In a report on part-time faculty members issued by the American Federation of Teachers in March, one paragraph opens with a stunning line: Adjuncts, it reads, "have varying degrees of seniority at the institutions where they work."
The paragraph, in "American Academic: A National Survey of Part-Time/Adjunct Faculty," goes on to parse how many of the 500 faculty members surveyed have been teaching at the same institution (60 percent), and for how long (six to 20 years). So much for the common wisdom that adjuncts are not worth higher compensation, because we're not committed to our institutions.
Seniority usually indicates measures of job security that increase with service. But the only thing the word "seniority" means in that AFT report is how long those surveyed have held onto the same jobs.
Few contingent faculty members have seniority to any degree: It's our very lack of seniority rights that make us contingent employees. By working contract to contract, we bring institutions both cost savings and the flexibility that enables them to accommodate fluctuating enrollments and other variables. Some adjuncts have successfully bargained for the right of first refusal when teaching assignments are made (adjuncts who have been teaching the longest get offered the courses first).
But more commonly, seniority means nothing for an adjunct. As a new department head told a colleague of mine who had 30 years on the job and was worried when his next semester's schedule was delayed, "Part-time faculty have no seniority."
That the AFT report didn't distinguish those two definitions of a term so crucial to the very population group it claimed to study seems significant in a couple of ways. Hart Research Associates, which conducted the survey for the AFT, does make other fine vocabulary distinctions: Its Web site points out that the company does "strategic research, not just polling or market research," and identifies its goal as "not merely to furnish interesting information; rather, we aim to provide the relevant decision making recommendations on which successful planning is built. ... All of us use our skills in every way we can to work toward the desired outcome."
Desired outcomes would be dictated by the clients, in this case the AFT, a union that purports to represent both part- and full-time faculty members but that didn't catch the fuzzy vocabulary in the report it had commissioned to illustrate its concern, presumably about, and for, contingent faculty members.
In fact, as dismayed adjuncts who posted comments about the report on an e-mail discussion group said, the AFT might just as well have commissioned the fuzziness itself (including the finding that most of us love teaching so much that "compensation appears not to be a major expectation"), as a way to justify the glacial pace at which the union has achieved contractual gains for contingent faculty members over the last couple of decades.
It's true, as the report's executive summary states, that the union now "is conducting an extensive national campaign to bring equitable salary and working conditions to contingent faculty and also to build a stronger corps of full-time tenured faculty in higher education." However, many adjuncts have questioned whether AFT and other unions that represent both sets of faculty members are working toward the first goal as hard as they are toward the second. In practice, the two goals can be mutually exclusive, partly because of budget limitations: Given a choice between more tenure-track positions and more money to pay adjuncts equitably, how many departments would choose the latter? And how many would choose fresh hires to fill the new tenure-track lines rather than long-serving adjuncts?
In our particular industry, credentials rule over experience and other standard criteria for seniority and promotion, and sometimes over judgment and common sense. In most professions, it's accepted that the longer you do a job, the better you get at it. But that's not perceived as true of adjuncts. In academe, the assumption is that if you spend more than a couple of years working in contingent teaching positions, something must be seriously wrong with you.
Even Hart Research Associates reports that 44 percent of its survey respondents believe they are not given a fair shot at full-time positions. The qualification that is preferred over teaching experience is a brand-new degree. "And a lot of the rest is luck," shrugs an exhausted tenure-track colleague, perhaps trying to make me feel better.
But as with so many of the symptoms of inequity between academe's two faculty tiers, fairness is only part of the problem. The other part is damage to the integrity of the institution itself: Too much veneration of credentials introduces a disconnect between declared values and practices, between aims and means.
At a recent conference, someone at my dinner table confessed to having been teaching in higher education for 24 years, but only the past four on the tenure track.
"Wow," I said. "Congratulations!" He was an unassuming-looking guy, but I was suddenly awed with what I realized must have been his hidden reserves of fortitude, not only to survive two decades of contingent teaching but also to have, at last, persuaded at least one institution to see adjunct experience as worthy of additional support. "Do you realize how rare it is to jump tracks like that? That must have taken some doing!"
"Not really," he said, finishing a mouthful. "You see, I finally just got the degree. I went back and got it." He was mumbling, his eyes on his plate, and others at the table, newly credentialed themselves, looked down, too.
What we need to put this academic house of ours in order—in a way that we can all be proud of—is fewer of our own particular definitions, credentials, and procedures, and more of all three that make sense to everyone. The rules shouldn't just benefit the house. That's the difference between colleges and casinos, or it should be.
Comments
1. vcvaile - April 22, 2010 at 02:13 am
Two images come to mind unbidden: one cinematic, the other from the used car lot.
In "Destry Rides Again" (1939), Marlene Dietrich tells a very young Jimmy Stewart, "It's a crooked wheel but it's the only wheel in town."
As for the other, isn't this system more like a used car lot than apprenticeship, in which experience turns apprentices into journeymen and masters at their craft. Adjuncts are more like used cars ~ mileage sends the Blue Book value down.
Come on baby, kick my tires.
2. tridaddy - April 22, 2010 at 10:04 am
usc158 describes a system that is working in some institutions already. I left a couple of years ago a university in the south and at least within our college we had clinical (teaching), research and standard faculty appointments. In addition we had guidelines and procedures for tenuring those who were appointed as typical tenure track faculty and guidelines for those appointed as, for example, an assistant clinical professor or assistant research professor. In addition to the guidelines it was well understood that an assistant research professor was to devote 90 to 95% of his/her time to research and pursuing external funding (same type of percentage for teaching for a clinical appointment). The system seemed to work. In fact the college has some Clinical Professors and Research Professors just as they have the more traditional "Professors".
