Is it harder to become a professor nowadays? If yes, why?

State support for public institutions has decreased on a per-student basis, and federal grants and loans have not kept pace with inflation. In addition, because of regulation, the easiest place to cut cost is the classroom, replacing tenure-line professors with adjunct and increasing class sizes.

Because reasons, demand never increased, and supply flooded the market with candidates who would accept pretty much any employment scenario. There is a handful of fields where demand is higher than supply (computer science and nursing stand out), but for the most part, there are ten new PhDs being produced for every new tenure line position.

A report published about 30 years ago, which anticipated significant need to replace retiring faculty from older generations, was used to justify a surge in new PhD programs and increases in PhD program size.

Hello, I have a question about astral projection. I started to get interested in this a little while after my mum passed in april. I thought I may be able to see her and speak with her if I managed to achieve astral projection. Since this interest, every time i sleep on my back I go into sleep paralysis. However, I cant progress into astral projection because it is very scary for me as I feel like I'm suffocating when this happens. I panic and force myself to wake up. This only ever happened about once a year before this. It sometimes lasts a long time. This has happened about 3 times per week since my mum died, as mentioned on a previous post. I no longer try to go into it anymore(due to the suffocating feeling), but it still happens. I read that sleep paralysis is the pathway to astral projection. Why has this started to happen so frequently since simply taking an interest in it? Is this connected to the afterlife? I am concerned about it as I now cannot seem to stop this happening. Could it be my mum trying to communicate? Im asking due to more knowledge around this in this group.

If you are not in one of a small number of high demand fields and you pursue a PhD, getting a permanent position in academia should not be your goal. It might happen, but you can’t assume it will.

If you are not in one of the most competitive PhD programs in your field, that’s a leading indicator that you won’t get an academic career, but I’ve known people from topflight PhD programs who couldn’t get permanent faculty positions because their area of specialization suddenly became unpopular.

Is it harder to become a professor nowadays? If yes, why?

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