor waggle her body to get space) and eventually got tenure- 12 years after starting. The second advisor brought a lawyer to his negotiation and secured a full lab space with promises of more, a $1+M startup fund, and a number of other key concessions; he got tenure in 5 more years. The first professor said it was "unseemly" that the second professor had brought a negotiator- but the reality is that the Deans who act as the university representative are quite knowledgeable and seek to bring on faculty for the lowest prices, while paying themselves the excess.
“Hi everyone, my name is Daniel, and I’m an astrophysics professor at UCLA. I’m only being paid $70,000 for this academic year,” McKeown says in the video.
McKeown, listed as a lecturer on UCLA’s website, says he had to move out of his apartment because he could no longer afford the rent.
McKeown says his rent was $2,500 a month. According to RentCafe, the average rent is $3,700 in Westwood.
Hrm, I have no idea what his actual situation or bills are. But 70k is not chump change, and 2.5k rent seems "manageable". Lets see, if his is single, that puts tax at 22%. It is probably 30% with state and local, minus SS tax. Lets kick it up to 36%.
(70000-(70000*0.36))/12.0=3733.33
Ok he is left with 3733.33-2500=1233.33 a month, that is BRUTAL, but I know people that live on less than that after a home mortgage and car note.
Again, I have no idea of his situation. Maybe student loans, maybe a car note, medical expenses, etc, but to state out loud that you have probably 1.2k a month after rent and can not possibly live without _a hundred grand_ extra (what he is trying to raise... which is EIGHT THOUSAND A MONTH EXTRA) seems a bit, I am not sure, overreacting? I am just conflicted about this story. I have really good friends that would do a hulluva lot for a 70k job with a 2.5k rent, but at the same time, it is true we are paying professors (and educators in general) far too little.
The linked article quotes him: “I’m asking for $100,000 so I can afford my rent”.
I take that to mean $100k total, which is $2500 pre-tax.
I suspect his effective tax rate is significantly below your numbers. 22% may be the marginal federal tax rate on $70k (I didn’t check), but that would probably put his effective federal rate in the low teens.
EDIT: just checked, just below 11% according to this SmartAsset calculator which puts take-home just shy of $54k or $4500 a month. Only if he has ZERO other obligations like child support or student loans.
Factor in state and local taxes, utilities, necessary expenses, transportation, etc. it seems fully believable that he is paycheck to paycheck which gradually boils down to debt when life rolls a 1 and you have to pay $500 to fix something.
If he is married, then his spouse (especially given the marital demographics of people holding advanced degrees) is quite likely also contributing income, and decently likely to be contributing income at least as much as he is. Now married with kids is a different ballgame, but married per se isn't going to be a financial burden.
As someone who recently left an industry job to teach full-time at a community college, I have mixed feelings about the situation of this physics lecturer. I don’t want to dismiss the difficulties that many people, including academics, face in the housing market. In places like Los Angeles and Silicon Valley it’s rough for those having to pay market rates for housing unless they have extremely high incomes.
However, I feel that the lecturer, who started his position at UCLA last year, didn’t do enough homework regarding academic salaries. $70,000 for a non-tenured lecturer is normal, maybe above average, and in fact there are many tenure-track assistant professors who make about the same. To add, UCLA is in a very expensive area. He will have to compete against well-heeled people who want to live within close proximity to some of the nation’s wealthiest areas, such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. A physics lecturer simply can’t compete against Hollywood.
In addition, a $70,000 annual salary means that he could qualify for a rental no more than $1944 per month due to the standard 3x the rent requirement a lot of California landlords have. A cursory search on Craigslist shows plenty of one-bedroom apartments in Los Angeles County that are within this budget. Granted, they may not be the nicest complexes in the nicest neighborhoods, and they may require a commute, but the Los Angeles metro area does have extensive public transportation, and nobody goes into academia expecting a luxurious lifestyle on an academic salary. An academic who wants to make serious money needs to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities outside the institution.
In addition, there are plenty of grad students and postdocs making less than $70,000 who attend schools like UCLA that are in very expensive areas. Once again, I don’t want to dismiss the challenges they have. I myself lived in Santa Cruz County for over a decade and I know firsthand the challenge of being a grad student at UC Santa Cruz dealing with the area’s notoriously difficult housing market.
