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How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang

In 2000, economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh published an article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics about the internal wage structure of a Chicago drug gang. This piece wou...

Click to view the original at alexandreafonso.wordpress.com

Hasnain says:

"With a constant supply of new low-level drug sellers entering the market and ready to be exploited, drug lords can become increasingly rich without needing to distribute their wealth towards the bottom. You have an expanding mass of rank-and-file “outsiders” ready to forgo income for future wealth, and a small core of “insiders” securing incomes largely at the expense of the mass. We can call it a winner-take-all market."

Just swap "low-level drug sellers" with "fresh PhDs", and "drug lords" with "tenured faculty" and it's still true.

Posted on 2013-12-01T02:21:51+0000