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| Do you know where I park?!?!? |
There was a brief time when contingent faculty had a big advantage when eventual t-t lines came open, but that's ended. We haven't been authorized to fill a need in our department for 5 years now.
Our adjuncts are treated okay, not great, not the terrorizing tales you sometimes hear. They are two to an office, have the option of attending all departmental and division meetings, and after one year of service can pick their books. They even have very modest benefits.
But of course it's not ideal. Most of our part-timers are quite young; about half are just one or two years past the Ph.D. But we do have one older gentleman who's taught with us for ten years. I like them. I've found a handful of them to be good teachers and conscientious, even willing to put the college first.
What binds all of them, though, is that they believe they are the most aggrieved and persecuted creations on the earth. Nearly all of my complaints from them center on three things: the times their classes meet, where they can park, and the fact that I'm not a greater champion for their needs (which are mostly about where they park and what time their classes are.)
Seniority rules this place, as it does others. Faculty members who are tenured or t-t, who have a certain number of years of service, get first shot at the classes. They choose times they like. They've earned it. Some choose early mornings. Some take all afternoon classes. One tenured prof teaches in our weekend university. So, yes, when it gets to the part-timers, they take what is left.
Parking? There are reserved lots for full time faculty. We pay $107 for a pass, and we park relatively close to our major classroom buildings. All part-time employees pay nothing, but park in a distant lot with spotty shuttle service. (I know about it; when my wife and I trade cars for some reason, I park out there, too.) I've asked about better parking for our adjuncts, and have been told that there isn't space. I believe it. I circle lots myself.
In an average semester, I might get 10 student complaints about instructors. In 9 out of 10 cases it's with an adjunct. The chief complaints are: instructor doesn't keep posted office hours; instructor didn't meet class; instructor didn't follow curriculum or syllabus; instructor was disrespectful. Each term I call adjuncts in to discuss these complaints, and instead of real answers to my questions I'm told about the plight of the adjunct, how hard it is, how persecuted they are. One decent enough teacher told me she was only giving me a third of her effort because that's how much I was paying her.
The adjuncts, even though I personally encourage their input, have never come to a department meetings. They are the only ones in my department who will jam a copier and leave it jammed without telling anyone. If I go by their office during posted office hours, most times I'll be met with a closed door. If I ask about it or raise it as an issue, I'm told, "I have to teach at the juco down the road. I can't keep hours both places!"
Okay, I get it. It's horrible to be an adjunct. The academy has fucked up by letting this model thrive.
But do a good job while you're adjuncting here, or I'm cutting you loose to be aggrieved elsewhere.
- Rex from Riverdale
Respectfully, Rex, you are in for a world of hurt. This is a very pro-adjunct website. In fact most of the postings are about the very people you find lacking.
ReplyDeleteRegular faculty don't have our sympathy. The people who minimize are the primary readers of this blog and you're going to get spanked.
And I'm going to laugh my un-tenured ass off.
Boo hoo for Rex. Sometimes has to park a long ways away. Welcome to my world you insensitive goon.
ReplyDeleteI personally think adjuncts have just been screwed too hard for too long for them to see the situation reasonably. It's not their fault, but at times they do have the persecution thing down pat.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't cause the problem, of course, and those of them that still give a shit and don't give a "third" of their effort are to be commended.
I was a long-term adjunct and I did the best I could. I was hired to do a job--at a pretty toxic place with very low pay--so I did my job.
ReplyDeleteYes, the pay sucked. It was hard to survive on such low pay for so many years and I often worked several other non-academic jobs throughout the year. Office space? What office space? Resources? Respect? What are those?
Yes, my fellow adjuncts and I bitched a lot and rightfully so, but among the hundreds of adjuncts at the CC where I worked, I only knew of a few who behaved in an unprofessional manner and those were fired.
As for the department meetings and other professional activities in which you'd like adjuncts to participate, is there any way to compensate the adjuncts for their time for these things? That was a big complaint among the full-timers at the CC where I worked--how the adjuncts lacked the dedication to participate--but the problem is that adjuncts are usually working so much for so little and often at so many places that it's difficult for them to give up any unpaid time they have for what they perceive as something that benefits someone else (their employer) rather than them.
You have a right to cut loose the people who aren't doing the job. I found it to be a shitty job, but it was a better job than cooking on the line or landscaping, two things I did while teaching to get by. No, I'm not advocating that people should just roll over and take whatever is offered because the economy is bad, but adjuncts who agree to teach should do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
I know good adjuncts who worked hard at shitty places who managed to get T-T jobs elsewhere, in large part because they were good colleagues when they were adjuncts. I'm one of them.
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ReplyDeleteGreta nailed it, I think: adjunct jobs stink (but still not quite as much as some other jobs, especially in the current economy), but anyone who accepts one should be prepared to do it responsibly (which to me preparing a workable syllabus and assignments, showing up prepared for scheduled class sessions and for any contractually-agreed-upon office hours -- provided one is given a functionally adequate place to hold them, which Rex's department seems to do -- answering email on a regular but not instantaneous basis, and returning graded work and turning in final grades as agreed. It probably doesn't mean coming to department and committee meetings, though it is, indeed, nice to be asked; just be careful that asking doesn't become expecting -- i.e. an unspoken requirement for contract renewal).
