Why I Will No Longer Work As An Adjunct – Effective Immediately

[ashling]

http://adjunct.chronicle.com/why-i-will-no-longer-work-as-an-adjunct-effective-immediately/

[font color=blue]A Commentary on the Demoralizing, Soul Crushing Existence of an Adjunct Instructor Thanks to the Absence of Job Security, Being Expendable, Being Under-appreciated, Feeling Like a Fraud, and Having a Master’s Degree but Collecting Food Stamps Because of Sub-Poverty Wages*

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*****
Until the writing of this letter, I was an adjunct instructor at Lackawanna College starting August of last year. It has always been a dream of mine to teach at the college level, but working as an adjunct has effectively killed that dream.

Why? For a number of reasons, including the absence of job security, being perceived as expendable, not being appreciated, feeling like a fraud, and being paid wages that are so ridiculously below the federal poverty level that many adjuncts (including myself), are eligible for food stamps, despite talented and advanced degrees.

*****

By virtue of the position, adjuncts have zero job security. Classes can be cancelled with little to no notice (this has happened to me multiple times this month alone; just yesterday I was checking my schedule online and noticed that my College 101 class had been cancelled), and adjuncts are limited in how many classes they’re allowed to teach.

*****

For a full-time instructor or an administrator, this is of no consequence, as those position offer a guaranteed salary. For an adjunct, this is financially devastating. As a single parent, I don’t have the luxury of having a working spouse. My only source of income is the money I earn teaching. I rely on that income to pay the basic living expenses for my family.

-----------------------

I had a course dropped this semester. Fortunately the kids are gone (sort of) and my wife works, but also as an adjunct - she teaches at 3 colleges and so there is a good bit of driving and her schedule is hectic. Then we find out that because they didnt' get our contracts until late - its always after the semester has started because you never know if the class will make - there will be no money til the end of next month.

Today we get word from the electric company that because of two late payments - because of the way we are paid - they are going to add a $400 deposit to our next bill.

I could go on, but I didn't intend to make this about me.

[In_The_Wind]

1. Damn.

[In_The_Wind]

28. How's the coffee today?

Is the library closed due to cold weather today?

[libodem]

2. I taught at our community college

It was an abusive nightmare. I hear you clearly.

[catrose]

11. Exactly.

Me too. No more.

[1000words]

3. Re: Readability of type color

All red type is difficult to read. Like bolding, it is best used sparingly.

[1000words]

8. Thanks!

I hope my feedback didn't come off as snarky.

As to the topic, I can relate ... sort of. My girlfriend was adjunct staff, until recently. Overworked, criminally underpaid and absolutely miserable. She finally had enough and called it quits.

Rec

[jsr]

4. Meanwhile the proliferation of highly paid paperpushers with big titles continues unabated

at taxpayer expense.

[ashling]

6. Thanks - I fixed it

I forgot to close that part.

[El_Johns]

5. KR. Adjuncts & grad students do the majority of college/university teaching.

[Bobbie Jo]

7. I did adjunct work several years ago

It was on "contract" to supplement my full time job. I can't imagine relying on this kind of income to support myself and a family.

[defacto7]

9. It's beyond belief...

And the salaries of college and university presidents? How do they justify them? They can't.

[hughee99]

48. Well, if you're going to piss off all the people at the bottom of the food chain,

you have to pay the person at the top of it a lot of money to deal with it...

Of course, if they fixed the problems, that would probably be a much better solution.

[cer7711]

10. An Absurdist Nightmare

Good grief; it's almost as if our plutocratic oligarchs are trying to financially impoverish and intellectually lobotomize the intelligentsia of this country! (The better to tighten their grip on power: frightened, desperate, broken workers--white collar or blue--are much more malleable and willing to see the "inevitability" of a declining living standard.)

Nah; must be wearing my leftist tinfoil hat again . . .

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. I had adjunct and temporary appointments till I got a tenure-track job--

and then I was denied tenure.

