The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Let's hear from the administrators. 

They sure take a lot of shots directly and indirectly, so maybe they could say something about what it means to have a budget to balance and hiring decisions to make.  We all know things such as the declining H.S. graduation rate and diminishing tuition revenues and state support----so maybe try and give some nuance to issues such as these?

The admins I have occasionally interacted with have genuinely been good folks----they remind me of the old H.R. admin and floor managers I used to work with in the corporate world, always smiling and politicking and trying to rally the troops-----and one was very instrumental in moving me from a PT staff to a FT staff member once.  But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

On the other hand, I have witnessed a couple of pure-bred dumba**s make a pig's lunch of the job (one actually got fired!).

Probably we should be nice to people who post here (as long as the posts are sane...you know who you are).

Hope we have enough actual posters in admin to honestly post.

Plus there is a college administrator in the "Tournament of Champions" on Jeopardy.   That's something.

Matt Reed at Inside Higher Ed writes multiple times per week on administrative issues and often has a pretty good comment section: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean

John Warner at Inside Higher Ed writes from an adjunct perspective and tends to get a lot of administrators commenting on where he's missed the boat by not understanding the big picture.  A good recent example is https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/when-you-can-hire-within that discusses recent suggestions on how to support adjuncts and what those suggestions miss about realities in many areas.

I'm happy to write at length for a specific question, but I'm not seeing one in the initial post.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 13, 2019, 04:56:38 PM
But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

This is the question, but I know the answer already. Administrators have their solution already. People are pointing the finger of blame in every direction and it's just a cacaphonic discussion which enables them to keep doing what they've been doing.
If you see the status quo as a solution, there's nothing you need to do but sigh and say 'gee I just wish there were funding.' It makes you sound like a nice guy, but what it really amounts to is 'if money grew on trees, I'd let you have some, probably, even though I'm taller and I run faster.'
Colleges and universities never don't need money. Someone just left a quarter of a million to MIT and it's considered philanthropy.
If they wanted something like what Wahoo envisions as a solution they, administration, would be saying  "Restaffing of the National Labor Relations Board with labor friendly attorneys or other qualified experts. Real penalties for illicit meddling in union drive efforts and recruitment. Adjunct unions everywhere they are legal. As populous and noisy as they can be. Because our job is to oppose them, and nothing will change until opposing them becomes more difficult and expensive than working with them. And those among us who actually despise adjuncts driven out of the workforce.'

I left admin when it was apparent that it was making me a very angry, very upset person.

Best decision I ever made at Big Urban College.

Regarding budgets, our campus president micromanaged and compartmentalized that, so no one below her really ever knew exactly what our money situation actually was.

We seemed to have enough money to hold regular parties and renovate classrooms into computer labs (that always went obsolete in 3 years), but there wasn't money for student workers or replacing broken-down photocopier machines.

Hiring? Hiring is all over the place. Some of us hired carefully and thoughtfully. We were the new administrators who hadn't been beat down by crushing morale and overwork. The "experienced" administrators hired a lot more indiscriminately. I can't tell you how many problems those "indiscriminate" hires have created for everybody else. Not being qualified for their jobs. Not understanding their jobs. Making constant messes for the rest of us to clean up after. Being an "Idea Guy" instead of a worker.  My low opinion of people who call themselves "Idea Guys" was forever tainted. I will never hire an "Idea Guy" again. Ideas are like butts, everyone has them and they're mostly full of poop.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 04:15:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 13, 2019, 04:56:38 PM
But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

This is the question, but I know the answer already.

This is not the question.  This is at best one illustration of being focused on one piece of the academic puzzle at the expense of the bigger picture.

For example, "the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic" is written from a humanities and/or underresourced general education perspective.  This is very much akin to a student saying, "and everyone else thinks so, too".  It's certainly a problem for those who are part of the army or see part-time jobs that could be consolidated into full-time jobs, but it's very far from universal as being high on the priority list.

Physicists and mathematicians may take teaching jobs that pay much less than they could make in industry or at government labs, but generally they aren't death marching through lack of other options.  Biologists may end up as part of a general education army, but again, they often chose a trade-off between teaching and having some other sort of job that pays better, but is less personally satisfying. Many biologists aren't doing the work for which their graduate education prepared them, but they don't tend to be quoted in the adjunct plight narratives in droves.

The concern in many areas is getting enough people who want to teach.  For example, CS departments are worried about finding enough instructors at all, even at well-heeled places. 

Quote

A recent study in Computing Research News found that 18 percent of computer science faculty searches in 2017 failed entirely. Survey respondents at 155 institutions reported looking for 323 tenure-track positions and filling just 241.

Even Stanford -- a computing research epicenter where computer science in the No. 1 major -- isn't immune from some of the factors plaguing the tenure-track faculty market. Roberts said in a recent interview that the department has lost twice as many faculty members to other opportunities in the last decade as it has in the previous 40 years.

Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/09/no-clear-solution-nationwide-shortage-computer-science-professors

Quote
Most Ph.D.s in the natural sciences and engineering leave academe because of the difficult job market, not because they want to, right? Wrong, according to a new study in PLOS ONE.
...
The study, "The Declining Interest in an Academic Career," is based on a longitudinal survey of a cohort of graduate students from 39 U.S. research universities over the course of their training. The central idea was to document changes in those students' career preferences and what might be fueling them.

The first major finding is that although the vast majority of students start their Ph.D. training interested in an academic career, that share falls to 55 percent of students over time -- and 25 percent of students lose all interest in academe.

Fifteen percent, meanwhile, were never interested in an academic career. Just 5 percent became more interested in a faculty career during their training.

...
Roach and Sauermann followed 854 students over their training in the life sciences (36 percent of the sample), chemistry (12 percent), physics (18 percent), engineering (24 percent) and computer science (10 percent). The 39 universities in the sample were considered tier one and accounted for 40 percent of all graduating Ph.D.s in the natural sciences and engineering.

...
In another significant demographic finding, some 27 percent of U.S. citizens lost interest in an academic career compared to only 16 percent of foreign Ph.D. students. Some 51 percent of U.S. citizens remained interested in an academic career three years on, compared to 68 percent of foreign students.

Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/29/study-challenges-common-belief-most-science-and-engineering-phds-leave-academe

That foreign national distinction is important because many engineering and physical science departments are quite worried about changes in international student populations and what that means for our future. 

Quote
The [National Foundation for American Policy] report found 81 percent of full-time graduate students in electrical and petroleum engineering programs at U.S. universities are international students, and 79 percent in computer science are. The report, which updates a previous version published in 2013, argues that at many U.S. universities "both majors and graduate programs could not be maintained without international students." It further argues that "the increase in both the size and number of graduate programs in science and engineering at U.S. universities indicates U.S. student enrollment has not been held down by the lack of available slots at U.S. graduate schools."

Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign-students-and-graduate-stem-enrollment

Quote
Meanwhile, it's true that STEM grads are increasing as a percentage of American university and college grads. But a dwindling number of those students are Americans themselves. Even though the number of foreign students matriculating at American universities dipped slightly in the fall of 2017 by seven percent, the proportion of foreign students studying STEM subjects in the U.S. has doubled in the last thirty years. The Kauffman Foundation estimates that given current trends international students will make up full half of all STEM Ph.D's by 2020. Indeed, without international students, graduate programs in STEM subjects in many schools couldn't survive.
...
So what's the answer? Clearly it isn't removing foreign nationals from these programs—although the State Department has started limiting visas for Chinese students in key areas like aerospace, robotics, and additive manufacturing. It's really about getting more Americans into the STEM game, starting with scholarships in areas that are critical to our national and economic security, and much more.

Reference: https://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurherman/2018/09/10/americas-high-tech-stem-crisis/#35f8bf0cf0a2

Even if we are successful in recruiting US citizens to college programs in STEM outside of biology (biology has different problems, but enrollment is not one of them), the students are often underprepared.

Quote
A 2015 Pew Research Center report found that only 29 percent of Americans rated their country's K–12 education in STEM as above average or the best in the world. Scientists were even more critical. A companion survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that just 16 percent called U.S. K–12 STEM education the best or above average; 46 percent, by contrast, said K–12 STEM education in the United States was below average.10

In summing up the state of STEM in America, the Trump administration's "Charting a Course for Success" report puts the best spin it can on the STEM issue. It asserts that "Americans' basic STEM skills have modestly improved over the past two decades" but also admits that we "continue to lag behind many other countries" and that "recent data from a test commonly taken by college-bound high school students found that only 20% are ready for courses typically required for a STEM major."11 On the other hand, the report said, "in the past 15 years, India and China have outpaced the United States in the number of science and engineering (S&E) bachelor's degrees conferred." Indeed, "these two countries have produced almost half of the total degrees, with India at 25% and China at 22% of the global total." Meanwhile, "American S&E bachelor's degrees comprised only 10% of the global total."12

Reference: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/americas-stem-crisis-threatens-our-national-security/

In short, we lack sufficient permanent residents and citizens to do the jobs we need doing, to educate more people to do those jobs, or even to be in the pipeline to be assets to the US.  Even just limiting the focus to academia, we're looking at an enrollment crisis as immigration issues become more pressing and the crackdowns on foreign funding of research (https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2019/09/us-academics-make-sure-you-know-rules-about-foreign-funding-and-affiliations) and research funding to foreign nationals employed at US institutions (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/new-doe-policies-would-block-many-foreign-research-collaborations) continue.

There are also other concerns.  For example, engineering is notorious for having low levels of women and under-represented US minorities.  Foreign women prop up some of the numbers and then they go home after their education is complete.  Having high grades seems to be a negative for bachelor-educated women in some areas of STEM.

Quote
Of the applications she submitted from equally high-achieving male and female personas, men received calls for further discussion twice as often as did women with equal grades. In science and technology fields, the ratio favored men by three to one.

Reference: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/21/study-finds-female-college-graduates-newly-job-market-are-punished-having-good

and even women with degrees tend to leave the field or never enter it. 

Quote
While all of the efforts channeled towards getting girls to study science, technology, engineering and math have certainly increased graduation rates in these programs, they haven't seemed to counter one particular setback for women in engineering: Once they make it into the field, they often leave.

Research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention this week showed that nearly 40 percent of women who earn engineering degrees quit the profession or never enter the field at all.

Reference: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/female-engineers_n_5668504

So, yes, the adjunct army is certainly one problem in academia, but it's far from the biggest problem facing academia and may not even make the top 10 if people other than humanities fields are making the list.

I don't think I really qualify, but I have been in a partial administrative appointment for the last few years, so I'll comment. This is a small institution and there is a distinct lack of redundancy/resiliency. Incompetence by one senior leader quickly throws the organization off the rails. Unfortunately we've had a sequence of very senior people who have demonstrated a distinct lack of managerial ability.

The other thing I've noticed is that admins are just as prone to confirmation bias as anyone else, if not more so.

Quote from: Aster on November 14, 2019, 05:40:11 AM
I left admin when it was apparent that it was making me a very angry, very upset person.

Best decision I ever made at Big Urban College.

Regarding budgets, our campus president micromanaged and compartmentalized that, so no one below her really ever knew exactly what our money situation actually was.

We seemed to have enough money to hold regular parties and renovate classrooms into computer labs (that always went obsolete in 3 years), but there wasn't money for student workers or replacing broken-down photocopier machines.

