How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang

GDP - The Global Development Primer

"If I say you're a friend of mine, that means you're connected. If I say you're a friend of ours, that means you're a made guy. If I introduce you, I'm responsible for you. Anything wrong with you, I go down".

That's how Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) explains to Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp) what it means to be a wise guy in a gang. Turn this dialogue into academiceze and it might sound like:

“Lemme tell ya somethin’. You’re a limited-term professor, right? Means you teach a coupla classes, you get paid peanuts, no security, nuttin’. Now, if I say you’re tenure-track, you’re one of ours, that means you’re in for good. Permanent. Nobody can touch ya. But if I bring you on with tenure? Now that’s on me. You screw up, you embarrass the family, I go down with ya. You understand? That’s the life.”

Like a drug gang there many "made guys" or limited term professors take on heavy, high risk jobs with little compensation and no job security. They're outsiders. The tenured crew are in the club and often well protected compared to their outsider counterparts. Then the bosses, or administrators. They rarely see the front-line work, but are tasked with running the organization. Amid the hierarchy of the university, much like the drug gang, there is a dualization of labour that might seem invisible from outside, but creates a high-risk, rigid environment that ultimately impacts students and taxpayers in the end. To get to the bottom of this, Alexandre Afonso joins GDP for this episode.

Alexandre Afonso is an Associate Professor in Public Policy at Leiden University, Netherlands, specializing in public policy and comparative political economy. A native of Switzerland, his research focuses on welfare state and labour market reforms, labour migration, and the role of political parties and organized interests in the economy. His work has appeared in leading academic journals and media outlets.

Check out his article How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang

Dr. Bob is an Adjunct Professor in the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative at Western Sydney University, in Sydney Australia. GDP is recorded in Halifax, Nova Scotia.