But I have a feeling we’re being withheld useful information about his finances. Does he have massive student loans impacting his budget? Does he have other obligations such as taking care of family members? Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing?
I just feel that this guy didn’t do enough homework about the realities of being an academic, especially one living in a very expensive area. I’m an academic in Silicon Valley and I’m fully aware of the tradeoffs of choosing this lifestyle over industry. Yes, I’d like a bigger home closer to work, and I have no idea how I’d raise a family (though I’m single now so I don’t need to worry). But at the same time I enjoy the freedom I have in academia; I have far more research freedom as a community college instructor than I did as an industry researcher. I also love teaching and guiding students.
Yeah, I think this article does a massive disservice to the issue of low pay for contract faculty and postdocs by highlighting the relative out-of-touchness of McKeown while ignoring how a lot of lecturers and post-docs (at UCs like UCLA as well as other institutions) earn well below $70k depending on the field.
> Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing
Lecturers are at the lowest priority for UCLA Faculty Housing.
That said, you can afford a 1bdrm on $70k in LA, just not in Westwood. He'd have to commute from the Valley if he wants to pay less than $2500/mo.
this basic economic situation has gotten so fucked up that even a traditionally solid middle-class gig like "professor at moderately prestigious university" can't pay his bills
yes, this. as others have pointed out: of course it is (understatedly) terrible that so many people who work various types of jobs cannot pay their bills. all that i see happening here is that the low income bar for being able to survive and live a decent life is getting higher and higher; it is not that there are not many others who also should be able to live a decent life.
(and yes, i do understand the difference between a lecturer and a professor, and i do understand about roommates, and i do understand about living in a cheaper cost-of-living area. i think these are all reasonable points. but i still think that it would be nice if someone could live a good life a distance from work that doesn't make their commute an absolute dread and still be able to afford basic things. yes, i believe everyone deserves this, no matter what type of work that they do. no, i don't think that's the direction we are currently headed.)
You mean an artificial economic situation that NIMBYs have created by making it nearly impossible to build new homes.
It’s not a fair situation from any perspective. NIMBYs are slowly destroying California’s heart, and turning it into a place where only people with a 100k+ (and soon 200k+) income can afford a home.
He can grow potatoes and sale contraband wares at the illegal market or immigrate to US and find a good paying job there. Oh wait, I though it was about 90ies in here places again.
This is a physicist who could likely make much more in the private sector. That's a compromise I've had to make too. I spend my weekdays doing work that I have little interest in and has less chance of improving the human condition, but it let me buy a house and pay the taxes and fees. If I instead choose to do what I'm interested in I'd be lucky to afford renting a room in someone else's house.
I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
> But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
I’m not exactly sure that’s how the world works…
less educators produce less educated, that's absolutely how it works.
the incentives, the logistics and finances of how we get to a point like that -- well that's where it gets muddier.
It's possible to devote too much time and energy to education, i.e. diminishing returns.
Academia is, in essence, a multi-level marketing scheme that produces more of itself, and will (if given unlimited resources from other areas of society) expand until it takes all resources simply replicating more of itself.
Many poor countries have enormously bloated education sectors.
The worry is that by better funding educators we might have to make do with less administrators, which could leave students less administrated.
No it isn’t. You’re implying education = higher standard of living, more jobs. It doesn’t.
One man can make a video lesson and teach millions, so more educators doesn’t mean more educated.
You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad. Yet UCLA doesn’t operate on 1:1 ratios.
Finally, what makes you think there will be less educators? Very likely UCLA can rely on the rich and nerdy people who are willing to subsidize their own careers. This already happens in many fields.
Really finally, this is a shit practice. I’d like to see an audit of where the money goes such that the most student focused educators become last in line to get paid.
> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.
Anything beyond it isn't bad, per se, but it is less optional.
> You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad.
A here does not imply B. If it did then the natural conclusion is that the world only needs one singular educator.
In reality there's a sliding scale where more students to a given educator results in lower quality education, but a greater number of educated. The art is balancing these concerns.
It is if you want to continue educating new physicists.
'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.
Im not sure you know how the world works
> Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
There are plenty of people who would be totally happy to step into this professor's shoes at his current rate of pay just to have a position in academia. We have too many PhDs—there are more people who want a position in academia than academia can support.