Looking at the job market for my field, I saw nothing but temporary jobs (one- to three-year non-renewable appointments in podunk colleges around the country) and adjunct positions, so I got out. I was lucky in that a friend introduced me to a company that needed textbooks edited, and from there I transitioned into translation.

I miss some aspects of academia, but everyone I know who is still in it is depressed. And that's the people who HAVE tenure.

The corporate model has taken over higher education, which is why we have more administrators than ever and fewer full-time instructors. Just as an example, when I was in college in the early 1970s, we had a president, a half-time academic dean who also taught classes, a dean of students, a comptroller, a director of admissions, a director of alumni relations, a facilities supervisor, and an international student advisor who also taught classes. That was it for administration.

I came back ten years later as a temporary instructor, and there were scads of new administrative positions, all of which paid more than any of the professors were receiving.

[El_Johns]

17. +1

[progressoid]

21. +1

[adirondacker]

34. +1000. Thanks for sharing. nt

[n2doc]

45. Exactly n/t

[Ms. Toad]

58. Really?

"I came back ten years later as a temporary instructor, and there were scads of new administrative positions, all of which paid more than any of the professors were receiving."

I just started in a position which is classed as administrative, even though I am teaching two classes. I wish it paid more than the professors I teach with are paid. The reality is it pays far less, even though - short of the deans - I am one of the highest paid on the administrative staff.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

61. Your mileage may vary

But at that time (early 1980s), the highest paid professor made $27,000, but three new vice-president positions had been created at $35,000 each, and all the administrative offices were bigger. There were no longer any administrators who also taught classes, other than department chairs.

[Vashta Nerada]

13. This post makes me sad and angry.

It makes me sad because I was thinking about going for my PhD, but what's the point? Why go through all that work if this is in my future? And it makes me angry that someone with so much education can be tossed around like a piece of crap, tossed away after a year or two. And for what? So the college administration can make a few extra dollars?

[FarCenter]

32. College teaching isn't the only career for PhDs.

Depending on the field, teaching and research are two different emphases within academia. Also, in either, choice of advisor, choice of topic, academic networking and politics, as well as performance, are critical in getting ahead.

[adirondacker]

35. A best friend's Phd brother drove buses in Amsterdam during the Reagan years. Of course, you have to

learn the language, but the pay was plenty to survive on and the work hours and benefits beat anything in the USA.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. I got my Ph.D. at an Ivy League school with one of the foremost authorities

in the field as my advisor.

Still spent one year unemployed and three years as an adjunct before I got a full-time job, which was a year-to-year appointment with a three-year limit, and then a tenure-track job that was a revolving door.

I had a wonderful time in grad school and made life-long friends. But given my current career as a translator, I would have done just as well, even better, to go teach English in Japan and transition into translation from that starting point instead of having to pay off loans on little income.

[Vashta Nerada]

47. In archaeology, college teaching is pretty much it.

Unless you get a great government job, such as a district or regional manager. But those jobs are extremely rare.

[FarCenter]

49. I didn't think you could put a shovel in the ground without an archaeologist's sign off

Tribes Vetting 22,000 Antennae Halt $13 Billion Rail Plan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-21/tribes-vetting-22-000-antennae-halt-13-billion-rail-plan.html

[Kali]

54. there is private contract work as well

when the economy is functioning

[Vashta Nerada]

55. Yes, but most CRM firms won't hire people with PhDs.

They don't want to pay the PhDs more money for work that people with Master's degrees can do.

[Kali]

56. that is true

although there are company owners with PhDs

[Vashta Nerada]

60. Yes.

But an MBA is a good thing to have to run a business.

I should get one...

[Vattel]

44. If you love the subject, why not go for a PhD?

In my field, I have never seen someone who didn't make it in academia end up poor. On the contrary they make a boat load of money outside of academia. Of course the economy is much worse now, and so the risks are greater, but there is nothing as awesomely fun as being grad student.

[JDPriestly]

14. It's shameful. Adjuncts are way underpaid, and yet, when students graduate, they have more

debt than they could ever pay off.

Full-time faculty are not overpaid for the years of work and the commitment to teach and to publish that they make.

