Even if you are going to limit your scope, a brief expression of awareness of things beyond it is called for-something absent here. Furthermore, the scope seems arbitrarily limited - it isn’t just the US system, the Canadian system is largely the same as far as ranks go - so why is the scope described as just “American”, as opposed to “US and Canada”?
The author is a Roman military history PhD talking about his personal experience in academia for the most part. It’s not hard to see the current system is broken, after all, but only if you’re in the middle of it. There are other sources if you want an in-depth view; the target audience is people who don’t even know what an adjunct is.
The author is also very much a teacher; his goal, I think, is to educate primarily his own students, firstly in how to do history, and secondly in how not to fail as a student. He's written more than one article along these lines.
Perhaps the shortage of navigation is a problem if you're just dipping in, or skimming. I check out Devereaux's blog every Friday, and if the article is interesting, I plough through the whole thing, including the footnotes.
If I wanted to do history at Uni, I'd like to have him as my teacher.
