There&#x27;s a lot to untangle here, and in your article. The supply&#x2F;demand question reminds me of a seeming paradox about gentrification -- that a young professional (or artist) who moves to that up-and-coming neighborhood appears to be the one at fault, making the place more expensive, creating more churn, becoming another patron for the lifestyle shops. Similarly, it&#x27;s tempting to blame the adjunct, as you suggest -- that by accepting the adjunct jobs they allow the system to survive. Your article also suggests blaming the careerist tenured academic for moral compromise: &quot;The cost to the individual who manages to get tenure is low but the cost to the field as a whole is high.&quot;<p>While I share your moral outrage, I see these phenomena -- whether the dilution of academia or the dilution of vital neighborhoods -- as a series of top-down structural choices. That gentrification is the result of opportunistic investment and regulatory capture of local governance. That starving adjuncts and uninspired professors are the result of a devaluing of a liberal arts education in the name of a bottom-line STEM&#x2F;entrepreneur-centric view of what is valuable to society. That a get-your-act-together chiding of those screwed won&#x27;t correct a system willfully rigged to take advantage of the idealist.<p>All this to suggest that we shouldn&#x27;t blame the victim, whether that is the adjunct or the badly taught and overcharged student, for having hope in teaching, learning, and an uneconomically rewarding practice.