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I'm moved to offer two potentially-linked modest proposals:
1. If some of the adjuncts Rex has hired are not in fact fulfilling their contracts, he should fire (er, not-renew) them. That will open the way for him to hire people who are willing to do the work well at the present salary, and in the present conditions. If Rex finds himself repeatedly replacing adjuncts who don't meet those criteria, he may have data about the nature of the adjunct labor market that he should call to the attention of whoever determines salaries and conditions.
2. But first, maybe Rex should test the hypothesis that his adjuncts do, indeed, have a point by trying a one-semester experiment: give the adjuncts first rather than last shot at the schedule, and urge each of his TT department colleagues to voluntarily turn over his/her parking pass to an adjunct for the duration of the experiment. If the adjuncts suddenly start performing better -- e.g. showing up in class and at office hours regularly and on time -- then it just might be that the structural factors Rex mentions -- a relatively remote location with inconvenient parking, little control over their schedules, and the need to teach at more than one school -- are playing a large part in adjunct performance. Of course, this experiment would be dangerous, because if it does reveal that adjunct performance improves under better conditions, then the obvious solution, for the good of the department and the school, is to make these changes permanent. I dare him to try it.
Contingent Cassandra, as much as I hate to disagree with you, I have to disagree with the second point you make (although I cannot tell whether or not you're being facetious). Adjuncts should never get the first shot at the schedule for several reasons.
ReplyDeleteFull-timers are contractually obligated to teach a specific course load, so they need to fill that load first and foremost. Also, full-timers (tenured and T-T) have many other contractual obligations to the institution where they teach (research, committee work, professional development, etc.), so they need to have greater control of their schedules in order to meet other contractual obligations. In fact, at many institutions, the hierarchy of scheduling is codified for seniority, so Rex probably cannot give adjuncts first go at the schedule.
Another point is that full-timers and T-T faculty have earned their seniority. Why strip them of what they've earned, for any reason? As I've just earned tenure at LD3C, I'm the lowest on my department's seniority list and often have to cobble together a suitable schedule, but I've earned the right to have greater control of my course schedule than the adjuncts have because I've gone through the tenure process--a very rigorous, painful, and exhausting tenure process. It's not merely that I've suffered that gives me greater rights to scheduling (and other aspects of full-time employment) than adjuncts have. I've been vetted by my college and have worked very hard to become the full-time employee they desire.
As for the parking at Rex's institution, the full-time faculty pay for it. Paying over $100 for parking is a hardship for some adjuncts; are you proposing that the T-T and full-timers also pay for the parking?
As I said, I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but giving the adjuncts the full-time perqs you've described won't make them perform any better, because the underlying problem still exists: adjuncts often need to work several different jobs at several different places to make ends meet, and they feel completely de-valued while doing so (because they are). Sure, closer parking and a tidier schedule can help, but it won't solve the overall time-management nightmare that adjuncts face.
@Greta: well, I did characterize it as a "modest proposal" (a la Jonathan Swift's suggestion that hunger and overpopulation in Ireland could be solved in one fell swoop by eating babies; embedded links don't seem to be working for me today, so here's a url for the Wikipedia article, with apologies for the English-major reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal). So I realize that it is, on the face of it, a pretty outrageous suggestion.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think a voluntary experiment, championed and urged upon his TT colleagues by Rex, would be worth a try (I'm agnostic on who would pay for the parking, which sounds pretty cheap from my perspective -- assuming that's per-semester or per-year; if it's per-month, I get your point). There are, indeed, structural realities that govern TT as well as adjunct faculty's schedules. The question -- which can't be answered without trying a different approach -- is whether the department as a whole, given its present dependence on adjuncts, would function better if the balance were tilted toward accommodating adjuncts' time management issues to the greatest extent possible given present resources, even if that made time management for TT faculty more difficult. If so, then I'd argue that, for the good of all, TT faculty should -- once again voluntarily -- make the changes permanent, at least until and unless they can make the department less dependent on adjuncts. If it turns out that TT faculty become *less* effective under the new arrangement, well, that's food for thought (and at least the tenured faculty's jobs aren't vulnerable as a result; perhaps untenured tenure-line faculty should be exempted from the experiment because of that possibility). I'm honestly not sure what the results would be (mixed, most likely), but if Rex is feeling as frustrated as he sounds, I think it would be worth trying the experiment, both for the sake of seeing what actually happens, and for the sake of walking a semester in the other guy's shoes. At the very least, he could propose it in a faculty meeting as food for thought (preferably while clad in full body armor).
I'm astonished to hear about this "I'm senior so I get first dibs on everything and the rest of you can go suck on a rope" mentality. We don't have it here. Here, everyone - whatever their seniority - can request a particular schedule ("I only want to work on Thursdays!"). The chair then juggles the schedule so that the classes are set when students, by and large, want to take them, and also does his/her best to make sure that EVERYONE gets at least one thing they wanted ("okay, you're working Thursdays, but also Mondays and Tuesdays, best I could do.") But nobody, as a rule, gets everything they want.
ReplyDeleteThis "I earned because I've been here longer" mentality makes no sense. The tenured and T-T people have already got a steady job, decent benefits, decent pay, job security, health insurance, you name it - why on earth should they also get first kick at the schedule? Why not tell everyone alike "let me know what you want and we'll do the best we can"?