Hiring? Hiring is all over the place. Some of us hired carefully and thoughtfully. We were the new administrators who hadn't been beat down by crushing morale and overwork. The "experienced" administrators hired a lot more indiscriminately. I can't tell you how many problems those "indiscriminate" hires have created for everybody else. Not being qualified for their jobs. Not understanding their jobs. Making constant messes for the rest of us to clean up after. Being an "Idea Guy" instead of a worker.  My low opinion of people who call themselves "Idea Guys" was forever tainted. I will never hire an "Idea Guy" again. Ideas are like butts, everyone has them and they're mostly full of poop.

Though I was never an admin in the academic world, I am where I work now, and I've found that hiring is one of the toughest administrative jobs there is.  You can try your level best to hire the best person on offer for the job, and still end up with a dud.  And then have a lot trouble replacing that dud.

Quote from: apl68 on November 14, 2019, 08:39:21 AM

Though I was never an admin in the academic world, I am where I work now, and I've found that hiring is one of the toughest administrative jobs there is.  You can try your level best to hire the best person on offer for the job, and still end up with a dud.  And then have a lot trouble replacing that dud.

What I like about hiring TAs is that their contracts only run for a term at a time. If someone turns out to be a dud, I simply don't rehire them. I don't have to fire them or justify anything.

If you have a union (as we do) you sometimes have duds that were allowed to persist log enough to get status/seniority and now are difficult to get rid of, or impossible.  The casual/convenient hire often ends up anything but.

I am now an administrator at a college where I was faculty.

On the one hand it was an easy transition, as I had a business background and so I had plenty of experience to draw from.

We have a lot of administrators who came from faculty and don't understand how to manage an organization or advocate for resources for their programs. It's all about signing things. Department chairs tend to make most of the day-to-day decisions.

We also have administrators where it's hard to tell which ones are doing a good job or not, because they don't have a budget or targets to hit. It's just making sure that they sign all the things... and sometimes they don't even do that, but they have been around so long they don't really get flogged for it. 

I have a part time admin appointment. That doesn't make me the ideal person to comment on administration, but I deal with them all the time. Two things they shouldn't do:

Express strong opinions outside their area.

Make decisions based on what they know to be true.

As a faculty member, you can get away with making the occasional ignorant statement. As an admin, you represent the university, and your ignorant statement probably has a negative effect on faculty, staff, or students. If you're going to say something that makes people want to respond "F*** you!" you'll want to first be sure you know what you're talking about.

The second problem I've dealt with is (primarily budgeting) decisions that are carried out inconsistently. If they had looked at the data, or asked, or believed the data they were given, they'd have known that they were making a bad decision in time to change course.

Both of these can be blamed on lack of time. As a rule, if you're lacking time, postpone or just don't make the decision. I've had cases where I've been way behind schedule on making decisions because of a lack of time. I'm okay with that. Disclaimer: My decisions are on a much smaller scale than, say, a dean would make.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 04:15:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 13, 2019, 04:56:38 PM
But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

This is the question, but I know the answer already.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

This is not the question.  This is at best one illustration of being focused on one piece of the academic puzzle at the expense of the bigger picture.

Of course it's a question. You may not like it or it may cause your keypad to burn up from friction, but it's a question. And you've even answered it. You don't think it's that big of a problem. I said it's not a problem to people in administration if, to them it's more solution than problem. Pretty similar. We just about agree.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM
For example, "the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic" is written from a humanities and/or underresourced general education perspective.  This is very much akin to a student saying, "and everyone else thinks so, too".  It's certainly a problem for those who are part of the army or see part-time jobs that could be consolidated into full-time jobs, but it's very far from universal as being high on the priority list.

So, yes, the adjunct army is certainly one problem in academia, but it's far from the biggest problem facing academia and may not even make the top 10 if people other than humanities fields are making the list.

Oh geeze, Polly.  OF COURSE we are not talking about the professionals who teach on the side!!!!  Do we always need to post that?!   Get off that please.

And I gotta say, given the heat this subject generates here and in the media, the overall effect it is having on our colleges, and the sheer number of classes taught and the people involved, both students and PT faculty, it is one of the 10 biggest problems facing academia. 

It may seem like no big deal for those narrow people who do not see the value in the humanities. 

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 10:32:41 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 04:15:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 13, 2019, 04:56:38 PM
But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

This is the question, but I know the answer already.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

This is not the question.  This is at best one illustration of being focused on one piece of the academic puzzle at the expense of the bigger picture.

Of course it's a question. You may not like it or it may cause your keypad to burn up from friction, but it's a question. And you've even answered it. You don't think it's that big of a problem. I said it's not a problem to people in administration if, to them it's more solution than problem. Pretty similar. We just about agree.

I think Polly's point above is, essentially, 'this is your problem, not our cool STEMy types' problem, so why should we care?' If you look at her points, they generally fall in two categories: 1) students are terrible, unready, and society is screwed, and 2) the humanities, ffffft!!

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 14, 2019, 05:36:18 PM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 10:32:41 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 04:15:48 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 13, 2019, 04:56:38 PM
But I always wonder a bit at the general inability of our academic leadership to come up with any innovation regarding the adjunct army which virtually everyone finds problematic.

This is the question, but I know the answer already.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 14, 2019, 06:00:48 AM

This is not the question.  This is at best one illustration of being focused on one piece of the academic puzzle at the expense of the bigger picture.

Of course it's a question. You may not like it or it may cause your keypad to burn up from friction, but it's a question. And you've even answered it. You don't think it's that big of a problem. I said it's not a problem to people in administration if, to them it's more solution than problem. Pretty similar. We just about agree.

I think Polly's point above is, essentially, 'this is your problem, not our cool STEMy types' problem, so why should we care?' If you look at her points, they generally fall in two categories: 1) students are terrible, unready, and society is screwed, and 2) the humanities, ffffft!!

The first point is a new phase in Pollyanalysis of higher Ed. Although anyone's positions can evolve, I am skeptical. I think it's a red herring. Polly's real problem with adjunctification is only the controversy. If no one said anything about it it would be fine; the other effects of it are considered manageable. I've run into many administrators who stir the same Kool-Aid. They're just not as verbose. They justify their use of dead-end job temp worker faculty with two points, the second one undermining the first:
1. there's nothing wrong with using this type of employment since it's OK with the people who accept it, and
2. Anyhow we use fewer adjuncts than that college across town that is run by a bunch of unscrupulous fools; I could never stand to use so many temporary faculty.

So the thinking is the blame for the controversy rightfully belongs to those whose proportion of adjunct faculty is 'anything higher than mine.'

Quote from: mahagonny on November 14, 2019, 07:00:48 PM

1. there's nothing wrong with using this type of employment since it's OK with the people who accept it, and
2. Anyhow we use fewer adjuncts than that college across town that is run by a bunch of unscrupulous fools; I could never stand to use so many temporary faculty.

OK, so tell me how I'm being underpaid. Here's my situation:

• Each course pays about $8000.
• My course has a limit of 40 students.
• I've taught it several times.
• There are 30 hours of lectures in a term.
• Since we have universal healthcare, that doesn't depend on my employment at all.

Say we split that $8k, roughly half for the prep/lecture part and half for student grading. That amounts to $4k/30 = $133/hour of lecture.

Is $133 per hour of lecture to prep and deliver too low? If so, by how much?

For grading, that amounts to $4k/40 = $100/student for grading.

Is $100 per student for grading too low? If so, by how much?

Before you ask, there are the same slogans, signs, lapel pins and so on here complaining how woefully underpaid part-time faculty are.

I would truly like to hear in what way(s) I am underpaid, and how that should be explained to people who don't work in academia in a way that makes it obvious.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:03:24 AM

OK, so tell me how I'm being underpaid. Here's my situation:

• Each course pays about $8000.
• My course has a limit of 40 students.
• I've taught it several times.
• There are 30 hours of lectures in a term.
• Since we have universal healthcare, that doesn't depend on my employment at all.

[/quote]

Oh, wow, this explains a lot. I don't think you are being underpaid (just curious is that in US dollars or Canadian, regardless, that is quite good)

You have to understand how much more you are making than is common in the US. I'm getting paid the maximum possible for an adjunct at my institution, plus a bonus if I teach a maximum load, which is dependent on none of my classes getting cancelled for low enrollment, and it ends up being a bit more than 4k per course. I'm pretty sure this is actually very good. I know amounts of 2k and under aren't unheard of. The only place I've made more was at a fancy SLAC that rarely employed adjuncts.

The actual pay is only part of the issue, though. The overall security and ties to the institution are a bigger problem. Up to this point, I keep getting courses, but it could all go away at any moment, for any reason, or no reason at all. I can only manage this level of uncertainty because I'm married to someone who makes more money.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 06:36:49 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:03:24 AM

OK, so tell me how I'm being underpaid. Here's my situation:

• Each course pays about $8000.
• My course has a limit of 40 students.
• I've taught it several times.
• There are 30 hours of lectures in a term.
• Since we have universal healthcare, that doesn't depend on my employment at all.

Oh, wow, this explains a lot. I don't think you are being underpaid (just curious is that in US dollars or Canadian, regardless, that is quite good)

It's Canadian, but that's pretty common here. I seem to recall Janewales , who I believe lives in an entirely different part of the country, indicating a similar wage there.

Quote
You have to understand how much more you are making than is common in the US. I'm getting paid the maximum possible for an adjunct at my institution, plus a bonus if I teach a maximum load, which is dependent on none of my classes getting cancelled for low enrollment, and it ends up being a bit more than 4k per course. I'm pretty sure this is actually very good. I know amounts of 2k and under aren't unheard of. The only place I've made more was at a fancy SLAC that rarely employed adjuncts.

Yes, I've heard that. My point was that there is exactly the same complaining here about how poorly part-time people are paid. I'm sure if the pay per course were doubled that wouldn't change.

Quote
The actual pay is only part of the issue, though. The overall security and ties to the institution are a bigger problem. Up to this point, I keep getting courses, but it could all go away at any moment, for any reason, or no reason at all. I can only manage this level of uncertainty because I'm married to someone who makes more money.

And while some of that is due to things like full-time positions being split into part-time to save money, some of that uncertainty is why the positions are part-time in the first place; to handle things like sabbaticals and enrollment fluctuations, which by definition will not be permanent.

Administrators exist in the same systems the rest of us do. They can't snap their fingers and fix everything. In many cases, the Dean of a College is not going to have much of an ability to do much about the conditions of adjunct employment. They have a budget and then they have to parcel that out to departments, who then have to figure out how to cover their classes. Often when those budgets get slashed, they are slashing adjunct budgets themselves, so there's obviously not a bunch of spare cash lying around to give adjuncts permanent positions.

What does bug me though is the general lack of urgency and imagination. College get wealthy donors to pay for all kinds of buildings and institutes. Couldn't you pitch the idea of funding permanent teaching positions to some rich people? What if you put it within the context of the need for more focus on teaching in colleges and combined it with some fancy sounding "innovative" program in issues of civic knowledge and engagement, or a grounding in the great texts, or whatever. Emphasize the idea that none of this works without dedicated teachers and right now there just aren't enough full time faculty members and that instead of having adjuncts you're going to have people permanently employed. Tell the rich people that everyone else is always funding some building, but this is a different approach towards investing in people. Use all the business speak you can.

