For Some Adjunct Faculty Members, the Tenure Track Holds Little Appeal

By ROBIN WILSON

If Mel J. Ciena worked full time, he probably would have earned tenure by now at the University of San Francisco. But that's never been on his agenda.

For the past seven years, Mr. Ciena has been an adjunct professor of psychology at the university. The fact that he actually likes his part-time job makes him seem an oddity. But at a point when many educators are bemoaning academe's reliance on part-timers, and many adjuncts complain about their treatment, Mr. Ciena falls among a large number of part-timers who don't covet a full-time, tenured post.

A tenured job, he says, wouldn't leave room for his other interests: writing screenplays and deejaying at one of the hippest nightclubs in town.

"I understand the importance of educating the city, but also of entertaining the city," says Mr. Ciena. His university named him distinguished lecturer of the year last spring and has repeatedly asked him to consider a tenure-track job -- a request he has turned down. "You need to have a balance in your life," he says. "If I worked full time at the university, it wouldn't allow me to do the other things I love to do."

Everyone in academe has heard the stories of part-time professors who are underpaid, unappreciated, and unhappy. As the proportion of adjuncts has grown to more than 40 per cent of all faculty members, the noise from disenchanted part-timers has captured higher education's attention. Many of them feel that their Ph.D.'s are going to waste in temporary teaching jobs, and they resent the meager pay and low status. Representatives of academe's largest learned societies have taken up their cause, urging administrators to cut back on part-time posts by converting them to the tenure track.

What has received little notice, however, is the finding of a national survey that a great many adjuncts like their jobs. Certainly, they say, the pay could be better (most earn between $1,000 and $2,000 per course). And many wish that their universities would offer them health insurance (some institutions, including Mr. Ciena's, have).

But many adjuncts work part time because they have other jobs or other things in their lives. Some have hobbies to pursue, others have children to raise. Many also have partners at home to help foot the bills.

"This is not an environment where you're permitted to be happy if you're a part-timer," says Lou Ann Lange, who has happily taught history part time at Clarkson University for the past 13 years. "We're in a culture of misery, and if you're happy, you have to be quiet about it."

Adjuncts did speak up about job satisfaction in a survey of faculty members conducted by the U.S. Education Department. The results, published by the National Center for Education Statistics in 1993, are considered the most up-to-date data available. No one knows for sure whether the results represent the attitudes of part-timers today, and forthcoming surveys by the Education Department could reveal changes. But the 1993 data are still widely used by scholars who study the professoriate.

The survey found that by 1993, 42 per cent of all faculty members worked part time -- up from about 20 per cent in 1968. Fifty-two per cent of the adjuncts surveyed said they taught part time because they preferred to -- not because they couldn't get full-time teaching jobs. And 86 per cent said they were satisfied with their jobs. Almost two-thirds of the adjuncts said they held full-time jobs elsewhere, and only 15 per cent had doctorates. In other words, most adjuncts couldn't snag tenure-track jobs even if they wanted to, because they lack the necessary credentials.

"This is a far more textured and nuanced issue than people have figured out," says David W. Leslie, a professor of education at the College of William and Mary who has analyzed the Education Department's data. "There is a lot of unhappiness, and there are ghettos among the part-time faculty, particularly in the humanities and in English. But there are also people who enjoy teaching and who have no interest in an academic career."

Mr. Leslie wrote a book about adjunct professors, The Invisible Faculty, that was published in 1993 by Jossey-Bass. The co-author, Judith M. Gappa, a professor of educational administration at Purdue University, says, "The focus has been on aspiring academics, which are, according to our estimates, only 10 to 15 per cent of all part-timers."

For their part, many university administrators say the use of adjuncts is a win-win situation. "Colleges employ these part-timers because they bring real skills into the classroom," says Daniel J. Julius, associate vice-president for academic affairs at the University of San Francisco, where part-time professors are unionized. "A lot of part-timers are vibrant and actively involved in the community."

But Ernst Benjamin, director of research for the American Association of University Professors, says there is another side to the story. The Education Department's data, he argues, show that adjuncts who taught in the liberal arts were not as satisfied as those who taught in vocational fields, including health and computer sciences. According to the survey, 60 per cent of adjuncts who taught at four-year institutions in the liberal arts said they did so because they could not find full-time professorships. Only 28 per cent of adjuncts who taught vocational courses at four-year institutions said that was true.

Part-time faculty members in vocational fields may be happier than those in the liberal arts because they have other jobs that pay well, says Mr. Benjamin. At four-year institutions, adjuncts who taught in the liberal arts had an average total income of $38,500 per year, compared with $69,563 for those who taught in vocational areas, according to the Education Department survey.

"There are large groups for whom part-time teaching is a supplement, and it's not a bad supplement," says Mr. Benjamin. "But for those who are economically dependent on it and had real hopes of an academic career, it's frustrating and disappointing."