So where does the money go?

Well, for one thing there are the administrators. College presidents, for example, are very well paid. They are, after all, not leading competitive companies. They are leading the professors -- intelligent and well educated people, and the employees of the university. They are responsible for organizing the care of the students, but they have lots of employees to do the tough work. To a certain extent, theirs is an honorary job. They fund-raise, but just where do the funds they raise go?

So is their high pay justified?

When I pass campuses or on rare occasions visit one, I notice that they are building a lot of additions. Is that where the money goes?

I question the spending priorities of our colleges and universities.

[quakerboy]

16. I have often wondered this

Where exactly does all that tuition go, especially when you are looking at some of the mid-pricy private schools. I believe my old school is now at 36k per year. That's well above what it was when I was there, and I'm willing to bet that the profs, tenured or not, havnt seen a significant pay raise over the same period of time. But enrollment has gone way up.

[exboyfil]

37. Lets say 15 to 1 student to faculty

You are talking about $540,000. Fully loaded cost for a professor is probably on the order $175,000. That professors don't take the entire teaching load. The poor underpaid adjuncts do that job so their cost has to be added in as well (probably at about $100/student/class but this can vary all over the map). You have to keep the lights on, buildings warm, grass cut, maintenance done, library and computers in place, activities funded.

And of course the mountain of administrators and support staff paid (many addressing things like safety, EEOC compliance, Title 9 compliance, health, financial aid, counseling, etc)

Here is the organization chart for a typical university. All salaries in Iowa are publicly available. Who should be cut? In the case of this university, I would cut the sports programs completely. The students and tax payers subsidize them at about 50% of the cost as of 2010 (about $3M).

http://www.ir.uni.edu/dbweb/orgchart/?empID=0D1AF9CA2B

http://www.dmcityview.com/2012/08/30/columns/skinny.html

[MADem]

15. Do you make so little that you are eligible for government assistance?

Can you get some help on that electric bill?

I'd call and try to reason with them, in any event--it can't hurt and it might help. Perhaps they can lower that deposit, or charge it to you over a period of several months to ease the sting?

Also, if you are being paid in the dark, you may as well apply for lifeline phone service, too--it would be cheaper than a regular phone, certainly.

[oldandhappy]

18. I am sorry.

I know this happens a lot in many many places. Not fair to you and not fair to the students.

Run for the House! They work Tues evening to Thurs morning every other week. Cushy job!

[riderinthestorm]

19. K&R. Horrified. nt

[raccoon]

20. ITA, adjuncts get a raw deal. And there are more and more adjuncts.

Speaking of funding, I happen to know that the state and the feds don't give the local community college near as much money as they used to. My guess is that is true of most state colleges.

It's not just a question of who's getting the money, though that certainly enters into it. It's also that there isn't that much money around due to funding cuts.

[FarCenter]

22. I thought adjuncts were professionals from business and public sector organizations?

Adjuncts are a way to bring in people with practical experience to teach courses that broaden student's outlook on life after college.

For example, a law school would have some courses taught by practicing attorneys, or an engineering school would have courses taught by engineers employed by firms in the area.

It is a way for the adjunct to pad his resume, to network with professors, and to identify candidates for internships or employment in his organization. It also comes with a small amount of pay that amounts to an honorarium.

It's not a full time job.

[Vattel]

25. You thought wrong.

Most adjuncts are people that have advanced degrees in a subject, but because they don't have a full-time academic position, they settle for teaching whatever courses are left over after the regular faculty members' teaching schedules are filled. They are paid by the course and at a very low rate. Thus, unless they can find at least four courses per semester, their work is pretty much part time work. Moreover, their contracts end at the end of a semester and so there is no job security for them.

[FarCenter]

29. A friend taught a course at a local community college - $1200 per course each semester was the pay

She taught just one course per semester, evenings. She had a full time job related to the course content.

[exboyfil]

38. Her efforts undercut the bargaining position

of full-time adjuncts. You realistically can't teach more than 4 courses/semester - that is $12/K if you are fortunate enough to teach 2 in the summer.

