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[oldadjunct]

I am still trying to wrap my head around the experience I am about to relate; I may delete this thread but let me give it a try.

First, this is not my situation.  Though I strenuously object to the exploitation of, and reliance on, contingent faculty for me in early semi-retirement it works.

But I met a fellow contingent this fall who commented to me early on that "it" wasn't working out so well; spouse was agitating that it had long since become time for a full time job with benefits.  As the story goes this person left a full time support job at the school in order to do some teaching.  Fine.  Fair enough. I shrugged.

Fast forward to a week ago when in the adjunct coral a discussion heats up about spring course assignments, seniority, and the need for hours.  One person turns to my previously mentioned colleague and says, "I know you have a year or so more seniority than me, but we have to be at the top, right?"

"No," says this other and then ticks off 5-6 even more senior adjuncts.  At which point I ask, "When did you start here?"  Some twenty years ago is the answer.

What??  Two people in the vicinity of twenty years of adjunct-hood and there are some half dozen ahead of them? Really people, are you out of your minds?  You wonder, perhaps, why institutions take advantage of you.  After laying spread eagle during your prime earning years, the institution took advantage of you?

Someone posted here this summer that staying contingent for more that four years clogged the system.  Absent special circumstances, I would knock it down to less than that.

After two or three years you and the institution are drunks at a Christmas party.  Shame on you both for what happens in the cloak room.

[mdwlark]

I'm like you, I really like my adjunct job and it is serving my needs.  I have another steady job with benefits.  I'm getting a lot out of the adjuncting, personally, and work for a terrific department.  I'm grateful for the opportunity, to tell you the truth, so I hate to be critical.   But I do think we ought to be paid much better and I can't imagine going on like this indefinitely.  I think adjuncting would be a reasonable solution for a lot of people's careers if they were paid decently, myself included. 

But, most of us are not paid a reasonable amount for the work we do.  You are wondering who is f*#@(#ing  with whom?  Well, it is sort of like an abusive marriage.  The victim becomes dependent on the perpetrator and the victim's sense of reality is altered so that she/he believes this is the way life is.  The fact that the victim doesn't run away doesn't make it any less abusive or exploitive.  It is also like any other form of living in poverty.  It becomes a life style.  They learn where the best soup kitchens and thrift stores are and that becomes part of daily living routine.  These adjuncts are getting up every morning and surviving in the ways they survive every day.  Yeah, it is a mutually dependent relationship, but make no mistake about it, the adjunct is the one getting *****d.  Good thing I'm anonymous here.

You are asking people to give up what they love, teaching, and go do something they don't really have passion for, but which would pay decently.  That's a dilemma, isn't it?  We all know that no university values the adjuncts 20 years of teaching and how hard they have worked to perfect their teaching skills.  Unlike you, who are doing this in retirement as a seasoned and respected veteran and expert, most of the adjuncts have lost any chance of being the glamorous Dr. Hotshot who is being brought in to teach for us.  And you are saying they should give up what they love out of a sense of self-respect and  personal dignity, and an unwillingness to be exploited.  There are also people working 9 to 5 who wonder why they are giving up their dreams of pursuing what they love for the security of a steady paycheck and reliable benefits.  They think they are selling out, "I pay the bills, but have no joy in what I do." 

I do wonder why these adjuncts are dickering over who gets what class.  Doesn't the chair or the chair's designate coordinate their requests and make those decisions?  If you are a contingent employee, you don't have any seniority, just longevity. 

[polly_mer]

Hmm.  The abusive marriage metaphor doesn't ring true for me because some people are happy being long term adjuncts.  I prefer to relate it to the affair with a married man. 

If the mistress keeps hanging around because "eventually, he will marry me", she will be hurt and angry when it finally dawns on her years later that it's never going to happen.  However, if the mistress knows going into the relationship that no commitment will ever be made because they're just having a good time, she can then decide whether the trade-off is worth the price.

[dr_dre]

I worked with someone who had been adjuncting for 20 years. He taught 6 courses some terms, with 40 students in each class. In a year, he would occasionally work as much as 6-2-4-4, with January term and Summer sessions. He never wrote a single comment on student papers, just the grade, but heck, who could blame him. At $3K per course and owning his home, he makes ends meet--this was in the NYC area. Still, watching him teach all those survey classes in the core, while the TT folks focused on their 15-person upper-level seminars underscored for me many of the problems in higher education.

I'm TT now, but with budget cuts, a senior professor was speculating as to whether or not my peers and I would ever have a chance at tenure. There but for the budget go I.

[watermarkup]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my personal standard on this is that I'll only work place that offer me full-time pay for full-time work. If I teach 4-4, I want a full-time salary. Otherwise, it's time for me to do something else. After the first position, health insurance became a minimal requirement. Sometime soon, some form of long-term employment will become a minimal requirement, and I may or may not have a position that matches that requirement when that time comes.