I'm not suggesting that this is easy, or even that it would really solve problems of underfunding, but you just don't see much in the way of attempts to deal with the problem, which suggests to me that many administrators just don't much care.

Let's try something structured differently with a list of the concerns related to academia.  This is in minimal order because I have to go to work soon so I'm also not going to do a ton of links.  If you want it, then google it because these are not secrets.

Demographic shifts such that fewer 18-22 year old exist and will exist for a good decade in large parts of the country.  Even in the parts of the country where that population is growing, the shift is for the students to be more likely first-generation, non-traditional in some sense (e.g., working full-time, having substantial care taking responsibilities, enrolling as a part-time student even at age 18), and underprepared by their K-12 system, even for the highly motivated students.    For those who don't know, the current enrollment has about the same number of single parents as 18-22 year olds who are enrolled full-time and live on campus.

Related issues:

• The support mechanisms needed for these students to succeed mean a very different mindset for the institution.  Support mechanisms beyond tutoring and bridge programs may include child/elder care, curriculum that caters to part-time students, emergency funding for personal emergencies, connections that help get people into the system for food, shelter, and medical needs that takes into account the student situation, mentoring/counseling in how to best balance the needs of the family/community with the needs of being a student.
  
  
• Opportunities exist to enroll more veterans and returning students (either dropouts or people who want specific courses), but they tend to want and need something very different than a general education or major that assumes full-time enrollment by people learning to be adults.
  
  


• Increasingly large fractions of students pick a college based on geography.  Most people go within 50 miles of home if they can and that's hugely true for people who are bound by current family obligations and jobs.  Thus, individual institutions even in places with growing bigger-scale numbers of potential students may lose out because they are one of N institutions within a 100-mile radius with essentially the same mission and majors.
  
  

The faculty problem is complicated because the variations of needs across the fields is huge.  Some fields are regularly having failed TT searches, even at elite institutions, because of the mismatch between the number of openings and people who want to be academics, while other fields have armies of underpaid adjuncts who could be consolidated into full-time teaching positions

The people who are at the top of a medium-to-large-sized university will hear both situations regularly and have to weigh some trade-offs.  One consideration that comes heavily into play is whether to shift the money in an effort to fill that TT position next time because students are being turned away due to lack of space (i.e., we're losing tuition money now and alumni donations later) or whether one shores up a general education program that isn't currently great, but isn't so bad that students are leaving in droves and citing general education as the reason.

Related issues:

• Service including shared governance obligations often need representatives from the whole breadth of the university.  Converting the adjunct armies to full-time faculty will not fix the field representation problems related to having specific diverse experiences.  That one woman in electrical engineering (a department of only 20 faculty) will still be tapped far more frequently than individual women in English (a department of 80 with more than half the professors being women).  Retention of faculty from underrepresented groups is a huge problem in some fields because of the disparity in service loads.
  
  
• Spending more money to get big-picture-similar results is always going to lose to spending money to get almost immediate improvement in tracked numbers.  Increasing the overall enrollment by bringing in new students will always win when budgets are tight and money is allocated.
  
  
• The pipeline problem in CS and certain engineering specialities gets huge attention in political circles at all levels.  Money exists to help with pipeline problems and people will get good political capital for using those funds.  The reliance on foreign nationals who increasingly take their excellent graduate educations back to their home countries instead of staying here as either academics fixing our faculty shortage problems or become US citizens to support our research needs in specific technical areas is cresting at an alarming rate.  In addition, foreign national enrollment is declining in part because other parts of the world also now have excellent programs. 
  
  Time was that any US degree was viewed as a benefit to an individual to get a job back home.  Now, with the global changes to higher ed including more welcoming policies in first-world, non-US countries as well as a rise in elite and next tier universities in China and India, many Chinese and Indian students coming to the US either are doing so for one of our elite educations or because they couldn't get into a good enough institution at home and they can get into a good enough institution here.
  
  

The diversity of US higher ed institutions means that the priorities of various issues will take on a very different ranking at individual institutions.  For example, the tiny (under 1000 students and a semester course roster that is under 20 total pages) institution in the Midwest or Northeast that is faced with a dying region with few employers is unlikely to be faced with the adjunct army problem.  Instead, they are much more likely to be faced with the problem of being unable to staff the majors that students want by being uncompetitive on the national scale, even for fields that nationally have favorable-to-the-institution ratios of qualified people wanting jobs and jobs available.  For example, Super Dinky almost had a failed English search one year, despite never having a problem getting professional fellows to cover the occasional course.

The isolated community college may be able to financially hire full-time faculty for nearly everything, but also find themselves unable to get faculty in certain fields willing to live close enough to do face-to-face courses or may fill out a lot of paperwork with the accreditor for people who have content knowledge, but not the expected graduate education.  Because of the geographic limitations, if the CC goes the distance ed route, local students who do a little research are much more likely to go with a good national distance education program that invested substantial resources into an administratively pleasant experience over the home-grown version.

The research-intensive institutions may encounter a conflict between their research mission (AKA we need the best faculty we can get and the graduate students/postdocs/technicians/assistants they will attract and support) and undergraduate teaching mission.  The adjunct army for general education is likely to be a concern here, but again the large-scale trade-off between doing what's necessary to get that star faculty member who will head a 20-person research group with a couple million dollars in funding every year versus converting a few people to have slightly better undergraduate general education tends to not go in favor of conversion of the army.

The seriously-underfunded urban community college that runs extensively on the revolving-door adjunct army may still be faced with several higher priorities than conversion to provide stability for faculty and students.  For example, deferred maintenance can hit a point such people with options will enroll at some other institution (usually readily available in an large urban area), which exacerbates the underfunded problem for all funding that comes on a per-head basis.  These are the institutions hit the hardest with needing to be holistic in supporting students who are food insecure, housing insecure, attending part-time, and needing emergency funds because of their complicated and precarious situations.  That's additional staff and overhead to ensure that students don't drop out or fail due to non-academic reasons. However, academic deficiencies cannot be ignored and also require hiring more people in tutoring centers and other student success areas to directly support individual students.  Even with the single mission of teaching students, the classroom instruction can't be the primary focus for optimization for folks who have data on the big picture.

The regional comprehensive may end up with several combinations of the problems.  The RCs often have the geographic problem of not pulling students from much farther than 100 mile radius, possibly in a dying region, and yet will lose geographically-bound students to good national online options.  The RCs may not be competitive on salary, resources, or quality of life for research-focused faculty in fields that have a national favorable-to-the-faculty-member mismatch between qualified people who want to be academics and numbers of TT jobs.  Even within the region, the RCs may not be competitive for faculty who have good non-academic options as well as desire to live in the region.  That's a huge problem for popular majors like nursing and business where students want to stay in the region and will go to a good enough local option and yet the RC has to turn people away due to staffing deficiencies.

Paradoxically, the RCs may have an adjunct army that includes a mix of convertible positions staffed with highly qualified individuals, stop-gap/last-minute positions staffed with slightly under-qualified-on-paper individuals who are working hard for low pay, and hard-to-fill positions that are only being staffed by generous volunteers who know the content, but had to have extensive paperwork filled to be deemed qualified.  Thus, knowing all the adjunct army problems and feeling general education pain in some cases that would be better solved by hiring full-time on a national market may still lead to different priorities because, if the RCs don't fix the enrollment problems by hiring TT (or at least full-time, permanent enough) faculty in certain fields, then the adjunct army will solve itself as the demand for general education drops precipitously.

Changes in what people expect from college education tend to lead to significant value conflicts on where to put resources.  The complaint from many faculty is that college is not a business and money shouldn't be the primary driver.  Well, that's true enough and I'm a big fan of Good to Great and the Social Sectors. (https://www.jimcollins.com/books/g2g-ss.html)

However, as one of my colleagues put it "Having a buffet of kale, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts as our main advertisement has a pretty limited market since students can vote with their feet.  We'd be much better off being a bigger buffet like Golden Corral and having free kale etc. with every plate purchased."

I harp on general education a lot because I've worked at various institutional types.  A true liberal arts eduction (1/3 credits in major, 1/3 credits in general education, 1/3 credits in fabulous, freely chosen electives) is indeed a fabulous thing for which the higher education community should fight hard.  However, that's not the only education worth having and is an increasingly small portion of the undergraduate degrees being earned.

The general education specifics (which fields?  what lofty goals?  What counts as meeting one of the N sectors?) to generate an acceptable pick-a-mix list are almost completely irrelevant for a curriculum that contains six or fewer actual choices for either general education requirements or genuinely free electives.  That's the case for many of the preprofessional programs (e.g., nursing, engineering, social work, education).  We need people educated in those areas and extending time to degree because those programs don't look like liberal arts education is shooting ourselves in the foot as a society. 


We also shoot ourselves in the foot when we spend a lot of resources on the adjunct army faculty side of the equation without asking questions like:

* What happens if we reduce the list from 27 choices for the sake of choice to the number of full sections we can staff with the full-time faculty we have?

* What happens if we do better scheduling so that the choices are more reflective of true choices by the students instead of whatever fits in the required schedule based on when faculty wanted to teach?

* What happens if we continue down the path of admitting substantial fractions of students who have already met most of their general education requirements using AP/dual credit/IB/CLEP so we might still want 27 choices overall, but we only need 8 sections of anything in a given term?

While it's certainly true that eliminating established programs in favor of standing up brand-new, flavor-of-the-month student attractors is a bad idea all around, it's also a bad idea to insist that, because a field is valuable in its own right, the local specific program must be propped up at all costs or else the barbarians have overrun the civilization and all is lost.  We must look at the trade-offs that include accounting for how people are voting with their feet away from certain programs and towards other programs.  At this particular institution, if a program has too few takers for the major and even people with choices are opting out of the general education requirements, then reallocating those resources including faculty lines is a better institutional long-term solution even though individuals lose their jobs and those individuals would much rather that other choices be made.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:04:11 AM
What does bug me though is the general lack of urgency and imagination. College get wealthy donors to pay for all kinds of buildings and institutes. Couldn't you pitch the idea of funding permanent teaching positions to some rich people? What if you put it within the context of the need for more focus on teaching in colleges and combined it with some fancy sounding "innovative" program in issues of civic knowledge and engagement, or a grounding in the great texts, or whatever. Emphasize the idea that none of this works without dedicated teachers and right now there just aren't enough full time faculty members and that instead of having adjuncts you're going to have people permanently employed. Tell the rich people that everyone else is always funding some building, but this is a different approach towards investing in people. Use all the business speak you can.

The folks who have rich people's ears are generally not the people in charge of the institutions that have the underpaid adjunct armies with students who are reliant on close-enough-to-free to be affordable.  The wealthy donors tend to give money to their alma maters and the places that have their colleagues, friends, and others in the social networks.

The community college that is staffing with almost exclusively adjuncts in crumbling buildings with students who are there hoping for a path to a better life tends to have much less philanthropic activity (may not even have a department for institutional advancement/giving/fundraising) of any kind.  They aren't getting wealthy donors who are choosing naming rights for a building over supporting quality teaching.

