A reflection on academia, by my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I've thought about it a lot, so it's probably worth repeating.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair I'm friends with), says that he's sick of the pretense of charity with academia.

"You accept low pay because it's a charity," he was like, "But the students are getting richer and richer, and paying more and more."

Then, he's like, "Please, enough, just stop the act and pay us a living wage and make a job a job."

He also said that he's noticed how administrators talk about pitching in and whatnot for alumni donations and even to calm people down over budget cuts, but they never apply that to themselves.  If you ever question why their salary is so high, he said, it always boils down to, "Because I can get that much, and I took it."