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[polly_mer]

All the complaints about low status, low pay, and long hours would be greatly lessened if there were a strong union of adjuncts willing to withhold their labor.  Oh well, in the meantime at least we have the status - oops, no status.

These remarks by TT faculty and adjuncts should be required reading for anyone entering the hallowed halls as an adjunct.

What I sheepishly take away is the need to accept the system as it is exists behind the flowery words.  And, I can see better what  meaningful time management means (you can't advance by only teaching as an adjunct, one needs service, good ideas/writing and publications in the 'right' journals).

My suggestion for improving the system is to teach futility and humility by showing movies about how to arrange deck chairs on the Titanic, and lock all new adjuncts to a desk in personnel until they read these forums in The Chronicle.

Yeah, but I still need the little bit of money.  "Night clerk at 7-11" wouldn't look as good on my CV.   I'll be happy to join a union, but, working 55 -60 hours a week with 10 hours of commuting, I don't have time to organize one. 

That's only 70 hours a week, you slacker.  Get your clipboard out and start agitating for a union. :)

Seriously, that time crunch is actually the problem in most cases.  Like most student government officials, adjuncts are (or should be) just passing through and shouldn't devote time to union organizing and other social engineering efforts.  Those efforts will help the next people, but it takes a lot of time and energy that is better spent for personal advancement to the next step.

Yes, keeping your head down and not making waves helps perpetuate the system, but making a stand on this issue tends to leave you standing alone and no better off than before.

[renji]

All the complaints about low status, low pay, and long hours would be greatly lessened if there were a strong union of adjuncts willing to withhold their labor. 

Are there universities with adjunct unions?

[goldenapple]

All the complaints about low status, low pay, and long hours would be greatly lessened if there were a strong union of adjuncts willing to withhold their labor. 

Are there universities with adjunct unions?

It is extremely difficult to organize part-time workers in any field. See the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data on unionization rates:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

[the_myth]

All the complaints about low status, low pay, and long hours would be greatly lessened if there were a strong union of adjuncts willing to withhold their labor. 

Are there universities with adjunct unions?

It is extremely difficult to organize part-time workers in any field. See the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data on unionization rates:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Especially when you can be "not re-hired" in any given term.

[charlieinthebox]

All the complaints about low status, low pay, and long hours would be greatly lessened if there were a strong union of adjuncts willing to withhold their labor. 

Are there universities with adjunct unions?

Yes, NYU and the New School in New York City.  I think Yale now has a union, but I could be wrong about that. 

I work part-time through a union contract and supplement that with another job.  The pay is reasonable and I do get health insurance and retirement benefits through my part-time work.  One issue, however, is that the union has capped the number of courses you can teach, reasoning that if the school/dept. wants you to do more, they should come up with a full-time position.  That's nice in theory, but we all know what coming up with that FTE means in practical terms.  It ain't happening any time soon.  I was forced to take my outside position in large part because even though my dept. would have gladly given me more classes (enough that I would have been OK financially, not great, but OK and with a reasonable load of 4-4 with no committee work, etc.) their hands were tied by the union restrictions which essentially mandate my more liminal position.

I'm not arguing against the union, they have been terrific, and my situation is unusual, I know.  Still, I am able to cover myself financially (the addition of an outside position actually makes my overall salary higher than it was when I was in a full-time tt position.)  and still do some publishing and outside creative work necessary in my field to be competitive for the tt job if and when it comes up in my field, in the limited geographical area I am searching within, etc.

Yes, adjunct labor unions exist, and they work.

[neutralname]

I don't know if there's any evidence that full time faculty teach better than adjuncts.  I doubt there's much difference.

However, it's not just about teaching.  Undergraduates need to make a connection with their college, and they need advice from people who know the programs well.  Adjuncts are normally temporary workers, and often they don't know much about the college programs.  Furthermore, students also need letters of recommendation from faculty who know them well, and when most of their courses are taught by a bunch of different adjuncts (as happens for many students at my college) it is much harder for them to get substantial letters of recommendation.

And of course there's the question of the future of the profession, and whether there will be more than a few full time jobs available if most of the teaching is done by adjuncts. 

[sibyl]

I found that there's one school at one of the many universities where I teach which last year added 14 "staff" positions for every TT position.  Does that ratio seem a little skewed to you?  What's a normal ratio? 

In his book Tuition Rising, Ronald Ehrenberg shows that research universities typically have a ratio of 4 or 5 FTE staff to 1 FTE faculty; at baccalaureate colleges it's more like 2 to 1.

Ehrenberg doesn't differentiate between TT and non-TT.  But there are innumerable signs that the number of TT positions, both new and overall, have been declining steadily for several years.

It's my belief that the decline in TT jobs is largely a function of two forces: the end of mandatory retirement at 65, which makes it difficult to adjust to variances in enrollment and impossible to plan replacements; and the current flood of Ph.D. graduates.  That makes it possible for institutions to depend on contingent labor; there is plenty of labor, so the classes are covered, and the tenured are content with their own teaching assignments and other working conditions.

Ironically, the high quality of most adjunct teaching makes this solution more palatable.  If there were indeed a clear distinction between them -- if all adjuncts were terrible and all TT faculty were excellent -- then institutions would see enrollment decline such that they would need to add TT positions, not remove them. 

Maybe you, lotsoquestions, are on to something with your search for the "normal" ratio.  I suspect that if US News decided to include percentage of adjuncts as a criterion in its odious "rankings," you would indeed see many institutions adding TT slots.  (It wouldn't fix everything, of course, but it would be a start.)