A solid presentation of a very disturbing situation. We have people like this where I profess. This article needs much wider distribution.

The graduate student experience that you describe sounds absolutely hideous. Certainly it engendered my sympathy, and then my outrage, and then the question: why would you stand for this kind of arrangement as a graduate student? You have convincingly argued that it was an unlivable situation. Not all graduate programs are like that -- mine was so cushy by comparison that I'm too embarrassed to give details. In particular, no adult should enroll in a graduate program which does not offer them medical insurance unless they already have insurance and can count on it for the forseeable future. I think that absolutely the practices of the university you describe need to be changed, but surely one step in that -- a very necessary step -- is for people to start saying no to that terrible situation.

In fact, non-tenure-stream faculty -- including adjuncts and graduate students -- are not just "actually teaching many of the courses offered in departments across our universities": we're teaching HALF of the undergraduate courses offered offered in American public institutions of higher ed. And it's not that we shouldn't teach under such abominable conditions, as is suggested by love-it-or-leave-it defenders of the status quo. It's that schools who can't afford equity for the 70% of their faculty who are serving contingently should close -- or at least rephrase their noble-sounding missions.

Better be careful, Faunce and posters. You are treading dangerous waters, those of CHE regulars Benton and Adams, whose tell-alls inspire bitter criticism from a regular cadre of followers.

Incredible, but more-satisfied academic professionals haze and ridicule the whistle-blowers, even as Rome burns. They seem not to grasp the tentative nature of their own tenure.

But it's all true. Adjunct wages are similar everywhere and over the course of a year might equal that of a full-time Wal-Mart cashier. But how do you explain to your inner circle that you are using your Ph.D. in _______ to get on the assistant manager track in retail? Where does the conversation go from there??

Thanks for warning unsuspecting undergrads, before they invest 8 more years into their "true calling."

In para 2 you mention younger peers who rely on Medicare. Surely you meant Medicaid.

"don't know what else I can do, personally, to help friends who still participate in the economic horror show that is graduate school, other than to speak up, and remember." Or you could have paid attention when the rest of the field was warning people of what awaited them upon graduation. You could also do some research first and not study an area that has limited full time employment opportunities after graduation. And you can study in a school that is not in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And once in graduate school, when you realize that you may not get a tenure line job later, you can find another career path. No one forces anyone to remain an adjunct the rest of their life.

You missed the part about the sessionals that are hired a week before term time and don't have the 4 months to pull the syllabus together.

Grad students and recent PhDs should really think twice about taking work under these conditions. In most cases it is NOT going to make you more employable as a tenure-track prof. Given the pay, you might be better off waiting tables and having intellectual energy left over to write articles.

I wrote a series of blog posts with thoughts on this here: http://jovanevery.ca/?s=sessional

As a doctoral candidate at an urban university and an adjunct lecturer at another, this article sadly resonates with me. It reminded me of when I received an increase in food stamps the same day I passed my comprehensive exams. Guess which news excited me more?

Those of you who suggest that adjuncts should reject such dismal conditions must understand that for many of us (including this single mother of two who receives less than $100/month in child support), we have few employment options available since we're usually overqualified for most entry-level positions outside academe and underqualified to work in higher education administration that often requires experience beyond teaching and a graduate degree in HEA. At least being an adjunct pays (most) of the bills for now. I'm seriously considering pursuing a second MA in Student Affairs in hopes of becoming more employable, but I fear amassing more debt.

i wonder if a bit of comparison is not in order. is this trend to contingent professorial labor the same in europe? and on a different tack, there is, i don't think, anything even remotely similar in K-12. why is that? it can't just be a matter of union power as most teachers are probably not union members (private schools and schools in "right to work" states).

Yes, I was there as a grad student as well. What I didn't realize is that after graduating Ohio State with the doctorate in economics in 1987, I would be unemployable for life! Instead the colleges and universities in this country were falling all over themselves to hire foreigners.

I'm very sorry you had to go through that. Thank you for the article. It is because of articles like this that I decided to drop out of my Ph.D. program. The further I go away from academia, the more I am happy to leave it all behind. Thank-you for your time spent writing this and thank-you for all the honest comments about the unbalanced university structure.

To all bright undergraduates tempted by the prestige of graduate school: put your talents to work elsewhere. Your intelligence should give you some reward--not just the university which is happy to suck your brain and pay you nothing.

Somehow "equally opportunity employer" has taken on a new meaning.

The syllabus prep and other duties M. Faunce noted are part of it all since adjuncts and the privileged few who are full timers or tenured have to do such things. However the level at which adjuncts are paid for these duties is the grating condition. Essentially adjuncts ate the sharecroppers of academe, paid little or nothing and left with little more than the illusion that they could become more.
The corporate attitudes which have infected academe have made this type of thing inevitable, administrations love adjuncts because they are cheap, no benefits need be paid, and can be tossed aside with little or no notice beyond a enrollment cap. And increasingly at some smaller schools because of the 'cheaper is better' paradigm the adjuncts are becoming less qualified because the employment conditions are such that many better candidates simply cannot afford to come to these areas. Wonderful situation for academe's accountants, appalling for adjuncts, students and families.
And of course academe sells itself as an elevation, but those who go onto terminal degrees sell themselves to the lenders for life, and often find that the product academe sold them is good for little more than part time and poorly paid postings within the same institutions which sold them into often massive debts. Demoralizing for new graduates, and this condition illuminates a massive hypocrisy within academe about how it treats its progeny.
Eventually of course the whole exploitative structure is going to come down. Higher ed is increasingly distrusted by the general public, and 'love of teaching' won't hold back increasing resentment by people within higher education who are little more than very well educated pieceworkers.
When higher ed took on the corporate model, including the debt for education scheme, it sold its own soul...

I fund my teaching addiction by going to the dark side--administration. I'm a mid-level functionary during the day, and in exchange for work (and the draining of my soul), they give me a salary and insurance. At night, though, I escape to another college's grad program and teach with exuberant impunity. While the day job drains the life from me, the teaching energizes.

At first I believed the lie. You know, the one where I begin as an adjunct and a tenured faculty member says that I'll be first in line for a full-time position. Okay, that is always a lie. Well, not ALWAYS--there was one adjunct who was hired into a tenure-track position after adjuncting for 5 years at a university in Iowa, but the REAL faculty quickly realized their mistake and changed the locks on her office door. Then they tortured her emotionally. Then they fired her. In that order.

Now she's the assistant to the regional manager of a paper company, and in counseling for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Her therapy is going well and she hopes to be able to drive again soon. Perhaps there is a lesson in there somewhere--anyway, my boss is coming and I have to act like I'm working hard in my cubicle--quick, pretend like you're a vendor and we're scheduling a delivery...

atana09: I'm not sure how much the public cares about exploitation of adjuncts when they are the ones getting the service from adjuncts. But people getting wealthy off the system while tuition, fees, taxes escalate? About that they will care.

Well the public would care because of indirect effects. First would be the concern that their offspring are being taught by a instructor who is hard to contact, or is often denied the ability to effectively advise students. This is not criticism of adjuncts but more of the fact that many have to take other jobs, do not have offices or are shuttle teaching at several different institutions.
The other indirect concern for the public would be why they pay the continually escalating tuitions (and attendant escalating debt) for part time instructors. The public perception of adjuncts is that they are not as qualified as the old stereotype of the tweed jacket prof in his/her office full of old books. Obviously this is not the case regarding adjuncts abilities(although there are exceptions at smaller or rural schools for reasons already discussed)...but nonetheless it is a public perception.
In some subtle ways, academe has strangled its own goose by becoming so reliant on the exploitation of its own progeny.

It isn't just urban, trust me. I'm finishing my PhD, and to save money, I moved out of one state and to another. I'm adjuncting (and I'm just going to say for the record I have one hell of a terrific dean, and an adjunct coordinator that can't be beat), but my daughter's braces are on hold, I'm calling utility companies and begging for an extra day, sharing internet with my neighbors, etc., to make ends meet. It makes me long for the days when my TA funding seemed skimpy. I wish I made that much now!

You might want to look at New Faculty Majority. They, at least, have some good ideas. The sad truth is, no matter how great my dean is, if I make waves, I'm out of a job. The biggest problem is job security.

Today, I refer to myself and other adjuncts as paper towel teachers. The schools use us up and throw us away.

I realized the truth of this several years ago when I suddenly wasn't assigned a course for the term after teaching online courses as an adjunct for several years. I foolishly trusted that I would be given courses because I had shown my loyalty to the school by taking on extra classes at the last minute, devoting my time and energy to my students, keeping up with the technology, and receiving higher than average student evaluations. I was so upset because I needed that income. When I protested to the Director of Academics, she said adjuncts shouldn't count on this income. I felt angry, demoralized, and undervalued. The idea that hard work will be rewarded does not apply in the World of Academia, if one is a lowly adjunct.

Now I have a full-time position with Student Support Services for a community college and adjunct for two schools just to make ends meet. After reading your article, I think I may stop teaching as an adjunct. Perhaps if enough of us stop adjuncting for a semester or two, these institutions of higher learning will value our contributions. They certainly will have a difficult time with their budgets.

Wow! It might be nice to have a chance to read for pleasure in the evenings instead of grading papers, responding to emails, and taking part in online discussions. My carpal tunnel problem might disappear, too.

Thanks so much for inspiring me to take a stand and escape from the Vestibule of Hell.

This is a great summary of the demoralizing and hectic life of an adjunct. As a student at a large urban university in New York City (CUNY, obviously!) I can completely relate. The title of this editorial is a little misleading, however. When I read "An Underclass is Educating Your Children" I really thought this article was going to be directed to an audience of tuition-paying parents, but this is mostly just a rundown of the work-life of a disrespected and underrepresented adjunct--a story we've all heard a thousand times.
I wish this article had given more thought to the audience suggested by its title, since I sincerely believe that at least one of the ways to change our current situation is to educate and inform students and parents about the deleterious effects of adjunctification upon the quality of education. Adjuncts have stood up and talked about how hard they work and how good they are for too long. It's time that we were really honest with parents and students and explained to them that while we are being cheated out of a living wage, they are being cheated out of a real education.
The first day of each class, I make an effort to explain this fact to my students. Telling them a little bit about myself, I ask them if they know what an adjunct is, and inevitably the great majority have no clue. My students are mostly sophomores and juniors who have spent the last two years taking classes almost exclusively with adjuncts, and yet not a single one of them knows what an adjuncts is, how they are treated, and how little they get paid. I tell them exactly how much I am paid and what my course load is, and then explain what the average salary and course load is of a tenured or tenure track professor. Inevitably a few students gasp, and several groan, especially when they realize that many of them are probably making more a year than the adjuncts that teach them.

But here's teh important part, I also tell them that because of these conditions it is impossible for me to oganize the class in a way that is truly student centered(when I develop syllabi, for instance, my biggest concern, sadly, is not what students will learn, but how can I organize the class in a way that creates the least amount of work for me), that there is no way I will be able to provide them with the time and attention that they deserve and which they are paying for, that my lectures and discussion sections may be less than perfectly prepared, and that I will not have the time to give them feedback on their written work, to look at drafts before they are turned in, to write them letters, or to spend any time with them outside of my one paid office hour (one hour for several classes).

jameshh,
Good for you, but don't you feel like you're taking a chance? How will the administrators feel about your advertising their shoddy practices?
atano09: No one is hard to contact these days, thanks to e-mail. I've been hearing for years that the lack of accessibility is exasperating to the public. However, I never hear this from the public.
What I think may turn the tide is when adjuncts unionize. Then better wages will make it harder for bloated administrators to hide what they're doing.

And you failed to mention what has happened to me several times: months of prep work and then your class is cancelled the day before it's due to start because of low enrollment. And you aren't paid one dime! Like jaysanderson, I'm lucky. I'm a FT administrator during the day and I adjunct at another university nights/weekends (I teach online). But, the university I teach for uses mostly adjuncts and all are treated badly. Even after teaching there for more than a decade, there is no job security and no guarantee I will get staffed for a class next semester (some semesters, I haven't been staffed).

If you are a grad student is the teaching part of your education? I thought adjuncts were persons with other full time employment and the "adjunct" teaching position is for "fun" or to maintain your knowledge. That does no sound like fun. I would just get a real job and stop wasting time with a school that does not appreciate your efforts. There is no honor in being a victim.

Carla Ross

To add to the wonderful life of an adjunct, in many universities,including mine, "part-timers" (they don't even get a proper title here!) can be bumped from a course as late as into the second or even third week of instructions, to be replaced by a full-time faculty whose course didn't have enough students to make. Imagine the psychological and fiscal hit on that!

And to #18 Espraven who hopefully but naively mentions, "Perhaps if enough of us stop adjuncting for a semester or two, these institutions of higher learning will value our contributions. They certainly will have a difficult time with their budgets." I wouldn't bet on that. There are always desperate folks out there to take up the slack regardless of pay or conditions, especially in these rough economic times.

The author appears to be confusing medicare (for disabled or older adults) with medicaid (low income). What is his Ph.D. in again?????

RE: (3. hoppingmadjunct)

This brings up a theme about "what if" there was a reduction in supply of labor (24, glomzx and others mention this as well). In America, higher ed institutions are a diverse bunch, ranging from Community Colleges to general state schools, SLACs, R1s and others. Each segment has some adjuncts, how many and how severe the reliance is different between the segments.

