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[ega110]

Does anyone know if it is possible to work as an adjunct without a Ph.D?

Specifically, I am considering starting a master's program in English and Creative Writing. One benefit of the program is that you have the option of transitioning into the Ph.D program after completion of the master's.

My main goal is and always has been to teach introductory courses on the collegiate level. By this, I mean classes such as freshman comp and literature survey classes. I understand that having a Ph.D will give me far more flexibility in where I work. However, there are two reasons why I am nervous about trying for a Ph.D. The first is that the market for tenure track positions is very bleak. The second reason is that I have interviewed with professors from several doctorate programs and every one has been nearly entirely focused on research. One professor even described working with students as a necessary hassle.

I have no intention of ever applying for a tenure track position. I will never need high level research skills for the kind of academic work I want to do. I fear I may not even be capable of the kind of high level research necessary for a Ph.D. However, I am very skilled at teaching. I am very skilled at understanding and speaking to the needs of college students. It seems to me that there should be a way to simply teach college classes.

I understand the economic reality of living off an adjunct salary. I have done some research and I have determined that I can cut cost of living by making use of sublets. Most sublets I have examined cost about three hundred a month. If the average adjunct course pays around two thousand dollars, I can pay for my entire year's rent charges with less than two classes.

In terms of the cost of food, I have spoken to some adjuncts who have agreements with students working in the dining commons. The adjuncts often trade tutoring for access to leftover food that would otherwise be thrown in the garbage.

I am also willing to work for any institution, no matter the location nor the prestige level. I know I till be hard, but where there is a will there is a way. All. Need to know is if it is possible from a hiring standpoint to adjunct without a Ph.D.

[totoro]

You can teach at a community college but my understanding from the fora is that competition is so fierce in fields like English that a lot of candidates have PhDs. I suppose you could work as an adjunct at a 4 year college too. But it'd make much more sense to teach high school than do that, I think. I wonder whether this post is just to make a point that a PhD shouldn't be needed to teach intro classes at the college level. Unfortunately due to competition it is.

[ega110]

Sorry if I came across as having an agenda. My only point about the need for a Ph.D and teaching introductory courses is that I see them as two very different skill sets. Think about it in terms of driving. There are many different levels of driving. There is the everyday driving such as going to get groceries and there is high level professional driving such as long haul trucking for dangerous chemicals. It seems to me that requiring a Ph.D for teaching freshman comp is like requiring all sixteen year olds to qualify to transport dangerous chemicals before they can drive to prom. I have nothing but admiration and respect for all high level academics. I however simply want to take my date to prom so to speak.

[totoro]

Yes, it makes no sense to me either.

[ega110]

I should probably explain my situation. It is very unusual and it will change the way you read and understand my question. I have a fairly severe form of autism. I am not in any way intellectually challenged. I am however deeply challenged when it comes to certain aspects of daily life. There is only one environment that I thrive in. That is higher education. The world of higher education is like a bubble. Everything makes sense. You come in, you learn a subject and you either succeed or fail based on your effort.

 I am trained to teach. I know that I could do well as a teacher of introductory subjects. I am good at doing what is asked of me. If I am asked to give high grades I can do that. If I am asked to teach a certain way I can do that also. I am simply aiming for basic survival. I can do what is necessary to make this work.

When I was in school I was told that my condition was severe enough that I would most likely have to be institutionalized as an adult. I worked hard. No one expected me to go to college. No one expected me to get a master's in education. No one expected me to earn dean's list or to almost graduate with honors. I am jot trying to brag, I am simply saying that when motivated, I can do what is needed to get by. That is all I am talking about here, survival. It may seem like an odd dichotomy, adjunct teaching or living in an institution, but for me that is the reality.

[_touchedbyanoodle_]

Whether or not you can get adjunct gigs as a composition instructor without a PhD will depend on your location.

On either coast? Nope. The competition is too stiff; too many English PhDs who can't find TT jobs.

In central U.S., though, there are pockets of communities where teaching frosh comp with a master's is the norm, and there are plenty of people who aspired to do just that. Even then, though, there is competition for sections and one would need to expect to be required to teach at a few different colleges to scrape together enough teaching assignments to earn anything more than $20K a year. Collecting enough teaching assignments to earn $30K year would make one a rare adjunct.

Upon re-reading, I see you have a plan to sublet... the feasibility of doing so will also depend on your region. Finding a place to live for $300 around my parts is not going to happen.

