There is a multifaceted crisis occurring in higher education in the United States right now. Graduate students trained to be professors cannot find jobs, and the vast majority of professors today are not even working tenure-track positions. Instead, academics everywhere struggle to piece together enough classes, which pay a few thousand bucks a piece, to survive. Undergraduates leave college buried under debt, which today’s labor and housing markets make extremely difficult to ever pay off.

Meanwhile, major universities and elite colleges have become leviathan-like entities lording over their cities and towns, operating as real estate developer, landlord, cop, medical provider, and boss — not only to academic workers, but also to many blue-collar workers whose jobs are often contracted out to third parties. At a time when wealthy universities have celebrated historic returns to their multibillion-dollar endowments, public universities suffer from decades of declining state aid, while many poorer and less prestigious privates face the possibility of extinction.

For Jacobin Radio podcast The Dig in February, Daniel Denvir interviewed academic and organizer Dennis M. Hogan, who has written on labor and the American university, about the state of higher ed in the United States today. This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.