Adjuncts arguably have far greater need to be able to choose their schedules, because unlike full-timers, they have to be somewhere else 30 miles down the freeway to teach another class at 2:00; not to mention their night job as a line cook and the weekend landscaping gig that they need to work around.
I have tenure, and I also have children. I have done my best to arrange my schedule for the last few years so that most days I can pick the kids up from school. The department accommodates this when it can. When it can't, I arrange child care. We had an adjunct in the same position and did the same for her. She makes a hell of a lot less money than I do, so when it came to a choice, she had dibs, because child care was a much more significant dent in her wallet than it was in mine.
As for parking, there also we have a more equitable arrangement. Parking close to the classroom buildings costs a lot; parking in the lots farther away costs less; parking off campus costs nothing, but it's a fair hike. There are also a few metered slots in all the lots. Anyone who wants to can buy any grade of parking they like; the high-end permits sell out first, and it's first come, first serve. Tenured faculty with a keen interest in maintaining their privilege can get in there early and buy their permits like anyone else. Adjuncts in your area may not be able to afford the close-in slots, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have a shot at them. Or just make some metered slots available in all parking lots, for people who don't have to be there every day.
The combination you describe of lousy pay and closed-club privileges astonishes me. Your tenured staff have "earned" their privileges? Sure, of course they have. But your adjuncts have "earned" it too, through the difficult circumstances in which they live.
As for department meetings - I'm paid to go to them. Adjuncts aren't. They're always invited, but they certainly don't have to come. Sometimes they do. It's up to them. If it's really important (the meeting is about classes they teach, for example), then they should get paid to attend; or at least, if the Dean won't cough up, profusely thanked for their time, and offered lunch.
If you're thinking any college is giving preference to adjunct scheduling and parking, you're living in some kind of fantasy. This thread makes me a little sick to my stomach.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked for minimum wage, I considered stealing one of the perks of the job. Work at fast food? You better believe I am eating a free lunch. A copy place? Totally printing out the side project book I'm working on and all of my school papers for free. Coffee shop? Constant stream of selling coffee and pocketing the change.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't that I'm dishonest. It was that I was desperate. I was hungry all the time. I didn't have enough money to spend $6 on lunch. And the reason I was so hard-pressed was because of the nature of my job.
Eventually I climbed out of that hole. But adjuncts are still in it. If you think for a minute that you are paying them enough to be ad hoc servants to your community, you're totally wrong. Sure, it's not your fault. But have some sympathy man.
Why give their free time for faculty meetings at a uni that will most likely never accept them as full time faculty? Especially considering the high probability that hey are moonlighting at another college, or tutoring high school kids, or working a telemarketing job to finish paying bills and student loans?
I'm going to agree with Merely Academic here about the whole scheduling issue. It sounds like Rex's department gives all the full-time people everything they want, without even considering the adjuncts at all, and then just throws out the shitty scraps for the adjuncts to fight over.
ReplyDeleteWhere I teach, as an adjunct, the Department Chair does his best, as suggested by Merely Academic, to give everyone something they want. He does this for senior faculty and for junior t-t faculty, and he also does it for adjuncts as far as he is able.
He's also willing to actually make some effort to accommodate adjuncts by making changes, if it's within his power. For example, last semester I was scheduled to teach two classes on a Mon/Wed schedule, and a few weeks before the semester started I was offered another class at the same university on a Tue/Thu schedule. I wanted the extra class, but I also preferred not to have to drive all the way to campus two more days a week. The Department Chair offered to try and make the new class a once-a-week class (three hour block) instead of a twice-a-week class. He was able to make this work, giving me a Tue-only class, and it meant one less day of commuting for me, so I was very grateful. This took some effort on his part, but not a huge amount, and him being willing to do it made my whole semester much more pleasant.
Going to department meetings? Not on your life, if it means making a trip to campus on a day when I would not otherwise be there. If department meetings were held at a time when I was already going to be there, and didn't need to be doing something else, I'd be very happy to go. But I'm not making the half-hour drive to campus, on a day when I don't need to be there, in order to attend a department meeting that will go on just fine without me.
And I'm not even saying that because I think I'd be frozen out or ignored. I get on fine with all the full-time people in the department, they are all friendly and considerate, and they treat me as their intellectual and professional equal in our conversations. But I have no particular complaints to bring up, I know that I don't (and probably shouldn't) get a vote on long-term policy issues, and there are some administrative issues that I simply find completely uninteresting. There's simply no reason for me to go, and the Department Chair has made clear that I should feel under no obligation whatsoever to be there. And I think that's how it should be for adjuncts.
I don't have an "I'm senior so I get first dibs on everything and the rest of you can go suck on a rope" mentality. I knew that's how some folks would interpret what I wrote.
ReplyDeleteWhere I work, seniority indeed is codified; that is, it's in the contract. We don't deliberately attempt to hang the many, many, many adjuncts we have out on a limb. However, it is completely impractical for adjuncts to be given scheduling priority over full-time and T-T faculty at our institution (and I suspect at many other institutions).