The sentance at the end of your post is really what I'm interested in. You mention that adjunct heavy institutions should pay an appropriate amount and baring that, close, or adjust their mission. Some institutions could take up the slack by trimming student services or diversity initiatives, some could cut athletics pay (if it's not already completely auxillery use funded), but there is a segment which probably could not do that; public community/junior colleges. Adjuncts, for better or worse, have helped enable community colleges to keep tuition low. With appropriations from states on the decline (both presently and historically), and an increase in pay to compensate adjunct instructors hitting the budget, a rise in tuition would be required.

So I think you are very correct, they have two options in this scenario; close or adjust the mission. I think this presents a value judgement on what is the mission of community colleges (typically to serve lower SES students, shifting of workforces, non-R1 functions) and how important that is for your community/state/country. Some might argue those goals are what seperates education from being another business sector, and if that is true, is that worth preserving. While not impossible to preserve higher wages/better treatment of adjuncts and low tuition/high access, it is highly improbable to do so without additional state support which I see as a non-starter in this current climate and for the foreseeable future. The friction comes in the form of these two noble goals, which one is more important is largely a value question.

This isn't intended to be snarky in a "ah HA! you didn't think about the following " type way or contradictory to your post (actually, I intended it as a companion/complimentary post). You were just the first and best person to point out that there is a value conflict and I wanted to expand on that illustration.

RE: (26. gpage)

And writing of "reducing the supply of labor," we could take inspiration from the efforts of administrators and boards of trustees and legislators. They have choked off the supply of secure, middle class jobs and vastly increased the supply of insecure, impoverishing jobs.

"...administrators and boards of trustees and legislators. They have choked off the supply of secure, middle class jobs..."
in the bastion of liberalism, academe.

I wait tables and adjunct, and trust me adjuncting's got nothin' on serving in a restaurant. At least students will show you respect. Customers in restaurants are cheap at the best and cruel at their worst. I am tired or hearing that waiting tables is an attractive alternative when all I want is to leave it behind and do what I love.

While being a "professional adjunct" is setting yourself up for a life of abuse and stress, it is far better than "real" labor.

This article feeds into a notion that ought to be debunked: that these supposedly awful adjunct lives are inescapable and that the poor fellows who lead them have no personal agency and can't do anything else. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are not forced into doctoral programs in the humanities. Quite the opposite, in fact: only a tiny minority of those who hold bachelor's degrees chose to apply to doctoral programs. (That this tiny minority is, in and of itself, vastly larger than the number of tenure-track jobs that will be available to it upon graduation should not distract us from the fact that, compared to the general population, the percentage of humanities Ph.D.'s is infinitesimal.) To put it more bluntly, no one put a gun to Dr. Faunce's head and forced him into doctoral study. Likewise, no one forced him to attend "a major public university in New York," likely a certain impoverished graduate center located in what was once the B. Altman Department Store on Fifth Avenue between 34th and 35th. (Please forgive me if I have misidentified this "major public university in New York.") There are other universities in New York--and, for that matter, other universities in less expensive parts of the United States and the world, and many of them offer far more generous fellowship packages than does Dr. Faunce's alma mater.

I should know. I survived a humanities doctoral program in the very same metropolis as did Dr. Faunce. Like the author, I finished my Ph.D. at a university in New York and taught at a campus--to borrow his phrase--with a panoply of class, race, ethnic, and sexual diversity. (That's any campus in New York, happily.) I, however, was concerned with the material aspects of my existence when I applied to graduate school in the first place, and I chose a rich Ivy League university in New York rather than an esteemed but broke public institution. Had I failed to gain admission to my graduate alma mater I would have done something else, something more remunerative. As it was, I finished my doctorate without having to subject myself to the agonies of running around the five boroughs and applying for food stamps or federal health support. It wasn't a Carnvial cruise--is any graduate program?--but I was able to get by, just.

This gets to the always-unmentioned core of adjunct complaints that pop up on grad student blogs, the Chronicle, education supplements in newspapers, and in classrooms themselves: that many complaining adjuncts operate from the presumption that they have a right to decent salaries and good working conditions. Workers who greatly outnumber the jobs they desire should suffer no such illusions. Education, for better or worse, is a market like any other, and this particular market will continue to bear the low salaries and abysmal working conditions of adjuncts until such time as there are no adjuncts left who are willing to do those jobs. I would therefore advise the author, when attempting to formulate how, precisely, "to help friends who still participate in the economic horror show that is graduate school," to tell them to do something else altogether or to transfer to an institution that will provide them with a salary and working conditions more to their liking. And, whatever the case, get over yourselves. No one made you do this, and you can always jump ship and do something else. Should you feel that you are no longer suited for any kind of other work, welll, that's simply too bad, but it's no one else's fault.

Great article!

It DOES suck being an adjunct, even if you are excellent at it.

Say, is it typical of adjuncts to seek tutoring jobs in NY? I hear it pays an average of 100 bucks/hour...although I imagine that's pretty competitive, too.

How much do landscapers make? How many adjuncts have rough hands?

What mucwp602 and jonkwilliams fail to note in their harsh, unempathetic advice is that higher education generally is headed in the direction of being staffed by "contingent" faculty. When tenured faculty have declined to 31% of all positions, the entire system is threatened. I'm not necessarily defending tenure by making this observation, but the simple fact is that permanent employment at most institutions is linked to achieving tenure.

So what's next? Will higher education become merely a collection of online courses offered by for-profit syndicates and staffed by freelance faculty who bid against one another for the privilege of teaching? If not, what or who is going to stop this trend?

Re #30: "Had I failed to gain admission to my graduate alma mater I would have done something else, something more remunerative."
I think it's fine to take credit for what you've done with your life. You lose me when you try to take credit for what you would have done, had you not succeeded at something else.

test.

I too am working in the academic salt mines here in NYC. Having spent a number of years working a well paid corporate gig, but selling my soul as the price, i came back to graduate school fully aware that I would have to suffer the trials of being exploited in exchange for having a job with flexible hours that I could work around my studies. Given that my university owners and masters @ NYC public U are very clear in their mission to exploit cheap labor, I harbor no guilt in making it my mission to give them what they pay for...as little as possible. Sadly, students are caught in the middle, but I didn't create this system. Much like jameshh, I have mastered the art of juggling multiple courses, sometimes in 2 different states (teaching 4-5 courses/term). My only thought is how to maximize my living wage and minimize my effort, this way I have time left over to write my dissertation and publish. The much beloved market efficiences that drive my employer drive my process too. I try to teach the same courses over and over again, multiple sections if possible. I almost never read student work. Giving students good grades guarantees my future employment, so that makes my accounting work very simple. I don't get many complaints. This is clearly not a good situation, but again, I didn't invent this game. I love both this city and my graduate program....but I would never let my kids enroll here as undergraduates. With any luck I'm out of here in 2 more years. My experiences here tell me that there is no one who cares who is in a position to fix it. The union is gutless..no end in sight.

I understand this piece concerns adjuncts and their conditions, but the impact on students and their education seems to be sparse, except in the title. What I don't understand is the insane paradigm that in terms of instructors for our existing and future generation, "the cheaper the better." How could any administrator believe that having a majority of its institution's "education" in the hands of weakly prepared, underpaid, poorly supported, and disenfranchised temporary help is good policy, acceptable quality for its students, and satisfactory accountability? I wonder how many institutions would accept such employees in the administrative ranks. Would any private or public sector ditch the professionals and be satisfied with weaker part-timers? Would their customers, clients, or public feel well-served? Has any thought been given to our children's future and thus, to our society's future? Destructive penny-wise, pound foolish process, it seems. Sad.

I'm sorry but cry me a river...most of the successful university professors I've ever met, studied with or taught with were a lot more diversified in their professional experience and outlook than the sad bitter overwhelmed ones that you describe in your article. Just because you were "dedicated" to being an educator does not mean you are a saint, should get a gold star or for that matter will even make a fine teacher. Those who teach and supplement their income with medicare and food stamps are idiots and slackers. I wouldn't want them teaching me or my kids, if they lack the common sense to realize that no intelligent adult would continue down a path that did not allow them to support themselves or their families. Yes, you are absolutely right that educators are not paid well or even fairly, however, you knew this when you signed up for all those student loans to pay for your PHD program. Stop complaining, get a second or third job (god help you if you were say a single mom without a college education trying to make your way in the world) and learn how to better manage your time (really course plans don't take that long to construct) or consider changing careers. Good luck.

All workers in an underclass suffer the same economic reality: supply and demand. Wherever you find too many applicants chasing too few jobs, you will find low pay. You can justly complain that grad schools were irresponsible churning out too many English lit PhDs, but the doctoral candidates share some of the blame for choosing such a path. As for administrators, they'd be fiscally derelict if they overpaid for a commodity that is so plentiful, just to appeal to a sense of fairness that is so disconnected from economic reality.

The adjuncts who have posted here only demonstrate through their narratives why they are not getting fulltime work. When you don't take your job performance seriously, no matter what it is, how can you expect colleagues or chairs to take YOU seriously? If you don't prepare your lessons in advance, or spend more time worrying about your dissertation than about your students, you are cheating the students and cheating yourself in the long run. Your evaluations will suck. You won't get a job at CUNY, and god knows that NYU or Columbia or Fordham will want nothing to do with you, either.

pterodactyl123: You have no idea what I do.

Yes, I don't know what you do. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us? I hope your story is different than the author's story, because I agree with smartgirlsensei that I would not want people like bronxprof teaching me or my children. The students who attend Big Public Urban U deserve better. I'm glad that "gutless union" of the Big Public University of New York has put a cap on how many courses adjuncts can teach, so that people like bronxprof can minimize their exposure to our students.

Most adjuncts do pretty good work, for very small money. Using simple arithmetic, full time professor's teaching should be approximately five times better than that done by an adjunct, in order for the full time teacher to be equally meritorious. Now, be my guest and go after the slackers.

bronxprof, you are absolutely brilliant and are exactly the sort of person I'd like to teach my kids. We need more adjuncts like this one, people willing to play the kleptocrats' game and produce crappy work in crappy conditions rather than being willing to subsidize the upper class with their work ethic. Critically, however, they should also tell everyone about their crappy work so that the public knows that it will get what it pays for.

This adjunct situation cries out for an Upton Sinclair to write The Jungle for university teaching, or a Jacob Riis to do photojournalism. Alas, it might be hard to garner much sympathy for well-educated, articulate adults who dress decently and work at desks, computers, and lecterns. The adjuncts I know (I direct a writing program at an urban public university) do their jobs very well, participate in program teaching workshops, have collegial relationships with each other and with the full-time faculty in the program, and generally are respected by their students and receive good evaluations. Most of them have master's degrees; a handful have a Ph.D. or an M.F.A. Many of them bring valuable job experience (in journalism, marketing, business, non-profits, even health care, and of course a few in K-12 teaching) that enhances their teaching of writing.

Yes, if they all went on strike or "dropped out" for a semester or two, we could possibly find other desperate folks to take their places. But some of those "other desperate folks" would not be as good, and would not have the valuable years of experience teaching in our program and other programs. There is not an inexhaustible supply of good first-year writing teachers. Nor is it ever good to have frequent turnover in any workplace, especially a professional one.

The entire university system needs reform. More funding from state legislatures would help, but that is unlikely. Better allocation of existing university budgets would be a start: at least make undergraduate teaching and learning THE priority, and see how far you can go paying all university teachers a fair wage with benefits, and giving full-time positions when there is full-time work. If necessary, cut back on or eliminate some student support services (but you have to be careful there--students need their financial aid processed, their registrations handled efficiently, their housing and food provided, their internships and career counseling); some research; athletics; "institutes"; and any program that doesn't support itself with outside grants, if there are any such. Ask tenured faculty to teach more, but don't expect them to publish as much or serve on a dozen committees. Above all, cut back on upper-level and mid-level administration, and make all those people take substantial pay cuts. If a vice-chancellor or associate dean is needed, there are people who would gladly do the job well for $80,000 or $100,000 instead of $200,000, or even less, as long as they can't get paid more for being a professor. (I get paid less than $55,000 for fall and spring semesters, supplementing that with summer pay, so I'd be willing to do one of those administrative jobs for $80,000 in a minute.) You might end up with a pretty stripped-down model of higher education, but then you could look around and see what resulted. Boards of trustees, legislators, governors, and the general public, including parents, could see what their money can realistically pay for.

Don't blame graduate students or adjuncts for this situation or for their choices. The ones I know (and the one I once was) like what they are doing and are willing to sacrifice to do it rather than manage a store or work in some government agency. They love teaching, love mentoring, and love knowledge and inquiry. They are simply starting to ask, "Why can't I be accorded a modest degree of financial security and respect for this good, necessary work I do?"

Supply and demand. It's "simply" a matter of supply and demand. Too many entrants wanting the "academic" life style.....not fully understanding the underlying (business) fundamentals of the industry. Wanting things to be different doesn't change the current reality that "higher education" is long overdue for structural changes. Technology alone makes the tenure model unsustainable. Next up......."boutique" Ivy colleges with tenured faculty, the rest.....high volume technology based universities with centrally developed uniform curricula, and more. Oh wait, it's already here.

Marshakfox: (#44)
This is the most sensible reform I've heard described. For some reason it seems to be extremely difficult for many well educated people to come around to this view of things. Maybe because the people on whom we would rely for these reforms are the overpaid administrators. Whom do they hang out with? State legislators.
If only we saw articles like this one (and your response) in Newsweek magazine instead of in academic publications.

rear_view_mirror said:
"Using simple arithmetic, full time professor's teaching should be approximately five times better than that done by an adjunct, in order for the full time teacher to be equally meritorious."

