The Adjunct Situation as Emotional Abuse

I don’t believe for a second that only the “best” adjunct educators land tenure track jobs. But I do believe that they do not continue to work at a job that is abusive, non-advancing, and grossly underpaying.

Higher Ed administration and adjuncts: This relationship between two entities has developed, I believe and hope, into a state of codependency rather than outright abuse. Abuse implies the intent to hurt, and adjuncts suffer most from neglect. (I teach psychology). Of course the unions in my state are powerful enough to react and prevent any outright abuse.

Adjunct please!

For how long have you been an adjunct? Even in the best of situations (and I count mine among them), the dead-end and economic realities tend to overtake one’s sense of idealism.

When the data isn’t even kept locally then nationwide surveys can’t be done.
No data = no issues. I mean afterall adjuncti are simply transitory fill-in the -gaps; they come they go, who can keep track? Yea, right. There simply is no motive for the administration to gather evidence of the overuse of adjuncts or open themselves up for any number of potential realities.

ome issues exist in large scale comparisions. First: which schools keep data and how are thy different from those that do not? Other: Comparing the salaries across semester and quarter system, 2 vs. 4 year, Is pay per class? Per contact hour? What respponsibilites does the pay include such as office hours, individual student conferences and meetings? Compare those with or without retirement, health benefits, and unemployment.

Domestic violence in more one-on-one when both parties legally have equal power to end the relationship. Bullying? Codependence, but with one group having offical power to end the relationship for the other.

“[Leaving] …. it’s not a solution for adjuncts as whole. And that’s a key difference between an abusive marriage and the abusive relationship between adjuncts and institutions …”

I’d say it’s true of domestic abuse too. Walking out, singly, individually, does nothing to stop the abuser (and other abusers) from doing the same to others. Solidarity among abused spouses or partners, a mass walkout, availability of alternatives, and a mass effort to prevent people from entering or staying in such relationships in the future would have a bigger impact on abusers’ ability to keep on abusing.

I think the parallel is better than the author realized.

bwyatt4561, you are lucky to have found an adjunct position with good money. I am a full-time faculty member at a place that depends on adjuncts, and while those of us who teach here value our part-time colleagues, the most these folks can make in the five classes a year they are allowed to teach is less than $10,000. We ask them to do far more than their salaries deserve.

The tragic irony is that adjuncts have little hope of landing a regular full time position, particularly at the institution where they are teaching. Their adjunct status works against them. It can’t be overcome with successful publications and books (particularly if the ternured faculty lacks in this regard).

We are losing the best of potential faculty, the individuals who love to teach and who thus are the best teachers. This doesn’t bode well for the future of higher education.

One gets used to a certain level of self-indulgence in Chronicle blog posts, but this one is over the top. Spousal abuse is a serious, complex, and often life-threatening social problem, one in which vulnerable people are genuinely trapped by economic, family, and cultural circumstances. You’re a well-educated professional who feels like he doesn’t get paid enough. This post is an insult to a lot of tormented people who would love to have your problems.

Isaac, your posts are always so depressing yet true. The question I keep asking myself is how long can I stay in this? I dont want to do anything else but teach, but I am approaching 40 and cant go much longer without health insurance and stability. I teach art and the funny thing is, I thought teaching was the responsible route compared to trying to make it as an artist in New York.

I am tired, for 7 years now, I have been teaching 5-6 courses a semester and 2-3 a summer, with no breaks. How much longer should I keep this up? What else can I do? I am a failure, I have failed my wife and family. I have so much school debt.

I am usually never one to complain. Grin and take it I always say. But I really need help, I need an escape button!

As many of the responses here have noted, abuse is a very strong word. I think that exploitation may describe the situation of contingency more aptly. The great irony is that not only are contingent faculty exploited. Our students and our full-time colleagues all suffer the consequences, albeit in different ways, of having approximately 75% of the faculty in positions that do not require office hours (or, in many cases, even provide offices) or service to the institution. When our students need us, we’re all too often on our way to another campus. When there is curriculum to be developed or policy to be determined, ditto.

