Covid adjunct nonrenewal: women & minorities

[jerseyjay]

Nobody feels sorry for a doctor earning a quarter of a million a year, no matter how overburdened, abused and drowning in paperwork for insurance companies they may be. 

Evidently written by somebody who is luck enough to have never had to go to hospital. If my life depends on a doctor, I don't care how much he or she makes. I would, however, prefer to have a doctor who is not "overburdened, abused and drowning in paperwork" since, well, my health (or life) may depend on it.

Similarly, one of the biggest problems with the casualization of higher education is not that it is bad for the adjunct teaching staff--although I think it is--but that it is bad for the students. Having been both an adjunct and a tenure-track professor, I can say that I am a better teacher on the tenure track than I was as an adjunct. In fact, I am a better teacher in the classes I teach at my home institution as an assistant professor than I am at the school where I teach a class each semester as an adjunct. This is not because of any innate difference in ability or skill, but because of the inherent differences in the two jobs. And when I had to stitch together a (barely) living wage by teaching at four schools, I was a worse teacher. Of course there are some very good adjunct professors there--but I think most would probably be better if they had the stability, benefits, and respect of a full-time position.

More broadly, as a full-time professor, I view the casualization of higher education as an attack on the conditions and status of all professors. The reliance on low-wage adjunct lecturers has allowed schools to hire fewer full timers, increase their workload, and keep compensation in check. The professorate has really been degraded over the past several decades--the same as many other jobs, including janitors, truck drivers and meatpackers. Of course professors usually make more than these workers usually do, but the increase in adjunct labor is part of the degradation of working conditions and pay overall in the last period.

All of this is leaving aside the conditions of any particular adjunct lecturer. It is true that there are some who work elsewhere, are retired, clip coupons for a living, etc. I do not think this is the case for most. And even if it were, would we want education to be done by people who view as it as a side-gig?

On the specific issue of this thread: my department is small, entirely white, and almost entirely male. Our student's body is probably 75 per cent black and Latino and more than half female.  We got into this situation because of retirements and the fact that there has not been a new line since forever.

In order to combat the bad image that this creates, my chair has tried to hire more women and minority adjuncts. On one hand, this is just papering over the problem--and creates a situation of a small bunch of white men lording over an army of minority and women adjuncts. It doesn't do much to address the fundamental problem. And situations such as now, when there is a chance that many adjuncts will be made redundant, highlights the issue.

On the other hand, from a student's perspective, it does mean that somebody taking one of our classes might be more likely to have a professor who looks like them and has some sense of their experience. What we need is another line or two, to allow us to hire more full timers. That won't solve the problem, but it would at least provide an opportunity to address it.

[secundem_artem]

In an applied field (and I am in 2 of them) the best way to identify the problem is to disaggregate the data as far as possible.  I don't think anyone is unaware of the problems with English, History etc.  But even at that level, the data needs to be further drilled in to. 

Is the problem different in different parts of the country?  Does it vary by private vs public vs CC's?  Does it vary according to where adjuncts received their terminal degree?  Does it vary by time since completion of terminal degree?  Is it different for Dickens scholars vs Medievalists in English?  Etc Etc Etc.  If you cannot be clear about the problem (beyond woe is English) you'll never have any clarity about an actionable solution.

Umm....yeah.  All this info is out there.

MLA, AHA, and a host of other associations, organizations, and individual scholars (not to mention a plethora of journalists) have delved into degree pedigree (elite colleges take the majority of R1 jobs; the rest of the "tiers" are spread evenly throughout the rankings); sub-discipline (20th century American and European are overwhelmed with candidates; there are fewer candidates in other sub-disciplines, but also fewer jobs); type of institution (CCs have the most adjuncts; private colleges the fewest); and so on, etc. etc. etc.

But you didn't know any of that, did you?

A great deal of this info has been published on this very forum.  Did you think it wouldn't be?  Do you honestly think that academics and academic associations wouldn't have already published a ton of material on this?  Do a Google search before forming an opinion, for pete's sake.

You seem like a nice sort, secundem, but this is soooo typical of this debate.  So typical of human nature too, Dunning-Kruger and all that.

And similarly, I doubt much of the general public worries much about underemployed and underpaid adjuncts who were supposedly smart enough to make better career choices. The commonly discussed  solutions here on the fora to "spend more money" on education or "get a union" or "solidarity between adjuncts and TT faculty" are little more than magical thinking.