Full-time faculty where I work have huge contractual obligations beyond the teaching schedule. In order for such contractual obligations to be met, the full-time and T-T faculty must be able to put together schedules that allow them to complete those obligations. Yes, the adjuncts get the leftovers. There's also a seniority system among adjuncts (based on semesters of experience) where I work. I'm sure my institution is not alone in this, either.
And I have earned my seniority over adjuncts at my institution, earned it through a very rigorous tenure process through which adjuncts have not been vetted. Because of the nature of my full-time employment and the ritual hazing that is known as pre-tenure at LD3C, I have contributed more to the school than any of our current adjuncts have, no matter how long they've taught here--and, no, I'm not exaggerating. I also grant that full-timers hired in before me have earned more seniority than I have.
The indignation at such a suggestion sounds like a lot of the crap being thrown at union workers by non-union workers around this country: I don't have the perqs that you do, so you shouldn't have them either.
I never said that adjuncts weren't abused. They are, they absolutely are. I made my living as an adjunct for many, many, many years before landing this full-time job. There is no reason to begrudge the full-timers what they've earned, nor is there any reason to do a shittier job than one should because one is an adjunct.
And Contingent Cassandra, I missed your "modest proposal" reference. *smacks self in forehead*
It sounds like scheduling works very differently in different places. In my department, like Merely's and Defunct's, some poor (tenured) soul (not the chair, who would be overwhelmed by this job alone) solicits everyone's preferences, then emerges weeks or months later, pale and gaunt and clasping a monstrous spreadsheet in a trembling hand (actually (s)he sends emails that say "here's your schedule; I've done my best to accommodate everyone's preferences, but had to take all kinds of priorities into consideration; please let me know if this is impossible" -- and then works with those for whom the proposed schedule is, in fact, impossible. When and if people complain about schedules that are not, in fact, impossible, the good of the department is invoked. It's a hell of a job, and whatever course reductions it earns, it's worth at least twice that, even if that means the person doing it would be on leave every other semester (except we couldn't handle that, because mastering the job takes several years). There are definitely changes in and additions to the schedule -- and newly-hired adjuncts tend to end up in those slots -- but if there's preference given to any particular class of faculty, it isn't immediately apparent (there are plenty of *kinds* of courses that are only taught by TT faculty, and tend to be scheduled at certain times -- e.g. grad seminars in the evening -- but that's another matter). But we're in a right-to-work state, with no union contracts involved. Frankly, this discussion makes me regret that fact a little less.
ReplyDeleteAnd our parking, too, is allotted via market forces (with the mid-priced option the most popular, and conveniently-located hourly options available for those for whom that is the best deal).
Eek! Somebody stop me before I become a union-busting proponent of the wisdom of markets!
P.S. Greta -- ah, that explains it. I didn't think it was that obscure (and I thought I was remembering correctly that you, too, are a literary type, but thought maybe I was confused).
GLG,
ReplyDeleteI wasn't speaking of you, though it sounded like it I see on rereading; I was responding directly to Rex's initial post. Sorry.
Giving TT & tenured faculty the schedules they need to meet all of their obligations, which are greater than the obligations of adjuncts, of course makes sense and takes priority. Giving TT & tenured faculty a Tuesday morning and Thursday afternoon schedule because they don't feel like coming in the other days, and justifying it on the grounds that "they earned it" does not.
TT & tenured faculty, like you and me, have indeed gone through a rigorous vetting procedure which adjuncts have not. This has earned us all kinds of stuff - we earn way more money, we have a steady and secure job, and all kinds of other benefits, depending on our institution.
I don't see how it has ALSO earned us absolute right to close parking spots - when we're not the ones driving in 30 miles to teach one class and then getting the hell out again to teach another one miles down the freeway and time is of the essence. Nor do I see that it has also earned us absolute right to have first crack at the schedule, beyond what is necessary for us to fulfill the duties of our jobs. Beyond that, why should flexibility in scheduling not be equally applied to everyone who teaches there, not just we, the few, the proud, the well-paid, the unbelievably lucky?
Don't we tenured or TT faculty already get enough stuff we've earned? What gives us a "right" to claim every other damn perq as well?
As for unions, of course adjuncts should be unionized. But I'm aware that "right to work" actually means "right to fire anyone we feel like anytime we damn please, and especially if they look like they're even thinking of unionizing". What I don't get is why anyone thinks that's a good thing.
I agree that Greta nailed it. All makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty much over hump, however. The idealism is gone. My first few terms were awesome. I got great reviews. I hit the ground running and really liked it - and figured the rest would follow. I was stupid and thought life would somehow fall into place if I worked hard without knowing where to focus. It didn't. So now I'm coasting. I was going to say, "I wouldn't go to a faculty meeting if you paid me." But that's not true. If you paid me - or paid me to be the persona that needed to be there - I would. But I am paid to be a cog in the wheel and years of paddling to no avail has made me just that. The excitement and idealism - which probably comes with any new job, but which, in some other jobs, if kept, can lead to improved conditions - are long gone. I am now the cog in the wheel that they pay me to be, in mind and body.
When I compare the institutions I teach for I notice that it isn't all about pay. It's lots of stuff. The "cog" mentality, the feeling of being a throw-away, replaceable, unmotivated, cog is actually greatest at the school where I earn the most money.