I read in the paper last week that I'm earning as much as a visiting instructor as the veteran county public defender earns, which is shamefully low on both counts.

[dismalist]

Speaking as someone who put in eleven years, more or less happily, as an adjunct:

Look, if it works for you, do it. If it doesn't, do something else. There will be no extra rights, nor extra pay, nor extra hope, for adjuncts in the short run. It's not quite "blood, sweat, and tears", but there it is. Just take it or leave it.

In the long run, relevant if you are young now, it looks somewhat better.

-The supply of new adjuncts must be drying up as the realization spreads that the money is so miserly. The demand for adjunct-like types must increase as the lack of a mandatory retirement age makes tenure as we know it untenable.

-The TT is useful for discovering and promoting research talent. That was always a very expensive way of delivering non-frontier teaching. But non-frontier teaching is precisely what present day adjuncts are good at delivering.

In the near future I expect to see a proliferation of limited term, essentially teaching, appointments with more stability and security attached than the present adjunct status enjoys earns.

For the middle aged to older adjuncts, we will have been a sandwich generation. For the younger, there is much hope.

[olddocpossum]

For someone who has been an adjunct for 20 years -- and who has stayed competitive by publishing -- an age discrimination complaint through the EEOC is one remedy. 

[the_myth]

I adjuncted for 2 years and it was 2 years too long.

I could never get enough classes in any given term to actually keep my head above water financially.

And let's not even discuss "seniority" ...or even gratitude for saving a department by swooping in on at least 3 occasions to pick up after a previous adjunct quit 2 weeks before the term started.

If adjuncts can get stable work at a stipend that covers monthly expenses term-after-term, more power to them!

Being able to do that for 20 years says something.

But, I do agree with the OP and others, what it says is not all good.

[mdwlark]

For someone who has been an adjunct for 20 years -- and who has stayed competitive by publishing -- an age discrimination complaint through the EEOC is one remedy. 

You have a lot more faith in this process than I do. 

[zuzu_]

If the mistress keeps hanging around because "eventually, he will marry me", she will be hurt and angry when it finally dawns on her years later that it's never going to happen.  However, if the mistress knows going into the relationship that no commitment will ever be made because they're just having a good time, she can then decide whether the trade-off is worth the price.

EXACTLY.

[olddocpossum]

However the lawsuit (see jexcerpt below, from Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2008) turns out, it will put universities on notice that they can't hire someones an adjunct for 20 plus years, then not offer a tenure track posiition when one is available, with no consquences:

San Francisco State U. Faces Federal Lawsuit Over Alleged Age Bias in Hiring
A lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says San Francisco State University violated federal age-discrimination laws when it hired a young, lesser-qualified applicant for a professorship over a longtime lecturer with a doctoral degree and 30 years of teaching experience.

The EEOC, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, alleges that 64-year-old Lawford Goddard didn’t get a job as an assistant professor in the institution’s black-studies department in 2004 because of his age. The university hired instead Antwi Akom, a 31-year-old at the time who had yet to receive his Ph.D.

The suit on behalf of Mr. Goddard, who taught as a lecturer at San Francisco State for more than 15 years, seeks back pay for Mr. Goddard, his hiring, and training in antidiscrimination law for university officials, the newspaper reported. Mr. Goddard is now director of education and training at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture Inc., in Oakland, Calif.

[mdwlark]

I agree, having anyone file a lawsuit based upon a legitimate discrimination complaint, which this one seems to be, sends a message to the entire academic community.  I just don't think these things work out well for the individual going through it.  It is a miserable process and the individual pays a big price.   Notice that it is 4 years later and no decision has been made yet.  I'm glad someone is doing it for all of us. 

[sikora]

Has anybody here been reading Marc Bousquet's blog in Brainstorm?  Seen his webpage, How the University Works?

[educator1]

If you are so bitter at the way your institution treats you, do your students a favor and leave!  You certainly cannot be enthusiastic in the classroom harboring such angry feelings.

Personally, I love adjuncting and have been doing it for over 15 years. I am full time and get paid almost (3/4) as much per day (I teach four sections two days a week)  as my consulting business earns. I was a university administrator (Registrar) for almost 20 years and, while I enjoyed the challenge for a while, the relationship between myself  and my students now is so much better and most of the university politics just passes by my door.
The university certainly benefits by getting four sections taught by a fully qualified Phd. who can bring professional experience into the classroom for relatively little money. I benefit by getting the rewards of teaching, full-time benefits, and the professional reputation as a consultant who is also a university "professor". I would call that win-win.

[mdwlark]

Educator1:   I like my adjunct job for many many reasons.  It serves many needs for me right now, and is the most fun thing I'm doing these days.  I don't like being paid $7,000 a year to do what is almost a second full-time job.  Take your criticism and shove it.  That is the expurgated version of my answer.