We're not faced with the prospect of not being able to train a next generation of physicists, but there's a real possibility that the next generation doesn't view academia as the ideal place to be—the physics equivalent of Broadway. If that happens, fewer people will put up with low-valued positions and a dangled tenure carrot, and the college job market will adapt.
In the meantime we're not going to solve the problem of academic jobs being overvalued by the workforce by artificially inflating pay for the lucky few who landed an academic job at all.
Of course you are correct, nobody is ever promised anything like the ability to fulfill their dreams or to live a decent quality of life. But maybe the universities could pay them a living wage for teaching six classes a week.
$70k is a living wage in Los Angeles; he his homeless by choice. To be clear, I’m not saying he is not underpaid. He might need a roommate and to live in a crappy apartment and not in Westwood to make it workable, which does not seem fair for a PhD teaching physics. But it’s not homeless level.
Zillow lists over 1300 places for rent in Los Angeles for less than $1600 a month, which is easily affordable on a $70k salary.
People seem to think it is easy to have roommates. My roommates were horrible, they wouldn't clean anything, blast music and always a privacy risks.
When I was living in Cambridge (MA) in the early 2010s, it was unthinkable to not have a flatmate or four. By far the most economical situation was to rent a 4 or 5 bedroom house. Doing this, you could easily have a sub-1k rent within a 10 minute walk of the Harvard or Central T stops.
Not to “kids these days” it or anything, but the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing.
> the entitlement over not being able to afford a private, one-bedroom apartment in a fantastically-popular city center is just absolutely mind-blowing
I used to think this way—that is, just like you—in my 20s. From my experience growing up, I was used to not having nice or even merely adequate things, and it was the norm to go without. I'm less cavalier about declaring it entitlement now. Why shouldn't an adult, even a brand new (i.e. young) one, not have their own place? I realized that I didn't have a good reason to justify the status quo (where a home of your own is out of reach), only that it was the status quo, and the thrust of my old position really just came down to something akin to the old saw that Hardship-<X> is good for you because "it builds character"—even though I'd never really found that argument persuasive when I'd encounter it elsewhere. (Just like the old retort "life's not fair", it seemed I'd only ever encounter it from someone in the process of actively trying to screw you over while trying to paint your indignance about it as unreasonable.)
Not saying everyone should expect the works, but I can't exactly fault anyone who would be content with a 12x10 kitchen attached to an 8x10 office that doubles as a bedroom but isn't able to have it. And that's without even addressing the fact that we're likely talking about a situation where you're losing all this money on something you didn't even get equity for!
I don’t know man, it’s not like I said the peasants should be content with their gruel. A private apartment in the center of one of the most desirable ZIP codes on the planet is an inherently limited good. Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy) is kind of the definition of entitlement.
And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything, even after that time my housemate attempted to clean their vomit off the bathroom floor at 3 in the morning with the communal Roomba. I guess that was hardship of a sort, but hardship creates friends and memories — I don’t think I built an ounce of “character”, but I had a hell of a time.
> Believing you deserve it (over, say, a family with kids who truly do need the space and privacy)
k. So you're not against strawmanning.
> And it’s not like it was a barely tolerable existence — I wouldn’t trade my five years living in a glorified flophouse for anything
That's good for you, I guess. Are you acquainted with Rob K. Henderson and what he calls "luxury beliefs"? Or abfan1127[1]? It's easy to discount having "a quiet place to study"[2] if you've never been harmed by not having it and your response to your roommates' youthfully stupid hijinx involves grins and not grief.
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468799>
2. <https://pudding.cool/2024/03/teenagers/>
> People seem to think it is easy to have roommates
It seems to me that they think it's easier than being homeless.
Homeless in new york and california is easy if u know what ur doing.
I think I'll take the roommates.
It is also that US is mostly filled with either very large single family homes or apartments in areas where rents are generally always high. A focus on efficient, individual space that is like 400 sq ft. dense studios but which actually translates into lower rent (e.g. 2500$ in the example to somewhere 1000-1500$ is needed). A lot of reforms and time needed for this.
This is one of the things I miss about Tokyo: there are plenty of small apartments there at relatively affordable prices. I personally would rather have a 400 sq ft unit to myself than to live in a shared house or apartment.