Also, having spent quality time with the fundraising literature and colleagues in the giving world, asking individual potential donors for operational funds is a bad idea that tends to backfire.  Operational funds come from grants or appropriations along with user fees (tuition etc. in this case); charitable giving is for something you can't otherwise do or an unexpected emergency like rebuilding from the natural disaster to augment insurance funds.  Most people will wonder what you're doing wrong if you can't meet basic operational budget through the standard funding means, whether that's scaling back to fit within the appropriation + tuition budget, being better at estimating cost/revenue to adjust streams over which you have control, or spending more quality time with the appropriators/grant foundations to make a better case for why you need more money.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 07:01:11 AM



And while some of that is due to things like full-time positions being split into part-time to save money, some of that uncertainty is why the positions are part-time in the first place; to handle things like sabbaticals and enrollment fluctuations, which by definition will not be permanent.

Sure, but that isn't the reality most of the time. I've been teaching at the same place for 5 years and I've taught 3-4 courses every semester. That's good for me, but it sure seems like there is a continuing need for someone to teach these courses. The institution is employing me as an adjunct rather than full time, so that they can avoid giving me benefits and so that they can ditch me at any moment if circumstances require it. That might be fine if I was an engineer drilling for natural gas in Oklahoma, but I'd argue that for a non profit institution that is supposed to exist to educate students it all produces some less than desirable outcomes.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:27:12 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 07:01:11 AM



And while some of that is due to things like full-time positions being split into part-time to save money, some of that uncertainty is why the positions are part-time in the first place; to handle things like sabbaticals and enrollment fluctuations, which by definition will not be permanent.

Sure, but that isn't the reality most of the time. I've been teaching at the same place for 5 years and I've taught 3-4 courses every semester. That's good for me, but it sure seems like there is a continuing need for someone to teach these courses. The institution is employing me as an adjunct rather than full time, so that they can avoid giving me benefits and so that they can ditch me at any moment if circumstances require it. That might be fine if I was an engineer drilling for natural gas in Oklahoma, but I'd argue that for a non profit institution that is supposed to exist to educate students it all produces some less than desirable outcomes.

But that's the problem; as long as there are competent, dedicated people like you that they can hire right now, is it likely the outcomes would improve significantly if they increased the pay substantially? Anyone who gets hired who is a disaster won't be rehired, but anyone who has a decent job is likely to be. Unless there is evidence that someone significantly better would be available for a higher price, then there are probably other budget areas that the money can be put into for a visible improvement.

At the risk of sounding like a cold hard capitalist, as long as there is an oversupply of decent candidates at low prices, there is no incentive to pay more. However, if the supply of decent, available candidates dried up, then the price would have to rise in order to fill the positions. So producing fewer PhDs and getting more people to find jobs outside academia is necessary to improve conditions for those that are left.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 07:39:13 AM

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:27:12 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 07:01:11 AM



And while some of that is due to things like full-time positions being split into part-time to save money, some of that uncertainty is why the positions are part-time in the first place; to handle things like sabbaticals and enrollment fluctuations, which by definition will not be permanent.

Sure, but that isn't the reality most of the time. I've been teaching at the same place for 5 years and I've taught 3-4 courses every semester. That's good for me, but it sure seems like there is a continuing need for someone to teach these courses. The institution is employing me as an adjunct rather than full time, so that they can avoid giving me benefits and so that they can ditch me at any moment if circumstances require it. That might be fine if I was an engineer drilling for natural gas in Oklahoma, but I'd argue that for a non profit institution that is supposed to exist to educate students it all produces some less than desirable outcomes.

But that's the problem; as long as there are competent, dedicated people like you that they can hire right now, is it likely the outcomes would improve significantly if they increased the pay substantially? Anyone who gets hired who is a disaster won't be rehired, but anyone who has a decent job is likely to be. Unless there is evidence that someone significantly better would be available for a higher price, then there are probably other budget areas that the money can be put into for a visible improvement.

At the risk of sounding like a cold hard capitalist, as long as there is an oversupply of decent candidates at low prices, there is no incentive to pay more. However, if the supply of decent, available candidates dried up, then the price would have to rise in order to fill the positions. So producing fewer PhDs and getting more people to find jobs outside academia is necessary to improve conditions for those that are left.

And at the risk of sounding like an anarchist and a philistine, taking tenure out the picture means improved solidarity and real addressing of pay equity concerns.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 15, 2019, 07:15:47 AM

The folks who have rich people's ears are generally not the people in charge of the institutions that have the underpaid adjunct armies with students who are reliant on close-enough-to-free to be affordable.  The wealthy donors tend to give money to their alma maters and the places that have their colleagues, friends, and others in the social networks.

The community college that is staffing with almost exclusively adjuncts in crumbling buildings with students who are there hoping for a path to a better life tends to have much less philanthropic activity (may not even have a department for institutional advancement/giving/fundraising) of any kind.  They aren't getting wealthy donors who are choosing naming rights for a building over supporting quality teaching.

Also, having spent quality time with the fundraising literature and colleagues in the giving world, asking individual potential donors for operational funds is a bad idea that tends to backfire.  Operational funds come from grants or appropriations along with user fees (tuition etc. in this case); charitable giving is for something you can't otherwise do or an unexpected emergency like rebuilding from the natural disaster to augment insurance funds.  Most people will wonder what you're doing wrong if you can't meet basic operational budget through the standard funding means, whether that's scaling back to fit within the appropriation + tuition budget, being better at estimating cost/revenue to adjust streams over which you have control, or spending more quality time with the appropriators/grant foundations to make a better case for why you need more money.

You have a lot more expertise in fundraising than I do, and these are valid points. That said, people endow professorships all the time. The Mellon foundation endows them all over the country. We have massive inequality in this country right now and a ton of really rich people. The point about a lot of this philanthropy going to places that don't need the money is well taken, but there are also a lot of big regional schools in wealthy regions with growing populations. Again, couldn't you pitch someone on the idea that they are going to do something radically different? Look, relying on wealthy donors brings its own problems, and is not going to fix this problem by itself. The point though is that I don't see people even trying. Instead, everyone seems content to just throw up their hands and decide that it doesn't really matter if students get a decent comprehensive education anywhere but at fancy elite schools.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:50:43 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 15, 2019, 07:15:47 AM

The folks who have rich people's ears are generally not the people in charge of the institutions that have the underpaid adjunct armies with students who are reliant on close-enough-to-free to be affordable.  The wealthy donors tend to give money to their alma maters and the places that have their colleagues, friends, and others in the social networks.

The community college that is staffing with almost exclusively adjuncts in crumbling buildings with students who are there hoping for a path to a better life tends to have much less philanthropic activity (may not even have a department for institutional advancement/giving/fundraising) of any kind.  They aren't getting wealthy donors who are choosing naming rights for a building over supporting quality teaching.

Also, having spent quality time with the fundraising literature and colleagues in the giving world, asking individual potential donors for operational funds is a bad idea that tends to backfire.  Operational funds come from grants or appropriations along with user fees (tuition etc. in this case); charitable giving is for something you can't otherwise do or an unexpected emergency like rebuilding from the natural disaster to augment insurance funds.  Most people will wonder what you're doing wrong if you can't meet basic operational budget through the standard funding means, whether that's scaling back to fit within the appropriation + tuition budget, being better at estimating cost/revenue to adjust streams over which you have control, or spending more quality time with the appropriators/grant foundations to make a better case for why you need more money.

You have a lot more expertise in fundraising than I do, and these are valid points. That said, people endow professorships all the time. The Mellon foundation endows them all over the country. We have massive inequality in this country right now and a ton of really rich people. The point about a lot of this philanthropy going to places that don't need the money is well taken, but there are also a lot of big regional schools in wealthy regions with growing populations. Again, couldn't you pitch someone on the idea that they are going to do something radically different? Look, relying on wealthy donors brings its own problems, and is not going to fix this problem by itself. The point though is that I don't see people even trying. Instead, everyone seems content to just throw up their hands and decide that it doesn't really matter if students get a decent comprehensive education anywhere but at fancy elite schools.

As Marshwiggle pointed out, your school and your students are already getting decent service from you. And, I'll add,  if anyone wonders about that, they can look at your student  evaluations of faculty performance.
The way things are set up, if there's any new money on the horizon, the tenure track will be getting there first and will give the donor the best opportunity for having his donation recognized.
Adjunct advocacy is in a Catch-22 situation. If the teaching is considered not good enough, it doesn't warrant better pay. If it's excellent, then the system is working great at keeping costs down.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 07:39:13 AM
as long as there is an oversupply of decent candidates at low prices

That's true of some fields and some locations. The problem is that the "let's hire the cheapest warm body we can get to fill out the semester's schedule" mentality can be found in metropolitan areas with fewer than 2 million people and outside the humanities. I don't doubt that you can put together a decent set of offerings in philosophy in NYC based solely on low-paid adjunct labor. That's not what's causing the problem.

The term "physics envy" has been around for a long time. I'd suggest deans have "big city humanities envy" when it comes to staffing decisions.

We seem to be having conversations past one another.  I see a recurring conflation of what is and what should be, without any discussion of how we might get there.  I also see myself being accused of things so far beyond my reality that I can't take any of it seriously.

Identifying problems (accurately) is not the same as solving problems.

What's the goal here?

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:50:43 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 15, 2019, 07:15:47 AM

The folks who have rich people's ears are generally not the people in charge of the institutions that have the underpaid adjunct armies with students who are reliant on close-enough-to-free to be affordable.  The wealthy donors tend to give money to their alma maters and the places that have their colleagues, friends, and others in the social networks.

The community college that is staffing with almost exclusively adjuncts in crumbling buildings with students who are there hoping for a path to a better life tends to have much less philanthropic activity (may not even have a department for institutional advancement/giving/fundraising) of any kind.  They aren't getting wealthy donors who are choosing naming rights for a building over supporting quality teaching.

Also, having spent quality time with the fundraising literature and colleagues in the giving world, asking individual potential donors for operational funds is a bad idea that tends to backfire.  Operational funds come from grants or appropriations along with user fees (tuition etc. in this case); charitable giving is for something you can't otherwise do or an unexpected emergency like rebuilding from the natural disaster to augment insurance funds.  Most people will wonder what you're doing wrong if you can't meet basic operational budget through the standard funding means, whether that's scaling back to fit within the appropriation + tuition budget, being better at estimating cost/revenue to adjust streams over which you have control, or spending more quality time with the appropriators/grant foundations to make a better case for why you need more money.

You have a lot more expertise in fundraising than I do, and these are valid points. That said, people endow professorships all the time. The Mellon foundation endows them all over the country. We have massive inequality in this country right now and a ton of really rich people. The point about a lot of this philanthropy going to places that don't need the money is well taken, but there are also a lot of big regional schools in wealthy regions with growing populations. Again, couldn't you pitch someone on the idea that they are going to do something radically different? Look, relying on wealthy donors brings its own problems, and is not going to fix this problem by itself. The point though is that I don't see people even trying. Instead, everyone seems content to just throw up their hands and decide that it doesn't really matter if students get a decent comprehensive education anywhere but at fancy elite schools.

Polly, I appreciate it when you make sane remarks.  Thank you.  However, what you are arguing is this is how it has been done, therefore it is how it is done.

The suggestion, which seems like a good one, is to figure out how to do it in the future.