Ah, the "magical thinking" quip.  Haven't heard that one in a while.

Do a Google search on "adjunct employment."  See what is being written in the popular press (this thread begins with one such example)----are you assuming these stories are being published because people don't care?  Do you know that there actually was a noticeable effect on hiring before the virus knocked us on our keisters?  Truly, did you?  Do you have any idea how much coverage this has gotten and the effect of unionization? 

For someone touting the effects of "actual data," you really dropped the ball here.

OK - I did it.  Page 1 of the Google Search turns up articles  from AAUP,  Education Dive, Inside Higher Ed, New Faculty Majority, Academe Blog, cca4US (whatever that is), the Chronicle, study.com, Reddit and the Hartford Courant. Looks like most of the discussion is more "inside baseball" than of interest to a general readership.

If you think the general public gives a rip about the problems of highly and expensively trained  (often with a significant degree of taxpayer expense) people who are unhappy with their lot in life and career options, you are sadly mistaken. 

As to me dropping the data ball.  OK, let's assume I did.  If the Ivys and a few R01's snap up all the desirable jobs and if American Lit is horribly over-subscribed, then you have your solution.  Supply > demand.  We can either graduate far fewer PhD's or fewer people should make the decision to undertake one. 

If you don't like the term magical thinking, let's go with cargo cult.  If only you build the sacred ritual objects of unions and more spending and solidarity with the TT folk, then the mysterious and powerful administrators will bless you with their bounty of full time, well paid, benefit rich employment. 

I feel for you and your colleagues Wahoo.  I truly do.  You and yours are caught between crummy circumstances, limited budgets, an uncaring society and your own agency for choices you have made.  It's placed a lot of people in difficult situations. But if you want to start name calling (Dunning Kruger and the like), then all I read from your posts are sour grapes.  You did it to Polly on another thread and now you're doing it to me. You cannot even use Marshie's handle without deliberately mangling it. Really dude??  Name calling?  That ain't no way to win an argument.

[marshwiggle]

No one "pretends" it is universal.  But it is widespread.  Over 50 percent of instructors are PT. I'd say that's pretty close to being universal since every campus I have heard of employs these people.

On here, several people have commented about how in their institutions, or at least in their departments, they hire few adjuncts, and they are all people with decently-paid full-time jobs. So unless you're going to claim they're all lying, the problem is not "close to being universal".

Nobody feels sorry for a doctor earning a quarter of a million a year, no matter how overburdened, abused and drowning in paperwork for insurance companies they may be. 

Evidently written by somebody who is luck enough to have never had to go to hospital. If my life depends on a doctor, I don't care how much he or she makes. I would, however, prefer to have a doctor who is not "overburdened, abused and drowning in paperwork" since, well, my health (or life) may depend on it.

The point was not whether doctors being overworked is a problem; it's how much public sympathy can be created for people who are seen to have vastly much more employability capital than the average person. The same thing goes for adjuncts, like it or not. The public sees someone who has a lot more education, working at a job that doesn't involve back-breaking or dangerous labour and who doesn't have to work shifts. By the standards of many working people, these people have it pretty good.

Trying to generate a lot of public sympathy for the plight of adjuncts is probably a lost cause. (Now, if you can demonstrate that the education parents are paying for is sub-standard, then you may get some traction in that parents will avoid sending their kids to those places.)

I feel for you and your colleagues Wahoo.  I truly do.  You and yours are caught between crummy circumstances, limited budgets, an uncaring society and your own agency for choices you have made.  It's placed a lot of people in difficult situations. But if you want to start name calling (Dunning Kruger and the like), then all I read from your posts are sour grapes.  You did it to Polly on another thread and now you're doing it to me. You cannot even use Marshie's handle without deliberately mangling it. Really dude??  Name calling?  That ain't no way to win an argument.

My experience is that the degree of name-calling is inversely proportional to the amount of solid argument Wahoo provides. In the absence of rational debate, insults are still a way to have the last word.

[polly_mer]

The solution to too many adjuncts is usually either modifying general education or closing the institution.

We've gone through this for years on these fora.

Data include that community colleges and other all-but-open-enrollment institutions tend to have the largest percentage of adjunct faculty for flexibility and tend to pay those faculty the least on tight budgets.  Restricting enrollment or flat out closing would be the most easily implemented solutions in those situations.