Still, even in a field such as English, where adjuncts have voiced the most discontent, it is easy to find part-timers who like their jobs. Crystal Collier works at the U.S. Department of Defense, keeping track of crisis centers around the world and writing intelligence reports for military officers. For her, teaching literature and composition at Northern Virginia Community College is a creative outlet. "My job is very heavy and structured and rigid," she says. "Teaching is everything that my job is not."

Like most of the two dozen part-timers who talked to The Chronicle for this story, Ms. Collier teaches not for the money but for the satisfaction. She earns about $1,400 for each of the four courses she teaches on the college's Alexandria campus each year. "I feel this is a direct way I can contribute to the future of my society," she says.

Keith A. Shuley, a partner in a large law firm in Austin, Tex., says he teaches part time at the University of Texas at Austin for the same reason. "Many professions, the law included, can drain you, and you wonder whether you're adding value in society," says Mr. Shuley, who teaches law and management courses in the university's architecture and business schools. "Teaching makes you say, 'Gee whiz, I am doing some good here.'"

Like Mr. Shuley, many other part-time professors spend their days in pressure-filled offices, and it is a relief for them to escape to a classroom a few evenings a week. "This keeps me grounded," says Rodi Rosensweig, who is president of a public-relations company in Manhattan called the Rodi Company. She works in show business, representing soap-opera stars and helping to stage special events and fund raisers. She has taught at New York University and has designed a new communications course that she will begin teaching at City College of the City University of New York this fall.

"In the entertainment world, you can get very caught up in the famous faces and the fancy restaurants and the black-tie galas," she says. "Nothing for me is more grounding than showing up in a classroom and drawing on a chalkboard."

The scholarly societies that have recommended a reduction in the use of part-time teachers argue that job satisfaction isn't the only issue. Many such groups worry that part-timers are less committed to students than are tenured faculty members, and they question the wisdom of using part-timers to teach undergraduates. "If universities are getting good teaching for a third of the cost, that's okay," says Mr. Benjamin, of the A.A.U.P. "But evidence shows that the quality of instruction suffers."

The adjuncts who spoke to The Chronicle, however, suggested that their teaching is at least as good as, and in some cases better than, that of their tenure-track colleagues. They say they do not have to worry about academic publishing or serving on faculty committees, and can devote their campus time fully to students.

What's more, they note, they do not get entangled in departmental politics. "I can go and teach and not be involved in the bureaucracy," says Ms. Collier, at Northern Virginia. "There is no pressure for me to be on committees and no pressure for me to have a certain pedagogy as far as feminism or an African-American focus."

Adjuncts say that they try to keep their course material fresh, and that students benefit from their real-life experiences. "I never see students as excited as when I tell them about an Emmy Awards ceremony that I ran the press room for the night before class," says Ms. Rosensweig. It's not the gossip that intrigues them, she says, but the inside look at a press room.

Ms. Rosensweig adds that she doesn't just teach her courses and go home, a common concern about adjuncts. She has offered career advice to students and helped some follow through to their first jobs. Mr. Shuley, who teaches law courses at Texas, has bailed out one student who landed in jail for a minor offense, and helped another to negotiate a dispute with a landlord.

Some adjuncts who have retired from full-time jobs off campus say they devote more time to students than their tenured colleagues do. Carl J. Baumgaertner is an adjunct professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College who retired 13 years ago after a career in the aerospace industry. He makes about $25,000 annually and spends five days a week at the college, even though he teaches only two classes a semester. When he's not teaching, he says, he is counseling students about their courses or their careers. "I don't have limited office hours," he says. "I have the wonderful flexibility of saying that my office hours are anytime you can find me there."

Jaren Horsley, who retired two years ago as curator of the Amazon rain forest exhibit at Washington's National Zoo, says teaching biology at Northern Virginia Community College has become an "obsession." He explains: "I think constantly about ways to do it better. I really get wrapped up with the students and their careers." Teaching at a two-year institution is particularly meaningful for him, he adds, because he attended a community college before earning his Ph.D. in biology from George Washington University.

Some adjuncts have chosen to teach part time so that they can spend more time with their children. While her tenured colleagues have been holed up in the laboratory or in the library, Lou Ann Lange, who teaches history at Clarkson University, has volunteered with scouting troops and helped coach a youth soccer team. The activities have helped keep her close to her two sons, now 13 and 17 years old. "Frankly, they are more important to me than a career," says Ms. Lange, who earned a Ph.D. in 19th-century history from Queens University, in Ontario, in 1981. She teaches two courses a semester at Clarkson.

Jane Dirks teaches part time at Carlow College because she has two young children, including a daughter with a chronic medical problem. Working full time anywhere would be impossible, says Ms. Dirks, who teaches two anthropology courses a semester, usually in the evenings.

Her husband, who is chairman of the information-science and telecommunications department at the University of Pittsburgh, pays most of the family bills.

Ms. Dirks says she feels torn over the issue of part-time teaching. She knows that some adjuncts must string together several low-paying teaching jobs to make a living, and are very unhappy. But she also knows that the situation works for her.

"I do feel some guilt that I don't stand in solidarity with those people," she says. But she doesn't feel mistreated -- and she likes her job the way it is. "Personally, I don't feel like I need any changes."