Using simple arithmetic, you teach one or two courses while I teach five. I also serve on committees, advise, publish research, and attend workshops to improve my teaching. That's why I am paid five times more than you do. I also do many things for which I am not paid.

If some adjuncts can't even do the things for which they ARE paid--like give substantive feedback to students, or assign grades that reflect the quality of the work submitted--then why bother teaching? Go be a waiter or a retail sales worker, and let someone more ethical and more professional earn the (good) money that you are paid to teach.

What a shock--the market logic that boards of trustees and universtiy administrators admire so much can just as readily be espoused by the people they employ: bronxprof is merely demonstrating the characteristics of a motivated rational actor. Market logic, you see, can be appropriated by anyone. It can and ultimately will get turned against you. What is perverse and obscene in all of this is not bronxprof's refusal to acquiesce to providing a high quality teaching product for substandard wages, but the university's calcualation and expectation that adjuncts can be "guilted" into providing labor that exceeds what they are being paid to provide. If you want work performed beyond the limits of paid "contact" hours, then compensate for it.

The entire system at "Big Public U" operates in accordance with this disingenuous logic. This is the same market logic that is presently rendering assunder the foundations of our society at large, one where plutocrats are "free" to steal and swindle, while the public is expected to financially underwrite and absolve their bad behavior. The problem with such logic is that sometimes the wage slaves just say "no." If Dr. Frankenstein and people like petrodactyl23 don't like the monster they alone create (bronxprof) then they need to get back in the laboratory and create something less offensive...instead of exhorting them to become waiters...again,more disrespect. Unfortunately, Big Public U. demonstrates over and over through their addiction to cheap, readily exploitable labor (who are often their own students)that quality and students are among the least of their concerns. No one should send their kids to be educated at this school.

Pterodactyl: first of all, I take bronxprof's account with a grain of salt. You can't wear an attitude like this on your sleeve and last long, not in most places.
Second: I don't compare my pay to yours, since I don't know yours.
My pay, per hour, is around one fifth that paid to a full tenured professor in my department, once you have factored in pension, health insurance, employee matched accounts and everything. Want to look around for poorly used money? Fine, go ahead. No one's looking at me, for at least two reasons.
Is adjunct teaching supposed to be the same level as that done time by full-time prof's? (In some cases I think it's better, but that's grist for another mill) Why don't you talk to the accreditation people? They never ask us anything when they come around. Maybe they're in bed with the kleptocracy.

I am in complete solidarity with Rob Faunce, however I have often wondered why so many adjuncts don't simply do something, anything, else.

I will adjunct if my partner has a job. We will go onto the job market together and one of us or both of us will get academic jobs. Otherwise we will go to work for a research firm or do some other sort of professional work which we, as PhDs in any kind of field, will be qualified for. Maybe we'll go overseas. Whatever else, we won't be used like educational toilet paper by administrators.

I am fortunate, I have had a real life outside of the university, another career, if I have to, I'll just go back to that. I'd make far more money at it than I ever would make as a prof, it wouldn't be as fulfilling, but I'd get my sail boat.

Too many gradstudents think it is ok not to be responsible for their own lives. Like they don't have to be adults until they are out of college or something.
It is disturbing to think of these intelligent, accomplished people, who, like their students, are expecting someone else to be responsible for their finacial and professional lives.

#41 pterodactyl123,

You miss the point entirely when you say, "I would not want people like bronxprof teaching me or my children." If your children decide to go to university and can afford it (or take on student loan debt in the attempt), they WILL BE taught by individuals like bronxprof. It does not matter whether they attend a state college or a private university... because the entire system has come to rely on adjunct labor, your children will necessarily encounter them. In fact, most of their instructors will likely be adjunct laborers. And because the system neither rewards good teaching -- despite lip service to the contrary -- or pay adjunct laborers enough to compensate, your children will get exactly what they/you pay for and nothing more, which is just what bronxprof provides them.

Unfortunately for your children, bronxprof would 1.) be less likely to teach them if s/he got a tenure track job; or 2.) be more likely to provide them with the education they need if s/he was paid more than retail-level wages. Since you don't think that either case is appropriate or necessary, well, your children are the ones who will suffer most.

The worst part of this whole rotten system is the way that universities kidnap people off the street and make them teach at gun point.

Wait--that doesn't happen? These people are adjuncts as a result of their own (poor) choices? That complicates matters.

Yes, I know, larryc, et al., God forbid we do not exploit grad students' idealism and naive desire to find fulfilling work. God forbid we fairly compensate a worker when we could suck the life out of him or her. I mean, we all know that greed is the engine that makes the free market such a wonderful place. Just because many people will be irreparably injured or die before 'the market' corrects itself, that's no reason to avoid being greedy. In fact, we can agree with Aristotle that slaves deserve to be enslaved since a deserving human would die rather than be enslaved. Yes, we are all autonomous here.

Eight years ago, when I began my MA progam, I thought the conditions I worked in - eerily exactly like those described in the beginning (although there were only 6 of us in the office, with only four desks between us, but we had a mini fridge) - were exceptional. Somehow, it took years to realize it was actually the norm. Back then, I didn't complan because I thought it would get better. Hmm.

Do something else but don't abandon teaching altogether. At least have it as part of your job history record or use it as a job reference. It has some value.

Oh I agree the system sucks--but didn't you know that going in? And if not, whose fault is that? I am by no means a defender of the system, but the fact that your "youthful idealism" kept your from asking basic questions about the realities of the job market does not make you a victim. Take some responsibility and find another path.

I'm glad Rob got a better job, as I've been glad when after years of adjuncting I've been moved up to such contracts -- but such FT NTT lines, still contingent, are helping to further entrench the two-tiered academy. Adjuncts are so happy to get a little more pay, security, benefits, and prestige within their departments that we don't protest, but we're still contingent and still, depending on the instituion, limited as to pay, governance, academic freedom, career advancement. . . . still second-tier, and the more of these appointments there are, the more tenure's weakened.

When this article first appeared, I wondered how long it would take for the social darwinists to show up; now they are here in force, berating adjuncts (and other contingent faculty) for being "idiots and slackers" who made "poor choices" and therefore deserve neither sympathy nor assistance from their betters. "Cry me a river!" they sneer. "Take some responsibility!" they intone. It's all about "supply and demand", they explain, and administrators would be "derelict" if they paid a living wage to those who can be bought for less than that. If you don't enjoy being treated like human garbage then go do something else, they admonish. And if, after all you've been through, you are no longer good for anything else, well, "that's just too bad." The way things are going, it would not surprise me if the next round of comments involves terms like "untermenschen" and "useless eaters."

Lost in all this self-righteous posturing by people who "chose" to go to rich Ivy League schools and "chose" to become well-heeled tenured professors and administrators is the fact that, as an ancient wise man once said, "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all." That wisdom seems to have been forgotten by the self-righteous twits who so gleefully dance on the heads of those they obviously consider to be their inferiors.

Sure, we should all take more responsibility for our lives, and much misery could be avoided if no one ever made any mistakes. But we all make mistakes sooner or later, and sometimes there is no way to distinguish in advance between a boneheaded error and a reasonably calculated risk--or even a brilliant move that by rights ought to pan out but, in the end, simply doesn't. It's easy to invent explanations for why someone whose life has gone to hell ought to have "known better". The woman whose husband gives her AIDS and then abandons her for someone else? She should have chosen a better partner. The employee who is cheated by his boss and then fired for filing a grievance? He should have chosen to work in a better establishment. The people who lose their jobs and their house through no fault of their own and end up on the street with three little kids in tow? They shouldn't have had children at all until they were sure they could support them comfortably for the next eighteen years. The twentysomething who joins the National Guard thinking he's going to be doing flood relief, and then finds himself in some third-world hellhole and comes back shot to pieces and unable to work, only to be told there's no benefits for people like him? He should have known better than to try to serve his country in the first place. And the young people who believed the bland assurances of their favorite professors that "people like you ought to go to grad school" and "you won't have any trouble finding a job with a degree from a good school like this"? They should have known that eight or ten years down the road the economy was going to tank, the tenure track would be going away, and there would no longer be any demand for the field they spent a decade studying.

In short, everyone should have a crystal ball with infallible discernment of the future--and anyone who doesn't have one should have the decency to shut up and stop bothering the rest of us about the consequences of their "poor choices." It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost!" These people need to stop whining and get with the program!

Problem is, no sane person really wants to live in a world like that. The social darwinists think they do, because for the moment they're on top of the heap looking down at the rest of us. The darwinists take for granted that there will always be people who feel called to engage in socially valuable professions like teaching, medicine, and social work instead of more profitable enterprises such as, say, marketing corrupt financial derivatives; and they are perfectly willing to take advantage of other people's decency and self-sacrifice even as they publicly vilify those same people as fools and idiots for entering such fields in the first place. They also turn into the biggest whiners you've ever heard when their carefully constructed world finally begins to fall apart and they have to start living like the rest of us. In fact, right here in this forum we've seen them become righteously enraged when the slaves they rely on to prop up their narcissistic little paradise threaten to begin operating according to the same self-centered competitive ethic that they themselves follow.

It's the same story we see over and over again throughout history: The "haves" think they have the upper hand because they deserve to, while they grind their boots in the faces of the lesser breeds who were born to serve; and when the "have nots" plead for some modicum of mercy and human decency from their betters, they get nothing from them but insults and further abuse. One might hope that academics, of all people, might do better than this, if for no other reason than a practical self-interest born of the knowledge that, historically, such situations always end badly sooner or later; but judging by what we've seen in this and similar forums in recent years, such hopes appear to be in vain.

I feel that at the core of what we are talking about here is entitlement. Grad students and PHD candidates believe that they deserve a better professional life and thus a better salary, work conditions, etc than other people. Obtaining advanced degrees is a luxury in this country. I know it shouldn't be, but until we have free higher educational systems, people who take the time and if necessary, the loans to pursue this academic track, will be doing so because they can afford to. When I was finishing grad school I was horrified that my MA didn't get me special access to a bright and shiny career path. Just like all the other worker bees, I had to make my way, earn my place, work two or three jobs, work outside of my chosen field, change cities and even country. I'm amazed at how such intelligent people can do advance research and write dissertations and whatnot, yet they can't google the salary and work economy for adjuncts? Really? The fact of the matter is, this is your career, your choice, your life. The academic/educational work structure didn't cahnge for the worst over night and will likely not bend to suit your sense of "well, I've worked so hard studying so now where's my tenure-track seat?". Step away from your academic thrones and do like the less-educated yet successful folk do - find a way to market your skills and talents so you may parlay it into a way to honorably earn a good wage. Or, get a job.

Smartgirlsensei: Your analysis assumes that people set out to become adjuncts and then were shocked to discover that adjuncting sucks. But I have never yet met anyone who began grad school with the intention of becoming an adjunct; we began grad school with the hope of becoming tenured faculty and having a professional career doing something that mattered to us and was of value to society. We were encouraged in that hope by reams of statistics and endless assurances from the federal government, from the universities, from people we knew in the field, from our professors, from damn near everyone we consulted, that by the time we finished our programs there would be a dire shortage of doctorates in the U.S. due to a massive wave of retirements that was promised to be coming any day now. And on that basis we made rational calculations about our job prospects and engaged in rational behavior intended to make it come true.

Of course all that advice proved wrong, and the promised openings never materialized. Why? Partly because of unforeseeable structural changes in the global economy, and partly because politicians and university administrators changed the rules of the game after we had already entered it. They got what they wanted out of us--sky-high tuition, cheap labor, expanded graduate progams, massive profits on student loans--but when we got to the end of the ride we discovered there was no brass ring.

And so we did all the stuff you are babbling about--working multiple jobs, working outside our fields, changing cities, and all the rest--and all it ever got us was more exploitation on the adjunct track, which many of us remained in for years while they plied us with more hollow promises about "when the next TT position comes open" and similar tripe.

So now what? Many of us are still deeply in debt, with years of our lives wasted pursuing a position we now know will never come ... and you blithely tell us to "market" our "skills and talents" so we can "honorably earn a good wage." Do you have any idea how hard it is for someone who is now in middle age and has spent his or her entire life in academe to get a foot in the door doing something else? When I tried that, the only advice anyone could give me was to take the Ph.D. off my resume and apply for a job at Burger King. Most corporate managers simply do not want employees who are smarter or better educated than they are, and consequently a Ph.D. on the resume is the kiss of death for most non-academic positions--and being twice the manager's age isn't going to help, either.

It's very easy to generalize from your own experience and say everyone should do what you've done. If it worked for you, that's great for you--but this is not a one-size-fits-all situation, even in the best of economies. And in today's economy, with unemployment the highest it's been in decades and even the most highly qualified people going begging, many people are as thoroughly stuck in their miserable positions as if they were medieval serfs bonded to the land.

septentriones,
I do not assume that you entered your PHD program or academia with the intention of becoming an adjunct, that would be absurd and heavens forbid a highly intelligent oever educated person would ever do something so ordinary. What I am saying is that I firmly believe many of you and us (because I say this from unpleasant experience) believed the road to tenure-track and other plum positions would come more easily, and quickly especially to someone whom was as you said are "smarter or better educated". I'm not 24, I am technically middle-aged as well and I feel your pain and frustration. I do not mean to be as harsh as I know I am sounding. I do however grow tired of reading these articles about how PHD teachers must compete with those who do not have the same educational background but more practical experience, or how those who opt for online teaching (a significantly more managable and often more profitable position) are sell-outs, blah blah blah....
Yes the economy and your professors promised an outcome they are unable to deliver. Such is life. I opted not to pursue my PHD because after paying off my undergrad and still in the midst of paying off my grad loans, it just didn't add up. I realized that in the end, it really didn't matter to anyone but a select community of degree snobs, my mother and my ego. I was still able to do the research and projects I wanted, still able to live a good life, feel like I was using my brain and my education and after less than glamourous teaching experience (at the university level and below), I was a much better, more confident and successful prof. And that (call it paying your dues or whatever), is how I got to this place. It didn't happen overnight and it was by no means easy, but I never complained and kavetched about a professional path that I chose and continued to stay on was choking the life out of me.