It’s not always easy living with roommates (I don’t like it myself), but we all have to make choices. Unless we’re wealthy, we can’t have it all. For many people it’s either roommates or a long commute, and I know people who have roommates and a long commute since that’s all they can afford. It still beats homelessness.
OK, I also live with roommates while I'm saving up a downpayment and waiting for mortgage rates to drop. But c'mon, there's a huge difference between being homeless and having roommates. I've been close to being homeless before, and at that point I would have been happy to have even the shittiesy roommates if it meant not sleeping on the streets.
I'm disgusted at the implication that 70k isn't enough to live in LA. Yes, it may not be enough to meet some arbitrary standard, but it's insane to say that the alternative is being homeless. This is just a spoiled rich kid who isn't making enough to keep their previous standard of living. There's tons of working class people in that same community getting by on way less than 70k who aren't getting articles written about them.
Well, he even says one of his criteria is he doesn’t want a long commute. There’s cheaper housing in LA. You just won’t favor it given other options.
You've done a bit of a bait and switch, "fulfill their dreams" and "decent quality of life" are two very different standards. One, sure, we're in a society and sometimes that calls for sacrifice, the other, if we can't promise a decent life we shouldn't be surprised when people break the contract and act in ways that hurt the common good.
i don't think i've done a bait and switch and generally don't actually know what you mean by saying that i have done so. my point in that sentence was simply that nothing is promised by life. society does have norms and people do have values. i never said that i don't understand (nor did i intend to imply or portray that i don't) why people would act in ways that are not to, or hurt, "the common good". it is clear why someone who doesn't feel like their life is comfortable when they are trying to better "the common good" would act against that same common good in order to get some peace or enjoyment out of their own existence.
Supply and demand, the pay would increase if there was no one willing to take the job. Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage... I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
> Maybe gig workers and fast food workers and everyone else also should be paid living wage...
I think you'll find that there's a lot of overlap in the group of people who think this guy should be paid more and those who want more pay for the people you named.
> I think they are lot more deserving and necessary than people working in universities.
I'm not sure I'm prepared to cosign on the idea that the guy saving me a trip to pick up my own dinner is producing the same value as the guy educating the next generation of physicts.
[dead]
And then might the society be worse off for lacking the physics/scientific advancements by not supporting adequately an an individual to remain on the scientific path.
I'm of the mind that if we had the best in the field educating the next generations and compensated them well that we would end up with better qualified graduates. It seems like this would be the result at all levels of education, really.
In America we are doing the opposite, and then wondering why the results are sub optimal.
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Of course. On the other hand, one has to wonder which of this two occupations helps humanity more, and it's this the one that's paid better. And if not, should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.
Sounds like there is an excess supply of physicists and physics professors, so on the margin they are no help at all.
> should we rethink the way we reward work to prioritize things that help society instead.
The problem is that everyone has different ideas about what helps society.
At least the current system, where people are compensated based on supply and demand, people actually want what's being produced. In contrast to the old soviet system where top down production decisions mean that what's "best for society" is of no use to pretty much anyone except those people who needed to fill their quota.
Why do you pick the two extreme situations. Isn't there a possibility of a middle ground?
The current system is not an extreme. Only concentrating power into the people who will pick what is good for society is extreme.
The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much in comparison with others (Like University and labs administrators)
> The extreme here is underpaying the professors and researchers so much
The problem is not that those people are underpaid.
The problem is the morass of regulation that prevents people building enough housing where they want to live, which keeps the cost of housing high.
And look - I get it - most of that regulation is there for a reason: it's popular. People like it. People like having rent control, or limited increases in property taxes. People in single family houses like not having apartment buildings go up next door to them. People like seeing green space on office campuses. People like mandatory parking requirements for homes and businesses.
But ultimately, a high cost of living is deeply corrosive to society, and all the little perks that come from these regulations just aren't worth it.
All forms of structuring society are "regulation". Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.
> All forms of structuring society are "regulation"
If you're going to count the emergent structure that forms from voluntary cooperation as "regulation", the word loses its meaning.
> Capitalism doesn't exist without private property law.
Sure it does.
Laws aren't self-enforcing: the the thing that makes laws "real" is violence (or the threat of violence) backing them up.
For those who are unable to avail themselves of remedies under the law - typically because they're engaging in illegal behavior - they can skip the law bit and move straight to violence.