Large research institutions often have contingent faculty that include graduate students and possibly a non-TT teaching track.  Thus, engineering will have a non-zero fraction of contingent workers, but those workers are seldom death-marching adjuncts.  The 70% contingent statistic comes from including non-TT permanent and part-time permanent (the professional fellows) along with grad students in with all the adjuncts.

At places where many adjuncts are used, the situation is often an army of general education adjuncts to prop up the idealized dream of a liberal arts education while dealing with the realities of how most students choose an institution (close to home, desired major).  The individual gen ed courses don't have to be good because those courses are just going through the motions to check a box.  No one involved cares about quality because that doesn't affect either enrollment or the job after college.  If those things matter, then the institution has a different mission and won't be using cheap adjuncts.

Almost no one who earns graduate degrees in certain fields works in academia (under ten percent for many engineering specialties and CS) and that's generally by choice.  In contrast, for some fields, few jobs outside of academia exist that truly require a graduate degree in those fields. 

The growth in master's degree holders in those fields meant an acceleration in people qualified to teach, but not necessarily qualified to hold a TT position with research expectations.  Thus, the TT jobs are at the research places and the teaching places keep cutting majors with full-time jobs in favor of part-time teaching jobs.

Now that higher ed is up against the wall and the question is what's truly needed, the cuts are to the easily replaced contingent faculty of all types and the interchangeable items on the list for a gen ed requirement.

While losing a job through no fault of one's own merits sympathy,  the longstanding situation of staying in a temp job to stay in academia instead of getting some other job is much less sympathetic to those of us who take jobs to feed our families and live inside.

The world has been changing over the past forty years and now higher ed has to face the music abruptly instead of on the slower pace.

[polly_mer]

The diversity questions that interest me can't be solved at the faculty level until we're much better at the k-12 level.  The pool going into college to major in the relevant areas is such that there's no way to have demographic representation in the faculty.

A diverse humanities department, however they want to define it, offering those two gen ed courses to the engineers, nurses, and others is far less useful to the professional majors than almost any other action designed to promote working well with people who aren't from a similar background.

[Wahoo Redux]

The solution to too many adjuncts is usually either modifying general education or closing the institution.

We've gone through this for years on these fora.

Indeed, we have debated for years----which is why Marshcreature's typically clueless "good solution" and secundem's surprisingly uninformed comments (which, I'm sorry my friend, you just doubled down on with the "supply > demand" comment----if nothing else, at least read the fora: there is a ton of demand, it has simply been chopped into little itty-bitty adjunct jobs, a trend which was reversing itself) are both typical and surprising.

But only you and a few others think we should close schools or eliminate those pesky lib arts.

The world has been changing over the past forty years and now higher ed has to face the music abruptly instead of on the slower pace.

And high ed has been changing, generally for the better in regard to hiring.  We'll see what happens after the virus clears.

[Wahoo Redux]

OK - I did it.  Page 1 of the Google Search turns up articles  from AAUP,  Education Dive, Inside Higher Ed, New Faculty Majority, Academe Blog, cca4US (whatever that is), the Chronicle, study.com, Reddit and the Hartford Courant. Looks like most of the discussion is more "inside baseball" than of interest to a general readership.

http://udreview.com/opinion-what-your-university-is-doing-to-its-instructors/

https://www.njspotlight.com/2020/05/college-adjuncts-voice-concerns-over-unemployment-ineligibility/

https://whyy.org/articles/incredibly-disposable-adjuncts-the-gig-workers-of-higher-ed-fear-losing-livelihoods/

https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine/union-spring-2020/essential-but-excluded/

http://udreview.com/university-reduces-number-of-classes-taught-by-adjuncts-streamlines-fall-class-offerings/

https://depauliaonline.com/48204/news/faculty-staff-send-petition-to-upper-administrators-requesting-protection-of-adjunct-and-term-faculty-as-covid-19-drags-on/

https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-doucot-gig-professor-coronavirus-0428-20200429-ri2mucexwbesvdwbfhd433ufmm-story.html

https://gothamist.com/news/cuny-adjunct-layoffs-are-already-happening-ahead-cuomos-expected-budget-cuts

COVID has kicked in a new type of adjunct coverage too.

I only looked at the first two pages of "adjunct employment" and "adjunct professor" searches.

The Atlantic kicked off coverage in 2015 and have been steady on since:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/adjunct-professors-higher-education-thea-hunter/586168/

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/higher-education-college-adjunct-professor-salary/404461/

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-cost-of-an-adjunct/394091/

WaPo of course has kicked in:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/it-keeps-you-nice-and-disposable-the-plight-of-adjunct-professors/2019/02/14/6cd5cbe4-024d-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html

As has the NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/upshot/academic-job-crisis-phd.html

And so on.