3. jimhd - April 22, 2010 at 01:58 pm
The problem described here is structural, and is related to a number of other obstacles to effective management of faculty hiring and promotions. Chief among them is the myth of the national search--that the best faculty member for any position must be hired by means of an open call. This concept rewards those with the least loyalty to an institution, the least commitment to teaching, and creating the kind scholarship that looks good listed on a CV, regardless of its actual impact or quality.
4. christinereed - April 22, 2010 at 09:27 pm
This problem isn't reserved for adjuncts. It occurs also with academic staff who, at least at my institution, are treated as less than if there are no advanced degree credentials, in spite of real-world experience and achievements.
5. tom_washingtondc - April 22, 2010 at 10:58 pm
"In academe, the assumption is that if you spend more than a couple of years working in contingent teaching positions, something must be seriously wrong with you."
This is a shallow view of how the world works.
6. jacklongmate - April 23, 2010 at 06:31 am
It's not true that "Part-time faculty have no seniority" everywhere. In British Columbia, Canada, seniority is the chief factor in workload assignment and job protection among faculty.
At Vancouver Community College, probationary faculty accrue seniority on a pro-rated basis: those who teach at 50 percent of a full-time load get 50 percent of the seniority. Permanent faculty, whether full-time or part-time, accrue seniority at the same rate, which protects the seniority ranking of those who may not teach as many courses as others of lesser ranking.
Seniority is a value proclaimed by the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (7.(c)). Failing to recognize seniority should be consider morally deplorable and illogical. Hiring an instructor term after term, year after year, should constitute tacit endorsement of that instructor's competence. If it does not, then what business do institutions have hiring and rehiring, term after term, these instructors?
Establishing a seniority system that is open and public is an excellent way for an institution to gain the trust of its employees. But when hiring decisions are made behind closed doors, even when made with the best of intentions, whenever a negative impact occurs, it will generate second guessing and distrust.
The best thing about creating a seniority system: the nominal costs associated with its creation make it feasible even during these horrible budgetary times.
Jack Longmate
Adjunct English Instructor
Olympic College, Bremerton, Washington
7. hoppingmadjunct - April 23, 2010 at 10:36 am
The shallowness is not in the view of the world quoted in comment #6: it's in the ways the academic world works. The examples to the contrary cited in #7 are excellent precedents for adjunct seniority -- too bad only to have to go outside the US to find them!
8. rochcom - April 23, 2010 at 08:18 pm
This reminds me of the arguments made in the Old South that the slaves (and later the freed servants) were happy in their work. The same argument was made with non-union factory workers. It is easy for those who have security to believe that others are comfortable with lesser roles.
9. categorical - April 24, 2010 at 12:01 pm
No need here to perpetuate the myth that the lot of most adjuncts is what it is because they lack degrees.
10. hoppingmadjunct - April 24, 2010 at 07:40 pm
True, #10: that's a myth. I think the intended connnection was between venerating a degree, whatever it is, vs. considering what the degree supposedly represents: knowledge and judicious judgement itself.
11. avatar70 - April 24, 2010 at 07:59 pm
jacklongmate too bad Canada is not the US. Adjunct faculty is becoming the workforce at most of the universities and the mean of making a living for many professors PhDs, ABDs, MAs, MScs.
12. supertatie - April 25, 2010 at 09:06 am
The problem in this system is not the way that adjuncts are treated - that is a SYMPTOM, not the PROBLEM. The PROBLEM is the tenure system itself. I just left a position at a major research university, where I have been teaching as clinical and adjunct faculty for 10 years, because catastrophic budget problems at the state level will mean cuts, and I know from long experience that positions like mine will be the FIRST to get cut, despite the overloads I teach, and the fact that I revamped a REQUIRED course in my department, received teaching awards and other recognition for having done so, and that I teach every single student in one of the largest departments in a very large college.
And guess what? I have BEEN tenured - so that's not the issue. (I was also among a group of tenured faculty who were let go from a private institution, in breach of our contracts, some years ago. Now THERE'S a story...)
As with any system that purports to guarantee employment, tenure is manipulable, and manipulated. Particularly in research universities, tenure creates a structure whereby efforts are made to palm off as much teaching as possible to adjuncts, clinical faculty and graduate students, so that research faculty can do research. Students suffer, those who do the teaching are over-utilized and underappreciated, and those TT faculty who actually LOVE teaching are forced to do a lot of research that often bores them stiff, because that's what it takes to get tenure.
I agree with those who have suggested multiple tracks - one for teaching, and one for research, at least.
Just as few want to admit, publicly, that we CAN evaluate good teaching (we just prefer not to, because so many of us are not good teachers), so, too are we loath to admit that a LOT of the research that is published under the predominant TT system is pretty much meaningless, virtually unread, and cranked out en masse as part of a publication quota system, not because it adds significantly to the discipline.
Sorry, but that's the way it is.
13. jeslanie - May 11, 2010 at 09:28 pm
My husband has been on the job market for 3 years and has only managed to "earn" a handful of phone interviews. Despite moving to another state (and giving up a lot of stability in the process), he still is discouraged to find that there are no real TT positions available. We initially moved because we were told that adjuncting is the way to get experience, that it would help him earn a TT position. Now we realize it's a dead end. Despite his publications, excellent teaching evaluations, the completion of his degree and even "having friends" (of friends) on the search committees, he has not had any more luck finding a job here than he did before we left. The whole system is sick, and it's depressing.
I am happy to report that my husband recently began looking for non-academic jobs, and has already had more offers for interviews than he did in the last 2 years. If only the system was better, or advisors knew how to educate graduate students...
Fortunately, my husband is very excited about the change, the chance to be free of adcademia, and a chance at a real salary, benefits and respect.