If your ego can handle it, take your PHD off your CV. You might be surprised by the results.

Wow!!! Talk about elitism. I wondered where the Chair got who nominally "takes care of the adjuncts" got his philosophy. He was recently bought out. That should free a great deal of money. The students whom I teach pay the same amount of money, no matter. So, where does the money go? I love teaching. I almost wish I didn't.

Just the other day a student of mine mentioned that he was thinking of pursuing a Ph.D. in order to "get a full-time job at a university." I told him to forget it, there's no work. He was stunned by my non-sugar-coated response. He can't say he wasn't warned.

I was an adjunct for years and was happy for the work, exploitative though it was. Upon finishing my Ph.D. I arranged to continue as an adjunct for a period of two years while I looked for a full-time gig. Failing to find one would mean getting out altogether; I simply would not be able to afford to continue as an adjunct. Fortunately, I met my self-imposed time-frame and got hired.

Regarding the long-time adjuncts at my uni, I assume money is not a problem for them. Otherwise, how can they continue as adjuncts year after year? Do their spouses support them? Did they inherit money? Win the lottery? I had no such luck when I was an adjunct. For me, it was either get hired full-time or get out, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Given the choice I'd rather be an adjunct. But, I can't afford it.

septentriones,
I would like to apologize for my insensitivity. I just came from a long meditative bike ride and realized that my "tough-love" approach was maybe too tough. I truly understand your perspective - I was there a mere seven years ago and like fruupp said, I gave myself a time-frame to put things in place. I took a lot of detours and 11 years after my masters, I was finally able to fully use my degree toward within the field I had studied. I must admit that the time in the middle was not spent in vain - those internships, adjunct classes here and there, side jobs, etc all contributed to experience that would later be of value to my employer, my students and myself. So best of luck to you.

The argument (made by jonkwilliams, larryc, and englishivy) which puts forth that adjuncts are responsible for their own predicament is clearly a red herring. As an adjunct, I take full responsibility for my chosen career. I accept the fact that with a Ph.D. from a top 20 school, great teaching evaluations, and yearly conferences and publishing, I still have relatively low wages and no job security.

The real issue, then, is implied by the title of this article: what impact does the status quo have on the education of students?

The answer is clear and cannot be denied: a system which pays low wages and yet requires several years of education will not attract the most talented faculty, and this is just one reason why our higher education system is so obviously faltering.

Imagine reducing the wages of most doctors by half, and stripping them of health benefits, retirement plans, and job security; and then telling those who nevertheless go into the profession of saving lives that when they complain about such working conditions they have noboby but themselves to blame for being so naive as to pursue such a hopeless career. That kind of riposte would entirely miss the more significant issue of how the treatment of patients would suffer miserably. And conversely, those who complain about their working conditions aren't necessarily expressing self-pity as they are simply pointing out the need for a dramatic transformation of the status quo.

zefelius: Useful "doctor" analogy. Maybe it would be better if, anytime someone taught poorly, a student died as a result.

Part and parcel to this article is the systemic revelation that so many have encountered in this rotting society where systems start out to be sold as one thing only to learn later on (as dependents who come to rely on system and are dependent upon it) that what was sold and received are divergently two different things; BAIT & SWITCH...

The suck-it-up and deal-with-it crowd individualizes this (highly influenced by the dominant culture of competition, controlling ones' professional life and external validation/alignment associated with the entrepreneurisal spirit. However, what gets missed are those similar processes that replicate "adjunct-itus" in larger systems.

1) BP oil spill: we are safe off shore drillers
2) Massey Coal Mining: we follow safety procedures
3) Food industry: Our Eggs don't have salmonella
4) Natural Gas Exploration: we aren't infecting your ground H2O
5) Banking Cartel: we lend to people everyday
6) Credit card Industry: ATM fees are the cost of doing business
7) Payday lendors: use us if need it but it will cost 400% IR
8) Pharma: You'll need to take this medicine for life
9) Politics: Big Money contributions won't hurt the system
10) CEO Compensation: executives should make 40 times labor

Smartgirlsensai suggests that academe is looking for a free pass versus the rest of the working world. On the other hand, I offer another idea that academe has been the last group to be colonized: de-regulating, financializing our work, turning into pockets of privatized, publically-privatized and for-profit segments. This has already happened for the large part. Terms like elite academic and job training specialists are used to divide the groups of the last vestiges of common goals.

It only requires a cursory look to see how "other" professions have been de-skilled over the past 30 years. It ony requires driving through your local neighborhood shopping center to see the difference between what is solicited and experienced. It only requires a 5 mile bike ride away from campus to see how our underclass lives. And lastly, it only requires reading a few posts from people here to see what they value most: themselves first and others second. At a time where so many have lost their home, had their credit shattered and lost their jobs-family life, isn't it about time we face our problems directly instead of explaining it away as someone else's problem?

People this is exactly why you can't find work - you literally think too much. Some of you like to hear yourselves wax liberal and disect the system and kid youselves that your pursuit for decent and fair employment is in fact unique compared to that of the working class. Let me break it down for you in a less academic way...you thought by expanding your academic portfolio that you would despite what every news outlet (much like this one) forwarned, somehow distinguish yourself from the overpopulated sea of other PhD-holding applicants and bypass the nitty-gritty down and dirty system and poof, wind up with a cozy private office with club chairs and ivy growing outside your windows to go with your full-time position. Well, surprise surprise, it didn't pan out the way you hoped and you may have to consider plan B. With all your smarts and analytical abilities, that shouldn't be too hard. I mean the rest of world is managing to do it. Oh, but I forgot, the education industry is a sacred place, much like the church/synagoge/mosque/whatever and the rules are different - more respectful, more fair and pure. Complaining is tacky and pointless, especially by people who are supposedly smart enough to know better. If you want to change the system, be innovative and create an alternative to the one that exists. Think outside the box - connect with other likeminded people and actually DO something rather than sit around complaining about how bad things are.

I wish this article could be slipped into every US News and World report 'Best Colleges' issue along with this chart outing the biggest exploiters: http://chronicle.com/article/Part-Time-Non-Tenured-Faculty/47411/.

Percentage of the classes taught by adjuncts is one of the best predictors for quality of undergrad education (and increasingly the worth of the degree after). Though, if the parents who can pay full tuition figure this out, it will be even more of the underclass teaching the underclass.

As an aside- in a wierd tale of budget cuts actually improving quality, I've heard of many departments who have had to eliminate adjuncts entirely so that all classes were then taught entirely by tt faculty. Once everyone figured out that it would only require a few shifts and trade offs (not the upending of the curriculum as both tt faculty and adjuncts warned), most have realized how superfluous that huge slave corps was especially given the exploitation and questionable quality. Even if the budget returns it's likely that a lot of these contingent jobs won't return (like a lot of the low skilled blue and white collar jobs in the economy in general), at least in the better institutions.

I don't recall reading the rule book that said that academics (those with PhDs, or grad students) have to restrict themselves to crappy, low-paying academic employment, if it's not going to pay their bills or the work is demeaning. If you haven't explored the non-academic professional job market to see what else you can do with your research, writing, editing, teaching, and advising skills, what on earth is holding you back?

It's a false dichotomy to suggest that adjuncts' only choices are (a) to whine endlessly; or (b) to go find a real job with better pay and working conditions. Instead, here are what some adjuncts I know are doing:
1. Teaching their hearts out, finding fulfillment in this interaction with students and exploring the discipline.
2. Organizing with other adjuncts (and a few full-time faculty, including a tenured professor like me) to make others aware of this problem, advocate for better working conditions, and invite all faculty to join together in solidarity.
3. When full-time jobs come open, usually non-tenure-track, apply for them.

Yes, we are responsible for our choices and we can make new choices when things don't work out well. The adjuncts I work with do not whine or wallow in self-pity. Some finally leave. Most preserve their dignity and self-respect, and I encourage them to stand up for themselves and their profession, OUR profession.

Do join the New Faculty Majority, and organize your own faculty. Feel free to email me if you want to know more about what we are doing at our university: sfox@iupui.edu

Whether adjuncts feel sorry for themselves or not, the complaining conveys useful information to the reader about where their money is going. And not going.
If I were paying five thousand dollars to have a new roof put on my house and I learned beforehand that the contractor puts $4500 into his own pocket and then gives his work crew $500 to divide between the three of them, I would find a different contractor.

Good work, Marsha. Thanks. For an adjunct to survive, there is too little time for a wallow or a wine. Just like millions of other contract workers in the United States, they are doing the best they can, sometimes under very difficult circumstances.

And speaking of false dichotomies, it seems worth noting that most tenured faculty would prefer that the adjuncts in their departments have health benefits. At least if you look at voting patterns, you'll find that a vast majority of all college professors would favor more government intervention here. Within some departments I've worked in, it even seems as if an anomoly that David Brooks and Thomas Frank have described is true; the more affluent and powerful vote to help the weaker members of the department and where you can find "rugged individualist" voters, they tend to be lecturers, grad students, or adjuncts. But you don't find too many of these... I'm guessing that comment 71 does not come from an adjunct, but I hope she realizes that many, many professors and teachers of all kinds were raised by workers, not rich people.

Best,
Alex Kudera

What the smug social darwinist types don't realize is that they aren't safe, either. What's happening with adjuncts is what's happening with workers throughout the economy. The logical endpoint is that nobody has any money to pay for anything, including taxes and student loans. The economy is permanently collapsing, and even the MILITARY is worried about budget cuts.

College will soon be reserved for the rich, and there aren't enough rich people to keep all the college professors busy. There won't be enough grant money to keep everybody's labs running, either.

The problems faced by adjuncts aren't fundamentally different than the problems facing everybody that didn't get a foot in the door during the good times. Blaming the victim is a bit shortsighted here, because you might be the next one.

trendisnotdestiny and septentriones hit the nail squarely on the head. Academia's path of the last 15 years has simply paralleled a national culture away from the idea of an America with opportunity for all, and towards a two-tiered banana republic, with the haves in their gated communities and the serfs living in insecurity and destitution outside their walls. In academia, the TT faculty looked away while top admin jobs proliferated at staggering salaries, or they agitated openly against colleagues in other departments to capture more goodies for themselves, despite the fact that their "I could move to industry claims" are almost universally smoke and mirrors. Finally, they refused to teach undergrads and negotiated "prestigious" chairs (read: few if any teaching duties) for themselves, simultaneously proliferating grad programs to pump out graduate students. This supply line has kept wages depressed for everyone except those with endowed chairs, while pumping up the prestige of those who had the mostly white-male clout (with the occasional ethnic mascot allowed) to game the system. After all, it's hard to be prestigious when you're facing a section of disrespectful and skeptical freshmen and your university doesn't even grant MA's! So create grad programs and presto! you are now more prestigious. Yes, it floods the market with goods that depress wages for everyone, but what's that to you?

The chancellor is on the line - can you both fly to wherever to hobnob with whomever at the big hotel on the university expense account, so you can all talk about higher ed today?

Re #77:
"College will soon be reserved for the rich, and there aren't enough rich people to keep all the college professors busy. There won't be enough grant money to keep everybody's labs running, either."
If you think you're hearing complaints now, just wait for when this happens.

Smartgirlsensei writes: "you thought by expanding your academic portfolio that you would despite what every news outlet (much like this one) forwarned ..."

No, they didn't. They told us there would be limitless opportunities. They were wrong. Why is that our fault?

"... and poof, wind up with a cozy private office with club chairs and ivy growing outside your windows to go with your full-time position."

I don't give a rat's ass about having a "cozy private office with club chairs and ivy". I never did, and I don't know anyone else who did, either. What we wanted was an opportunity to do something we care about and are good at, something that makes a difference in people's lives, something that will leave the world a better place than we found it. Those jobs desperately need to be done. In fact, in many cases they are being done, by us--we just don't get paid fairly for doing them. And it's not for lack of money, because the money is there to pay us reasonably; it's just that the gatekeepers want to spend most of it on other things (primarily themselves) and leave us with as little as they can get away with. The result is not only a poorer life than we deserve for the important work we are doing, but poorer results for the taxpayers and students who are paying the bills.

"Well, surprise surprise, it didn't pan out the way you hoped and you may have to consider plan B. With all your smarts and analytical abilities, that shouldn't be too hard. I mean the rest of world is managing to do it." No, the rest of the world isn't managing to do it. In case you haven't noticed, the U.S. now has an actual unemployment rate approaching 20%, and there are at least six people competing for every available job. Many people have gone far beyond considering plan B; they are on plan Q, R, S, or T, and still trying. But at some point they will simply run out of alternatives because there are no alternatives left. Then what?

@Septentriones: "What we wanted was an opportunity to do something we care about and are good at, something that makes a difference in people's lives, something that will leave the world a better place than we found it."

You still can. Any job that you do well will make a difference in peoples' lives and leave the world a better place.

