Political Memes

Yes, you can just show up in a country.

I'm not sure what dice you're referring to, what sort of risk are you afraid of?

it's very easy to travel to other countries.

"It's not like you can just up and move"

yes, you can.

you need a few hundred bucks and a job that makes you $500 a month(there are many).

with that much, you can live at the level you're living in the US right now, and then build off of there pursuing what you're interested in because you don't have any financial stressors.

"There's also the little issue of not being a citizen wherever you go"

this is far more of a benefit than a liability.

do you mean a positive issue? I can't really think of any liabilities of being a non-citizen.

"culture shock"

"culture shock" is an absurd debilitating elitist promise and symptom of jingoism.

it is a flimsy term with laughable connotations.

"you all ride bikes? but I'm used to a car, im so confuuused!?"

this is like saying people should never exercise because they might hurt themselves.

or that people should never eat food because they might choke.

Americans get "culture shock" because they are taught to be afraid of non-american cultures.

"oh no. chopsticks. however, will I overcome this barrier? "

"It's no wonder people stay."

it is truly a wonder how much Americans complain about their shitty, expensive livelihoods ( rightly so), and how much they're getting screwed over by the education, employment, healthcare systems in the US and can't afford to live, but absolutely refuse to engage with the simplest alternative.

in the same breath condemning their government and the systems that abuse them, they haughtily defend that abuse.

" what am I going to do, leave my abuser?"

Yes, that would be a savvy alternative to being abused.

There's really a two tiered structure to academia that seems to be hidden from most students. Maybe even 3 tiered. There's the tenure-track research faculty who might teach one class per semester (often less) - they're still underpaid relative to industry equivalent jobs, but they get their research freedom and low six figures after a few years while bringing in seven figure research grants for the university. Mid-six-figures if they're upper admin. There's non-tenure-track adjuncts & academic professionals who teach 3-5 classes per semester, often at multiple universities because no one will give them enough classes to live on, doing the bulk of a university's teaching, especially at 'tier 1 research' universities, and they're lucky to get median salary. There's also a set of tenure-track faculty at universities without big research programs who teach 2-3 classes, maybe do a little bit of research or literature review, but probably without any significant extramural funding. They get paid somewhere in between.

They all get called "professor;" they all have PhDs; there's infighting to keep the faculty as a whole from rising up. I used to tell my students they (or someone on their bahalf) paid about $200 for each of my lectures, and they're free to skip them if they want, but even in a tiny seminar, 10 students, $2000/hour revenue, the highest paid professors are only getting 5% of that (not accounting for out-of-class effort).

It's a little more complicated than that. I think the factors are:

• part-time adjunct vs full-time
• research vs non
• type of college (prestige, size, focus)
• what you do in summers
• field

So for example you could be a machine learning Research Professor (non-tenure-track) in a first-tier university and bring in a lot of money through grants. Or you could be a tenured teaching professor at a smaller college and not work in summers and make a mid-level income. Or you could be a part-time instructor (e.g., adjunct faculty) in the humanities and make very little.