So adjuncts have zero right?

[polly_mer]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

[Hegemony]

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

Ha!  We're the state flagship university and we run on an army of adjuncts hired and fired at the last moment.

Whether or not this is a sustainable practice (it is certainly deplorable), it is brutal and unconscionable to make last-minute layoffs like this common practice. To put a stop to it may not be fixing the central problem of the university, but it is not the "wrong" problem. No problem with people's livelihoods is a "wrong" problem that doesn't warrant fixing.

[Wahoo Redux]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

This is literally all of academia, Polly.

My diss chair had been an adjunct at Harvard at one point in hu's life.

God bless the unions.

[polly_mer]

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

Ha!  We're the state flagship university and we run on an army of adjuncts hired and fired at the last moment.

Whether or not this is a sustainable practice (it is certainly deplorable), it is brutal and unconscionable to make last-minute layoffs like this common practice. To put a stop to it may not be fixing the central problem of the university, but it is not the "wrong" problem. No problem with people's livelihoods is a "wrong" problem that doesn't warrant fixing.

The humane livelihood fix to the standing army of adjuncts is to hire permanent gen ed faculty to meet the known demand or revamp the gen ed program to be able to be delivered with the full-time faculty. 

The armies of poorly-paid, revolving door adjuncts are not long term sustainable for a quality education and it is a red flag to be running the university that way.

[polly_mer]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

This is literally all of academia, Polly.

My diss chair had been an adjunct at Harvard at one point in hu's life.

God bless the unions.

No.  Just no.  Go look at the data and pay particular attention to the differences between:


* contingent on annual to three-year renewable contracts and adjunct on one-term contracts

* the research and name brand universities versus the much lower prestige places including community colleges

* various fields.  Pay particular attention to the fields with many gen ed courses versus the fields that pretty much only teach courses of their majors


I wouldn't have even known about the humanities adjunct plight if I hadn't been a regular reader of higher ed outlets dominated by the humanities.  It's not all of academia.  While Harvard has adjuncts, unless something has changed dramatically, Harvard doesn't have armies of revolving door adjuncts, but Harvard did make the academic news in the spring by canceling most of the humanities and social science 1-3 year, nonrenewable contingent contracts.

[larryc]

So sorry.

[mahagonny]

The contract signed in advance also has advantages for the college. They know they will have Marshwiggle's service in the Spring because they are organized. Therefore, he's not looking for another gig.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

Ha!  We're the state flagship university and we run on an army of adjuncts hired and fired at the last moment.

Whether or not this is a sustainable practice (it is certainly deplorable), it is brutal and unconscionable to make last-minute layoffs like this common practice. To put a stop to it may not be fixing the central problem of the university, but it is not the "wrong" problem. No problem with people's livelihoods is a "wrong" problem that doesn't warrant fixing.

The humane livelihood fix to the standing army of adjuncts is to hire permanent gen ed faculty to meet the known demand or revamp the gen ed program to be able to be delivered with the full-time faculty. 

The armies of poorly-paid, revolving door adjuncts are not long term sustainable for a quality education and it is a red flag to be running the university that way.

We already know that polly will never get it about basic rights of the employee to have some dignity and consideration in the workplace. But I'll say this.
Polly: Anyone's entitled to their opinion of a school. Is it legitimate or ripoff? Anyone's entitled to their opinion of unions. But they should understand it's only their opinion.
What you are about is different. You don't have a magic wand to close down schools that you have recently decided don't have a right to exist. But you do or did recently have an opportunity to meddle and bully adjuncts in your department so they would be less inclined to unionize. This is unethical and in some instances illegal. If there were actual penalties for it people like you would be out of business.

So sorry.

+1 LarryC. The man of few words, but well placed.

We are all sorry and wish there were more we could do, Hamburger.

[Wahoo Redux]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

This is literally all of academia, Polly.

My diss chair had been an adjunct at Harvard at one point in hu's life.

God bless the unions.