What cracks me up about this post is that at my school, fill in "full-time" for "part-time" and it's the same story. They never stop bitching about everything, but especially parking and teaching schedules. They don't show up to meetings, don't keep office hours, etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteMerely, I totally agree with your points about the convenience of scheduling. We do have full-timers who want to come in twice per week, who whine about how difficult it is to schedule their lives around childcare, who want to do as little as possible. Fortunately, they're not in my department and they're a tiny minority, but everyone around the college knows who they are. I don't see their "right" to a more convenient schedule for those reasons, either.
ReplyDeleteI think the parking where Rex works is BS. I worked at a large R1 institution where everyone on the faculty--adjunct or full time--had to pay an outrageous price for parking, and it was first come, first serve. The last place I worked and my current place of employment have free parking for all faculty, and it's all first come, first serve. No distinctions. You get your sticker and you get there as early as you can.
I don't know where everyone works, but the only advantage in all things being equal that we full-timers have over adjuncts at LD3C is scheduling. We have full-time benefits; they have part-time benefits. I don't even have an office to myself, and I'm tenured.
I completely understand why adjuncts bitch the way they do, and getting back to you, Rex, if you haven't spent years on the part-time side of things, you don't understand their long-suffering misery. You seem like a good guy, though, and I don't envy you your task of having to field every little complaint--about everything.
And let's remember, everyone, that this is a place to vent. Rex's complaints aren't any less valid than any other complaints here. Sure, the adjuncts get the shit of the academic world (right above the TAs at R1 institutions, that is, from my experience), but that doesn't excuse unprofessional behavior regarding job duties.
Oh, and Merely--I hate "right to work" states. Ridiculous Orwellian doublespeak. You're absolutely correct.
ReplyDeleteHuh. I'm pretty sure tenured people get first priority where I work, but we are all expected to teach one lower-division course and one early-morning or late-evening course, so choices of time are limited. We also don't get to choose our teaching days, except insofar as we get two-day or three-day courses lumped together in any particular quarter, alternating quarters, so we don't have to come in every day. Adjuncts are expected to teach three-day quarters pretty much anytime, I suppose because it's assumed they don't need "research days" (which isn't fair), but not to come in every day.
ReplyDeleteParking sucks for everyone. Full-time employees, tenure-track or no, get first crack at the expensive close-by parking, but as a full-time, tenured faculty member, I can't afford it.
I like the pop-eyed fellow at the top of the page; he reminds me of the bug-eyed UFO pilots on the covers of "Fortean Times" and "Fate Magazine."
ReplyDeleteYou know this whole battle between the Tenured and TT people versus the Adjuncts is just a wedge from the (incompetent) Administration to keep the faculty split and "controllable." If there were Tenured faculty unions and Adjunct unions, the Adminstration would figure out how to cause splits between the unions....the people "running" the universities have taken their cues from Corporate America (especially working-hating outfits like General Electric), not realizing that their skinflint tactics are damaging academia badly and undermining their own position.
I have a question: how much do your adjucnts make per class? Is the answer "as little as the university can get away with"? Probably. 5k per course sounds the low end of reasonable. You anywhere near that? Yes or no?
ReplyDeleteBecause if you pay your adjuncts shit with little or no benefits, you don't really have the right to whine that they're not doing a good enough job.
What will you do, Rex, when they fucking rise up and say no to that bullshit? You'll finally have to pay them what they're worth. Adjuncts are paid a FRACTION of what they bring into the university in the way of tuition. You know that.
Unfortunately if you fire those complain-y adjuncts for not doing just what you want, you'll probably find fifteen more eager to take the crap you deal out. Because that's the nature of the beast these days.
But you're not entitled to any more work than you pay for. Not one speck more.
Colleges need to pay adjuncts what they are WORTH, not simply what you can GET AWAY WITH, and then and only then to administrators have the right to bitch about how they jam up the copier and don't keep enough office hours.
So let's hear again about that salary per class?
When they rise up, Stella, I don't know what I'll do. It's never happened in my state, not in any way.
ReplyDeleteWe pay $2400 a class to every part-timer for every class taught that way. We only have about 20% of our college's courses covered in this way, and that number has stayed fairly stable.
I've lost some part-timers because they've taken other positions or because their work wasn't meeting our needs, and I've always found others to do it.
I wish I could hire 3 full timers instead of 6-8 part-timers. But when I've requested that, I've been turned down.
The college pays them to meet their classes and to meet our expectations. When they fail, they are replaced.
SfS: $5 K a class? ! wish! That's what adjunct at my uni make for 2 classes. I make a bit more than 5K for two classes because I've been there the longest.
ReplyDeleteBut Stella, I'm sure that the cost of living is really low "sort of in the middle of nowhere." I bet even gas is cheaper -- at least if you look at it from the perspective of dollars per gallon rather than gallons needed to get to work, or mpg in the sort of older car most adjuncts can afford, and no doubt absolutely must own in order to get to work at Rex's fine institution, unless, of course, they live near campus, which is probably more expensive than the rest of the area. And then they'd still need to find a way to get to their other job(s). Or, if there is a bus, they can add hours, and an even higher degree of uncertainty, to their travel (one of the things that strikes me each time my own older car breaks down is just how inefficient and unpredictable public transportation -- which is actually pretty good in my area -- can be. There's a time and stress cost that people who habitually travel by car just don't recognize. At least when I make it to campus early, having allowed plenty of time for problems, I have an office to go to and a computer to work on. That's not true for many adjuncts).