[ega110]

Sorry, I think I used the wrong words when I was talking about subletting. What I meant was that I myself would be the one living in someone else's sublet. When I went to college, people would Euler a room in a house or a basement. The going rate someone would charge me to live in a room in their house is about 300 a month. In a year that would be about 3600.

One idea I have been thinking about is going to a school and just being up front about my situation. The dining commons throw out a ton of food each day. There is the possibility I could either buy some of their unused food at a cheap rate or pick up a few hours working in the dining commons. My school gave a free meal to anyone working a shift in the commons. It would take swallowing my pride, but I could o it.

It seems to me that I could live this way on eight thousand a year. That would only be four classes a year. That would be two per semester with the possibility of picking up work in the summer. I feel good about this.

P.s. Thanks for the tip on looking in the center of the country. I bet the cost of living is cheaper there also.

[polly_mer]

I am trained to teach. I know that I could do well as a teacher of introductory subjects. I am good at doing what is asked of me. If I am asked to give high grades I can do that. If I am asked to teach a certain way I can do that also. I am simply aiming for basic survival. I can do what is necessary to make this work.

This paragraph makes me hurt.  Teaching is not about "doing what is asked" or toeing the line that someone else sets.  Teaching is not about the right answer or the grades. 

Teaching is about having a passion for a subject and sharing it with others.

Teaching is about knowing what has to be done to become proficient in a subject and encouraging others on that path of proficiency, despite their setbacks.

Teaching is about having the guts to look a student in the eye and say, "You are not good enough yet.  You must try again", even when knowing that the price is going to be an unpleasant reaction.

Teaching is about doing what is right by the students and society.  Don't you dare suggest giving higher grades than are earned; we trust you to mark in a fair manner to reflect student mastery of the topic.  At a minimum, you have done the student a disservice by giving an inflated sense of mastery.

You are not ready to be a teacher with the attitudes that you have displayed, despite that master's degree in education.  That program ripped you off if you graduated and still think teaching is about rote memorization and making sure that other people can do things by rote as well.

[ega110]

I agree completely with your sentiments. However, I also have to make concessions to reality. In a better world, my job as a teacher would be to only pass students on when they are ready. Everything you said is true.

However, from what I have seen, the prevailing mindset on campuses is that of consumerism. This means the students are buying a service which I am providing. I would like to note that while I am compromising, I am still maintaining most of my principles.

My plan is to approach grading in this manner. I will design assignments around very specific rubrics. These rubrics will ask the students to turn in a paper that accomplishes a set of requirements. If the paper has met that requirement, the student will take the credit. For example, you could have simple requirements like page length. You could have more complex assignments such as providing a clear opinion. You could go on to have the student acknowledge then refute a different point of view. My philosophy with this is that the students will get better as writers simply by virtue of writing.

I don't mean to sound cynical but when I said I am prepared to teach, I was strictly referring to my ability to provide what these community colleges and students want. It sounds awful, but you can't deny that there will be a certain market driven appeal to this approach. It is a compromise, but it is a compromise that will allow me to live a relatively stable life. Once these co eyes see that I can be relied apron to do what they want without making waves, I will be seen as a safe bet. And markets so prefer safe bets over constant risks.

[dr_alcott]

I don't mean to sound cynical but when I said I am prepared to teach, I was strictly referring to my ability to provide what these community colleges and students want. It sounds awful, but you can't deny that there will be a certain market driven appeal to this approach. It is a compromise, but it is a compromise that will allow me to live a relatively stable life.

Oh, boy, does this rub me the wrong way. I teach at a CC. I don't compromise anything in my teaching. I don't think of my students as consumers, and I've never been asked to.

What is asked of me is to give my students access to university-parallel education. I do that well.

I don't know what you mean by "what these community colleges and students want," because there's tremendous, tremendous variety there. But what they most certainly DO NOT want is someone who thinks that teaching is simply handing over some sort of product to some sort of passive consumer.

Yes, it's possible to adjunct at a CC without a PhD. But you'll need to rethink your attitude about teaching community colleges and our students if you want to survive an interview.

[merinoblue]

I think the answer to your question lies in real life experimentation.  Apply for teaching positions.  Go to interviews, if offered.  See how your teaching philosophy and credentials are received by the search committee.  If you're offered a position, great. If not, you might want to revisit some element of your strategy or teaching philosophy. (And since this is a flow chart, I acknowledge I left out a step: if not offered interviews, revisit strategy/teaching philosophy).

[womanofproperty]

Ega110, from what you've said, you currently have a master's in education and are thinking of getting a master's in English so that you can teach as an adjunct at a community college.