No.  Just no.  Go look at the data and pay particular attention to the differences between:


* contingent on annual to three-year renewable contracts and adjunct on one-term contracts

* the research and name brand universities versus the much lower prestige places including community colleges

* various fields.  Pay particular attention to the fields with many gen ed courses versus the fields that pretty much only teach courses of their majors


I wouldn't have even known about the humanities adjunct plight if I hadn't been a regular reader of higher ed outlets dominated by the humanities.  It's not all of academia.  While Harvard has adjuncts, unless something has changed dramatically, Harvard doesn't have armies of revolving door adjuncts, but Harvard did make the academic news in the spring by canceling most of the humanities and social science 1-3 year, nonrenewable contingent contracts.

Yes, Polly.  Just yes.

We've been over all this before. 

[marshwiggle]

The contract signed in advance also has advantages for the college. They know they will have Marshwiggle's service in the Spring because they are organized. Therefore, he's not looking for another gig.

My courses are highly specialized, uppper level, and have significant labs and projects. The challenge of finding people who know the material is hard enough, without even considering the learning curve of getting up to speed on the equipment and infrastructure for the hands-on portion of the course.

Courses that are hard to staff, but likely to have decent enrollment, are going to provide lots of incentives for institutions to not wait until the last minute.

We already know that polly will never get it about basic rights of the employee to have some dignity and consideration in the workplace.

This confuses me.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

The humane livelihood fix to the standing army of adjuncts is to hire permanent gen ed faculty to meet the known demand or revamp the gen ed program to be able to be delivered with the full-time faculty. 

The armies of poorly-paid, revolving door adjuncts are not long term sustainable for a quality education and it is a red flag to be running the university that way.

I don't see how Polly's points conflict with mine. As long as there are generic courses, with lots of small sections that may or may not run, which can be taught by all kinds of available people who don't need to be knowledgeable about institutional infrastructure, then there is no incentive (and a lot of disincentive) for employers to make early committments.

"General education" courses aren't really a thing here, and even introductory courses tend to be in large sections, so there isn't that same need for dozens of easily replaceable instructors. We have service courses that are taught by part-time people, but because those courses are also taught in large sections, the same people teach them year after year.

As long as courses and programs are set up to work with easily replaceable instructors, that's how hiring will happen.

The way to make emplyment more secure is to get rid of as much "commoditized" content as possible.

[in2ny]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

Wholeheartedly agree with these statements. The idea that "a strong union would make life better for adjuncts" is fixing the wrong problem. The main problem is that schools are relying on adjunct faculty for ongoing teaching needs.

A truly strong union actually would not necessarily make life better for adjuncts, because they would oppose the underlying forces that lead to the adjunctification of the professoriate. A strong union would bargain for a contract that would (1) guarantee a high percentage of course sections in every department to be taught by full-time union-represented faculty and (2) strictly limit the number of sections that can be taught by an individual adjunct over some period of time. These provisions would ensure that full-time faculty are hired to meet ongoing teaching needs and limit adjuncts to situations like where someone has a 9-5 job and teaches their specialty on the side, or someone is hired at the last minute to teach an extra section because enrollment was unexpectedly high.

[Wahoo Redux]

Other thoughts on recent posts on this thread:

1) The ripoff artists should be closed and students directed to good educational institutions.  Creating a strong faculty union is fixing the wrong problem.

2) Professional fellows tend to have good job stability with the department, even if the contract is not officially signed until after the drop date.  True adjuncts (i.e., extras or temporary substitutions) will generally be last-minute hires or anticipated possible hires if enough sections make.

3) Places that are running on armies of adjuncts hired/fired at the last minute are probably approaching ripoff status and should be closed.  Again, fixing the timing of adjunct contracts is fixing the wrong problem in most cases.

Wholeheartedly agree with these statements. The idea that "a strong union would make life better for adjuncts" is fixing the wrong problem. The main problem is that schools are relying on adjunct faculty for ongoing teaching needs.

A truly strong union actually would not necessarily make life better for adjuncts, because they would oppose the underlying forces that lead to the adjunctification of the professoriate. A strong union would bargain for a contract that would (1) guarantee a high percentage of course sections in every department to be taught by full-time union-represented faculty and (2) strictly limit the number of sections that can be taught by an individual adjunct over some period of time. These provisions would ensure that full-time faculty are hired to meet ongoing teaching needs and limit adjuncts to situations like where someone has a 9-5 job and teaches their specialty on the side, or someone is hired at the last minute to teach an extra section because enrollment was unexpectedly high.