Merinoblue wrote: "I don't recall reading the rule book that said that academics (those with PhDs, or grad students) have to restrict themselves to crappy, low-paying academic employment, if it's not going to pay their bills or the work is demeaning. If you haven't explored the non-academic professional job market to see what else you can do with your research, writing, editing, teaching, and advising skills, what on earth is holding you back?"

What makes you so sure people haven't explored those other options? Do you read the news? There are vast numbers of highly qualified former professionals out there with all sorts of skills that used to be valuable and now won't get them an interview at the local Starbucks.

Yes, I can do research, write, edit, teach, blah, blah, blah. So can millions of other people--many of whom are far better situated than I am, and still can't find decent work. Even before the bottom fell out of the economy, such skills were widely considered to be of little value without industry-specific experience to go with them, and the anti-intellectual prejudices of American society and especially American management have always made it a handicap to be too smart or too well educated. Way back in the middle of the 20th century a major corporation ran a commercial showing off its fancy new research facilities ... with a voiceover that said, "No geniuses here--just average Americans putting in a day's work." That attitude has only gotten worse over the past fifty years; and now, with the whole national economy in ruins, it's ten times worse than before.

And it's not just the U.S. A while back the London Financial Times ran an article entitled, "The brainy in business should get back in their box". The main thrust:

"Think what characterises the really intelligent person. They can think for themselves. They love abstract ideas. They can look dispassionately at the facts. Humbug is their enemy. Dissent comes easily to them, as does complexity. These are traits that are not only unnecessary for most business jobs, they are actually a handicap ... For all the talk of diversity, big companies are spectacularly undiverse in terms of thought, and becoming more so. If you are too bright ... you are not going to get anywhere."

As for all this facile advice about "thinking outside the box", the article has this to say: "One of the greatest corporate fallacies is that companies want people who 'think out of the box'. This is one of the most irritating phrases in the English language. Where and what is this box? And what is so bad about it? In fact, companies really want people to think inside the box at all times."

That's the voice of reality speaking. Ignore it at your peril.

Merinoblue writes: "Any job that you do well will make a difference in peoples' lives and leave the world a better place."

Really?

How about, say, repackaging worthless financial instruments and selling them for big bucks on the international derivatives market, thereby crashing the world economy and putting millions of people out of work?

Or developing a gene-splicing technique that allows someone's military to tailor viruses that kill only people of a particular ethnic group?

Or running a whorehouse in one of those Nevada counties where prostitution isn't against the law?

Or a hundred other jobs that are perfectly legal and pay quite well, but just happen to be immoral and/or socially destructive?

At the end of the day, the questions that remain are:

Does the leadership of the university have an obligation to educate students while making all efforts to contain costs and improve the image of the college. I believe the answer is yes, and the growing and widespread use of adjunct and non-tenure track faculty is one of the ways the school controls cost. Some (most?) readers will respond with a set of "yes, but look at how expensive the athletic/admenistrative/business school/whatever is" lines. While I agree that these other areas are often too expensive, the central issue is the leadership has a legal obligation to the trusties, students and me the tax payer to control costs. Others will argue somekind of rebaked Marxism that somehow costs and income are not relivant to the education of students. I simply disagree and feel the facts are showing your position to be incorrect.

The second issue is to what degree are the individuals responsible for their blight. I would argue they knew or should have known what they were getting into. Others will argue either they did not know/where too immature/ or that even if they knew, the system needs to change to help them. I simply disagree.

Honestly people, go work at Walmart. Don't tell me they will not hire you, I know several Ph.D.'s from on-line programs working at Wal-Mart. They too thought they would be infront of the classroom. They are infront of the cash machine.

Re #82:
"Does the leadership of the university have an obligation to educate students while making all efforts to contain costs and improve the image of the college. I believe the answer is yes..."
So when chancellors, provosts, deans and other heavy hitters pay each other hundreds of thousands in salary each year, they are acting out of a sense of obligation? My stomach hurts from laughing.

22097984 - exhibit A for the day in the need for an education. For starters (ignoring the rampant spelling and usage problems that any college grad should have cured), "I would argue," followed by an opinion, doesn't make it so. Next time, try offering some evidence.

Controlling costs ought to start with eliminating the gangsters of greed at the top who have taken over American higher ed and are busy dispensing goodies to their pals - just as on Wall Street.

Corruption is front page of the NYTimes, as long as it's in Afghanistan, with "those" people.

Merinoblue and Smartgirl:

Although your ad hominem attacks aren't necessarily inaccurate in any given case (although they aren't necessarily accurate in any given case either), I think it is helpful to point out one more time that they are red herrings in the sense that they simply miss the bigger, more important issue. It simply doesn't matter if you are right (and this goes for englishivy, larryc, and others as well), because even if you are right that adjuncts should stop pitying themselves (assuming for the moment that they are in fact doing this), or that they alone are responsible for their actions and their chosen careers (while this too can be debated), it still wouldn't follow that their basic arguments apropos of lousy working conditions and the impact of those conditions upon the kind of service they are supposed to provide to students (i.e., a rigorous education) are any less valid.

In short, many of our institutions of education are crumbling before our very eyes. The fact that there are so many adjuncts and part-time faculty exacerbates this undeniable fact. If adjuncts like myself complain, this need not be construed predominantly in terms of self-pity or self-responsibility, because in fact the main issue we are raising has to do with improving our working conditions in order to facilitate the vitality of our institutions and thereby improve the quality of education in this nation for as many students as possible. That is the key issue. Anything else is either ad hominem or a red herring.

To be absolutely clear: if we don't support our faculty, and likewise attract the best talent to our respective fields, we will continue to see the all too predictable deterioration of higher education in this country.

A question from an undergraduate:

Grads in the biological sciences usually have to take research ethics courses. Do the people who eventually become administrators, who make the decisions to hire/fire/pay adjuncts and others have to take ethics courses relevant to these decisions?

Are there professional ethical boards which can censure them in some way?

#67, rearviewmirror

Even with bad medical practice the causal chain isn't always straightforward to the death of a patient.

Less prepared staff teach our future doctors.

Rob - your essay is sad to read. I feel sorry for you. The best thing to do is "get out" of education before you ruin the lives of too many young men and women. I am really so tired of hearing whines from faculty about how terrible their lives are. Get a new job then -- Or -- get a job in corporate American and come back to the classroom when you have some real life experience to share - and when you might demand more salary. When all else is equal, the candidate with some work experience brings more to the table than one or two pubs on a CV from someone else competing for the same job. In regards to your students, you are doing more harm than good - and you probably don't even know it - when you bring this poor attitude to the table. Poor attitudes like yours are often brought into the classroom - and it gives the rest of us a bad reputation.

I worked in corporate America for over 20 years before I came to the classroom at a major national university. I make substantially less than I did as an executive, but I knew that coming to the job. What I enjoy now is the quality of life the university life brings. E.g., if I am not home by 5PM - or - if I am working weekends - its by choice. Please dont try to tell me you are working 70-80 hours a week pouring over textbooks and agonizing over student papers and syllabi because I don't believe you - or anyone else (and yes, I publish too, and have textbooks, grants and articles on my CV also - as well as hold several leadership positions with service organizations).

What you are whining about is really sad. You think you deserve more - well you don't my friend. What you get for your lower pay and political ladders you need to climb is an ersatz entitlement and autonomy NOT seen in corporate America. E.g., The working from home mentality, the benefit to leave work early to attend child sporting events or take them to the doctor, the general canon that you, "dont need to be in the office" other than office hours, et al., are all common in academia -- AND -- exist nowhere else in corporate America. If you weigh family life and autonomy over salary, you are in the right job. But if you feel you are worth more than the salary you are offered -- and -- you are a 70-80hr/week work ethic kind of guy - than leave the university for a consulting job someplace. But also know, if you pay your dues, you can make more money in "good universities" too. Chairs and program directors at "good schools" can make between $120-$160 year. So pay your dues and work your way up. Between now and then, please stop whining. It's not "adult like" and it's bad for the profession.

I know for a fact that anyone in Ph.D. in English (particularly one who looks like they are from an English speaking country) can make very good money in India training customer service representatives. I also know that people much less qualified than that can do quite well in Cambodia teaching English. Both jobs involve teaching and pay fairly well (>$100,000/yr after adjusting for PPP).

These are just two examples which I thought of immediately from my earlier experiences without having looked explicitly for opportunities for people with PhDs in English. I am sure there must be many more such examples.

Given that America is only a small part of the world, perhaps looking outside it might help. After all, students from India, China, etc. routinely look outside their own countries for opportunities even though immigration rules make it much harder for them to do so.

mileydog,

I have spent decades in Corporate America too... However, I do not have that internalized indifference that is so characteristic of your comments. It is as if you have unconsciously absorbed us vs. them individualism, so much so that you forget that one day it will be you that wants and needs support....

In terms of academia and corporatism, Andrew Bacevich makes a pertinent point here that we can use as a conversational springboard:

"Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. A young man in a hurry is nearly uneducable; he knows what he wants and where he is headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts,he has neither the time nor the inclination. All that counts is that he is going somewhere. Only when ambition wanes does education become a possiblity."

Industry requires us to forego our critical thinking for the pace of the conveyor belt of production, ambition and competition. This has been engineered in our culture for tens of decades. The people who want an easy explanation offered by social darwinists have neither the inclination for self examination nor the mentality to challenge status quo systems. History ryhmes and repeats itself in cycles here. Just ask Tiger Woods, Bill Clinton, Wayne Rooney or Elliot Spitzer about ambitions' entitlement. The Takers!

Yes, we must help ourselves, but not at the expense of ignoring the pain of others... The fact that a few of you refer to whining is proof that examining this too triggering; you will keep doing what you are doing with indiffernt words and competitive actions until something happens in your life where you will be in need to find someone like zefelius, alleyoxenfree and septentriones who is willing to dispassionately listen to your experience and help you put into context. And then you will have embodied the hubris that few will witness.... How "adult" is that?

It is very true that adjuncts are often exploited (though I do agree to a certain extent with the points made above about personal agency). But whenever I read articles like this, I am struck by one big thing. Am I the only person who sought a PhD because I wanted the knowledge and not because I wanted a job? Yes, I lived for years on a graduate stipend of $537 a month in a little apartment with horrible heat even during the worst snowstorms, but I loved it. I was having the time of my life immersing myself in books and ideas, especially since I didn't have to answer to anyone for it (no family money and no help from anyone but myself). Then, I earned my degree and decided to become an adjunct to figure out what I wanted to do next. As an adjunct, I earned a bit more, bought a car, and pursued a range of jobs, mostly in the government. Irony of ironies is that I was offered a tenure-track job when many of my peers who wanted to be faculty were not.

Perhaps there is a mistake in assuming that any degree means we deserve any job? I know a lot of lawyers who say that no one who graduates law school should think they will automatically get a job in law, so why do we assume PhDs will automatically get a job based on their degree. Yes, I did get such a job, but I never planned on it.

Wow, trendisnotdestiny! That Bacevich quote is amazing. Sadly, I see this same attitude displayed by the majority of my students. I need to read the book that came from. Can you share?

@ jameshh

I agree! Bacevich is amazing! His book is called:
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War 2010 (Baecevich is at Boston University)

He has a brief article out I found on commondreams.org called: "The Unmaking of a Company Man: An Education Begin at Brandenburg Gate".... where pieces of this quote are derived...

http://www.commondreams.org/print/59751

Peace

rkgrkg,

You have some experiences and points to make that are clear, but I fear that what is convoluted is not an elite entitlement to find a high paying job (no, that is portrayed in the wrong context by people who respond to a corporate mentality)...

Instead the adjunct or disgruntled academic is increasingly resentful because they had self selected out of the business world into one where context matters, ideas matter and openness is not a sales pitch. When one finds their occupational home, only to find it desecrated by the very institutions they have purposely rejected, well it can be seen as intrusive....

Especially when the forces that are intruding are using the professorate as a scapegoat for problems within/ and outside of our purview (NCLB)... all while the tuition rises as the market participants take for-profit stocks to wall street to solicit and brand a new era under Uncle Arnie the Chicago Carnie...
This isn't whining.... This is losing a home.... How ironic it is that industry started first gutting our residential housing and moved into our occupation worlds.... This is not entitlement, this is co-option with a whole group of new workers coming into a context they know little of, but welcome the opportunity.... This is the history of capital and replacement labor.... Someday it will be you.


Happy Labor Day

trendisnotdestiny,

Unfortunately my friend, it is scholars like you that try to normalize the standard deviation. I've had dozen of doctoral students over the years - and I don't let them whine. I remind them all the time that there are (literally) millions of people that WANT their problems. And that problem is being highly educated, working on a terminal degree, and getting it from a national unversity. Once the PhD is completed, PhDs can go into corporate America, academia, consulting and/or start their own business. Unlike the rest of America who largely remain in job lock, having an education and beign a PhD is a priviledge. And getting the keys to the "university club" is a priviledge. If you let your own students whine about how bad things are in academia, you are being a poor role model -- so get out yourself. Also, I'm not impressed that you read a book, can quote it in APA form, or still know a few words from your GMAT exam. Be a leader and a role model to your students. That means leading by example, role modeling posative behavior, and not tolerating incompetance and poor attitudes from those around us.

I must admit I rather enjoy the delicious irony of being lectured by an arrogant windbag with delusions of superiority who claims to work for a "major national university" and to have had "dozen [sic] of doctoral students over the years" and yet peppers his rants with non-words like "unversity" and "priviledge" (twice), urges us to exhibit "posative behavior", and declares that we should not tolerate "incompetance". Indeed!

Is there any way we can we vote this clown off the island?