Granted, there are many things that academia needs to worry about.  No one will ever argue this.  But personnel should be a prime concern unless we just give up the ghost and go full corporate model with our universities----perhaps we should start outsourcing our online classes to China?  Bet'cha it would be a lot cheaper. 

The adjunct march is relatively big news; I suspect you could convince philanthropists to leave a legacy of endowed chairs or teaching professorships that bare their names----not as impressive as a building, certainly, but part of university history nevertheless.  And honestly, how many of us know anything about the surnames on our campus buildings?  I don't think I realized that was how our buildings got their goofy names until I was well into graduate school; certainly as an undergrad I could have cared less.

But however you cut it, this is the sort of innovation I always wonder about.  We all know resources and budgets are limited.  What I don't know is why this problem seems so intractable given the intellectual power and creativity of the people it affects.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 07:50:43 AM
That said, people endow professorships all the time. The Mellon foundation endows them all over the country.

This is...a little strong. By my count, Mellon has endowed three professorships in the past ten years (at Morehouse, Rutgers-Newark, and Rutgers-New Brunswick). Also, based on my understanding of endowment payout rates and likely salaries for the positions that were funded, I'm guessing that the Mellon grants did not cover the full cost of endowing the position; grantee institutions probably had to put up a similar amount of money. (I wouldn't be surprised if they had to match the endowment 1:1, which is pretty common for Mellon endowment grants.) There's been a pretty significant shift away from endowments (and capital grants) among a lot of major foundations over the past twenty years, and a lot of the funders that *do* still endow positions (like Mellon) work only with a selected list of schools and won't accept unsolicited applications. Individual donors for endowed professorships don't grow on trees either (and are more likely to be available to wealthy, well-resourced institutions with a substantial base of rich alumni). I'm not saying that endowing chairs isn't a possibility, but it's very difficult; it's not for lack of trying that more institutions aren't getting lots of endowments to support faculty lines.

Quote from: FishProf on November 15, 2019, 08:56:12 AM
We seem to be having conversations past one another.  I see a recurring conflation of what is and what should be, without any discussion of how we might get there.  I also see myself being accused of things so far beyond my reality that I can't take any of it seriously.

Identifying problems (accurately) is not the same as solving problems.

What's the goal here?

The problem exists to the extent that each "side" sees the solution as totally in the hands of the  other "side". Administrators who split up full-time positions into part-time ones to save on benefits are contributing to the problem. Part-time faculty who will keep working for peanuts and complaining rather than leaving academia are also contributing.

The system will be "fixed" when and where there are enough qualified people to staff courses under conditions which work for them. That could be satisfied with all of the part-time people being retired profs or people with full-time jobs elsewhere. Even with things like pro-rated benefits, I think it is unlikely that any changes will work well with a significant portion of "part-time" people being people who are taking on multiple "part-time" positions to approximate a single "full-time" position.

Quote from: FishProf on November 15, 2019, 08:56:12 AM
What's the goal here?

My idea was just that administrators could speak about their own professional experiences with the subject matter often broached on these boards since we so often hear generalized accusations and complaints.  I thought we could hear from admin without attack arguments.

Solutions would be great, but obviously the new Fora is not going to change the landscape, just provide discussion.

Effective Shared Governance is one of the keys to a healthy, vibrant university.

People need to have formal conduits for 2-way, transparent communications between faculty, between departments, and between all units of senior administration.

There is much to said for transparency. Without free and open dialogue, problems stay buried, mistakes are repeated, and feedback is stifled.

If you want a good university, you need to have that university operate like U.S. universities are designed to be operated. Collegially, and democratically.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 15, 2019, 09:16:01 AM

Granted, there are many things that academia needs to worry about.  No one will ever argue this.  But personnel should be a prime concern unless we just give up the ghost and go full corporate model with our universities----perhaps we should start outsourcing our online classes to China?  Bet'cha it would be a lot cheaper. 

And if those classes produced measurably better student learning outcomes, what would you argue makes that a bad thing? (Serious question)

Quote

The adjunct march is relatively big news; I suspect you could convince philanthropists to leave a legacy of endowed chairs or teaching professorships that bare their names----not as impressive as a building, certainly, but part of university history nevertheless.  And honestly, how many of us know anything about the surnames on our campus buildings?  I don't think I realized that was how our buildings got their goofy names until I was well into graduate school; certainly as an undergrad I could have cared less.

But however you cut it, this is the sort of innovation I always wonder about.  We all know resources and budgets are limited.  What I don't know is why this problem seems so intractable given the intellectual power and creativity of the people it affects.

The thing is, since salaries are an operating cost, and buildings are a capital cost, they have massively different "bang for buck". Suppose someone gives a million dollars. That could do something noticeable to a building, which would last for decades. However, if it's going to be used to help salaries, it needs to be invested, and the interest used. At current rates, let's say that million can produce 5% a year, so $50000. That's not even a single full-time position, especially with benefits. Spread among 100 part-timers, that's only $500 apiece, and the next year the only increase will be inflationary. If there are 1000 adjuncts, that's on $50 apiece, which is insignificant.

To bump a lot of wages significantly requires massive influxes of ongoing cash.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 15, 2019, 09:21:46 AM

Quote from: FishProf on November 15, 2019, 08:56:12 AM
What's the goal here?

My idea was just that administrators could speak about their own professional experiences with the subject matter often broached on these boards since we so often hear generalized accusations and complaints.  I thought we could hear from admin without attack arguments.

Solutions would be great, but obviously the new Fora is not going to change the landscape, just provide discussion.

OK.  Here is an example of what I (as a Department Chair) was faced with this semester.
We plan for X students in a major for which we provide support classes.  We provide 3 of the first 4 courses the students must take in the first year.  Physical space is limited.  Enrollment management (doing, apparently, only the first half of the job) enrolled 136% of X.  So I had to hire 6 additional faculty to cover the courses. 

Those aren't going to be FT/TT faculty on such short notice, nor is the University likely to give us additional lines (we were already short 7 FT faculty and they haven't done a thing about that previously).  So I had to find adjuncts.  On short notice.   One I hired the 2nd day of the semester.

For me, there was zero consideration of benefits, other teaching the person may have been doing (other than at the times we needed) or any of the other forms of malfeasance sometimes attributed on these boards.  I don't have time to be malevolent.

So, my % of courses taught by adjuncts (which by contract is not supposed to exceed 20%) is now 51%.  I have no recourse except to report this to my Union, and hope they have some levers of power to pull.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 09:38:25 AM

To bump a lot of wages significantly requires massive influxes of ongoing cash.

As does a new building. Everyone wants their name on the building, but nobody wants to fund the ongoing maintenance for a fancy new building. Or a perfectly serviceable but boring old building with someone else's name on it that needs a new roof and plumbing.

See next --- having trouble with the quote function for some reason. The quotation is from marsh wiggle not caracal.

Quote from: Caracal on November 15, 2019, 06:36:49 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 06:03:24 AM

OK, so tell me how I'm being underpaid. Here's my situation:

• Each course pays about $8000.
• My course has a limit of 40 students.
• I've taught it several times.
• There are 30 hours of lectures in a term.
• Since we have universal healthcare, that doesn't depend on my employment at all.

I don't think you're underpaid, but I suspect that it would be reasonable to say that according to the economic theory you promote in these discussions, you are overpaid. Were it not for your union they could get you or somebody adequate to do your work for less. Or, were it not for your seniority, thanks to the union, they could let you go and find someone even more above average than you are for what they're giving you. And yet you promote gratitude to the employer, never to the union.

Quote from: Aster on November 15, 2019, 09:34:29 AM
Effective Shared Governance is one of the keys to a healthy, vibrant university.

People need to have formal conduits for 2-way, transparent communications between faculty, between departments, and between all units of senior administration.

There is much to said for transparency. Without free and open dialogue, problems stay buried, mistakes are repeated, and feedback is stifled.

If you want a good university, you need to have that university operate like U.S. universities are designed to be operated. Collegially, and democratically.

First you need to feel that you can be safe expressing an opinion. Many of us don't, for good reason.

QuoteThe system will be "fixed" when and where there are enough qualified people to staff courses under conditions which work for them. That could be satisfied with all of the part-time people being retired profs or people with full-time jobs elsewhere. Even with things like pro-rated benefits, I think it is unlikely that any changes will work well with a significant portion of "part-time" people being people who are taking on multiple "part-time" positions to approximate a single "full-time" position.

No evidence has been presented here that proves that retired profs or people with full-time jobs elsewhere  teach better than freeway fliers. A person with a full time job and 'teaching a course or two on the side for extra money' as it's called, can easily have the same issue, shortage of available time. As for motivation, again, I hear lots of anecdotes and general characterizations from individual workplaces, but I see nothing substantive to show a pattern of shortcomings among the maligned freeway flier. I do, however, see a potential motive, that being to immobilize adjunct activism and thereby preserve the option of cheap disposable stigmatized professional instructors.

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 15, 2019, 09:19:42 AM

Quote from: FishProf on November 15, 2019, 08:56:12 AM
Part-time faculty who will keep working for peanuts and complaining rather than leaving academia are also contributing.

I just don't think this makes any sense. It would be like blaming farmers for growing crops and thereby contributing to low crop prices. What are the farmers supposed to do? Yes, things would be better if there were fewer adjuncts (in fact as someone pointed out earlier, they are often better in areas where there aren't so many humanities Phds hanging around. I think that's part of the reason my conditions of employment are so much better than that of other adjuncts.) but if I decide to quit tomorrow and go work as a goat herder, it will change nothing about the overall picture.

The whole point of a complex modern system is that individual actions aren't going to make much difference and it is odd to expect people to make them based on "the market." People make decisions based on their own desires and their ability to make ends meet. This is the entire point of collective, governmental or institutional action of some sort to fix larger economic issues of fairness or untenable conditions.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 15, 2019, 09:16:01 AM
But however you cut it, this is the sort of innovation I always wonder about.  We all know resources and budgets are limited.  What I don't know is why this problem seems so intractable given the intellectual power and creativity of the people it affects.

I spent a couple hours just this morning listing issues that are a bigger concern than the narrow focus on the current adjunct situation as well as the connections between those problems.  I am happy to have a discussion on any combination of those issues in great detail.

Why don't people just fix the adjunct army problem?  Because on the list of the 5-10 biggest problems facing any given institutions, having an adjunct army tends to be a symptom of serious underlying problems in other areas, not the primary driver.  Yes, for the individuals involved, the problems are clear and it seems like people who just understood the issue could roll up their sleeves and get it fixed.

However, if we're allocating resources to fundraising (i.e., hiring administrators to do the work or pushing damn hard on alumni/friends to do the legwork for free and then only  paying the experts to get contracts signed) to solve our problems, adjunct faculty pay is not going to be on anyone's list as the highest priorities as long as classes can be held in some manner.

Even at CUNY where the adjunct working conditions are making national news and have for a good month now, the priorities for the leaders can't be adjunct pay when a quick search brings up:

Quote
The same week the news about the college admissions scandal broke, the ceiling fell in during a colleague's class [at CUNY]. While thankfully no one got hurt, the room has been closed. The pipes are so compromised there's no guarantee it won't happen again.

...

