"Rodin's anti-union major domo and deputy provost, Peter Conn, who looks as if he loves to eat, loves to argue and gets most of his exercise gesticulating"

-from the New York Times article about PhD students at Penn who want to unionise.

The article isn't particularly unbiased (or really unbiased at all), but it erred on the side I agree with. In this market, only about 20% of new PhDs are getting jobs as professors. I don't think in these situations that the universities can really argue that they are preparing students for jobs in academia.

There were some interesting points about how the way Penn (and other universities) treat their TAs lowers the need for tenured professors, making it harder for the TAs to get jobs when they graduate.