ReplyDeleteWhile in some way I understand Rex's perspective, I really, really hope that, once the economy recovers, his current adjuncts will quit, and he won't be able to replace them at anything less than a wage proportional to what a similarly qualified and experienced full-time faculty member would earn for the same work. And I hope that on some level he'll be happy when that happens, too, and will be able to use the fact that adjuncts are just as expensive as FT faculty to argue for more FT lines. That is an outcome that I think all of us, FT or PT, TT or not, can agree would be a positive one. But it's going to take a lot of adjuncts saying "enough," and some pretty painful years for those whose jobs include hiring adjuncts, to get there. And many administrators are probably looking for ways to get machines, or at least cheap offshore labor, to replace adjuncts who teach in person (and they may just succeed).
Pfff. You want a social experiment? Pay adjuncts ten grand per class if your typical load is 3/3, eight grand if your typical load is 4/4. That puts them at around entry-level TT salaries. See who complains and what they complain about. I bet it won't be parking and fringe benefits.
ReplyDeleteWhen I take a temp job at an office somewhere, I don't expect a reserved parking spot. When I replace drywall in a college building, I don't expect a discounted meal card for the cafeteria. Nor do I expect health insurance, gym membership, a carpool, etc. etc. These are perks that come with being a full-time employee. When I do work that's equally difficult (and, usually, less desirable) to what the full-time employees do, though, isn't it reasonable that I expect to be paid roughly the same amount? If you're well-paid, you're more ready to accept the lack of perks as part-and-parcel of what is, otherwise, a fairly good job.
This is about money. You get (and your employees are, by all rights, entitled to give you) what you pay for.
""The college pays them to meet their classes and to meet our expectations. When they fail, they are replaced."
ReplyDeleteThat is I think precisely the "cog in the machine" mentality AdjunctSlave was describing.
$2400/class? So a full course load would bring in how much in a year? I'm not sure if you're on quarters or semesters, but what would a "full course load" be for a full-time tenured faculty member - five classes? So an adjunct who teaches a "full-time load" would earn $12,000/year? If they get 2 summer courses on top of that, that would bring them up to about $17,000? Full-time minimum-wage work at McDonald's will earn them a little more than that.
If your university is only willing to pay them McDonald's wages, be grateful if your adjuncts show up sober and hand in their grades. Anything more than that (show up at faculty meetings? for what?) is definitely more than they're getting paid for - including unjamming the photocopier on their own time.
Yes, when I unilaterally decided that my college would pay adjuncts $2400, my goal was to make sure they would get paid less than McDonald's. The President tried to talk me out of it. The Deans said no. But fuck it.
ReplyDeleteAnd our part-timers are limited to 3 sections per semester and 2 each summer, so the most classes they can teach is 8 a year. Almost none of our few teach that much. Most teach 2-2-1.
I'm under no illusion that this is a full time or living wage. Our full timers teach 3-3 and have a whole raft of ancillary duties, and my department's average is about $78k, skewed slightly because we have 2 senior faculty near retirement.
My offering them a voice at faculty meetings was intended to encourage them to have a voice in what books we order each year and to massage the curriculum. I only offer because at one point we had an adjunct who enjoyed weighing on these things.
Listen, this place is clearly adjunct-centric, and I'm not saying I'm not. What I did want to share with my post was a view that I thought wasn't voiced on this page very much. Perhaps I erred in thinking the readership was a little more broad, and I meant no offense.
If I'm the scapegoat for the adjunct crisis, so be it. I can't imagine any denial would be met well so I won't try. I would happily have no adjuncts if the college had the money to hire some new t-t lines. But that is not the case, and being a department chairman - despite its many luxes - does not afford me the kind of power necessary to change that culture.
@Rex
ReplyDeleteDude, it's all juco and adjunct here. Don't try to impress us with your full time mumbo jumbo.
I teach next to the auto shop and my office is the men's room. That's the same for all of us.
Get your snooty nose out of here.
Rex, Rex, Rex...
ReplyDeleteDon't try to talk your way out of it now. You're part of the problem. Not just the fact that you "can't" pay your adjuncts more--it's your attitude.
You realize that you "pay" your adjuncts 20k per year for what is essentially a 4/4 load with zero or few benefits? You realize that's under the poverty line for a family of four, don't you? But that's a full-time job, and a full-time load. What other full-time job pays 20k per year? People working at Hobby Lobby make more.
The fact that adjuncts have not risen up in your state is not an excuse for your university to treat them that way. But that is not my quarrel with you. I realize that to some degree chairs don't have control of how much adjuncts are paid. You're obviously not making much of a fuss about it, but you're like most other chairs out there, told they have to hire x amount of adjuncts for x dollars per class. So they do it, and don't ever worry about what will happen if those adjuncts stop eating the shit they're doled out. They do it because they can. Your own comments make that evident. Your college, and you, pay those adjuncts shit because it's possible to pay them shit.
You say "The college pays them to meet their classes and to meet our expectations. When they fail, they are replaced."