Nearly a quarter of a million undergraduates attend the City University of New York, and they are caught in a vicious bind. Tuition for CUNY — which was free until 1975 — has risen by 31% since 2011. It now stands at $6,730 for full-time students at CUNY's senior colleges on top of the high costs of housing, food, transportation, books and other personal expenditures in New York City, where the majority of students attending CUNY come from families with incomes of $30,000 or less.

...

Cuomo has repeatedly refused to sign a Maintenance of Effort bill, which would at least keep funding for CUNY and SUNY in line with inflation. An $86 million gap has grown between the state's Tuition Assistance Program for CUNY's neediest students and the actual tuition fees, requiring CUNY colleges to cannibalize their own budgets to cover the shortfall. The state budget agreed to on March 31 promises more of the same: insufficient funding to cover rising costs, deferred maintenance and a desperately needed raise for adjunct instructors.

The results of this underfunding for students have been disastrous. Class sizes swell and resources are increasingly scarce. Over 20% of students report being unable to register for a course needed for graduation. As Barbara Bowen, head of CUNY's faculty and staff union puts it, under these shortfalls, "The City University of New York is reaching a breaking point."

Reference: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-true-crime-in-higher-education-20190402-xqdv2v22irao7c7pvatutyelke-story.html


Even with the huge army of adjuncts making well below poverty wages, the need is for more instructors to serve the students currently enrolled while somehow not raising the price.

And yet that underpaid army of adjuncts are performing miracles in crumbling buildings:

Quote
At Brooklyn College where we teach, we have seen first-hand the devastating consequences of the state's disinvestment. An anonymous instagram account Brokelyn College chronicles the ceiling leaks, broken toilets, busted pipes and other manifestations of decline. Where we work, the administration had to institute a near hiring freeze this year because there's no money to even replace faculty and staff who have left and retired — which has been part of a pattern of little hiring for years. (One department has lost six tenured or tenure-track professors in the past six years without hiring a single replacement.) Class sizes have been pushed up and up because there isn't enough money even for adjuncts (though adjuncts teach most classes and are paid the horrifying low rate of on average $3,500 per class), let alone the full-time faculty that students deserve. CUNY's 30,000 faculty and staff have been laboring without a contract for 16 months.

But what makes this financial neglect positively criminal from an economic justice perspective is the immense promise and transformation that CUNY embodies. Researchers studying how college enhances intergenerational mobility found that nine of the top 20 colleges nationwide that are actually succeeding in providing social mobility to their students were part of the City University. Brooklyn College came in eighth best in the nation.

...

Our students also tend to be poor — in one of the world's most expensive cities. Many suffer hunger and homelessness as college students ( a recent study found 48% of CUNY students experiencing food insecurity within the month and 14% homeless within the previous year), yet press forward determined to get an education.

...
Three years ago, we received a small pilot grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that allowed us to create a program to enable research opportunities and mentoring for transfer students. (Sixty percent of Brooklyn College students are transfer students, most from community colleges.) And even more amazing things ensued.

emphasis added
Reference: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-true-crime-in-higher-education-20190402-xqdv2v22irao7c7pvatutyelke-story.html

So, again, if we're looking at allocating resources to fundraise for Brooklyn College, addressing deferred maintenance, social services support so that students can focus on their studies, and pulling more miracles in terms of offering enough seats so students can progress in their educational paths in a timely manner are higher priorities than paying people who are doing excellent work more to do the same work.

It's not fair to the adjuncts or the students.  It's not just in any sense of the word, especially for any claims to a well-functioning society.  It's heartbreaking every day to know that the success stories in that system are more the equivalent of the daisy poking through broken cement than a typical experience for everyone involved. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytS4yFM4Oxw)

And yet, from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, as long as miracle workers are regularly showing up and do the job at the current rates, then the other problems have to take priority for finding the resources to address them.  Those buildings are not getting any newer or magically repairing themselves.  Those students aren't getting any more privileged or better served by the also-seriously-overburdened K-12 system. 

mahagonny is correct that the only solution to the low pay for the adjunct army in many cases is collective action by the individuals involved.  If the miracles weren't being pulled off regularly, then the underpaid/poor working conditions for the adjunct army would rise to the level of being a driver instead of a symptom.

I'm not scrolling back and sorting out the quote function.  However, upthread someone made the standard comment related to overproduction of PhDs contributing to the adjunct army problem.

A fabulous, pro-labor article I encountered recently is titled The Decline of Faculty Tenure: Less From an Oversupply of PhDs, and More from the Systematic De-Valuation of the PhD as a Credential for College Teaching (http://www.lawcha.org/2017/01/09/decline-faculty-tenure-less-oversupply-phds-systematic-de-valuation-phd-credential-college-teaching/)

This article makes a compelling case that the explosion in master's degrees awarded and then hiring those folks with the master's degrees to teach is a huge contributor to the adjunctificiation of certain fields.

Quote
People with PhDs not only face fierce competition for tenure track positions in their fields, but must also compete with doctoral students and people with terminal Masters degrees for teaching positions off the tenure track. This has effectively undermined the bargaining position of many people who receive PhDs, and reduced college student access to instructors who have ever published original scholarship in the fields that they teach in.

...

What observers like Jones overlook when they complain about the "preferences" of people with PhDs to accept poorly-paid, temporary work is that the vast majority of non-tenure track faculty do not have PhDs. During the 2003-4 school year, the last year for which there is reliable data on the subject, only 23 percent of all contingent college faculty in the U.S. had doctoral degrees.

...

People without PhDs are playing an enormous role in the academic job market. With 66 percent of all college faculty off the tenure track, and perhaps 23 percent of non-tenure track faculty holding PhDs, it is likely that more than 50 percent of all college faculty in the U.S. do not have doctoral degrees. They are the majority. Yet observers keep blaming people with PhDs for the decline of tenure, rather than analyzing how the decline of tenure has made a PhD increasingly superfluous for getting a job as a college instructor in the U.S..

The Loss of Bargaining Power for People with PhDs

By de-valuing the PhD as a credential for college instruction, college administrators have massively expanded the supply of job candidates, thereby allowing them to reduce teaching salaries to poverty wages.

...

So it really doesn't matter whether doctoral students and people with terminal Masters degrees are better or worse teachers than tenure track instructors. Nor does it matter that one may not need a PhD to teach introductory courses in Math, English composition, History, foreign languages, and other subjects that tend to be taught by non-tenure track faculty.

Higher education administrators and department chairs do not, for the most part, hire non-tenure track instructors for pedagogical reasons. They hire instructors who are ineligible for tenure— including graduate students from their own departments— because these instructors have less bargaining power than tenure track faculty to negotiate a decent salary.

...

The declining value of the PhD is not the primary cause of the decline of tenure (growing costs of education and declining public support to meet those costs are more significant). But opening faculty searches to people without PhDs facilitates the decline of tenure, because hiring instructors without PhDs undermines the bargaining power of all faculty, and thereby increases schools' financial incentive to hire faculty off the tenure track.

Reference: http://www.lawcha.org/2017/01/09/decline-faculty-tenure-less-oversupply-phds-systematic-de-valuation-phd-credential-college-teaching/

Discussion in the comments on https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/when-you-can-hire-within also tend to reinforce the situation that someone with a master's degree and substantial teaching experience can be fabulous in the classroom, but aren't the optimal choice for the full-time faculty position that includes substantial other duties, even at a teaching-only institution with a 5/5 load.

QuoteAnd yet that underpaid army of adjuncts are performing miracles in crumbling buildings:

...And now you're saying they are performing miracles. But you're generally maligning them all sorts of ways until someone who's pushing back (me) starts to get a little support.

So, to out it plainly, I don't think you can be part of a good discussion. And yet here and there you do post some plain truth.

How the buildings got to be crumbling, all of the dynamics involved, all of the bureaucrats who contributed but are not culpable and are just now deciding what to watch next on Netflix in the middle of a cozy retirement, is another discussion that needs to be had. But it's clear now that the crumbling buildings are helping to keep faculty labor costs down. Someone probably wins when this happens.
At some point the observer has got to look at the mess and say 'let's get this clock cleaned. Start with the people who are making a nice living here and whose decisions and rhetoric enhance their own earnings. You can't tell me there are none of those. You can't blame it all on the state legislature.'

Quote
Even at CUNY where the adjunct working conditions are making national news and have for a good month now, the priorities for the leaders can't be adjunct pay when a quick search brings up

They can easily be thinking 'disrespect for adjunct faculty has helped us in the past, no reason it shouldn't this time.'

Please make a case for paying people more for the same job when so many other problems exist.


A case can be made for paying more to bring terrible results up to satisfactory (e.g., no one will teach the class, the student outcomes are unacceptable due to huge classes or unqualified warm bodies).

What's the case for paying people more who won't quit/strike and yet get up every day and do an excellent job when so many other needs exist that will help support the students in their academic endeavors, including hiring more faculty for smaller classes or a wider variety of classes?

Remember, the point of a teaching school is to support student success, not provide jobs for faculty.

Also, we have evidence that the faculty at Brooklyn College are performing miracles.  We do not have similar evidence for warm body, death-marching adjuncts in general.

j

QuoteRemember, the point of a teaching school is to support student success, not provide jobs for faculty.

not quite:

"Tenure is a means to certain ends; specifically: (1) freedom of teaching and research and of extramural activities, and (2) a sufficient degree of economic security to make the profession attractive to men and women of ability. Freedom and economic security, hence, tenure, are indispensable to the success of an institution in fulfilling its obligations to its students and to society."

Quote
Also, we have evidence that the faculty at Brooklyn College are performing miracles.  We do not have similar evidence for warm body, death-marching adjuncts in general.

What we have is evidence that some people like, for instance,  you, who have populated administration are disdainful of adjunct faculty, want to bring pejorative terms in reference to them into circulation and work assiduously to accomplish that, as well as stifling and threatening any organized effort at advocacy on their behalf, etc. Management that fosters disrespect for faculty are at cross purposes for those who want a successful student experience.

As other forumites have stated, the policies that you promote will run higher education into the ground.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 16, 2019, 04:49:14 PM

A case can be made for paying more to bring terrible results up to satisfactory (e.g., no one will teach the class, the student outcomes are unacceptable due to huge classes or unqualified warm bodies).

But if this is a common situation that has existed for some time, as some here suggest (while usually avoiding the crass terms that you delight in using), then only changing the dynamics of the system would bring a different result. So, as Humphrey Bogart said 'it's bad business to mention Paris.' It's bad business for you to mention this, because the the best hope for changing the dynamics would obviously be more unions. And a hard look at whether those who oppose even the idea of giving them a chance to work can be kept around. And as you know you are the preeminent example of that person.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 06:16:31 AM
because the the best hope for changing the dynamics would obviously be more unions.

Because they would do.....what?  A union isn't a solution per se.  A union may be the best means to reach a particular solution.  But what is that solution?

Quote from: FishProf on November 17, 2019, 07:40:14 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 06:16:31 AM
because the the best hope for changing the dynamics would obviously be more unions.

Because they would do.....what?  A union isn't a solution per se.  A union may be the best means to reach a particular solution.  But what is that solution?

if they increase pay, which they generally do, the school has a bigger pool of interested people. Of course it's up to them to pick the better applicants. But why can't they? It's their job.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Do-Unions-Help-Adjuncts-/243566

"Adjunct faculty won salary increases at every institution we looked at. A 2018 survey by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources shows that U.S. faculty members this year are earning only 1.7 percent more than last year, a figure that is below the current rate of inflation. Unionized faculty have negotiated steady increases that are significantly higher, and some of the steepest gains have come from unions formed within the last few years."

