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I’m Not a Bad Investment (Anymore)

December 6, 2011, 9:59 am

By Isaac Sweeney

I was a full-time adjunct for three-and-a-half years, which is the same as saying I didn’t have disposable income or a savings account for three-and-a-half years. After losing an adjunct job, I was partially unemployed for eight months, with a small adjunct gig and various temporary jobs to help me through. In August, I started my current full-time job at Richard Bland College, but that also was the month when I really got behind financially. In more ways than one, the low pay of my adjunct career caught up with me.

In August, I was working so I had to stop drawing unemployment benefits, but I wouldn’t receive my first paycheck until September 1. My family was also preparing to sell our house, which meant spending some money on minor renovations. It wasn’t a lot of money for those renovations, but it was a lot for a one-income family.

I used up what small amount of credit I had left and I called some companies to get extensions on bills. Of course, extensions just put off payments. When I finally did start getting a paycheck from my new job, it wasn’t really enough to pay off bills and buy necessities, like groceries and gas. I was overdrawn and I still had to move and put some finishing touches on my house.

Somehow I survived, but it took me until November to get back on track. (I’m not completely sure I’m all caught up yet.) While being back on track seems like great news, my family is almost ready to start looking for loans for our new house. I’m afraid my financial activity for the last few months (and for the last few years as an adjunct) has so blighted my credit that I will be seen as a risk. Just looking at the recent numbers, I would probably consider myself a risk, too.

Maybe there’s good in all this: When I was an adjunct, I worked at a job I loved that, in some ways, didn’t love me back. But those near-destitute years have led me to my current tenure-track job. While the Isaac Sweeney market has had its ups and downs, I like to think that I’m a healthy long-term investment. Only time will tell.

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  • goldrick

    These arguments may “feel right” to you, Richard, but they lack empirical support. To the contrary, my colleagues and I have identified with a rigorous experimental design some sizeable benefits to Pell-type programs. The one we recently studied accelerated credit accumulation and apparently may have even induced higher grades, on average, and for the students most at risk it also reduced attrition. Overall, students responded to the aid by studying more and working less; it didn’t make them lazy or more likely to party. We wil elaborate on this in a response to you soon on COHE or my blog The Education Optimists, but for now your readers should consider hard data. Our work was covered in COHE and IHE last month and is available in this paper http://finaidstudy.org/documents/Goldrick-Rab%20Harris%20Benson%20Kelchen.pdf
    The Pell program, like all programs, could be improved but its shortcomings don’t lie in the areas you describe.

    On a different note, I have to wonder why you seem so eager to take resources away from those with the least? You know the literature on middle class tax credits- those are ineffective, yet you aren’t denigrating middle class families.

    Sara Goldrick-Rab

  • cwaynehood

    More income redistribution

  • tjfarrel

    1) who made the assertions that Vedder is countering?  He cites no one.
    2) is it really surprising that as college costs continue to rise at multiple times the rate of inflation (which itself has consistently outpaced earnings for many Americans), more students become eligible for Pell grants?  No.
    3)  other posters have noted the flaw in expecting Pell earners to graduate at the same pace and rate as those who don’t need them.

  • pnedry

    Just as our institutions have open enrollment policies that allow students to enter classrooms and labs will poorly formed, unsubstantiated positions, and belabored logic, so too, has The Chronicle allowed a forum for the same.  The political arena often uses terms like ‘low income’ and ‘the middle class’ without definition, leaving it to the reader to interpret.  Another common one is ‘small business.’

    Richard admits that he is a slow learner.  I hope he persists in his quest to better understand the Pell Grant and the award criteria.  I would like to see some data that define his use of ‘middle class’ and how many middle class students out of the total are awarded Pell Grants.  There may be some anomalies, given the complex formula and criteria–but they are just that–anomalies.

    There are certainly problems with Pell, but it is not that they are being awarded to students outside the criteria.  The programs and implementing regulations are exactly what the Congress and DoE have prescribed.

  • marka

    Hmm … This Blog column is titled “Insights & Commentary” … not ‘rigorous analytic treatise.’  I enjoy reading this provocative columns, to get me to see & think from a different perspective.

    I, too, am concerned about the Pell ‘subsidy’ and its contribution to the astronomic rise in tuition.  Similar, in my mind, to the subprime crisis & the counterproductive subsidies, including tax deduction for home mortgage.  I’m a ‘beneficiary’ of these subsidies – my daughter with a Pell, me & my spouse (and my family & friends … ) on the mortgage subsidy; but I shudder when I hear many object to eliminating the mortgage deduction because it will substantially undercut home ‘valuations’ – suggesting that, indeed, the deduction has substantially inflated the price of a home.  We all lose, ultimately, when subsidies go awry.So … nice to have more rigorous facts & figures, but I don’t read any pretense to that here.  Author says lack of reported evidence suggests adverse information – a perfectly valid presumption, and one enshrined in legal rules of evidence – although one needn’t agree with it.I just wish I would see some of these same criticisms leveled @ the obviously biased political partisan column ‘opinions’ of Paul Krugman, the point-man for far [out] left economic screed – but I rarely see such criticism leveled at the darling of the intellectual class, because, of course, they agree with his biases … See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/07/paul-krugman/paul-krugman-claims-protests-2005-werent-raucous-h/See also a collection of criticism @  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman If a Nobel Prize were the end-all & be-all, shouldn’t we all be bowing to Milton Friedman?  Not … See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences#Controversies_and_criticisms & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies

  • rebek56

    Congratulations on your tenure-track position!