That's pretty bloodless. Let me reword that for you: "The college pays the adjuncts as little as it can, even though they bring in in tuition many times more than we dole out. Despite this crap salary with zero benefits, they are supposed to be thankful for what they get, never complain, and do an excellent job. Because if they don't, they're out. There's always more adjuncts waiting to eat that shit sandwich."
That's pretty much how I see it, Rex. As chair you should be advocating in every way possible to create full-time lines. You should pressure the administration, and then pressure them some more. Don't just roll over and hire as many adjuncts as they tell you to. Make a stink about it every. Damned. Time.
And for God's sake, if you can't do that, at least don't sniff that these underpaid adjuncts that are getting ass raped by your university aren't doing their jobs properly, and complain too much.
Pay them what they're worth. Give them a decent parking spot. They may still complain, but only then will YOU have the right to complain about THEM.
It's not all adjuncts and juco here. Nor does the banner say "Adjunct and Juco Misery." And if this page becomes a place demonstrating that a single class of people whom corporate America would like to get rid of altogether is stupid enough to infight themselves to death, well, then, let's not bother.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping ToyBox Tony's comment was satire.
But $2400 sucks, completely. It's half what adjuncts get where I teach.
You know, everyone's right here. What Rex was complaining about is totally HIS MISERY. And having to deal with a university who will only hire really low-wage teachers is going to add to misery.
ReplyDeleteJust like Dean Suzy's misery is to try to find a low-paid adjunct who WON'T grope the students.
It's college misery, and we all live it while contributing to it. We're shitting on Rex right now, but really we ARE Rex, we've witnessed Rex, and we are becoming Rex.
Rex, you made a bad choice coming here to complain about adjuncts when this site is full of angry, embittered adjuncts....it's like wearing an IRA t-shirt in Northern Ireland.
ReplyDeleteSo the $2400 is part of some sort of deep game immiseration experiment you're running? You know, Philip Zimbardo got sucked into his own experiment (the fake jail) because he would not appoint a warden and played that "persona" himself. He though he was stronger than his own game. He was wrong.
Rex, there are some full time and TT people around here but we know to keep our heads down when anybody slights an adjunct. (Maybe I should say that we know we should but some of us can't help ourselves.)
ReplyDeletePointing out a problem with any particular adjuncts makes you Part of the Problem. Any of their failings are because of The System, of which you are a part. If you fight for higher wages, you must not be fighting hard enough. If you welcome adjuncts to a department meeting, you are insulting them by assuming they have the time for such things.
Don't let this stop you from posting. You just might want to skip reading the comments.
It must be something to do with the changing seasons because it was almost exactly one year ago...
http://collegemisery.blogspot.com/2010/08/hey-adjuncts-gtfo.html
Folks, it's not a question of what you are worth, it's a question of how valuable your skills are. Your skills are worth whatever somebody is willing to pay. There won't be any revolution because when adjuncts stop working for $2400 per class. Schools will raise their rate to $2500 and get on with their business.
Is that good? No, but I think it's how things work.
Beaker--
ReplyDeleteNaked capitalism is the enemy of academia and most especially the humanities. We can't just say "that's how things work."
What's going to be left if we keep down that path? Humanities are already being gutted as we speak. What will be left is service courses in the core and majors that "pay".
That's a really sad future. Really sad.
How do you treat adjuncts? Barring actually paying them a decent wage, you invite them to department meetings but make it clear they are not an obligation. You give them a decent parking spot, the same available to all faculty and staff. You attempt to meet their scheduling needs, making it clear to the senior faculty that adjunct needs for scheduling are as important as theirs. You temper your judgement of student complaints with the knowledge that students can smell powerlessness on a professor, and that the professor in question is overworked and underpaid.
You try to be sane and humane, and you offer more slack to the people who are making do with much less or practically nothing.
I say that as a full professor.
What Beaker said.... And so many others.
ReplyDeleteFuck.
An adjunct said, "And I'm not even saying that because I think I'd be frozen out or ignored. I get on fine with all the full-time people in the department, they are all friendly and considerate, and they treat me as their intellectual and professional equal in our conversations."
This is how I treat the minimum-wage cashier at McDonald's. Why should I not be polite to him?
Also, Rex from R said, "I wish I could hire 3 full timers instead of 6-8 part-timers. But when I've requested that, I've been turned down."
Three-year contracts with those three full-timers would require you to set aside about $1million. The eight adjuncts will cost you about $400,000 over that same amount of time--and allow you much greater flexibility.
Like the Monkey said, "We are Rex."
Not one of us is Spartacus.
Rex - of course you don't set the wages for your adjuncts, and would prefer to hire full-time faculty, which would be fairer all round. You are stuck administering a very bad situation. Very highly-trained people who had, they thought, a reasonable expectation of a middle-class career on the basis of their years of education are instead making less than they could have if they'd gone straight from high school to the stockroom at Walmart's. They aren't happy about it. You can't change the one thing that would really matter - their pay and benefits - and although you've tried, you haven't been able to give any of them a full-time job in the last five years. And meantime you're the face of authority for them; they look at you and see everything that's wrong with their miserable professional lives. And all of the real problems you can't fix.