Please I am so sick of the whining from adjuncts. I was an adjunct. It was hard. But it is the price you pay for a full faculty job. If it was easy to get a Phd and become a University professor, everyone would do it.

trendisnotdestiny: You are absolutely right. Ultimately this is not about making a choice between putting up with a lousy job or finding something else that pays better. This is about the loss of one's identity and one's lifelong dreams, and the death of a way of life that did not have to die. Things have come to this not because it was necessary that they be this way, but because some greedy and short-sighted fools have chosen to make it this way with no regard for the damage they are doing to others and to society as a whole.

But of course this is true not only in education, but everywhere else as well: government, media, military, business, health care, religion, you name it. We are well on our way to a world like the one depicted in Idiocracy ... except (if I recall correctly) the movie placed that world in the far distant future. Unfortunately, it's going to be here much sooner than anyone expects, and with consequences that are far, far worse.

@ mileydog

After reading your two post (#88 & #95), I find that it is ironic the mixed messages (schizophrenic) you are sending to the some of us:

QUOTES
"Rob - your essay is sad to read. I feel sorry for you."
"You think you deserve more - well you don't my friend."
"Unfortunately my friend, it is scholars like you that try to normalize the standard deviation."

In one breadth, you tell us of your pity while you repeatedly call us your friends. Let me be clear here: friends are not toxically contemptuous. Their concern is readily felt and understood and most of all they listen to what we are saying rather moving at the pace of ambition (like Bacevich discusses).
John Gottman at the University of Washington has done some great research on relationship identifying "four horseman of the relational apocalypse" used in negative cycles of interaction:

1) low intensity nagging - Criticism
2) inability to listen relationally - Defensiveness
3) cutting off the connection - Stonewalling
4) attributing meaning that doesn't exist - Contempt

Most relationships stuggle with the first three, but once contempt comes in (then it is hard to recover since the way most of us wish to be portrayed is not possible with contempt)...

--------------------------------------------------------------

QUOTE
"In regards to your students, you are doing more harm than good - and you probably don't even know it - when you bring this poor attitude to the table. Poor attitudes like yours are often brought into the classroom - and it gives the rest of us a bad reputation."

Spoken like a true administrator; where the problem must be with individuals and competency instead of a system of debt, indentured servitude, and the giant sucking sound of competition nipping at your heals. I say this with a tad of defensiveness: Grow an imagination!

"Chairs and program directors at "good schools" can make between $120-$160 year. So pay your dues and work your way up. Between now and then, please stop whining. It's not "adult like" and it's bad for the profession."

This type of thinking is exactly what is unhealthy. Legitimacy always uses some form of good and bad to weed out the ambitious for their own purposes. They develop a narrative to explain resistance and use it as a cudgel to shape opinion within the profession. No one is whining here.... you are filling in the gaps of your ignorance with your own narrative of people who you do not actually know. I could be someone who helped your son get college soccer scholarship or I could be a therapist who saw your family member after their spouse died. I could be the educator of your daughter in a family finance class that showed her she does not need to depend upon men to make good decisions. Or I could be someone you meet along the way that performs one act of random kindness. You do not know us, but for some reason (contempt) I do not suspect that you have the time to know very many without vested self interests associated with ambition. This is what is truly sad!

"Once the PhD is completed, PhDs can go into corporate America, academia, consulting and/or start their own business."

You mean there is a difference?

"If you let your own students whine about how bad things are in academia, you are being a poor role model -- so get out yourself. Also, I'm not impressed that you read a book, can quote it in APA form, or still know a few words from your GMAT exam. Be a leader and a role model to your students. That means leading by example, role modeling posative behavior, and not tolerating incompetance and poor attitudes from those around us."

So now you decide to out the fact that you have not read Paolo Friere? Pedagogies of Oppression should be mandatory reading not just a privilege!

septentriones: "They told us there would be limitless opportunities."

When did this conversation take place--1968 or so? Seriously, you keep making this point but I am finding it hard to believe.

When I began looking at grad school in the humanities in the late 1980s I began reading the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Though there were a very few voices predicting an improving job market, even back then the consensus voice was that the tough job market was not likely to improve any time soon. The professors I spoke with gave me the same message--think hard about this, because there are damn few jobs and you might not get one.

I think you might have suffered from selective hearing, as so many young people do.

I have to wonder whether "mileydog" is just pulling our chain. Not only can he not spell or construct a cogent argument, but most of his talking points are just standard talk-radio blather. I was especially struck by his ridiculous comment that contingent employees should "pay your dues and work your way up" ... to a $160K department chair, no less! I know there are always exceptions, but to portray this sort of trajectory as a real option for most contingents is simply absurd.

At our local state-supported R1, contingent faculty have been "paying their dues" for decades: teaching three times as many courses as "real" faculty (and often the courses with the heaviest grading loads, but without any graders, TAs, or clerical support); doing program planning and curriculum design; serving on and even chairing departmental and university committees; applying for and administering grants; conducting research, publishing, and presenting at conferences; advising students; and often rescuing the "real faculty" when the regional accrediting agencies come calling with their long lists of mandated content.

In return, contingents get a "career ladder" which goes nowhere; "raises" (if any) that do not even make up for what they've lost to inflation; continual disrespect from administrators and "real faculty"; endless pressure to "do more with less" when they're already stressed to the breaking point; and of course no job security whatever--that's what "contingent" means, after all.

And although there may be the occasional rare exception, I've never heard of anyone--no matter how loyal or competent or hard-working or collegial--who actually made the leap from contingent to tenure-track faculty; it goes against the grain of the whole culture. If you begin as a contingent, you will remain contingent until the day they cut you loose--which, if the administrators have their way, could be any day now.

larryc: I first heard some variant of the "limitless opportunities" line in the early 1970s; I last heard it from the members of my own doctoral committee a few years after Y2K. It has been a continual (if not quite continuous) refrain in the intervening decades, with numerous books and articles by alleged experts in the field promising that boomer retirements and economic expansion would necessitate vastly more PhDs than the market is producing, blah, blah, blah.

The federal government has been particularly guilty of this, repeatedly crying wolf over the "coming critical shortage of doctorates" in this field or that, and urging universities to increase the number of slots in their graduate programs, even as the number of unemployed PhDs skyrocketed. They are beating the same drum even now as an excuse to increase the number of H-1B and similar visas ... don't you know there's a shortage of engineers and scientists in the U.S.? Never mind that there are in fact a lot of unemployed engineers and scientists in the U.S.--no doubt they, like contingent faculty, are all slackers and losers who should stop whining and go get a cash-register job at Walmart.

septentriones: I am surprised, because at the same time I was hearing mostly the opposite, at least for history.

I did it anyway and it worked out for me--not because of any particular merit but because I was lucky. I got exactly two TT campus interviews and was offered one of the jobs. I later found out that my competitor for the position had really appalling personal hygiene. Such is the secret to my success.

I will say that I had a plan of looking for a TT job for two years, and if that did not work find another career path. Who is to say if I would have stuck to it, but it was a good plan. At some point you have to admit that it is not going to happen for you and make a new plan. Yes?

larryc: It varies by time and place and field and who is doing the talking. The one consistency throughout it all was that everyone had a different point of view, and most of those viewpoints turned out to be worthless.

I do appreciate the fact that you are willing to admit that luck has a lot to do with it. So many people on the tenure track are absolutely convinced that they "made it" because they were "special", and they look down their noses at everyone who didn't. Given the numbers involved, that sort of attitude is like someone who wins the lottery and then sneers at those who didn't. "Look, I bought a lottery ticket and I won a million dollars. Why didn't your ticket win, too? What's the matter with you losers, anyway?" That gets tiresome after a while.

I agree that at some point you have to make a new plan, but everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a reasonable effort and when it's time to bail. And sometimes people simply miscalculate despite their best intentions and efforts, and find themselves stuck. There is an aura of "damaged goods" that surrounds contingent employees; we are often considered "just temps" even if we've been there for ten or fifteen years, and after a while there aren't too many alternatives left that aren't even worse than where we already are. For one thing, we often find ourselves either overqualified or underqualified for almost everything we try to do. "Oh, you have a Ph.D.? No, you wouldn't be happy here. Next!" "What, you have a Ph.D. and you've been doing this same low-paying dead-end job for years without a raise or a promotion? And now you want me to let you manage my business? Not a chance. Next!"

Just as you need to have a plan B in case plan A doesn't work, so also the time may come when you have to realize that you've reached the point of diminishing returns on trying to "better" your situation, and just learn to live with it. That's what a lot of contingent faculty have done, and will continue to do, because at some point the psychic pain of constant striving and constant rejection overwhelms the allure of any likely gain. We lower our expectations and make our accommodations because that's the reality we have to live with if we're going to have any kind of life at all. That doesn't mean we're "slackers" and "losers"; it just means we're human.

I taught four classes last year at a well know U. in Massachusetts. The school grossed $480,000. I was paid $16,000.

Wesmoody writes, "Please I am so sick of the whining from adjuncts. I was an adjunct. It was hard. But it is the price you pay for a full faculty job. If it was easy to get a Phd and become a University professor, everyone would do it."

I would like to sincerely know if anyone believes a similar model should be applied to, say, air pilots or doctors? How many people would continue to fly if half of all pilots were part-timers? Would Wesmoody and others seek treatment at a hospital where most of the staff was paid half of what they are currently paid? Do we imagine that such a medical system would continue to attract the best doctors? And would anyone actually desire that the good doctors in such a system, being paid low wages with little benefits, leave their positions behind them as opposed to trying to improve their working conditions?

Of course, most professors aren't saving lives on a daily basis; but the analogy still holds true for a basic point, namely, that "whining and complaining" have less to do (for many of us) with self-satisfaction (even though that's important) than the overall well being of our institutions and the supposed goal of higher education, i.e., to educate our students. Does Wesmoody and others actually prefer that we facilitate the downward spiral of universities by remaining silent?

It's surprising how many commentators repeat this same fallacy. Rkgrkg writes that perhaps we shouldn't assume that a Ph.D means that we deserve a job. I agree. But, again, this misses the overall point, which is that for all those who do deserve jobs, and find jobs, 75% of them aren't being given very good ones. And if they're not provided with good jobs, with firm institutional support, then that problem has less to do with "self-pity" or "whining" as it does with the ability of our colleges and universities to fulfill their own missions!!

So hopefully we won't hear any more ad hominem or red herring arguments! ;)

And Septentriones: I think you're right. Mileydog can't be serious. If I were grading a paper of his I don't know where I'd start!

For the 500th time, the boomers just need to up and retire. You go work for minimum wage to supplement your bloated pension.

d

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment rates for people with doctoral degrees is 2.5%. Compare that with BLS's average of 7.9% unemployment for all workers.

Note: Data are 2009 annual averages for persons age 25 and over. Earnings are for full-time wage and salary workers.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm

People with doctoral degrees might not be in TT positions. We might not be employed at colleges/universities.

We do appear to have an advantage when it comes to staying employed in full-time jobs despite the current state of the economy.

Exploited? Feel used? Not treated with respect? So what. If you do not like the situation, then quit. Every industry in the US is using more part time workers to lower personnel costs. People are the most expensive item on the income statement. Universities are about earning money, including non-profits, and spending more on buildings. Instructors are a dime-a-dozen. The football coach is more important than you.

Why is this? Because the schools have dumbed-down the admission standards and curriculums. They don't need PhDs to teach, only for accreditation bragging rights. Adjuncts can do it while being paid lower salaries, no benefits and subject to the whims of clerks. However, if you like the income, then shut-up and do it. I have for several years.

Re: "Once the PhD is completed, PhDs can go into corporate America, academia, consulting and/or start their own business. Unlike the rest of America who largely remain in job lock, having an education and being a PhD is a priviledge."

I am an English Ph.D from a top 10 research university who always supplemented adjunct teaching with full-time jobs until I finally decided to leave adjuncting altogether. I am not a "whiner," and feel fortunate to have a full-time job writing for a weekly trade publication with benefits, even though it pays less than what many 20-somethings can make right out of an undergraduate program. Journalism, too, is flooded with overqualified people desperate for any kind of full-time employment. Many of them have decades of experience at top-name media publications.

But please be disabused of the idea that a Ph.D. in any field qualifies anyone to work in corporate America or gain traction as a consultant.

I don't know about other fields, but what some have said here is absolutely true: better to leave your English Ph.D. off your resume. It not only does not matter, it can hurt your chances of getting a non-academic job, for many reasons: 1) Employers know their field is your second, third or life choice; 2) They may be afraid of your smarts; 3) They may imagine you have other opportunities, and be afraid you will move on quickly; 4) They may think academics are difficult or unworldly, or won;t take direction.

All the other qualities that some posters here say you need, leadership, work ethic, etc., you can gain or demonstrate without spending 8 to 10 years of your life and an untold number of dollars in an expensive academic dead end with absolutely no value for your future working life in the non-academic world. Perhaps it's different for business degrees or degrees in fields that can be put to use in the national security or defense establishments.

gplm2000: And if you chop the cotton real good, and don't talk back to old Massa, maybe he won't whip you too much.

Welcome to the Slave States of America.

If you have children, I hope you're teaching them Mandarin.

"Those of you who suggest that adjuncts should reject such dismal conditions must understand that for many of us (including this single mother of two who receives less than $100/month in child support), we have few employment options available since we're usually overqualified for most entry-level positions outside academe"

Oh no you're not--but keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

@pga36 - Many boomers (like myself) have no pension. For most people who worked outside of academia and government a pension is a pipe dream. This is particularly true for those on the trailing edge of the baby-boom and just behind. For us, housing was always insanely priced. We were always behind the curve by birth. And employers with long-term jobs never existed for us. So I, and most others like me, must work until we drop dead.