  • http://twitter.com/IsaacSweeney IsaacSweeney

    Thanks.

  • academicentrepreneur

    Congratulations on your new position.

    Why, however, are you and your family “almost ready to start looking for loans for our new house?” While mortgage interest rates are low, your credit rating is probably such that you won’t qualify for the lowest of those rates. The real estate market is flat, and likely to stay so for at least a few years.

    Wouldn’t it make sense, if you sell your current home, to rent for a few years. Use the equity (if any) in your current home to pay off debt, build up an emergency fund, and start investing in more liquid assets than real estate. After a few years, you should no longer be living on the financial edge.

    If, after that time, you decide to purchase a home again, you’ll almost certainly be in much better financial shape.

    Just a few thoughts….

  • demisty

    Congratulations on your new, tenure track job!  Will we still get great blog posts from you?

  • policywonk46

    Wow, I didn’t think I’d see my own situation here…I went through the same thing while trying to get a tenure-track position.  The financial disaster ended a long term relationship and destroyed my credit score.  6 months later I am about to reemerge financially (but teetering on Bankruptcy) but happily employed at a tenure-track position I love.  The financial catastrophe you describe, I would guess, is far more common than we think.  The August-Sept. “lag” is really difficult and pretty much finished me off to the point of being homeless for 2 months (fortunately I have many friends).  Good luck to you, I wish you well in your current position.

  • http://twitter.com/IsaacSweeney IsaacSweeney

    Thanks for writing. Congrats on your position. I feel your pain.

  • whynotwhynot

    The meritocracy is alive and well…  hard work, struggle, yadda, yadda, yadda…

    The story is not with people who “landed the job” the real story is with all of those currently floating adrift with no prospects and all those who have already died.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Camille-Denise-Giampa-Mustachio/511082058 Camille Denise Giampa Mustachi

    I was an English adjunct at BRCC and various other schools until August 2011. I am now full-time at Germanna and LOVE every day of my career there!  It was not easy to get where I am, and your article articulates the pain of moving from part-time to full-time-with-relocation very well.  My husband and I are floating our house while renting an apartment–waiting for the real estate market to improve; eventually, we will completely move on from our old town to our new town.  The immediate financial challenge of relocating is part of the equation that few consider when offered a dream position, but it is one that faculty members (especially with families) have to weigh when planning for such a move.  While our first few months have been financially-cumbersome (ha!), we are finally getting back on track, as well. Good luck to you.   

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Camille-Denise-Giampa-Mustachio/511082058 Camille Denise Giampa Mustachi

    I was an English adjunct at BRCC and various other schools until August 2011.
    I am now full-time at Germanna and LOVE every day of my career there! 
    It was not easy to get where I am, and your article articulates the pain
    of moving from part-time to full-time-with-relocation very well.  My
    husband and I are floating our house while renting an apartment–waiting
    for the real estate market to improve; eventually, we will completely
    move on from our old town to our new town.  The immediate financial
    challenge of relocating is part of the equation that few consider when
    offered a dream position, but it is one that faculty members (especially
    with families) have to weigh when planning for such a move.  While our
    first few months have been financially-cumbersome (ha!), we are finally
    getting back on track, as well. Good luck to you.

  • pjkelly7935

    Congratulations to both winners!

  • 11891224

    This tool appears to be very
    useful provided the user follows through to the second page to enter aid,
    anticipated payments from the family, and expected borrowing. 
    Unfortunately, if the user does the comparison based only on the first page,
    the entire net cost (total cost minus average grants/scholarships) is assumed
    to be borrowed. This displays a misleading figure for loan borrowing in the
    first year, and assumes four years of borrowing at that level.   … Mary Piccioli, Scannell & Kurz

     

  • https://www.unibulmerchantservices.com/ Merchant Account

    CFPB’s tool for estimating and comparing tuition costs is very helpful, but when I did a cost comparison for three schools, it became immediately clear that far more important is being able to get some kind of a financial aid. So in my comparison, the sticker price for MIT ($55,270) was much higher than the one for the average four-year private non-profit university ($42,224). However, when you subtracted the average grants and scholarships, the average private school overtook MIT by a wide margin ($26,694 vs. $18,644).

  • ahmetts

     

    This is a tool that is very interesting and could be
    helpful for most prospective students. I actually tried using it and I am going
    to pass it on to other individuals at my institution to look at. I agree with
    11891224, that you must make sure that you go beyond the first page and fill
    out the borrowing amounts. Another issue is if a first gen student receives
    this information they will still need explanation. It will be interesting to
    see other comments and hear others opinions.

  • anand shing

    ISO Consultants India:
    ISOConsultantsIndia is a Business Management Consultant that provides ISO Consultancy Servies in Delhi and All Over India.
     

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