Basically every criminal organization or individual operates in this manner.
I'm not saying it's nice to live this way - I very much like living in a place with a (mostly) functioning legal system. But Capitalism very much does exist without private property law.
In the age of precision psychological influence and constant bombardment with low grade mind control, Capitalism is trash. To the most rapacious, the loudest, the most insidious go the spoils. If we're gonna keep the current system we need to slam the ban hammer on advertising and marketing with righteous fury.
> I admire the guy for choosing to do more important work and making sacrifices to do it. But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Students at public universities deserve good instructors. Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services.
Are you one of those people who thinks that whatever price the market offers for labor is axiomatically fair?
A lot of people always act tough until toughness comes to hit them in their face. People usually forget that we all live on the chopping board and it is a matter of high probability that eventually we all get some sort of chop.
> Stop applying a capitalist market rationale to public services.
We're discussing wages. Wages are all about that rationale. If you make a choice you should abide by it.
This is nothing to do with what students "deserve", whatever that means.
Amen. If the net present value and risk of being a professor paid as well as dealing with corporate B.S. I know which I would do...
The end result of this is that only people who are independently wealthy or who can’t make the private sector work for them end up as profs, which seems like a worse situation for society.
>But I'm not owed a decent salary in return for following my own dreams rather than my employer's dreams. Nobody is.
Why should that employer's dreams take primacy over anyone elses?
The answer: there isn't a reason why. All semblance of economic activity is based on a fiction. That fiction has been guided to structurally elevate a subset of people's wishes and motivations over everyone else's, including yours. And you're totally okay with that state of affairs. Useful idiot much?
Can at least applaud the guy for sticking to his principles. Sometimes society needs a good nut kick to realize it's destroying itself. That it collectively takes so many ruined lives to do so is the true tragedy of our times.
[dead]
Academia is exploitative. The financial incentives are a symptom of the bigger problem. Is university career training for industry or for an academic track? It is not made clear to people entering the system, and is often murky to everyone years into a degree. There is encouragement for education for its own sake, there’s encouragement for education for a high paying career, and there’s encouragement to merge these two and enter academia in a professional capacity. There’s often a mountain of undischargeable personal debt behind it.
What people are typically not told is that financially stable academic positions are either political or hard to come by. It’s like professional sports: you can be a pro and just short of top notch and you’ll be playing in the minors for your career, making pennies. This could take the form of endless low-paying postdoctoral gigs, or the crown prize, an associate professorship with little or no benefits and a salary that just lets you scrape by.
In the meantime you are expected to pour your heart and soul into the endeavor. There is some reward in that but it is fleeting, and once you have committed to a career path the momentum to change tracks can be a real obstacle. Academia will suck you dry and demand more. Unless you end up with a tenured position at the end of that, it’s not sustainable unless you have another source of financial backing, like a spouse with a “real job.”
The US doesn’t really value education. Those who do are idealistic or exploitative, sometimes both. You’re buying into a deeply dysfunctional system and should at least go into it with eyes open.
> Academia is exploitative.
As another commenter noted, this person could likely easily go into the private sector and earn multiples of their salary. Also $70k is smack on for median salaries in LA. This person chooses to work in academia. He is not being exploited. Presumably he finds it more fulfilling to do what he does currently. And good for him. But that’s a luxury. Nothing in life guarantees your dream job and your dream salary.
McKeown should be paid more, without question, but he is a lecturer, not a faculty member. His title and appointment is not as a "Professor". [0]
This is due to the hierarchical ranking system of academic institutions. McKeown's qualifications may be the same as his more highly ranked colleagues, but the tiered system which rewards research does not pay as much for lecturers whose primary assignment is to teach.
[0] https://www.pa.ucla.edu/lecturers.html#:~:text=physics.ucla....
Yes, lecturer is a low level academic position, using the word "professor" to describe him is inaccurate, even though he has a Ph.D. If he is teaching one class, it likely isn't even a full-time position.
Academics are also typically paid a 10-month salary (the "academic year" he mentions), if they teach summer classes that is separate "summer pay." At research universities, part of a professor's salary is also funded by research grant awards they win.
It’s in the article. 6 classes a year, so presumably a 3/3.
> It’s in the article. 6 classes a year, so presumably a 3/3.
