Measuring Misery (Last Call)

The Coalition on the Academic Workforce's Survey of Contingent Faculty Members and Instructors is scheduled to close today. I finally got around to taking it yesterday, and it struck me as well-designed and efficient, gathering key information about work loads, salaries, contract lengths and the like quickly, then allowing room for longer comments with a couple of text boxes at the end. The results, particularly if a number of us participate, should be well worth having. If you haven't filled out the survey yet, and belong to the target audience -- "all instructional and research staff members employed off the tenure track, including faculty members employed either full- or part-time, graduate students remunerated as teaching assistants or employed in other roles, and researchers and post-doctoral fellows" -- please consider taking a few minutes (filling the check boxes took me under 10) to complete it. If you're on the tenure track, and have a way to communicate with contingent faculty members in your department, please consider reminding them about the survey and encouraging them to fill it out by the end of the day today.

Apologies for an entirely serious/practical post. You may now resume discussing the more entertaining aspects of our collective misery.