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February 19, 2012, 07:00 AM ET

The Good Life

In a review of my self-published essay ebook on adjunct life, called Students Losing Out, Claudia Dreifus, co-author of Higher Education?, said, "Here's the dirty big secret of American higher education: It is being financed by thousands of underemployed adjunct faculty who work only for pennies and the love of teaching." She's right, but this is only one of many "dirty big" secrets. In my first year as a tenure-track professor, I have discovered another one: the tenure-track job sure can be a cushy one. After being a full-time adjunct for a while, this tenure-track stuff is kind of a cinch. Of course, everything has to do with perspective. I used to travel between two colleges to cobble together minimum wage; now, I go to work in the morning and stay in the same place until I go home. I also teach at a two-year institution and the majority of my job is supposed to be devoted to... Read More
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February 17, 2012, 01:50 PM ET

Dear Colleague

Dear colleague who has the classroom before me: First, let me say that I feel we share a certain bond, even though we've never met. Actually, I've never to my knowledge laid eyes on you. Our two class periods are separated by 15 minutes. I'm slogging over from the far side of campus, rushing just to get to class on time, and you're always long gone before I arrive. But believe me when I say that I can still feel your presence in the room--mostly because you leave so much evidence of it behind. Which brings me to my point, and that is to say, with as much genuine affection as I can muster: Please leave behind less evidence of your presence. For example, I think it's wonderful that you like to arrange the desks in a circle. Walking into the room and seeing them like that brings back fond memories of my own undergraduate days and of certain professors in particular. In my mind's eye, I... Read More

February 16, 2012, 12:51 PM ET

The Advice Not Taken

These last few months I have been stockpiling advice like a survivalist. Now, with my first on-campus visit set for this week, the day of reckoning has finally come and I'm reviewing my stores. I have collected pointers from former professors, the recent hires at my current institution, even a particularly generous dean from my undergraduate days. The advice has been as various as its sources, with one exception. Almost everyone concludes their counsel with the same imperatives: be yourself and be confident. The problem is that when I am being myself, I am a doubt-filled bundle of nerves. At this point it can seem as though there is no good reason for job seekers not to be confident. We've carefully studied the schools, the departments, our prospective peers. We've rehearsed our teaching demonstrations and job talks till we can (and do) present them in our sleep. We've polished our... Read More

February 15, 2012, 12:39 PM ET

Going 'Off List'

My last post, You Didn't Hear it from Me, Okay?, prompted a few readers to e-mail me directly to inquire about the ethics of going "off list" to collect intelligence on employment candidates. Questions ranged from, "Are we allowed to contact people other than references given by the candidate?" to "At what point (if ever) do we let the candidate know that we are going to be calling around?" Let me say at the very start that a hiring committee that relies exclusively on references given by a candidate is just begging for trouble. Most people, regardless of their qualifications and character, can scare up at least three people to say something positive. That's why I absolutely advocate going "off list" in pursuit of the truth. That said, there are essential protocols to be followed when doing this, and hiring committees who "go rogue" at this step of the process can find themselves in a... Read More

February 14, 2012, 02:24 PM ET

Who Benefits?

Although changes in student financial-aid policies for the federal 2012 fiscal-year budget have been widely reported, one change has gone largely unnoticed: the requirement that new students must have a high-school diploma, GED, or completed home schooling in order to receive federal aid. Currently, students without such a credential must take an "ability-to-benefit" (ATB) test to determine if they are ready for college-level work. If they pass the ATB test, they are eligible for federal student financial aid, including loans and grants. According to a recent article in The Community College Times, about 1 percent of community-college students, or 100,000, are ATB students. In many states, once those students earn a predetermined number of college credits, they are eligible to receive their GED. Meanwhile, they have earned credit towards a college degree and can continue seamlessly... Read More

February 10, 2012, 02:58 PM ET

Tell Someone You Don't Know

Though many speakers at the New Faculty Majority's national summit, in Washington, D.C., on January 28, urged spreading the word about the overreliance on contingent faculty and how this harms student learning, few were as colorful as Deborah Leigh Scott. Scott, an adjunct instructor, artist, writer, and filmmaker, uses various forms of art as her mode of expression. She's currently working on a documentary called 'Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America. She urges those with artistic means and motivation to use them to spread the word about contingent faculty issues. She talked about some of her fellow adjuncts who live in vans or in their parents' basements. She said these stories are heart-wrenching, but the images could be even more striking if they were captured on film, in fiction, or in some other artistic form. The idea was to let the general public know, somehow, what is... Read More

February 9, 2012, 11:15 AM ET

Buying Low on the Job Market

I'm a naturally optimistic person, maybe even a little naively so at times. When I read through the job lists this fall even the roughest postings seemed attractive for at least a moment. "Sure," my thinking went, "Mid-Tundra State is a little isolated and it sounds as though they're looking for their hire to run the writing center, edit the literary magazine, and teach a 6/6 load, but just think how much I could accomplish without distractions. I wonder if I could see the aurora borealis from there?" Of course, the more I learned, the clearer it became that some of the jobs I am most competitive for are no one's "dream jobs." In one interview the dean of arts and sciences made it clear that, while the university encourages research, in most cases the volume of teaching and service obligations effectively precludes it. Another interviewer at a different school described the university's... Read More

February 8, 2012, 02:16 PM ET

Inequality in the Academic World

As we talk about higher education in the 21st century, there are big-picture questions to address: What is the purpose of our varying institutions? What are our teaching goals -- to give students a broad liberal-arts education or job preparation? How can we best meet those goals and use our dollars? Since I attended the New Faculty Majority summit, however, I've been thinking about something equally important: education as a matter of civil rights and social justice. Anne Wiegard, president of the NFM Foundation, shared remarks with a pre-summit group that were based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s words: "We can never be satisfied as long as our colleagues are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating 'For Tenure Track Only.'" She talked about inequality in the academic world -- in terms of academic freedom, job security, and more. There are two faculty... Read More

February 7, 2012, 01:28 PM ET

You Didn't Hear It From Me, Okay?

Imagine sitting at a table with six fellow members of a search committee and feeling relieved that after a fair amount of debate and voting, the group has finally settled on the top three finalists -- or so you think. "I really hate to do this," says your colleague to the left, "and I thought maybe the process would play itself out so I wouldn't have to, but I feel obligated." "Obligated to do what?," you ask. "Obligated to tell you that Susan tends to sleep with her grad students," your colleague replies. "It's been a serious problem in her current department, so I'm sure that's why she is looking to make a move." This, of course, prompts half of the group to call for Susan's candidacy to be tossed out and the other half to question whether the grad students are in her lab, which would be very, very bad, or just grad students in the department, which seems possibly okay in a creepy... Read More

February 6, 2012, 12:18 PM ET

Policies That Aren't

One often-frustrating aspect of academic life is the phenomenon of alleged "policies" that, upon further inspection, turn out not to be policies at all. These "policies that aren't" come in two main varieties: phantom policies, which the "old guard" will swear to on their mothers' graves but which don't appear in any official document, and administrative edicts, which are not really policies--at least not at any institution that espouses shared governance--because they haven't been approved by the relevant, representational bodies. Years ago, when I first became department chair at another institution, I was told by the other chairs (most of whom had been there for 20 years or more) about several policies regarding faculty teaching schedules--for example, that every full-time faculty member had to teach at least one night class a year. Because the people in my department weren't... Read More