So no, it is not an "inside baseball" issue.

I can understand the economic point of view, but not the surprisingly stubborn, uniformed, aggressively condescending comments of very intelligent people who should know better.  What gives!?

[mahagonny]

Trying to generate a lot of public sympathy for the plight of adjuncts is probably a lost cause. (Now, if you can demonstrate that the education parents are paying for is sub-standard, then you may get some traction in that parents will avoid sending their kids to those places.)

We can all speculate about the future, but let's be clear that that is all we're doing. The question presents itself, though, what would the public do that they are not doing now if they decided to 'care more'? Give more tax money to the barons who run the state universities so they can have more options? Oh, great strategy!
Here's what people on the forum are not getting. Academic culture, all of it, tenure track, even full time non-TT who have been sampling the cool-aid, administration, their attorneys, et al claim that they do not want to hire low paid temp faculty. But the general public has the opportunity not to believe them. They have the opportunity to pay attention to what people do, as opposed to what they say about themselves. I think Confucius said something about that. This is not new information. The obvious conclusion should be that it is not lack of funding that needs to be fought or overcome, but untrustworthy people and their avarice. There would not be a good faith discussion coming. There would some other type of maneuvering and well funded resistance. This understanding would not make the public apathetic; more like worldly-wise and streetwise. College management does not believe in helpful hints from outside.
BTW, to those who say unions have no effect, I have health insurance now because years ago my colleagues did the heavy lifting and got it done. And to those who say the public doesn't care about how higher education is being run, I notice a lot in the press lately about the lavish salaries of a high number uf university administrators. Those newspapers are selling. Are they taking furloughs, pay cuts, sharing the pain enough? A few raised eyebrows, yes.
Of course, obvious too:  there are plenty on the forum and elsewhere who hope the general public will stay out of it. For example, an older professor at $150K, $200K per year, nice benefits with a lighter teaching schedule and another sabbatical coming, in which to research and publish more esoteric things of little consequence to anything we know of, does not necessarily relish being scrutinized by busybodies on the outside, Naomi Schafer Riley or ones of that ilk. Why should this be going on when your college writing professor is whizzing on to campus, looking for a parking space at the the last minute in order to make another thirty bucks trying to help freshmen write a paragraph in English so they can appear literate enough to be employed?

[Wahoo Redux]

My experience is that the degree of name-calling is inversely proportional to the amount of solid argument Wahoo provides. In the absence of rational debate, insults are still a way to have the last word.

I'd be a lot nicer to you, Marshy, if before you posted you stopped, took a deep breath, and really thought about what you are about to write.  For instance...

No one "pretends" it is universal.  But it is widespread.  Over 50 percent of instructors are PT. I'd say that's pretty close to being universal since every campus I have heard of employs these people.

On here, several people have commented about how in their institutions, or at least in their departments, they hire few adjuncts, and they are all people with decently-paid full-time jobs. So unless you're going to claim they're all lying, the problem is not "close to being universal".

I'll just let you stew on a couple of facts which you are free to dispute:

• Every campus in North America hires adjuncts
• Some hire more than others, some departments hire more than others, but they all hire adjuncts, even if there are not many of them
• these people may have "decently-paid full-time jobs" (I presume you mean outside academia; the meaning is not clear there) but they are still "adjuncts"
• and your source material is "several people have commented."

Okay, so if we define "universal" as the dictionary does:

"of, affecting, or done by all people or things in the world or in a particular group; applicable to all cases."

And everybody in "a particular group"----say academic institutions----does the same thing...

...it is what?

I know you can think this through.  Give it a go.  Particularly if you are going to make statements about "solid arguments" and "the absence of rational debate."

[marshwiggle]

No one "pretends" it is universal.  But it is widespread.  Over 50 percent of instructors are PT. I'd say that's pretty close to being universal since every campus I have heard of employs these people.

On here, several people have commented about how in their institutions, or at least in their departments, they hire few adjuncts, and they are all people with decently-paid full-time jobs. So unless you're going to claim they're all lying, the problem is not "close to being universal".

I'll just let you stew on a couple of facts which you are free to dispute:

• Every campus in North America hires adjuncts
• Some hire more than others, some departments hire more than others, but they all hire adjuncts, even if there are not many of them
• these people may have "decently-paid full-time jobs" (I presume you mean outside academia; the meaning is not clear there) but they are still "adjuncts"

So if an institution only hires part-time people who also have decently-paid full-time jobs, are they part of the adjunct problem? Is the problem that adjuncts are hired at all?

