Help Wanted: Adjunct Professor, Must Have Doctorate. Salary: $0.

After protests, U.C.L.A. took down a job posting that offered no pay. But it turns out colleges often expect Ph.D.s to work for free.

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It’s tough to be in liberal arts in the US, given that there’s an oversupply of PhDs there and not much job options for the academically inclined. I have been reading about this disparity for years that’s why I didn’t pursue a PhD because it seems like there is no need for me to do that—just yet. Although we in developing countries are better positioned than our counterparts in the US because we have job alternatives, plus there is still demand for PhDs in liberal arts since there aren’t enough teachers in colleges and universities with PhDs of value (I’m not talking about masters and PhDs from just anywhere). MBAs, however, are a different issue. There are too many MBAs here that they just obtained from somewhere with little value, just bragging rights even though there’s nothing to brag about it. That’s why it pays to graduate from a top university in a developing country like the Philippines because anything else is negligible in the bigger world. There is little brand recognition from anywhere else.

If I were these PhD candidates/PhD holders in the US, I would transfer to Asia where their degrees hold more value.

I’m speaking as a person who has come from a family of PhDs and the minimum educational attainment is a master’s degree and lived and breathed academic life.

In our sibling chat group where we discussed this NYT article, I told my brother to tell his son (who took the same undergrad course as I did) to work on apprenticeship more since in liberal arts it holds more value. Take courses or acquire additional skills in adjacent fields like fine arts to be more marketable in visual communications. That’s why a former colleague was very smart to take up a second degree at the UP College of Fine Arts (Visual Communication) after finishing her journalism degree while working. Her logos are now carried by startups. It’s better to be multi-skilled in our field. We now have data science + journalism, visual communications/multimedia/technology, and other hybrid disciplines.

For me, it was valuable that I took up a variety of courses in my undergrad so I couldn’t be pigeon-holed in one linear area. I was so thankful I took up edcomm and other social marketing related-subjects that I could use for communications strategy consulting. However, I need half of myself affiliated with an educational institution if I were to get consultancy jobs in this line. Maybe when I quit fulltime journalism.

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I’m gonna finish this tonight. Trying on wet-on-wet technique with Kuretake.

UPDATE

This is so satisfying even though using tiny brushes was painful. I think I need to scan this before I frame and give this to my mom. I think she would like the color/s.

My best friend has asked for this.

While my sister-in-law asked for this one for their new townhouse.

I have to dispose some of what I’m making because I’m running out of walls.

But before I could start scanning my old drawings, I must update the OS of this old laptop to the new Ubuntu version. My scanner is so old (Canoscan LIDE 25) that there is no driver for Win 8 or Win 10 that it can only be used with Linux. This scanner is perfectly serviceable and I don’t want to buy a new scanner since I don’t regularly use it.