ReplyDeleteBut you can try to change the things they do complain about, which wouldn't (in fact) cost your university anything. Cut the adjuncts as much slack as you can on scheduling. Make a fuss to someone about getting some decent parking for adjuncts. Don't try to tell them - or yourself - that the full-timers have earned the perqs as well as the pay and the benefits. Wherever there's wiggle room, wiggle in favour of the adjuncts. It will help them feel human. If they can't have money they can at least feel as if they have your respect.
It's likely clear to all, incidentally, that ToyBoxTony is the current name of our local underbridge symbiont.
It's not Rex's fault. He's the chair, but he doesn't run the college. I think ganging up on him is completely unfair, and again I state that his complaints are no less valid than any other complaints we've seen here.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shitty system. Rex is another cog in the wheel, as much as the adjuncts are. And Strelnikov is one-hundred percent correct: it's a divide-and-conquer mentality among those who run academe. Rex is a chair trying to do his job, trying to please higher-ups and adjuncts alike, while (I'm certain) feeling quite a bit of responsibility toward students and the community. Blaming him in any way for the current situation simply plays into the hands of the plutocracy. We are all pawns, all of us.
Seriously, people. Rex came to vent. He's as much caught in the system as the rest of us, including adjuncts. You want to hate him for not being adjunct (because that is what it sounds like, in many posts)? Go ahead. You're not harming him. You're harming all of us.
For the record (and I'm not backing down from my Stanford Prison Experiment reference, oh Hell no,) I don't hate Rex. I am endlessly curious as to why a guy who is willing to cut adjunct pay to the bone would be willing to admit such on this site. Masochism? A deeply buried Catholic refex to confess anonymously to anonymous people? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteYes, when I unilaterally decided that my college would pay adjuncts $2400, my goal was to make sure they would get paid less than McDonald's. The President tried to talk me out of it. The Deans said no. But fuck it.
ReplyDeleteThat was a joke, Strelly.
I hate to get involved in this because the rhetoric is pretty high, but I've taught in community colleges and have seen adjuncts get paid less than $2400, AND I've seen department chairs who DID try to make their lives better. I think it's silly to assume that Rex is some how to blame for the crisis because he isn't doing enough about it.
Whack-a-Mole city here yesterday. I'm glad I missed it.
"Whack-a-Mole city here yesterday. I'm glad I missed it."
ReplyDeleteIt's the end of summer, the weather is swampy, and the rage* is flowing like a melting Tibetan butter statue into the boiling sands around Lhasa...I told the dude he resembled an IRA supporter walking into a "Prod" area in Northern Ireland; he was warned, sorta. Nothing he wrote sounded like a joke; it read (and was taken by the regulars) as stark truth. I think facing the bag o' flaming shite on our doorsteps that is this upcoming semester has something to do with it.
_____________________________
* White hot and silvery, like molten aluminum pouring out of a Bessemer furnace, the sort of blazing rage you see in Japanese samurai films, or you heard in the speeches of Illya Ehrenburg during the War; pure, total, beyond mere hatred.
I do like your point(s), Greta and Strelnikov, that the Misery is felt on all sides here - those lucky enough to be tenured chairs, and those working twice as hard and earning 2/3 the wages of a Walmart stocker - and that the genius of the administration is to cause us to do this TO OURSELVES, to divide and conquer. We are all in this mess together.
ReplyDelete@Strelnikov: and to add a soupcon of post-adrenaline jitters to the mix, the earth shook yesterday in places where people just aren't used to it (but where there are plenty of colleges, and hence plenty of misery).
ReplyDelete@Ben: my theory is that this sort of conflict happens at this time of year precisely because it's when both those who hire adjuncts and the adjuncts make decisions that they know, on some not-quite-conscious level, will come back to bite them in the butt in a month or two. About a week ago, while Suzy was on vacation, somebody at another university hired her gropey little friend, wondering in the back of his mind why this particular adjunct with a hard-to-find specialty had bounced around so much from school to school, and knowing that he really ought to check references before extending a job offer, but the slot had to be filled, and he didn't have any other options on the horizon, so he went ahead and made the call. And Rex (or Rex's counterpart elsewhere) heard that slight hesitation before an adjunct accepted another class, and knows on some level that that little silence means the adjunct is going to have to hit green on every traffic light between one campus and the other and magically find the perfect parking spot five minutes before the start of the most popular time slot of the day in order to make it to class on time -- but hey, Rex needs to offer the class, and the adjunct needs the money.
Then we all come here and gripe at each other, and maybe even identify some commonalities in the process. The result is a bit messy, but valuable as well, I suspect.
I'm late to this "party" but my first thought on reading the initial post was here at Inner City Community College, we ALL complain. We complain loud and long and often. Our adjuncts are all saints as far as I am concerned. I am certain they have more reason to complain than we do, but that does not stop the full time crowd, but tenured and non tenured. And the copier---oh don't even get me STARTED on the copier! NOBODY treats that machine with the respect it needs. There is one adjunct who has a knack at fixing it when it has a bad jam (which is all the time) and she very naively let it be known she had such skills and now has to wear elaborate disguises just to make it to class on time....
ReplyDeleteBTW, Strelly, you are hilarious!!! Thanks for making me smile!
That wasn't supposed to be comedic....
ReplyDelete