[ashling]

42. The community colleges here won't let you take more than three.

I had 3 scheduled - one hybrid that didn't make and these two online (govt). My wife has 3 at the local comm college, 1 at another branch across town, and 3 at a state college about an hour and a half (80m) away. 2 of those are hybrid and one is completely online so she only has to go over there one day a week.

[exboyfil]

43. Wow that is quite a load

I have noticed some online instructors having four or five. The frustrating thing about the online instructors (and probably in the classroom as well) is some that really care and put time into it and others which don't. My daughter has taken about 50 hours online at three different community colleges and an university while in high school. I personally think online classes are great (I have taken at least 15 myself over the years in engineering).

If jobs are available I would like to adjunct when I retire from my employer. I have two Masters degrees and a bunch of coursework towards a doctorate which I abandoned when I moved with my employer.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

30. You're living in the past. That's how it was originally

but then the bottom-line fanatics saw that if they could pay an attorney a $5000 honorarium for teaching a class in business law, they could also pay one of the multitudes of Ph.D's in English the same price to teach freshman writing classes. Or one of the multitudes of Ph.D's in Spanish to teach beginning courses while the few remaining tenured professors taught literature to majors.

Graduate students come cheap, too.

In the olden days (pre-Reagan), colleges would have hired full-time professors to teach their specialty AND teach (or, in larger universities, at least supervise) basic courses. Now the relatively few tenure-track positions are for specialists only, and even many of them are revolving door positions in which, mysteriously, no one ever qualifies for tenure.

I found myself in one of those revolving door positions (seven years and you're gone, no matter how well you do), and in 1993, I could see what was coming: all the jobs that I had any hope of getting were short-term appointments or adjunct positions in widely scattered parts of the country. I had already met Ph.D.'s who worked in Oklahoma for two years, in New Hampshire for one year, in Arizona for two years, in Oregon for three years, and were moving on to South Dakota. If I had wanted to live like that, I would have joined the military. I had envisioned living in an on-going community of scholars dedicated to teaching, but the reality was different for all but the lucky 25% or so.

Oh, and the tenured professors? They know that you have no job security, and it's an open invitation to the bullies among them. Not everyone is a bully, of course, but a bully who can't be fired for making the adjuncts and non-tenured faculty miserable is a fearsome thing indeed. (Once tenured, professors can be fired only if their department is abolished, if the college is about to go under and declares "financial exigency," or if they are guilty of "moral turpitude." Examples of the latter are stealing rare books, raping students, or falsifying research.)

One of my former roommates is eking out a living teaching French at several colleges in the metropolitan New York City area. She seems to be one of those who didn't perceive the trend soon enough, and at her age (about 60), starting a whole new career is unlikely.

I would never advise a student today to go for a Ph.D.

[Orangepeel]

46. That's generally true with professional schools, like your examples

Not with liberal arts.

[joeglow3]

59. That is the problem with liberal arts degrees

Schools pump out hundreds of thousands of these degrees when there is nowhere that demand. We get pissed when shitty for profit colleges do it, but accept it with four year degrees.

[sendero]

23. Just a microcosm..

... of what is going on throughout America. Those at the bottom are getting less and less so those at the top can have more. It's sad.

[Laelth]

52. Precisely. n/t

-Laelth

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. Imagine this: First day of college...

... you eagerly take a seat in a lecture hall with 200 other people, each of whom paid $900 for the class and are equally eager for the opportunity to learn about 18th century english literature. Your dream is to one day teach the subject at the college level. You look around and realize that most of the people in this room share the same dream. Imagine that there are 5 classes just like this one each week. That's $90,000 for the college and 1000 competitors (this quarter alone) for the job currently held by the adjunct professor who is living on food stamps, and can hardly pay his or her student loans and is giving the lecture.

Who'll get the job? The one who is willing to spend the most, accept the lowest pay and put up with the most shit.

I'm okay with the idea of following your dream, if you've really evaluated the issue... but don't tell me that college graduates have a monopoly on critical thinking skills.

"Humanities professor" isn't the only career in the world.