UCLA is on a quarter system, so maybe 2/2/2.
Thanks, I did miss that.
I mean, yeah, that's kind of the problem.
“Technically, I am homeless. I do not have a place of my own. I’m not on any lease,” he says.
That is not 'technically' homeless, or any other kind of homeless. If it was, millions of adults who move back home with their parents would be 'homeless.' Millions of spouses who aren't on the lease or deed would be 'homeless.' Millions of roommates, too -- which is, in fact, what this guy actually is.
I sympathize that the guy is in a tough spot, $70k a year is not a lot to live on in LA. But this kind of self-victimization is not helpful, Professor.
(Brit here). I'm not saying it's a huge salary at all but $70k is around $4500/mo after tax. If his rent was $2500, that leaves $2000 for everything else, which doesn't seem to equal homeless? Paycheck to paycheck probably I guess. What am I missing?
2500 per month of rent is 30k per year. 70k is just a bit more than twice of that. In UK he won’t even pass credit checks for renting
Nothing - American here and 100% agree with you.
> I’m only being paid $70,000 for this academic year
hmm...
> ac·a·dem·ic year
> the period of the year during which students attend an educational institution, usually from September to June.
That's around 100k annualized. Something is rotten in Denmark.
I think that's over-interpreting his words
Maybe universities should provide housing for the lower paid teaching staff. In the case of UCLA they have on-campus housing and nearby UCLA-owned apartments for about 13000 people. Let's say they expanded that by 5%. That would be housing for 650 people.
They have around 5500 faculty members and 31000 staff members (although both of these numbers vary quite a bit from source to source), but many of the faculty are in research positions not teaching positions.
UCLA is usually reports to have a student to teacher ration of around 19:1 and around 45000 students, which would suggest about 2400 teachers, so my proposed 5% housing expansion would let them offer housing to about 1/4 of the teachers.
It would probably have be high density housing, much like typical undergraduate housing, but that should be fine. All the people in it would be doing very similar jobs, likely on very similar schedules, and with similar requirements for their home environment. The more similar you are to your neighbors the higher density can go before people want to start killing each other.
My university's dorms suffered from no AC, black mold, cockroaches, and yearly floods. I couldn't imagine if teachers and TAs had to live in such slums in addition to being given such inadequate pay. Providing housing is just treating a symptom - universities should fix this by paying their staff enough so they can even afford rent.
It says he is a lecturer. Unfortunately lecturers are not well payed. My understanding is lecturers only teach and don’t bring in research grants. Tenured professors are a different story.
For some reason his videos keep showing up when I watch Youtube Shorts even after I've clicked the various buttons which should suppress them. At some point, people started pointing out the problems in his argument, and he'd... post trolling videos with him responding. And the videos are just static snapshots of twitter exchanges.
Any sympathy I had for him disappeared when he started attacking folks making good points.
Per smartasset.com:
70K salary in Los Angeles - Gross $5,833/mo, filing single, including federal, state, fica, state disability gives a monthly take home of $4,447
So find it hard to believe he is "homeless", seems to be more by choice. And if the take home after paying rent is still too high, do like most others do - get a roommate to share expenses.
Yeah, seems obvious getting a roommate would be the answer here. I'm not sure if that's not as culturally acceptable in LA as here in NYC but there are people in their 40s and beyond who have roommates.
It's culturally acceptable to get a roommate in LA - especially to live in a neighborhood like Westwood.
Furthermore, he could live 20 minutes away in another neighborhood instead of Westwood - which is LA's version of Lower East Side in NYC - and get a 1bdrm for $1800-2400.
This is truly out of touch, because so many Los Angelenos have a combined household income at or below $70,000 yet are able to raise families and live a middle class life in LA.
This does not mean that lecturer pay shouldn't be increased - lecturers in humanities fields at UCLA get paid WAAAAY worse than $70k, and would fight to get that kind of a salary alone.
Homeless due to not having roommates like college students.. Too bad that he though he was in a higher caste of profession...
Low pay isn't the problem. There's nowhere $70k shouldn't enable you to afford rent. Setback requirements, and single use & single family zoning are the problem.
> There's nowhere $70k shouldn't enable you to afford rent
You can afford to rent a 1 bedroom on a $70k salary in Los Angeles - not in Westwood (the bougie neighborhood that UCLA is located in), but take the 405 and commute from the Valley.