It doesn't seem that you've actually taught at a CC, given the questions you've asked. Yet you also say that you are very skilled at teaching. I'm wondering why you think this is the case. Do you have any experience teaching at the college level?

[spinnaker]

I don't know what you're so excited about. There has been grade inflation, but if your grading blends with what is being done, you're probably not contributing to new grade inflation, you're just not trying to deflate grades in order to match the practices of the distant past.

[snowbound]

OP, I have great admiration for your determination to live independently, and I wish you every success.  But I have to say I share Polly Mer’s consternation about your understanding of teaching. +1 to everything she says.

Given your preference for rules and things making perfect sense (which I understand is related to your autism, English seems a particularly unsuitable discipline for you to teach.  English classes (including intro level) are not about delivering a set body of knowledge (like, say, getting freshmen up to scratch on how cells divide and what the constituent parts are called).  They are about teaching skills in reading deeply, thinking analytically, and communicating effectively in writing.  What do you need (in addition to a strong knowledge of the subject) to teach college English? Flexibility of mind, sensitivity to nuances of meaning, the ability to recognize the connections and parallels that the text is indicating, the ability to make the imaginative leaps that the text is indirectly suggesting—and the ability to help students develop their ability to read and think in this deeper sort of way.  And not by set rules, but by understanding and encouraging their halting attempts, finding the hidden little bit of insight in their comments or drafts and encouraging it to grow.  This is normal in a college English class; it’s what I and the rest of my colleagues (including hopefully the adjuncts) do. 

Yes, of course, there are rules of grammar and syntax, but we don’t spend a lot of class time repeating what students have already been told umpteen times in K-12.  If a student has an ongoing grammar problem, I recommend the Writing Center; if a sizable chunk of the class has the identical problem, I might spend 10 - 20 minutes of one class on it. In a freshman comp class (though not an Intro to Lit or Lit Survey class), I’ll spend substantial time on how to develop a thesis, build an argument, have an effective intro and conclusion, use sources effectively (and correctly), how to quote, how to use library resources effectively.  There’s guidelines and recommendations for these things, but no hard and fast rules for most of them.  In fact, one task that college English teachers face is to get students to unlearn some of the “rules” that they have apparently absorbed from HS (essays must have exactly five paragraphs, the thesis must always be the last sentence of the first paragraph, the thesis must have three sub-parts, etc).

On another subject entirely . . .  At my east coast school, near a major metropolitan areas, most of our adjuncts only have MAs.    I wish more were more highly educated.

[dr_alcott]

OP, I have great admiration for your determination to live independently, and I wish you every success.  But I have to say I share Polly Mer’s consternation about your understanding of teaching. +1 to everything she says.

Given your preference for rules and things making perfect sense (which I understand is related to your autism, English seems a particularly unsuitable discipline for you to teach.  English classes (including intro level) are not about delivering a set body of knowledge (like, say, getting freshmen up to scratch on how cells divide and what the constituent parts are called).  They are about teaching skills in reading deeply, thinking analytically, and communicating effectively in writing.  What do you need (in addition to a strong knowledge of the subject) to teach college English? Flexibility of mind, sensitivity to nuances of meaning, the ability to recognize the connections and parallels that the text is indicating, the ability to make the imaginative leaps that the text is indirectly suggesting—and the ability to help students develop their ability to read and think in this deeper sort of way.  And not by set rules, but by understanding and encouraging their halting attempts, finding the hidden little bit of insight in their comments or drafts and encouraging it to grow.  This is normal in a college English class; it’s what I and the rest of my colleagues (including hopefully the adjuncts) do. 

Yes, of course, there are rules of grammar and syntax, but we don’t spend a lot of class time repeating what students have already been told umpteen times in K-12.  If a student has an ongoing grammar problem, I recommend the Writing Center; if a sizable chunk of the class has the identical problem, I might spend 10 - 20 minutes of one class on it. In a freshman comp class (though not an Intro to Lit or Lit Survey class), I’ll spend substantial time on how to develop a thesis, build an argument, have an effective intro and conclusion, use sources effectively (and correctly), how to quote, how to use library resources effectively.  There’s guidelines and recommendations for these things, but no hard and fast rules for most of them.  In fact, one task that college English teachers face is to get students to unlearn some of the “rules” that they have apparently absorbed from HS (essays must have exactly five paragraphs, the thesis must always be the last sentence of the first paragraph, the thesis must have three sub-parts, etc).

Well said, Snowbound.