For me one of the most depressing and frankly, dumb things to read on these fora is the claim that adjunct unions should not be tried because they don't 'solve' the adjunct situation. But that claim is made most loudly from people who wouldn't be in them anyway. It's not for them to decide what qualifies as a solution. It's arrogant nonsense (I don't mean you Fishprof)--- as though the adjuncts are not qualified to decide what's right for them or speak on their own behalf. That's part of understanding a person's legal right to pursue collective bargaining. If you don't respect the right, then just say so. Vote for Chris Christie. Be honest about where you're coming from.
In any case, absent 'solution' improvement is better than no improvement.

So, mahagonny, are you explicitly referring to adjunct-only unions?  I ask b/c my union covers both, and our union has negotiated higher pay for both groups, but also has negotiated a cap on the % of classes  that can be offered in a semester taught by adjuncts.

That is, in principle, good for creating TT lines, not so good for current adjuncts (esp. those holding Master's credentials - they are ineligible for the new TT-lines).

Let's try another example to paint the big picture.

The faculty are the furniture in the house that is the university. 

In some cases, that furniture is indeed concerning with a couch that has boards replacing the springs, a leg that is propped up with a brick, and cushions that have seen such better days that even the fading afghan doesn't conceal the fact that one of those cushions is actually a plastic garbage bag filled with remnants of pillows.

However, a couch in that state is unlikely to be in a fabulous mansion that could afford all new living room furniture where the discussion of whether we want to replace the good enough couch with two recliners or a love seat and a bean bag chair or one of those new leather sectionals makes sense.

Instead, that clearly-in-need-of-attention couch tends to reside in the house with a leaky roof, an iffy floor due to termite activity, and is located such that tornadoes are likely, fires are likely, floods are likely, and one good mudslide means the whole thing crashes into the bottom of the valley.  There's reason to believe the slow plumbing is a result of tree roots getting into pipes and that backyard septic system is indicating signs it has reached its end of life.  It's unimportant to this example what academic problems (anything related to demographics, deferred maintenance, changing expectations for majors/college education outcomes, state underfunding, student loan regulations, online national market versus regional physical market) map exactly to which house problems.

What's important is that for people who are focused on having a house that is livable, replacing that couch cannot be top priority or even in the top five since the furniture will be destroyed when the ceiling caves in, the floor gives way, the house is rendered uninhabitable by plumbing issues, or a fire/flood/tornado/mud slide takes out the whole house.  Advocating for a newer afghan or fabulous throw pillows for the couch is going to be ignored in favor of figuring out where to put resources first for the roof, the floor, the plumbing, and mitigating the natural disasters.

When we're showing people the problems to ask for money for the roof etc., even if we point to the couch, the couch is still functional with perhaps a bucket for the leaks and replacing the heavy boards and bricks with more plastic-wrapped pillow innards in ways that plumbing is not.  Responsible adults cannot possibly have a serious discussion about replacing the couch with a leather sectional or two recliners when the house is in danger of being unlivable.  One can live OK in a solid house with minimal furniture if one is careful about how many people are being accommodated and the other choices for those people are to try to survive outside. 

Once the basic house is sound, it's pretty straightforward to get more furniture, although the trade-off is still likely to be good enough couch with an afghan over the back to protect it versus bean bag chairs versus recliners instead of all leather/glass, expensive top-end furniture.

Citing the AAUP statement is an interesting choice since it so clearly highlights a disconnect between what faculty claim they want (trading high pay for security of long-term contracts) for what's done in practice (faculty who will work for years at low pay with no guarantees of security).  Or, do you, mahagonny, want to make the case that somehow the death-marching adjuncts aren't men and women of ability who have other good options so there's no trade-off to be made?  That seems unlike you, but that's a logical conclusion based on the evidence we have.

Polly, you are a little like Tolkien's Sauron: you keep coming back in a new form with each successive age.  In this age you have taken the form of 'the adjunct crisis is not an important problem in the big picture.'  Why not just come out and say whatever it is that generates this disdain and fascination even after you have left academe instead of trying to persuade the good peeps here that you have some sort of rational reasoning on the subject?

Quote from: FishProf on November 17, 2019, 08:08:26 AM
So, mahagonny, are you explicitly referring to adjunct-only unions?  I ask b/c my union covers both, and our union has negotiated higher pay for both groups, but also has negotiated a cap on the % of classes  that can be offered in a semester taught by adjuncts.

That is, in principle, good for creating TT lines, not so good for current adjuncts (esp. those holding Master's credentials - they are ineligible for the new TT-lines).

Well, I'd have to see more information to know whether I would join that union or abstain. I might be able to live with for example too courses per term at $5000 each as opposed to three at $3600 each.
In any case, the presence of people like Polly_Mer on a campus or in a discussion means you're going to hear someone pretending that they have some special knowledge that unions for adjuncts cannot possibly be an intelligent choice for those faculty because they don't 'solve' the problems that they wake up to every day. Whereas we all know that often enough half a loaf is better than none and many problems we have in life never get fully solved, but with work and a little luck, they become manageable and bearable. and of course we all know administrators who dread unions, because they mean things will cost more, and have a well enough capacity for self-adulation that they are able to articulate reasons there shouldn't be union that ostensibly have the worker's interests in mind. And actually appear to believe it. Or it's a veiled intimidation attempt.
I have mixed feelings about tenure, too. What tenure purports to provide is a way to carefully select your coworker for the next thirty or twenty years based on his reasonable, down-to-earth temperament. Yet you find senior faculty who hate each other's guts but can't leave because they've invested too much in the place. It's not uncommon. But I suppose that's another discussion. And as regards tenure's relationship to the teaching workforce in general, as one forumite put it 'tenure is the tyrant that supports nothing but itself.'

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 17, 2019, 11:37:03 AM
Polly, you are a little like Tolkien's Sauron: you keep coming back in a new form with each successive age.  In this age you have taken the form of 'the adjunct crisis is not an important problem in the big picture.'  Why not just come out and say whatever it is that generates this disdain and fascination even after you have left academe instead of trying to persuade the good peeps here that you have some sort of rational reasoning on the subject?

Perhaps it's nostalgic for her to think back to the days when she could go into work every day and pass people in that hallway that she likes to hate.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 07:51:48 AM

Quote from: FishProf on November 17, 2019, 07:40:14 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 06:16:31 AM
because the the best hope for changing the dynamics would obviously be more unions.

Because they would do.....what?  A union isn't a solution per se.  A union may be the best means to reach a particular solution.  But what is that solution?

if they increase pay, which they generally do, the school has a bigger pool of interested people. Of course it's up to them to pick the better applicants. But why can't they? It's their job.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Do-Unions-Help-Adjuncts-/243566

Here's an interesting section from that article:

Quote
Why has it been so difficult for adjunct unions to gain these three measures? To some extent, the failure stems from the bargaining process itself. Before starting negotiations, unions survey members to determine their highest priorities. The highest priorities, such as increasing salaries and benefits, have the support of nearly all members. In contrast, when members are divided in opinion about a specific issue, it is difficult to mobilize the faculty during collective bargaining.

Take the issue of increasing the number of full-time positions on campus. Although most part-time faculty want to work full time, many others do not. In fact, some part-time faculty may view an increase in the proportion of full-time positions as against their interests, because any such increase would likely diminish the amount of part-time work available. Collective bargaining alone is not likely to stanch the increasing reliance on part-time faculty on American campuses.

To answer FishProf's question; once it gets past "more pay and better benefits", the "ideal solution" is unclear, and probably even non-existent.

If one goes by reading the forum or the old CHE forum, unions haven't provided a solution for tenure track faculty either. They think they should be paid more.

Some adjuncts I've talked with didn't want to get the administrators angry by signing on for a union and feared retribution. I might have felt that way once, but when I was approached I answered 'hell yeah.' I guess with age you take more risks. Your kids have grown, you've had a lot of good life already, and you feel like giving back to the community.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 02:45:01 PM
If one goes by reading the forum or the old CHE forum, unions haven't provided a solution for tenure track faculty either. They think they should be paid more.

Some adjuncts I've talked with didn't want to get the administrators angry by signing on for a union and feared retribution. I might have felt that way once, but when I was approached I answered 'hell yeah.' I guess with age you take more risks. Your kids have grown, you've had a lot of good life already, and you feel like giving back to the community.

Maybe I've been misunderstanding you. I keep asking what the endgame is you're aiming for, but it just now occurred to me that your point is that a union is the best way to move forward regardless of what the endgame is. Would that be correct? 

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 17, 2019, 04:28:12 PM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 02:45:01 PM
If one goes by reading the forum or the old CHE forum, unions haven't provided a solution for tenure track faculty either. They think they should be paid more.

Some adjuncts I've talked with didn't want to get the administrators angry by signing on for a union and feared retribution. I might have felt that way once, but when I was approached I answered 'hell yeah.' I guess with age you take more risks. Your kids have grown, you've had a lot of good life already, and you feel like giving back to the community.

Maybe I've been misunderstanding you. I keep asking what the endgame is you're aiming for, but it just now occurred to me that your point is that a union is the best way to move forward regardless of what the endgame is. Would that be correct?

Congratulations. The endgame is tomorrow holding more hope that today does. Everyone who contributes to the success of higher education having a voice and a little clout. In my opinion, an end to the only way the adjunct can get improvement in the job being by establishing himself as 'an adjunct who's not like most adjuncts.' There's nothing wrong with most adjuncts. It's unhealthy having a stigmatized population. There's something wrong with getting rich off of a mess like what we have.
What they prioritize after getting together and talking and having the administration recognize them is something is something they have to figure out.
Having a union that consists of some who hope to get full time and some who do not does not make perfect sense, but not having a union at all makes even less sense.
There's no reason 'part time/full time' dichotomy has to persist. Particularly where health insurance benefits are tied to employment, it's a made to order opportunity for management to divide and conquer.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 02:45:01 PM
If one goes by reading the forum or the old CHE forum, unions haven't provided a solution for tenure track faculty either. They think they should be paid more.

Some adjuncts I've talked with didn't want to get the administrators angry by signing on for a union and feared retribution. I might have felt that way once, but when I was approached I answered 'hell yeah.' I guess with age you take more risks. Your kids have grown, you've had a lot of good life already, and you feel like giving back to the community.

We have worked at a non-union school and a union school.  I have been adjunct and FT at both.  My spouse has gotten tenure at both.

The union school is far, far better in every regard.

I cannot imagine how the adjunct army would do worse with a union, but I don't see that the state of adjunct employment will change radically even with a union.  As long as there is an adjunct-army things will not go well for most adjuncts.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 17, 2019, 05:15:43 PM

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 02:45:01 PM
If one goes by reading the forum or the old CHE forum, unions haven't provided a solution for tenure track faculty either. They think they should be paid more.

Some adjuncts I've talked with didn't want to get the administrators angry by signing on for a union and feared retribution. I might have felt that way once, but when I was approached I answered 'hell yeah.' I guess with age you take more risks. Your kids have grown, you've had a lot of good life already, and you feel like giving back to the community.