The plight of contingent faculty has been well documented. We often lack computers, and sometimes even supplies as basic as markers for white boards, or copy machines, or blue books are not provided. We do not receive equal pay for equal work. Still, I’d say that to expect us to buy these standard items on our meager salaries is not abuse, but it is exploitation.

No school (at least, to my knowledge), demands that we teach six classes a semester, but their reluctance to offer us a full-time job, or even a part-time position with fractional responsibilities and benefits, or any real job security, leads to many of us becoming freeway flyers at multiple institutions. Denying contingent faculty the basic necessities of life: a living wage, health insurance, retirement benefits, perhaps comes close to being abuse, but I think that it is still, more accurately, exploitation.

The question of how to deal with exploitation has no easy answers. If it did, we’d have cured the disease long ago. My only suggestion is to do as Joe Hill urged: “Don’t waste any time in mourning [(or complaining, or quitting, or feeling sorry for ourselves—my additions)]. Organize…”

Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College

I do understand why some here have been protesting the “abuse” analogy as stretching the similarities enough to cause offense. Perhaps there is a better comparison: Being an adjunct is like being “The Other Woman.” While I do not speak from personal experience, the analogy does seem to have some internal strength: you get involved with someone/someplace committed to others more than you because of the dream that someday will change, you work hard to earn appreciation in the hope you will become “The One” for whom they will leave all the others. In the end you often stay because living part of the fantasy is better having your dreams totally dashed.

I wonder whether we really need to address systemic problems like the proliferation of graduate programs (traditional and online) that are pouring out candidates into a job market where employers are unwilling to expand their F/T pool. Do they realize that I cannot teach as effectively because I have a full-time job somewhere else, am on campus a couple of nights a week and the best place to have office hours really is the student center? I work a very good college with people who promise they are seeking to bring me on full time. I love teaching college and dream of doing so full time again one day. I can only hope I am not being idealistic without good cause and that the analogy I gave earlier cannot be applied to me as well.

Agreed. See my reply above.

It is disheartening to think of an adjunct position as an abusive relationship. My position is a delightful, post-retirement experience for which I had no expectations of tenure track; neither do I expect to be hired permanently despite my energetic and professional performance in my teaching duties. If the department that hired me could afford a tenured PhD, they would have one in the position I now hold. Yes, the salary is minimal. It is my option to walk away if things get unbearable, but for now the teaching experience is immensely gratifying, compliments come from my boss, my students, and my co-workers constantly, and the money I am paid goes into savings.

The emotional turmoil still grows.
I came in second for a FT position 4 years ago. If FT I’d make $45,000 and essentially teach 1 more class, get my own office, and officially GET to do governance. The person who got the job was truly better qualified (way more experience).

Where am I? At least I can say I would have been hired if the first alternative decided to not take the job. For 13 years I have had health benefits, retirement and now get paid close to 29,000 a year to teach 8 classes (quarter system). I have taught almost full-time, choose my own texts and help choose group texts. I have access to a computer, phones, email 24 hours a day, a semi-private shared desk, enough shelves and drawers. I have many activities I do that I am not paid for but serve me and my students better. I continue to work for the better treatment and respect of adjunct.

Yet I am temporary: repeatedly hired every four months. Others in academia say I do not have “a career”. To some administrators I am no more valuable to the school than a new adjunct since adjuncts are simply for flexibility in the schedule. 13 years + the same classes = flexible?. Ha ha ha. Most fellow FT faculty at our school treat and respect adjunct as FT. A double edge sword… My area chair expects that there is no reason I can’t teach until I retire in 19 years. I am still trying to cope. Where do you draw the line to feel not taken advantage of? After not getting the FT job I HAD to draw the line more. Emotionally I couldn’t take it. Several fellow FT interpreted this as bitter. I was simply very depressed and wondering how to cope.. Add to this the guilt over feeling bad when I have it very good in so many ways, makes me feel even worse. Somebody verbally slap me (gently) and tell me something spiritual to shake me out of this nagging depression. A new perspective?

