The Problem with Adjuncts
A few days ago my Mom told me about a labor organizer (that's what she called him) she saw on TV. His name was Jim Hightower, she told me, and he looks like a good old Texas cowboy. She said Hightower was listing off the different groups of workers he engages with and the last one he mentioned was adjunct instructors.
My parents were thrilled. You'd have thought he had said my name in particular. "He gets it!" my mom proclaimed. "You should go work for him."
I thought that was perhaps an extreme step, but I checked out his website nonetheless. Lo and behold - there on his homepage was a link to his article about what I like to call "the problem with adjuncts." He does, in fact, "get it."
What's the problem with adjuncts? Let me tell you how it works (or doesn't work) for me.
The school that I'm teaching for only allows adjuncts to teach four, at most, classes all year - or else the school would have to provide benefits. I'm currently scheduled to teach four but if there were no limit - or if they wanted to create a full time position - I'd be teaching at least six. That's right: I had to *turn* *down* two classes that were offered to me, even though I literally can't live on what four will pay me, because the college doesn't want to hire full time faculty. That means the two classes that I turned down will most likely be filled by one or two other adjuncts, instead of full time professors.
Granted, I don't have my PhD yet. But I could very well still be in the same position after I get my degree - I know many people who are. I understand that one could argue that there is an over supply (ie, grad schools are admitting more PhD students than there are full time jobs) and we were all aware of that when we signed up. But it's not that there aren't enough *jobs* for PhDs - it's that the universities are turning to adjuncts more and more frequently to fill the positions they would have once filled with full-time faculty members.
In fact, HIghtower explains that in the 1970s, full-time tenured faculty made up almost 80% of the university teaching staff nationally. Today less than 25% of our nation's universities' teaching staff are full-time tenured professors while adjuncts make up over 50% of the workforce.
And here's why you should care, even if you don't work in academia: While teaching three classes this fall, I will need to find an outside source of income - one that will hopefully expand (or else I'll have to get another, on top of that) for post-January, when I will only be teaching one class. That means my attention is split. That means I'm working til 2am at the bar and teaching American History at 8am. That means I have less time & less energy for my students, for preparing for class, for tailoring my lectures to fit the particular class, for going above and beyond, for taking field trips, for assigning interesting, fun, stimulating assignments (takes too much time to make and usually even more to grade). It means I'm nowhere near as good of a teacher as I could be.
The worst part is that it makes me not care as much about my teaching. It really sucks to say that. But I can't tell you how many people - including two of my direct faculty supervisors where I teach - have told me to *not* do extra work. "Save yourself" and "you don't get paid enough to do more" and "just make the tests multiple choice" and "don't assign too much reading" and "don't assign ANY papers" and "if you do assign papers, don't edit their writing" and "show them movies whenever you can" - I've heard all of these statements from people who know that they are essentially telling me to be a crappy teacher.
As much as I'd like to argue with this way of thinking, I can't. Where's my free market incentive to work harder? It's not there. No matter how good I am if the university doesn't want to create a new full-time position, it won't. Even if they did, there's no assurance that I'd be given the post. In fact, there's some evidence that the best and most frequently hired adjuncts are LESS likely to be given full time jobs (it's a stigma thing - don't launch me down that rabbit hole...). So if you plan on sending a kid to college one day or if you think it's probably not in our nation's or the world's best interest that educational standards are dropping like the thermometer during a polar vortex, this issue should be of dire importance to you. And, FYI, I am not "Victoria" in Hightower's article on this topic - but I could be. I learned today that I qualify for both unemployment (for the summer) and a variety of forms of welfare. Maybe this should be a relief - I could use it right now, frankly. But instead it's just really depressing. I'd make more money being a bartender than teaching at a well-regarded university this fall.
Which would you choose?