It is unfortunate that the author of the OP didn't critically evaluate the career landscape before committing to this path. Exploitation of graduate students isn't a new phenomenon.

We criticize Wal Mart for paying wages so low that (through public assistance) they effectively externalize their costs onto government. I think that colleges deserve the same scrutiny. More in fact, because at least Wal Mart doesn't require you to incur six-figure debt to get a job there.

[Vattel]

27. My sister made a living being an adjunct, but it is not easy.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

[aikoaiko]

31. Adjunct positions are not a good career choice.

Good reasons to be an adjunct for one or two classes are: need a little extra cash, enjoy talking to talented, bright students, teaching experience while a post-doc or grad student.

Adjunct positions typically don't lead to full-time employment and rarely tenure-track positions.

But I understand that there are sometimes no or few choices out there.

[Xithras]

36. I taught as an adjunct for years

I taught as an adjunct for years at several California community colleges and at a CSU. I really didn't have a problem with it when I was only teaching one or two courses a week to supplement my "real job", but became disillusioned pretty quickly when that "real job" went away and I had to take on more courses to pay the bills and make the ends meet.

I was treated like garbage. I once had half my classes (and therefore, half my income) canceled a week into the semester due to "low enrollment" without any notice. Work became a popularity contest as adjuncts competed to rob next semesters classes from each other, and I had anxiety attacks from the constant stress of not knowing whether I'd land enough courses to make ends meet. The full time faculty treated us like inhuman dirt who weren't "real" college teachers, and who weren't worthy to be in their presence. When full time or tenure track positions did open up, I was repeatedly told not to apply for them because some other adjunct was already a "favorite" for the position and that I would just anger people if I tried to "take it from them" (and the one time I ignored that advice and applied anyway, I found myself with absolute garbage classes the following semester...that was actually the semester that half my classes got canceled).

I absolutely loved teaching. I loved interacting with the students, I loved sharing knowledge, and I loved watching their faces light up when they got a concept that I was explaining. I had many students come up and pointedly tell me that I was one of the best teachers they ever had, because I had a knack for breaking complicated subjects down and making them comprehensible. As someone who taught computer science and math, that can be a tough thing to accomplish at times. My RateMyProfessors score was a 4.9 (highest in my department at my last college) because my students liked me as much as I liked them (and I even had a chili pepper!)

But I HATED everything else about teaching. Everything. The schools, the administrators, the tenured faculty, the never-ending march of committees...it's like they designed the entire system just to treat adjuncts like dirt. So when the opportunity arose to take a good job with a great technology company in the Bay Area, I didn't even hesitate to take it. I will never teach again.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

40. Although I did have nine years of full-time work in there

I, too, loved the classroom experience, liked many of my colleagues, and had no use for the administrators, many of whom seemed to have risen to their level of incompetence.

[eppur_se_muova]

41. All is proceeding as planned; check out step two in this list ...

http://junctrebellion.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/how-the-american-university-was-killed-in-five-easy-steps/

[JCMach1]

50. Only 31% of all College instruction now is by full-timers...

That is approaching FAST FOOD levels...

I started a small business when I returned from the states, but I would also like to still teach a bit as an adjunct...

What's the problem? Between the number of hours required to do the job, the commute and the low salary, I calculated my salary would come to just under $3 per hour. There operations only pay you for the time in the classroom, or a flat rate per class. It is long past time that something were done about this!

I chose NOT to work a job that would pay me less than what I made when I was 16yo and working in a grocery store.

[Laelth]

51. k&r for labor. n/t

-Laelth

[jimlup]

53. Been there - done that

now I teach at a private HS. Much better for job tenure and stability issues.

[1awake]

57. I have felt your pain...

I was one at a college close to where I lived previously and it was downright scary. It was always my dream to teach at the college level and that experience ended it. At least I can say I fulfilled that dream... sorta.

[Starry Messenger]

62. I'm sorry about this. Fellow adjunct here.

I'm too old to quit now, unless a miracle occurs. Full time work in my area is very very limited. I feel your pain.