People that write in this blog andsay that labor abuse cannot be compared to spousal abuse need to have their heads examined. I would say that is worse. I would call it the last form of slavery. Given the job market that was these past years, many that have been abused could not move to other places. And the abusers know this.
I know faculty on tenure track positions that have been horribly abused, and even with outstanding records (research grants, great teaching evaluations) they could not move for a few years because of the job market.
Reviewing: you are abused, you have to do your job like nothing happened, you have to look for a job and get one no matter the job market, and on top you cannot talk about why you move.
Maybe the bruises are not visible but they are there.
It would be good if before accepting a job, each department/university would disclose all the conflicts that have been in the past in the department and the university. This way you would know if you accept the job or not, and if you have no choice, at least you’ll know that although you are offered a TT it might be temporary, or who are the people that you have to avoid at any price.

I see the point, and I know as academics (even basement-dwellers) we could debate any analogy until it runs screaming; I’ll weigh in on the side that’s against Nazification of the topic.  It’s truly awful enough in its own way without dragging up an even worse situation for reinforcement. 

I’ve found great relief in getting a much easier and less time-consuming job to pay the bills (teaching test prep) and indulging my love for teaching by adjunking when and where I wish.  Once you get beyond the mindset that you have to belong to/in academia on their terms, the rest is easy.  :–)

I like Professor X’s comparison (“In the Basement of the Ivory Tower”):  we’re the present-day equivalent of Victorian piece workers.   The big difference?  We do have options beyond prostitution.

Certainly he was referring to emotional abuse — so was I. Nowhere did I suggest that only physical abuse should be worthy of our concern. Indeed, the line between the two is extremely hard to draw in domestic abuse situations, since the threat of physical abuse often lurks behind ongoing emotional abuse. And however one draws that particular line, the experience on either side of it is of a different order than the tribulations of academic labor.

Indeed, the comparison trivializes domestic abuse.

Love it! We are the adjuncti…………….
 

 Thank you, Isaac, for reading and discussing my blog post.  It was a pleasant surprise to see “The Homeless Adjunct” referred to in The Chronicle.  I do agree with your statement that one adjunct’s decision to leave academia is meaningless as far as changing the system is concerned.  I share Antsy’s position, that it takes solidarity and a widespread movement to succeed in ending the deprofessionalization and impoverishment of fully 70% of all university faculty in America. The New Faculty Majority was formed with this goal in mind.  It is for this reason, too, that my film partner, Chris LaBree, and I are currently in production with a documentary called ‘Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America.  The goal is to raise awareness outside of academia of the many ways the American university has been ruined by corporatization.  The general population needs to be made aware of the majority faculty’s plight and poverty, not only because it is shameful labor exploitation, but because of the many horrible ways it impacts our students.  Solidarity among faculty is only a part of what will be required to change all this; we need a larger community of students, parents, legislators and educators to stand together and demand improvement if there is to be any hope of change.  

In regard to those who felt that my reference to emotional abuse trivialized that suffering, I want to express regret, but feel that you misunderstood my point.  I would urge you to read my actual blog post, because I think the comparisons I draw are well defended there.  (http://junctrebellion.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/when-labor-abuse-becomes-emotional-abuse/)  

My heart broke when I read “radjunct”‘s post, “….How much longer should I keep this up? What else can I do? I am a failure, I have failed my wife and family.”  You are not a failure, my friend.  
The system has failed you, by its false promises.  It has failed you by this continued exploitation of your talents and qualities.  To the rest of you I say, if those expressions of helplessness, low self-esteem, shame and guilt don’t sound like the effects of emotional abuse, then what are they? 

Bottom line – we need to stop arguing with each other.  If we love teaching, and love what the university used to be, then let’s come together in as widespread a way as possible to rescue what was best about academia and its role in a healthy society.  Anyone who wants more information about the documentary, please write to me privately at junctrebellion@gmail.com.  I welcome your ideas, comments and involvement.   Isaac, thank you again.  

 ’Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America

Are you at all concerned about the title?  I get the title, but the title might lead less knowledgeable people to think that the adjuncts are the reason for the trashing or even the trash itself?

It sounds as if it is not so much policy as wise and effective implementation of sound policy that is required to prevent abuse of systems that are designed to achieve worthwhile goals. Naomi F. Collins, Ph.D.