FLASHBACK: Trump should pity the poor PhD. “We’ve heard a lot about the problem of inequality in America over recent years. But most of that talk has ignored one of the very worst pockets of inequality in American society. I speak, of course, of the American university system and its treatment of adjunct professors and graduate students. Academics seem to think that the business world is a feudal environment characterized by huge status differentials and abusive treatment of underlings. They think that because, to be honest, that’s a pretty good characterization of . . . the modern university, where serfs in the form of adjunct professors toil in the vineyards. . . . Today universities have a two-tier class system: Tenured professors and administrators on top, with generous pay and benefits and job security, while many (in some places most) required courses are being taught by the equivalent of serfs, with low pay, no job security, and little in the way of status. This is happening even as tuitions are skyrocketing and the numbers of (much better paid) university administrators are mushrooming.”