Here is another perspective, for balance:
https://x.com/DrBrianKeating/status/1845528361013231808
He should get the message that they don't need him there. He should quit and get a real job in industry that pays 100-200k. It may require him to move, but not be homeless.
This comic has sat in my head for a long time: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/college-level-mathematics
It’s now outdated, and the numbers are worse
How is he homeless? Can someone break down where that 70k goes? It's about $5.8k/month gross.
Wonder how much UCLA administrators get paid compared to faculty?
All of UC's pay is online at https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ If you search for administrator (although dean might be a better term?) you will see folks like the head of the Hammer Musuem, which is affiliated with UCLA, makes gross $437K. Her job title is Academic Administrator VII (the highest level in that job type). Similarly, the Dean for UC Extension (basically a night-school for UC) makes a similar salary. Other Academic Administrator VII make "much less"- all the way down to $26K or even $0.
As an anecdote, let me explain how the game is played. I had two different postdoc advisors at Berkeley. Both were tenure-track professors with good publication records. The first one negotiated her own startup package (starting professors get lab money and lab space to get started) and ended up with a small collection of rooms (3) on a crowded floor, with terrible IT infra. She eventually convinced the facilities manager to give her an IT room (nothing quite like watching your advisor waggle her body to get space) and eventually got tenure- 12 years after starting. The second advisor brought a lawyer to his negotiation and secured a full lab space with promises of more, a $1+M startup fund, and a number of other key concessions; he got tenure in 5 more years. The first professor said it was "unseemly" that the second professor had brought a negotiator- but the reality is that the Deans who act as the university representative are quite knowledgeable and seek to bring on faculty for the lowest prices, while paying themselves the excess.
I am no astrophysicist, but he notes:
Hrm, I have no idea what his actual situation or bills are. But 70k is not chump change, and 2.5k rent seems "manageable". Lets see, if his is single, that puts tax at 22%. It is probably 30% with state and local, minus SS tax. Lets kick it up to 36%.(70000-(70000*0.36))/12.0=3733.33
Ok he is left with 3733.33-2500=1233.33 a month, that is BRUTAL, but I know people that live on less than that after a home mortgage and car note.
Again, I have no idea of his situation. Maybe student loans, maybe a car note, medical expenses, etc, but to state out loud that you have probably 1.2k a month after rent and can not possibly live without _a hundred grand_ extra (what he is trying to raise... which is EIGHT THOUSAND A MONTH EXTRA) seems a bit, I am not sure, overreacting? I am just conflicted about this story. I have really good friends that would do a hulluva lot for a 70k job with a 2.5k rent, but at the same time, it is true we are paying professors (and educators in general) far too little.
Is this just to make a statement maybe?
The linked article quotes him: “I’m asking for $100,000 so I can afford my rent”.
I take that to mean $100k total, which is $2500 pre-tax.
I suspect his effective tax rate is significantly below your numbers. 22% may be the marginal federal tax rate on $70k (I didn’t check), but that would probably put his effective federal rate in the low teens.
EDIT: just checked, just below 11% according to this SmartAsset calculator which puts take-home just shy of $54k or $4500 a month. Only if he has ZERO other obligations like child support or student loans.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#DV9x0OBRA9
Going from "I don't know this guy's situation" to "This guy is just making a statement" is a pretty big leap.
He is asking for 100k, not 100k extra.
Factor in state and local taxes, utilities, necessary expenses, transportation, etc. it seems fully believable that he is paycheck to paycheck which gradually boils down to debt when life rolls a 1 and you have to pay $500 to fix something.
You haven't done anything extra like insurance, mobile bills, other loans etc... which is also costly.
If he is married, has obligations to support parents, you are out of luck.
> If he is married
If he is married, then his spouse (especially given the marital demographics of people holding advanced degrees) is quite likely also contributing income, and decently likely to be contributing income at least as much as he is. Now married with kids is a different ballgame, but married per se isn't going to be a financial burden.
his taxes in total are more than thirty six percent in California, and there is no mention of debt service costs.
I posted the smartasset tax calculator link in this thread but the upshot is his state taxes should be a bit over 4% effective, or about $3k.
Total effective tax burden (federal, fica, plus CA) on this pay amount for a single person with no other circumstances is just shy of 23%.