We have worked at a non-union school and a union school.  I have been adjunct and FT at both.  My spouse has gotten tenure at both.

The union school is far, far better in every regard.

You've mentioned in your opinion, from your observing, that adjunct faculty vary widely in ability, all the way down to downright terrible. I haven't seen much of this at all. Our adjunct faculty are OK, pretty good all the way up to outstanding. How does that come to be tolerated? I find this shocking. Is it simply allowed to continue and then used as ammunition to deny adjuncts any pay raises?
When an incompetent person is hired, he may be at fault or he may not. He may not completely know what the job is or figure that since he was hired he's qualified enough. He may have had no real interview or orientation session. Or he may be a willful slacker. Whereas the person who hired him knows, or should know, that something is amiss, and has been paid a lot more, and has the honor and distinction of being a permanent part of the school. Yet can do no better than this?

Quote from: polly_mer on November 17, 2019, 08:31:22 AM

Citing the AAUP statement is an interesting choice since it so clearly highlights a disconnect between what faculty claim they want (trading high pay for security of long-term contracts) for what's done in practice (faculty who will work for years at low pay with no guarantees of security).  Or, do you, mahagonny, want to make the case that somehow the death-marching adjuncts aren't men and women of ability who have other good options so there's no trade-off to be made?  That seems unlike you, but that's a logical conclusion based on the evidence we have.

No, I would make the case that where there are extremely low paid and no job security or advancement jobs being used regularly, such as at the school you and your Provost Bob worked, one may also find administrators harboring the more virulent, scornful attitude towards the workforce and feeling no compunction about offering jobs that they openly regard as a -rope-a-dope scheme. With amusement. Much of this impression is the result of reading these fora. And that the disconnect between that level of functioning and the type of relationship described in the statement from the venerable AAUP is vast.
The statement on academic freedom and tenure mentions the need for economic security. I don't see anything there about trading high pay for security of long term contracts. Did I miss it? The trade-off part is what tenure track faculty say about themselves. The full prof tenured people in my field would never have that kind of salary anywhere in the same field. They're smart and accomplished, but they're not rare. I suspect you could get them for less.

QuoteI cannot imagine how the adjunct army would do worse with a union, but I don't see that the state of adjunct employment will change radically even with a union.  As long as there is an adjunct-army things will not go well for most adjuncts.

Schools are spending a lot on attorneys in the hopes of avoiding adjunct unionizing.

Quote from: mahagonny on November 17, 2019, 04:56:02 PM

The endgame is tomorrow holding more hope that today does. Everyone who contributes to the success of higher education having a voice and a little clout.

If we view the situation of poorly-paid and overworked part-time faculty like  a public health problem, then there are 3 levels at which it must be addressed:

• individual- for public health, this means treating individuals who are ill; for academia it means getting better pay and benefits for workers at a given institution
• prevention-vaccination protects individuals, and also provides herd immunity to others; for academia, this would be making grad students well aware of the situation, and preparing them for employment outside academia so they are not suceptible to exploitation. This provides herd immunity by reducing the pool of exploitable workers, which helps everyone.
  As Wahoo said:
  

  Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 17, 2019, 05:15:43 PM
  I cannot imagine how the adjunct army would do worse with a union, but I don't see that the state of adjunct employment will change radically even with a union.  As long as there is an adjunct-army things will not go well for most adjuncts.
  

• health policy-regulations regarding clean water, food preparation, etc. prevent the spread of disease. Working for legislation like pro-rated benefits would reduce pressure to break up full-time positions to save on benefits and healthcare. (The American health care situation is truly odd; why does a person's basic health coverage depend on employment???? But I digress......)
  

I'm interested much more in the latter two levels of this issue, largely because they are not institution-specific.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 17, 2019, 08:31:22 AM
Let's try another example to paint the big picture.

The faculty are the furniture in the house that is the university. 

This is a pretty astonishing and revealing claim. Teaching isn't at the core of institutions of higher learning? I'd always assumed that the point of requiring students to pass classes and get a certain number of credits to graduate was based on the idea that you wanted them to take classes and learn things under the direction of professors, but I guess who those people are and whether they do a good job is just a tertiary detail? Do classes and degrees just exist so colleges can get the tuition dollars that allow them to replace the water heater in the Student Union?

Quote from: Caracal on November 18, 2019, 08:02:06 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on November 17, 2019, 08:31:22 AM
Let's try another example to paint the big picture.

The faculty are the furniture in the house that is the university. 

This is a pretty astonishing and revealing claim. Teaching isn't at the core of institutions of higher learning? I'd always assumed that the point of requiring students to pass classes and get a certain number of credits to graduate was based on the idea that you wanted them to take classes and learn things under the direction of professors, but I guess who those people are and whether they do a good job is just a tertiary detail? Do classes and degrees just exist so colleges can get the tuition dollars that allow them to replace the water heater in the Student Union?

Let's try another analogy to paint the big picture.

The faculty are the furniture in the house that is the university (yes, this is a really dumb analogy, but we'll go with it for now); the students are the boarders; the landlord is the administration.

In one corner we have a couch.  It is a very old couch which has been a part of the house since the very beginning---literally, right from when the house was built, this couch has been sitting here.  It used to be very nice, gaudy even, but has fallen on hard times.  The couch has been a cornerstone of every classical, modernist, and feng shui arraignment because, hey, it is a couch and thus axiomatically an important piece of furniture.  Virtually every boarder will need to sit in this couch at one time or the other, and so every single day someone is sitting on the couch.  In fact, the couch is grossly overcrowded by boarders who need a place to sit. 

However, for some reason the landlord only occasionally repaired or reupholstered the couch, and then only minimally.  In fact, most repairs are only temporary (patches, bricks where legs used to be, etc.) including the springs, which naturally complain under the heavy load.

Since the couch is central to the mission of the house to provide a shelter to the boarders, it would only make sense to make the couch as strong and as well equipped for its duty as possible.  Sure, the roof tends to leak occasionally, the back porch is sagging a bit, and so on, but these are the natural repairs that need to be made----it would be prudent to repair the structural aspects of the house, but it would also be prudent to maintain the central pieces of furniture (the dining set, the chairs, the bookcases, the TV, and of course the couch).  We might even put a little money aside and worry about the paint and wall-paper later as these are primarily cosmetic while the couch is largely necessary.

Unfortunately, the landlord would rather get the chic new plywood fold-out TV trays, because that's practical (or something), and instead of replacing the couch or bolstering the bookshelves, the landlord buys highly overpriced office-roller chairs.  The office chairs are actually a little less practical than the couch and no more comfortable, but this is what the landlord thinks the boarders want, largely because of cultural misconception of which pieces of furniture are really useful and the office chairs have a few gizmos (like height-adjustment and a headrest) which make them marketable (even if these are not really worthwhile additions).  What's more, the officer chairs will wear out pretty soon----so the landlord, rather than fixing the roof or repairing the other pieces of furniture, will simply order more expensive office chairs in the future (even though studies have more or less proven that this type of chair is damaging to boarders' postures).

To make matters worse, the landlord successfully begins a capital campaign, raises a few bucks, and uses the money to buy shiny new pleather recliners in the hope that rich friends will come over, watch football on the old TV, and then give (essentially the same amount of money that the landlord expended in the first place to buy the chairs) to the house----never mind that the local team only wins about 6 or 7 of every 12 games; football is exciting and therefore more important than the roof, or the porch, or the couch which most of the boarders will sit on.  Maybe we'll name the microwave after one of the landlord's rich friends.

In the meantime, certain shallow thinkers actually blame the couch for becoming careworn, as if it is the couch's fault the wear-and-tear from everyday use and lack of attention are taking their toll.  What's more, certain shallow thinkers actually blame the ancient couch for making noise when it is sat upon too hard or too heavily.  They would actually see the couch fall apart while praising the new electric can-opener.

Or perhaps we could work together to keep the house from falling apart, you know, since we all have a stake in how well the house and its contents stand the test of time.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 18, 2019, 09:28:13 AM

However, for some reason the landlord only occasionally repaired or reupholstered the couch, and then only minimally.  In fact, most repairs are only temporary (patches, bricks where legs used to be, etc.) including the springs, which naturally complain under the heavy load.

What does reupholstering the couch correspond to in this analogy? And what does repairing it correspond to?

Quote from: marshwiggle on November 18, 2019, 09:33:03 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 18, 2019, 09:28:13 AM

However, for some reason the landlord only occasionally repaired or reupholstered the couch, and then only minimally.  In fact, most repairs are only temporary (patches, bricks where legs used to be, etc.) including the springs, which naturally complain under the heavy load.

What does reupholstering the couch correspond to in this analogy? And what does repairing it correspond to?

Look up world class foam upholstery and Captain Nemo and the answer will become clear to you.

Briefly, as I am in a rush.

Mahogany, you replied that you would need to know more before you'd decide to join, or abstain from, my union.  But later, you say that unions are always the best way forward.

That sounds contradictory.

Nevertheless, I''ll Ask:  What do you need to know to make your decision?

Quote from: FishProf on November 18, 2019, 01:14:15 PM
Briefly, as I am in a rush.

Mahogany, you replied that you would need to know more before you'd decide to join, or abstain from, my union.  But later, you say that unions are always the best way forward.

That sounds contradictory.

Nevertheless, I''ll Ask:  What do you need to know to make your decision?

Well it's alway a guess what kind of success or disappointment the future holds. But I'd tend to give it a chance if they sound like they want to go to bat for part timers. Some of the things I've heard about SUNY though have been really off-putting. It seems like the union only serves the full timers, mostly.
I guess part of it is I have a little bit of fight in me. Someone (the provost) says 'we don't recommend that you vote for union because a third party inserting itself into our relationship will be counterproductive. They don't know the academic culture) then my reaction is 'oh yeah? Screw you. First of all, we don't have a relationship. Second, academic culture has some serious pitfalls so there's no need to avoid shaking it up.' And so on.
Administrators just need to STFU about unions. They have no business meddling in your decision for union yes or no. That should be obvious to anyone. Still some persist. Maybe they need to get a life.

here's an interesting piece:   https://chroniclevitae.com/news/254-off-track-how-to-bust-an-adjunct-union

Mahagonny  (incidentally, I've found that 'Mahagonny' sometimes autocorrects to "Mahogany" - bummer.

Mahagonny

I'm still not clear what, specifically, you'd be looking for.

Nevertheless, a follow-up.  As I said, we have a joint PT-FT union, and those groups are not equally served by union decisions. 

How would an adjunct-only union work at a particular University?  Only current adjuncts can be members?  Or are we talking more AFL-CIO kinds of stuff where it's a "if you don't hire union members, you don't hire anyone" kind of situation?  Which do you envision?

Oddly enough, I am a union member for the day school (TT), and a member with a different status (adjunct) at the night school (same union - different contracts).  I am not sure how I should feel about that situation.  The night contract pays me pays based on my day rank. 

This probably muddies the waters, but I am trying to get a better sense of what you (and others) are arguing for, in practical terms.

The saying around our system is "Administration rents. Faculty own."

Quote from: ciao_yall on November 18, 2019, 04:50:37 PM
The saying around our system is "Administration rents. Faculty own."

Ha. Not when it comes to blame.