[Wahoo Redux]

Go back and reread the thread, Marshy.  The answer to your question is over your head (maybe in more than one metaphoric sense).  You are arguing a point that is not in contention.

But I'm just curious, what is the point of this response that some departments hire practitioners as PT teachers? 

Everyone in academia knows this.  (Semi-humorous aside: Our business school hired a local lawyer who had some sort of personal crisis in the middle of the semester and went to France for two months, leaving the department hanging.)  So why even mention it?  Marshy, don't think you have to respond.

You know, I've had enough to eat today.  Actually, I ate more than I should calorie-wise even though I mowed the lawn.  My house has central air and is very comfortable as I cool down.  I'm also receiving my full salary while maintaining social distancing.

I know that other people are without salaries, enough to eat, and central air. This is not a problem specific to COVID, but the virus has exacerbated these issues. But the problem is clearly NOT specific to me.  It is therefore not universal. 

I do know that my life is affected, even though I have enough to eat, a salary, and central air.  Apparently how it affects me is not enough to generate a response.  Maybe a little empathy, but I am irritated by the "magical thinking" of people who want to do something about it. 

In fact, I am convinced that nothing can be done about the situation.  Too bad for people without enough to eat.  They should just get jobs. Or we should eliminate the jobs they do have so they'll be forced to get real jobs.  Down with McDonalds and Walmart!!

[mahagonny]

So if an institution only hires part-time people who also have decently-paid full-time jobs, are they part of the adjunct problem? Is the problem that adjuncts are hired at all?

Not the fact that someone may hold a full time job concurrently, but the fact that this should be a go-to rationale, yes. Particularly if they're paying that dismal figure $2700 per course, no benefits. Because of what it breeds. You don't end up verifying that your employee has a full time job somewhere else. It's questionable ethically, maybe even legally. How can you require a person that you pay by the hour or the piecework contract to be doing something specific during that time each week when you are not paying him? That's called 'one's free time.' Besides, it only makes more trouble for the people who hire. They don't want to do it. They want to know (1) do you appear qualified and (2) are you available and agreeable to the terms.
There are people who show up here regularly to report that their adjuncts are full time employed somewhere else. I view it with skepticism. Particularly when our provost had made that blanket statement to the press. I've never held a full time job in my entire life. At the time I knew one adjunct who had a full time job somewhere else, and he was an embarrassment to the rest of us. Always calling in sick. Then when I ran into to him he was fat and sassy (full of health). But, of course, n=1 there.
Intelligent people can disagree about what a minimum stipend should be. But $2700/per is ridiculous.
What continues to amaze me is those instances where quite a few in the academic community (including, and even sometimes, especially, the tenure track) seem oblivious to how much self entitlement they display by suggesting they should have labor from highly educated people who don't need decent compensation. And that's why I don't have the same reverence for the culture that is expected.

[marshwiggle]

So if an institution only hires part-time people who also have decently-paid full-time jobs, are they part of the adjunct problem? Is the problem that adjuncts are hired at all?

Not the fact that someone may hold a full time job concurrently, but the fact that this should be a go-to rationale, yes. Particularly if they're paying that dismal figure $2700 per course, no benefits. Because of what it breeds. You don't end up verifying that your employee has a full time job somewhere else. It's questionable ethically, maybe even legally.

This is all a consequence of the way American healthcare works, which I agree is stupid. There's no nonsense like that here since healthcare is not dependent on employment.

[jerseyjay]

So if an institution only hires part-time people who also have decently-paid full-time jobs, are they part of the adjunct problem? Is the problem that adjuncts are hired at all?

I am assuming that this is not meant literally (i.e., that its only teaching employees are part-timers who have other full-time jobs) but that it means that its only adjuncts are all working elsewhere full time. (To be honest, neither case seems likely.)

In any case, if a school hires a few part-time professors who have other jobs, I guess it isn't a problem so long as these people are practicing experts who want to teach on the side, or the courses in question need to be staffed because of unforeseen complications. This is not my experience at most schools.

Even if a department makes sure to hire only adjuncts who are elsewhere employed (which I am not sure is legal), so long as the school, like most schools, depends on adjunct professors to teach a significant percentage of classed, this is very much part of the problem of the casualization of academic labor.