As someone who recently left an industry job to teach full-time at a community college, I have mixed feelings about the situation of this physics lecturer. I don’t want to dismiss the difficulties that many people, including academics, face in the housing market. In places like Los Angeles and Silicon Valley it’s rough for those having to pay market rates for housing unless they have extremely high incomes.
However, I feel that the lecturer, who started his position at UCLA last year, didn’t do enough homework regarding academic salaries. $70,000 for a non-tenured lecturer is normal, maybe above average, and in fact there are many tenure-track assistant professors who make about the same. To add, UCLA is in a very expensive area. He will have to compete against well-heeled people who want to live within close proximity to some of the nation’s wealthiest areas, such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. A physics lecturer simply can’t compete against Hollywood.
In addition, a $70,000 annual salary means that he could qualify for a rental no more than $1944 per month due to the standard 3x the rent requirement a lot of California landlords have. A cursory search on Craigslist shows plenty of one-bedroom apartments in Los Angeles County that are within this budget. Granted, they may not be the nicest complexes in the nicest neighborhoods, and they may require a commute, but the Los Angeles metro area does have extensive public transportation, and nobody goes into academia expecting a luxurious lifestyle on an academic salary. An academic who wants to make serious money needs to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities outside the institution.
In addition, there are plenty of grad students and postdocs making less than $70,000 who attend schools like UCLA that are in very expensive areas. Once again, I don’t want to dismiss the challenges they have. I myself lived in Santa Cruz County for over a decade and I know firsthand the challenge of being a grad student at UC Santa Cruz dealing with the area’s notoriously difficult housing market.
But I have a feeling we’re being withheld useful information about his finances. Does he have massive student loans impacting his budget? Does he have other obligations such as taking care of family members? Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing?
I just feel that this guy didn’t do enough homework about the realities of being an academic, especially one living in a very expensive area. I’m an academic in Silicon Valley and I’m fully aware of the tradeoffs of choosing this lifestyle over industry. Yes, I’d like a bigger home closer to work, and I have no idea how I’d raise a family (though I’m single now so I don’t need to worry). But at the same time I enjoy the freedom I have in academia; I have far more research freedom as a community college instructor than I did as an industry researcher. I also love teaching and guiding students.
Yeah, I think this article does a massive disservice to the issue of low pay for contract faculty and postdocs by highlighting the relative out-of-touchness of McKeown while ignoring how a lot of lecturers and post-docs (at UCs like UCLA as well as other institutions) earn well below $70k depending on the field.
> Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing
Lecturers are at the lowest priority for UCLA Faculty Housing.
That said, you can afford a 1bdrm on $70k in LA, just not in Westwood. He'd have to commute from the Valley if he wants to pay less than $2500/mo.
[dead]
Man with highly educated background ignores basic economic situation that also affects millions of other people.
Slow news day.
alternatively:
this basic economic situation has gotten so fucked up that even a traditionally solid middle-class gig like "professor at moderately prestigious university" can't pay his bills
yes, this. as others have pointed out: of course it is (understatedly) terrible that so many people who work various types of jobs cannot pay their bills. all that i see happening here is that the low income bar for being able to survive and live a decent life is getting higher and higher; it is not that there are not many others who also should be able to live a decent life.
(and yes, i do understand the difference between a lecturer and a professor, and i do understand about roommates, and i do understand about living in a cheaper cost-of-living area. i think these are all reasonable points. but i still think that it would be nice if someone could live a good life a distance from work that doesn't make their commute an absolute dread and still be able to afford basic things. yes, i believe everyone deserves this, no matter what type of work that they do. no, i don't think that's the direction we are currently headed.)
You mean an artificial economic situation that NIMBYs have created by making it nearly impossible to build new homes.
It’s not a fair situation from any perspective. NIMBYs are slowly destroying California’s heart, and turning it into a place where only people with a 100k+ (and soon 200k+) income can afford a home.
Then leave.
There are other solutions than violence.
What solution do you propose? No more UCLA?
He can grow potatoes and sale contraband wares at the illegal market or immigrate to US and find a good paying job there. Oh wait, I though it was about 90ies in here places again.
I expect professors to be homeless too.
He can get another job most scientists need to stock shelves or something puts their phd in perspective