By the way - what Rob Faunce calls "adjunct" is what we called "TA". But that's ok.

"I'm sorry but cry me a river...most of the successful university professors I've ever met, studied with or taught with were a lot more diversified in their professional experience and outlook than the sad bitter overwhelmed ones that you describe in your article."

Absolutely. Being a member of one leisure class or another can do that for you.

Too bad Paris Hilton doesn't want to tote a laptop and sport tortoise shell glasses. (That's hot).

@pba36 - I should add to what I said about the total lack of pension. I and several of my friends have made plans to commit suicide rather than wind up old and homeless. We expect to end up homeless and broke, because we know that the young behind us are angry and blame us for clogging up the job market. We know that the young have ideas about how easy it is and has been for us that are wrong.

And we know that nothing is quite so contemptible in our society than a "little old lady". So, we are practical. We have made our plans. Good luck to you when you get old.

"And because the system neither rewards good teaching -- despite lip service to the contrary -- or pay adjunct laborers enough to compensate, *your children will get exactly what they/you pay for and nothing more* which is just what bronxprof provides them."

That's not quite accurate. PARENTS are paying for decent teaching. The UNIVERSITY is not paying YOU for decent teaching.

If you can't handle raising awareness without making threats at the wrong people, then you really DO need to leave not only for psychological reasons but because your reasoning skills leave too much to be desired.

"and the anti-intellectual prejudices of American society and especially American management have always made it a handicap to be too smart or too well educated. Way back in the middle of the 20th century a major corporation ran a commercial showing off its fancy new research facilities ... with a voiceover that said, "No geniuses here--just average Americans putting in a day's work.""

That's not "anti-intellectual" in the only sense that traditionally concerns academic snobs, that's so they don't to pay them a skill premium.

All profits can then be looted by the executive suite and their finance sector cronies who teach them how to do it--for a hefty fee, of course. (Gotta buy off Congress to write the loopholes and keep it legal).

If there's no skill premium in the private sector, there's no skill premium in academia either.

You need a new vocation.

Yes, it is sad the conditions that adjuncts have to endure to earn a measly wage. What's sadder is the fact that educated people willingly do it. If the system is so abusive and unjust, why not walk away from it? I have little respect for adjuncts because they clearly have little respect for themselves.

GPLM and More_cowbell:

As I pointed out above, your reasoning is quintessentially fallacious. I honestly don't understand why some commentators make the same flawed arguments without responding to how these arguments have already been exposed as fallacies.

So, once again: it simply doesn't matter what you think of adjuncts. It doesn't matter if you respect them or not. Telling them to quit if they don't like their jobs is not a rebuttal of their complaints. These kinds of arguments are hybrids between ad hominem and red herring fallacies. So even if you are 100% correct that adjuncts are just a bunch of whiners who would be better off if they quit their jobs, it wouldn't matter at all because this argument misses the whole point!

The point is that we are concerned with the overall well being of our universities (and the individuals therein), which includes being able to attract and support great faculty to do excellent research and teaching. Now, when many of us adjuncts suggest that working conditions are less than ideal, this is another way of pointing out that the whole system is in danger. If your response is that we're whiners, then you've once again put forth an ad hominem fallacy. If, on the other hand, you retort that we should leave, I can only surmise that you wish for the level of higher education to deteriorate even more than it already has---because there is simply no way of improving an ugly situation by having everyone walk away from it and pretend that everything is rosy.

Making personal observations of others' "poor choices" and "lack of personal responsibility" has no bearing at all on whether these individuals are correct in their assessment of the status quo. If they are right, however, then the education of students will continue to worsen. By ignoring this last point, which brings us to the heart of the matter, many of you show that you care more about personal attacks and clever witticisms than actually engaging the real issues.

A course in logic, most likely taught by one of us adjuncts, could remedy some of these fallacies!

@ zefelius

Of course they won't answer you because they are too busy admiring their own individual ambition in the system; any mention of collectivism generates a rolling of the eyes and almost seizure like reaction signaling the cerebral cortex to: work harder, be more productive and network relationships to false opportunities (and shut up about it) because all they really have to offer is an indifference and a blind intolerant allegience to a larger economic system that is devoid of any real imagination other than outcomes and bottom lines ...

Instead it is much easier prey on the rotting corpse that has been higher education over the last twenty years after a covert corporate takeover has starved Higher ed of its resources, made it more dependent-subserviant and is in the process of cutting out resistance.... (creating a spitting image of a cancerous host cell about to metastisize into the blood stream of academe, gutting the white blood cells who have resisted this infection for decades upon decades). Folks, this is stage 4 co-option and so many of the commentators here are asking us to hurry up and die....

This is not adjuncts vs. tenured; whiners vs. the-suck-it-up-and -workers... This is the gutted state of America folks... we are not in remission... Our currency is debauched, pensions & retirements unfunded and poorly invested, foreclosed and bankrupt. Our politicians are corrupt and ignorant. Our business leaders seem to think the greatest income/wealth disparity in seventy years is no big thing and we have so many angry people externalizing their own individual stories as if we all could absorb them and their truths to make change happen right away.

Zefelius, I think they have already given you a label and passed your comments by like a Geico commercial. They covet power but use words like liberty and personal freedoms... Bacevich is right, ambition equals anti-intellectualism.... However, I appreciate your attempts to clarify the points being made here.

@ Trendisnotdestiny

I think I'm passed by "like a Geico commerical" because my wit and writing aren't quite as lively as yours! I do enjoy your poignant critiques and heartfelt engagement with the issues. I don't mind disagreements with anyone. There are commentators on both sides of this issue who have genuine insights and make real contributions to the debate. But too many, as you already mentioned, are more concerned with their egos than with an honest exchange of ideas.

Re: #100 "I think you might have suffered from selective hearing, as so many young people do."
Indeed. One man's selective listening is another's healthy skepticism. Hadn't we all been taught that educators and their supervisors were men and women of virtue and fairness? When you don't believe everything you hear,it could be that it doesn't blend with what you have been told.

Are adjunct wages really "similar everywhere?" as realtyannie argues? Actually, you may be surprised at the differences, even given similarities of geography. Look at public universities in Los Angeles for example. The University of California, Los Angeles, pays its graduate student composition instructors $6,500 per class. California State University, Los Angeles, right across town, pays its grad student composition instructors $2,500 per each class. And yes, both are on the quarter system. Because of the high remediation rates, might argue that the CSULA instructors have the harder job, but UCLA instructors receive more than double the pay as CSULA instructors. CSULA instructors get NO fee waivers, unlike UCLA instructors. In addition, CSULA instructors are required to take a seminar class, at about $600. Not only that, the English department once (when I was teaching) forced its TAs to pay for their own handout copies, since the "copy machine budget has been exceeded." SO, deduct a couple of hundred more for copies for students. My classroom was filthy on the first day of instruction, being coated with a film of smog fallout, and repeated requests to have the classroom cleaned were not acted upon by maintenance. All told, CSULA teaching assistants make around, after costs and considering time spent reading papers, make around $5-6 an hour, while across the city at UCLA, they make a handsome above-minimum wage.

zefelius, septentriones, trendisnotdestiny, and others, thanks guys and/or gals, for saying so well and with such wit what needed to be said here to topple the social darwinist's self-satisfied advising. I wonder if some of those commentators realize just how arrogant they sound asking adjuncts "to take responsibility for choices." And I love it when commentators point to themselves as models of responsbile choosing, career changing etc. Meanwhile, bigger issues are on the table here, like the ills of the current university system.

35. bronxprof - September 03, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Truth telling at its best! I too am finding much greater reward cutting instructional corners than I ever found teaching. The smug satisfaction of whipping through a stack of under-read essays vs. being a martyr for this "peculiar institution" does not induce guilt. I give 'em what they pay for.

47. pterodactyl123 - September 04, 2010 at 12:26 pm
"Using simple arithmetic, you teach one or two courses while I teach five. I also serve on committees, advise, publish research, and attend workshops to improve my teaching. That's why I am paid five times more than you do. I also do many things for which I am not paid."

Out of touch much? Have you even talked to any of the adjuncts who carry your department? They are often teaching 6 or 7 classes on several campuses just to earn a fraction of what you are paid.

You are also (not surprisingly) unaware of how many activities adjuncts are NOT compensated for. We too serve on committees (the better to get hired with, my dear), we too advise students (my husband is stalking me; my child is seriously ill; I was in jail over the weekend), we too research, we too publish, we too attend workshops, we too "improve teaching." Unlike you, we are not paid for ANY of these activities. We are paid a fifth of what you earn; in fact, it is far more common for an adjunct to "do many things for which we are not paid" than it is for you.

"If some adjuncts can't even do the things for which they ARE paid--like give substantive feedback to students, or assign grades that reflect the quality of the work submitted--then why bother teaching? Go be a waiter or a retail sales worker, and let someone more ethical and more professional earn the (good) money that you are paid to teach"

So, you feel adjuncts are on par with waiters or sales clerks---why am I not surprised? And did you really want to refer to adjunct wages as "good money," or was that a typo? (Better take the out; you're looking a wee haughty.)

Enjoy your sabbatical.

For some reason I continue to be fascinated by this thread. There is obviously an undercurrent of resentment out there.


Most of this comes back to the quality of the program and school. We pay $4,500 for adjuncts in my current department - but my former university paid $9,000 for one adjunct for one course on a regular basis. But all of the adjuncts that were hired were also full time Asst or Associate Professors in other reputable programs too. I suppose we "got what we paid for" - and I never considered our "adjuncts" any different in quality from the full time faculty we had/have on staff. There was/is lots of mutual respect. Our adjuncts feel well respected, feel they are compensated fairly, and also feel like they are part of our team. Part of this quality outcome is good program leadership too.

For other adjuncts out there, there is no secret to getting a full time, TT faculty job. I can tell you what most every search committee is going to look for right now:

1. Quality of your degree granting institution:

In academia, pedigree does count. A candidate with a degree from a nationally recognized university is more likely to get a serious look from a search committee than someone with a degree from a lesser known college. I've seen many a candidate run to the first university and doctoral program that will accept them. This is a mistake. If you need to take prep course for entrance exams, take extra grad classes to beef up a GPA, or wait a year (or two) to get into a reputable doctoral program -- do it!!! Please dont be fooled into thinking that all doctoral degrees from all universities are the same. They are not. A reputable degree from a reputable and quality program is your first step to getting a full time faculty job. For some out here, I know it's probably too late.

2. Publish:

Waiting to get a TT job (or any faculty job) to publish is not the right thing to do. The candidate with a few pubs on his or her CV - and a doctorate from a quality university - will be impressive to a search committee. Most doctoral students can probably take a quality paper from a given semester and send it off to a B-journal for peer review. There are lots of B-journals - and even trade journals out there - that would accept a quality 10-15 page paper for publication from a doctoral student. You may even want to network and collaborate with some of your professors or other doctoral students on a publication. Leading a "small team" on a publishing venture will engender loyalty from your peers, impress your professors and get you noticed within the profession. Publishing should begin in the 1st year of your doctoral program. Not the last. You begin to build your CV in your doctoral program, not after.

3. Networking, service and professional organizations:

I am amazed at the number of CVs I see of young doctoral candidates who have no service history, or have never joined a professional organization. Part of getting a faculty job is also based on networking too. If you are a "good volunteer," assume leadership and committee positions in service organizations, and are active in your professional society, you will develop name recognition and personal branding. Unfortunately (and again), waiting to do this until you get hired is too late. As in the TT process itself where the committee is looking for a "history" of service excellence, joining professional organizations and doing 'one volunteer' job 3 or 6 months before you apply someplace does not suggest to a committee that you have a history of service excellence. Most members of a search committee have an "ethic" of service - and do service to "give back" to the profession -- not get something out of it. Most full time and tenured faculty I know continue to do service because it is "part of who they are." If it's part of you too -- it will show.

4. Work Experience:

This may be important for teaching schools where life experience may be valued over research. Unlike the medical profession where college to med school is often the path of choice, many reputable schools and programs may value the life experience in industry you can bring to the classroom. So if you want to go straight from your doctorate to the classroom, you may not compete very well with the candidate that has been in industry for a period of years and can offer that to the classroom.

5. Reputation:

Getting a degree from a quality program, publishing research early in your career, contributing to the profession through service, and having life experience builds your reputation as an expert in the field who has something to contribute to the classroom, program, dept and school. No one wants to hire a faculty member who "reads out of the book" to teach the subject.

6. Hiring myth T/F:

Teaching lots of classes as an adjunct makes me more attractive to other schools because it shows I am experienced. This is false. Having teaching experience as an adjunct may not be weighed as much you think. If you are a "great teacher" and this is what you "love to do" - than maybe high school teaching is for you. Being a university faculty member is more than being a good teacher - please know and accept that now.



Let me close by saying the obvious that this is my opinion. But I think it is valid opinion. If you have other opinions, I'm interested in reading them.

@petrifiedadjunct:

You don't sound petrified. You sound like you think you know it all. Adjuncts don't "carry" my department. The full time faculty do. And no one in my department is asking adjuncts to teach 6-7 courses at various colleges and universities. They are allowed to teach a maximum of 2.