First, because by hiring moonlighting professionals, the school is essentially is limiting the number of full time jobs.

Second, there are actually many full-time professors (like me) or high school teachers who need to teach an extra class on the side in order to make ends meet. Thus, the problem of casulalization of academic labor is just another side of the degradation of academic labor as a whole.

Many Uber drivers I have had are in fact working somewhere else in the day. In that sense, they are probably less exploited than somebody who is just an Uber driver. That said, their having to be an Uber driver is a reflection of the general low wages that many people receive. It also helps to drive down the wages and working conditions of other drivers, many of whom now struggle to make a living. So the "Uber problem" is not just how it affects the individual driver, but also the entire industry. The "adjunct problem" is similar.

Of course short of increasing funding to higher education and hiring more full timers, there is no real solution to this problem.

Finally on the question of public sympathy: my stepson made more money last year working at a fast food restaurant full time than I did some years as an adjunct. When people realize that a significant number of people whom they assumed had good-paying prestigious jobs in fact do not, there are a bunch of reactions. Sympathy is not always one of them, but surprise usually is.   

[marshwiggle]

So if an institution only hires part-time people who also have decently-paid full-time jobs, are they part of the adjunct problem? Is the problem that adjuncts are hired at all?

I am assuming that this is not meant literally (i.e., that its only teaching employees are part-timers who have other full-time jobs) but that it means that its only adjuncts are all working elsewhere full time. (To be honest, neither case seems likely.)

Yes, the latter is what I meant. (I think it made more sense in the context of Wahoo's post.)

In any case, if a school hires a few part-time professors who have other jobs, I guess it isn't a problem so long as these people are practicing experts who want to teach on the side, or the courses in question need to be staffed because of unforeseen complications. This is not my experience at most schools.

As has often been noted, this is a factor that varies a lot by academic discipline. (For instance, it's very often the case in professional fields.)

Even if a department makes sure to hire only adjuncts who are elsewhere employed (which I am not sure is legal), so long as the school, like most schools, depends on adjunct professors to teach a significant percentage of classed, this is very much part of the problem of the casualization of academic labor.

First, because by hiring moonlighting professionals, the school is essentially is limiting the number of full time jobs.

In professional fields, it's often considered a bonus to have a full-time practising professional teaching a course, such as an accountant teaching accounting, rather than having the course taught by someone with a PhD but who has never actually worked as an accountant.

Second, there are actually many full-time professors (like me) or high school teachers who need to teach an extra class on the side in order to make ends meet. Thus, the problem of casulalization of academic labor is just another side of the degradation of academic labor as a whole.

Again, this is discipline-specific. You don't see a lot of engineering adjuncts who struggle to put food on the table because if an engineering school needs to hire adjuncts then they're going to have to pay enough to match what engineers can get outside academia.

Many Uber drivers I have had are in fact working somewhere else in the day. In that sense, they are probably less exploited than somebody who is just an Uber driver. That said, their having to be an Uber driver is a reflection of the general low wages that many people receive. It also helps to drive down the wages and working conditions of other drivers, many of whom now struggle to make a living. So the "Uber problem" is not just how it affects the individual driver, but also the entire industry. The "adjunct problem" is similar.

Uber is an interesting example, since it was created to "disrupt" the taxi industry. The taxi industry operated by limiting supply to maintain profitability. Uber (and others) offered individuals "flexibility" with no limit on supply.

The disciplines where there are the most adjuncts struggling financially are the ones where there is a surplus of people with graduate degrees that have very limited market value outside academia. The disciplines producing the excess PhDs are the same ones then hiring those graduates as poorly-paid adjuncts. There is a huge conflict-of-interest in those fields.

Of course short of increasing funding to higher education and hiring more full timers, there is no real solution to this problem.

But issues like the declining population of young people have nothing to do with funding; also, if multiple part-time positions are consolidated into full-time positions, then that means many now employed part-time will be completely unemployed. This is also independent of funding.

Finally on the question of public sympathy: my stepson made more money last year working at a fast food restaurant full time than I did some years as an adjunct. When people realize that a significant number of people whom they assumed had good-paying prestigious jobs in fact do not, there are a bunch of reactions. Sympathy is not always one of them, but surprise usually is.

The point is that many seem to think that if there is sufficient publicity about the situation of adjuncts that there will be sufficient outcry to force changes. I think that is highly unlikely, since many people consider their own economic struggles to be more pressing than those of people with more education.