Of course, "petrified adjuncts" think that teaching 6-7 courses across the city or state gives them a legitimate complaint: "I teach more than full-time professors but get paid less." It doesn't; it just means you're a fool. Wage-wise, you'd probably be better off with a fulltime job as an office receptionist (because at least you'd get benefits).

Term faculty who are abused should quit. Term faculty who feel underpaid should quit. As long as people work for nothing and accept being treated like crap, universities will continue to do it.

When you are in a bad relationship, end it.

For the most part there seem to be two responses consistently made by posters: 1. Esoteric meanings such as by Trend... 2. Head-in-the sand about reality. But then what is new on a college campus?

A university is a business, either for-profit or non-profit, that makes revenue and expense decisions like anyother business. If it wasn't, then why do many support costly athletic programs and perks for faculty? The highest cost to any organization is personnel. Of those, the faculty and upper administrators are the most expensive. One way a school can lower labor costs is to use adjunct faculty. Lower salaries and no benefits. Companies do this all the time through part time workers. When one hires-on to do part time work he/she understands these are the rules. If you do not like the rules, then leave.

Higher education is no different than most companies just because it's product is classroom/online teaching. Classes have been taught by adjuncts, graduate students and occasionally by full-time faculty for years. The size of classes has rarely been below 25 with most freshmen courses 50+, depending upon the school. It is amusing to hear the outcry about an underclass teaching students.

@ gplm2000,

It must be a lofty perch from which you wrestle with the some 130 post of complexity and are able to simply box it up into two tidy categories like this gplm. Will you be asking us later if we would like this last effort giftwrapped for a later date?

That you are amused by structural problems within and outside of academe is probably more representative of your indifference than any scholarly thinking. However, go on, by all means, reduce us using your meaningless and unwitting labels of academics gone wrong, it only confirms your willingness to bend in that direction that business wind blows...

Pteradactyl, your posts are becoming more and more illogical. In #39 you lecture adjuncts on the merit of "taking their job seriously." In #129 you explain that adjuncts who do exactly that are fools. In your view there is no meritorious way for an adjunct to act. If so, how can the author of the adjunct contract be innocent?
You may not realize it, but the only thing you're sure of is that the people who generate money for academia exist to give it to the ones in power.

You need to clean that rear view mirror from time to time. I told "petrified adjunct" that she (he?) was a fool for hustling off to 6-7 campuses a semester rather than trying to find a full-time job (even if that means leaving academia).

I personally find it hard to imagine that someone who teaches 6-7 courses on 2-3 different campuses can take their job(s) very seriously. I've known people who tried, and it always meant cutting corners with the students getting the short end of the stick.

The only thing I'm sure of is that the people who generate money for academia (students and their parents) deserve to get their money's worth.

I don't think that converting an adjunct like "petrified" or "bronxprof" to fulltime status will solve any problems. You'll still have the same lousy and careless teacher, but you'll be paying a lot more money for him/her.

Pterodactyl: You just gave the whole game away. You "personally find it hard to imagine" that overworked adjuncts can take their jobs seriously. But what you can "imagine" is not the standard against which other people's lives are measured; and in fact it appears that your imaginative capacities are seriously defective. This comes as no surprise, however; the smug and self-satisfied seldom understand what life is really like for "the other half", and they always imagine that if the tables were turned they would not make the "poor choices" that the underclass does. If only life were that easy.

For many adjuncts, it is precisely because they take their "jobs" seriously that they endure the stress and deprivation and outright contempt that are their lot in life. If they were the "lousy and careless" teachers you would like to believe, they would indeed cut corners, find ways to take the money and run, or else follow your advice and abandon teaching for something that is at least easier, and perhaps even more lucrative.

There are all sorts of reasons why they don't do that, some of which have already been outlined above; but for many it is because they have what used to be called a "vocation"--something you apparently do not understand because you confuse it with a mere "job". A job is what one does to earn money; a vocation is a way of life that is at the core of one's identity and often the very purpose of one's existence--and one can no more casually toss it overboard than one could casually cut off one's right arm.

For people with a genuine vocation, telling them to "just move on" when things don't work out is a bit like telling a parent to give up on a wounded child, or a spouse to abandon a beloved partner who develops a chronic disease, or a patriot to betray his country's cause when the tide of battle turns. In each case that may be the cynical, self-serving, calculating thing to do. But those who are forced to such extremities lose a part of their humanity in the process; and those who go that route too easily, or try to bully others into doing so with no appreciation of the real-life consequences, are less than fully human themselves.

Of course our mammon-worshipping idiocracy understands none of this, and spits on anyone who does. But that doesn't make them right--and it's pretty foolish of you, as an academic yourself, to add fuel to their fire. Once they've finished us off, they're going to come for you, too.

@septentriones

You'll notice I'm only responding to people who have directly referenced my posts. I understand having a vocation. I appreciate how painful it would be if I had not gotten lucky and landed the job that I did. I probably would have stuck it out as an adjunct and waited and hoped. But I would not be playing the blame game or cutting corners as a result of my choices. And several of the posters who comment here seem to feel "smug" about cheating students out of the quality education they deserve.

I get tired of people who think "the system" owes them something for the years they put in. I've read several of your posts in this thread, and I think your sense of entitlement is quite appalling. I can only imagine how much fun you must be in person.

"But I would not be playing the blame game..."
My taxes pay for the state universities so I'll blame them for mendacity and greed as I would any politician.

In addition, if and when my son attends a state college I will be pretty interested in how the college is treating its faculty. If the college is intending to cheat the students out of the quality education they deserve by not paying teachers enough, I might have something to say about it.

This writer is ignorant of Medicare, which is a program for the disabled or those at full retirement age (65 and increasing). It is NOT and never has been used by the population he references.

X

I'm a little amazed that anyone would consider "cut[ting academic corners" and not giving their A-game to their students to prove that "the university gets what it pays for." I understand adjuncts are in a difficult position, but, dear God, have some pride in your work. You have an opportunity to make a difference, something that's becoming harder to find in this world. Don't blow it with a half-assed attitude; that may be why those who've advocated for giving a less-than-committed performance are feeling angry and resentful. Do the job you were hired to do -- warts and all -- and know that you've changed lives with a job well done. Anything less and you're cheating your students and yourself.

Once again, to any impressionable undergrad who is reading this: DON'T GO TO GRAD SCHOOL ESPECUALLY IN THE HUMANITIES. THERE ARE NO REAL JOBS, JUST HORRID ADJUNCT JOBS and you will be treated like a dog.

Now go out and find something else to do with your life so you don't end up like us PhDs who fell for the lies of these tenured know-it-alls who are castigating us for cutting corners and telling the truth.

In many of the anti-adjunct postings we've seen here, there is an interesting double standard that should be pointed out.

We are told that students and parents are paying good money for a decent education and hence "deserve to get their money's worth" in return for their investment, so adjuncts who "cut corners" or give less than their all to their students are cheats and slackers who should be ashamed of themselves for their egregious misbehavior.

We are also told that these same adjuncts have no one to blame but themselves because they knew, or should have known, right from the start that the academic job market was terrible, so if they chose to pay good money for a worthless product then it's their own damn fault.

But wait a minute. The grad students who eventually became adjuncts were, by definition, students--and students "deserve to get their money's worth" for their investment. Yet clearly many grad students who ended up as adjuncts did not get anything close to their money's worth out of their graduate programs. On the contrary, they were lured into graduate school with false narratives about their employment prospects, told to focus on the wrong things, burned out with excessive teaching and/or research loads, burdened with vast amounts of student-loan debt, dumped unprepared into a job market that had no use for them, and then abandoned to their fate as "damaged goods" by the senior professors who got them into this mess in the first place.

So the bottom line as narrated by "real" faculty seems to be that the adjunct is always the one to blame. If today's students are getting a lousy education, it's not because universities treat the majority of their instructional staff like garbage--it's because adjuncts are lazy and shiftless (i.e., don't want to do more work than they are being paid for). But if adjuncts are adjuncts because they got a lousy education that didn't adequately prepare them for the job market, it's not the fault of the senior professors who gave them that lousy education--it is, once again, because adjuncts are lazy and shiftless (i.e., didn't do their homework before committing to that lousy product in the first place).

But why should we not stand this whole argument on its head? Why not say that students and parents who get ripped off by corner-cutting adjuncts should have done their homework better and figured out in advance that they were throwing their money down an academic rat hole? "If parents choose to send their kids to a university that skimps on staffing costs by hiring adjuncts at slave wages, then they have no one to blame but themselves when their kids spend four or five years learning nothing and then have to move back home when they graduate because they're not qualified for any of the few decent jobs that remain."

As the old saying goes, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

I suspect the real motivation for a lot of the hostility toward adjuncts is blame-shifting by the senior faculty. They are the ones who let their grad students down and threw them to the wolves; they are the ones who created, or allowed the creation of, the two-tier academic system we have today; they are the ones who benefit from a system that protects their own job security and comfortable salaries at the expense of adjuncts who have neither. And so of course they must find some reason for believing that the adjuncts are simply getting what they deserve--even while insisting that those same adjuncts have a moral obligation to exert maximum effort delivering good product so parents and students don't figure out what's going on.

And before anyone accuses me of agreeing that adjuncts should "cut corners" and deprive their students of a good education, that is not what I am saying. I agree completely with what "mxims" wrote above. As professionals we have an obligation to do what is best for our students, not ourselves, and if we can no longer do that then we should leave the profession. I have always tried to hold to that standard myself, often at considerable personal cost, and I have always encouraged others to do so as well. Teachers should no more skimp on their teaching than doctors should skimp on their doctoring. We don't have the right to screw up other people's lives because of our own problems, no matter whose fault those problems may be.

But I do object, and rightly so, to the multiple victimization that many adjuncts are subjected to. First they are used and abused by their graduate programs. Then they get even worse treatment in the job market and in their employment--expected to behave as professionals but not treated as such. And when they dare to point out that in fact they have been, and continue to be, mistreated in this way, they are told to shut up and stop whining. Do those of you who are so down on adjuncts really think that mistreating and berating people like this is the best way to keep them on the job and doing it to the best of their ability?

It should also be pointed out that senior faculty often speak with forked tongues on this point as well. Senior faculty will lecture adjuncts at the drop of a hat about professionalism and commitment to their students; but there have also been far too many cases in which senior faculty were telling their grad students, "I don't care if you are a TA with a mile-high stack of papers to get through; you are not here to teach but to get a Ph.D. Stop spending so much time on your students and get some chapters written."

What septentrions says might sound like a load of negativism, and "entitlement" but hey, the story he tells is familiar to many of us. I was encouraged to get my lit PhD by a string of famous profs at my undergrad institution. Praise and encouragement did not abide at my very good PhD program. And I did everything by the book: published in good journals before getting my PhD, presented work at conferences and so on. Those well-known profs kept telling me to hang in there, to keep doing research, to publish, and continue trying on the job market. So, four years later, I'm still a slave adjunct and/or visiting lecturer and need to find something else to do with my life. And btw, I love teaching and research. Another career trajectory is a painful alternative. Anyhow, I feel like, I did everything right, was encouraged and nudged by my profs with open arms, and now...here we are....

If you're a VAP, then you're certainly not a failure. Four years is not that long. Your professors are right: hang in there, because the market seems to be getting better.

I've heard of people working as adjuncts for several years or even over a decade, and then finally getting their tenure track job. Not that I have any experience on hiring committees, but I suspect attitude goes a long way, so stay positive. That sounds horrible and probably naive, but that's what you have to do. Stay in contact with your professors and keep doing things by the book. And network. When I finished my PhD, my friends in TT land told me that temp positions can often lead to permanent positions. They were right.

Re: #136: "I get tired of people who think "the system" owes them something for the years they put in. I've read several of your posts in this thread, and I think your sense of entitlement is quite appalling."
All statements about justice and fairness involve the question of entitlement.
One may note that there is no such thing as what a person deserves; there's only what he can get, or can't get.
However, academia does not operate by free market force alone. It starts out with certain beliefs about fairness and entitlement. These are challenged and defended.

See this Postsecret: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/TIwjbEdb8dI/AAAAAAAAM94/PK5aTo8Aml4/s1600/faculty.jpg

A teacher complaining about having to create a syllabus and, *gasp*, make copies to distribute to students is like a dentist complaining about having to fill cavities. It's the cornerstone of your job description.

jdi84 He's not complaining about having to create a syllabus. He's explaining what he has to do in order to receive shit pay.

Thanks to Trend... and other elitists for their jokes today. It is Thursay the 16th, we all need a good laugh today.

Just as a historical note, this would all seem a restoration of the ancient classical model (which is not a justification).

* The pedagogue was typically a slave in classical Greece.
* Children were taken care of by slaves or servants.
* Wealthy Romans had slaves to wet nurse their babies (see the scene on the wet nurse option in "Spartacus").

Nietzsche staged this photograph, inspired by how Alexander the Great reputedly used his tutor Aristotle (Aristotle harnessed to a cart, Alexander in the cart, whip in hand):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nietzsche_paul-ree_lou-von-
salome188.jpg

Socrates taught for free and attacked the Sophists who charged to teach.

Here is part 2 of the historical note.

Doctors, teachers, tutors and librarians; all slaves, were a major Roman import from their Greek conquests. The Romans appreciated a good liberal arts education among those they were enslaving. The educated slave joined the multitude of slaves doing the work at the household or enterprise that purchased them.

The Roman typically had little concern about being catered hand and foot by slaves or having their children catered hand, foot and mind by slaves. Well, maybe a bit of anxiety about another Spartacus, but then that was what the legions were for.

I was referring to the 1960 Kubrick "Spartacus" in post 152.