This is a long-standing debate on these threads.  There is too much for you to track down and read, most likely, but...well...yeah.         

And you are right, of course, but what you are suggesting is probably not going to happen anytime soon.  How much do you know about how colleges operate? 

[pigou]

The way to make emplyment more secure is to get rid of as much "commoditized" content as possible.

And to make students (and the institution) care about those courses. I was at a pretty well-ranked (top 50, but not top 10) college for undergrad and I recall how the required natural science class (taught by an adjunct) was an incredible waste of time. None of the students wanted to be there and take the class, but they were required to. The adjunct clearly wanted to minimize her workload (multiple choice questions, student "presentations" at times unrelated to the natural sciences). We were left with a class that demanded nothing and offered nothing, that could have been taught by anyone with a pulse, and that somehow satisfied the demands from both parties.

At my current university, students would be rioting over a class like this. But I suspect there are a lot of universities that are looking for something just like that. Whatever need it fills, there's no way that's going to let someone command favorable employment conditions of any sort. if the students don't care how well you teach the class, there's no way good teaching will get rewarded or compensated.

[mahagonny]

The contract signed in advance also has advantages for the college. They know they will have Marshwiggle's service in the Spring because they are organized. Therefore, he's not looking for another gig.

My courses are highly specialized, uppper level, and have significant labs and projects. The challenge of finding people who know the material is hard enough, without even considering the learning curve of getting up to speed on the equipment and infrastructure for the hands-on portion of the course.

Courses that are hard to staff, but likely to have decent enrollment, are going to provide lots of incentives for institutions to not wait until the last minute.

You frequently talk about incentive as though people always do the right thing, as opposed to what we know they do. Laziness, procrastination and resentment of adjunct faculty are incentives to put off hiring until the last minute. That way you can complain that adjunct staffing doesn't work out and lobby for more publish-or-perish academic jobs to fortify the standing of those who already have tenure. whereas, you could be getting the right person to staff the course through 'part-time' hiring if you tried harder and paid somewhat more.

A strong union would bargain for a contract that would (1) guarantee a high percentage of course sections in every department to be taught by full-time union-represented faculty and (2) strictly limit the number of sections that can be taught by an individual adjunct over some period of time. These provisions would ensure that full-time faculty are hired to meet ongoing teaching needs and limit adjuncts to situations like where someone has a 9-5 job and teaches their specialty on the side, or someone is hired at the last minute to teach an extra section because enrollment was unexpectedly high.

These are all things the tenure track claims they want. But they leave adjunct unions to twist in the wind, because they don't really want these things. They want the cheap disenfranchised labor and the opportunity to insinuate they aren't reputable and professional.

[marshwiggle]

The contract signed in advance also has advantages for the college. They know they will have Marshwiggle's service in the Spring because they are organized. Therefore, he's not looking for another gig.

My courses are highly specialized, uppper level, and have significant labs and projects. The challenge of finding people who know the material is hard enough, without even considering the learning curve of getting up to speed on the equipment and infrastructure for the hands-on portion of the course.

Courses that are hard to staff, but likely to have decent enrollment, are going to provide lots of incentives for institutions to not wait until the last minute.

You frequently talk about incentive as though people always do the right thing, as opposed to what we know they do.

Rather the opposite. Incentives are things that push people to do something other than what they are naturally prone to do.

Laziness, procrastination and resentment of adjunct faculty are incentives to put off hiring until the last minute.

Laziness and procrastination are precisely why hard-to-fill positions incentivize administrators to keep the same people teaching the same courses. If it's a big hassle to replace them, they won't be eager to do it, and they won't want to see them wander away on their own because they don't know if they'll be rehired.

A strong union would bargain for a contract that would (1) guarantee a high percentage of course sections in every department to be taught by full-time union-represented faculty and (2) strictly limit the number of sections that can be taught by an individual adjunct over some period of time. These provisions would ensure that full-time faculty are hired to meet ongoing teaching needs and limit adjuncts to situations like where someone has a 9-5 job and teaches their specialty on the side, or someone is hired at the last minute to teach an extra section because enrollment was unexpectedly high.

These are all things the tenure track claims they want. But they leave adjunct unions to twist in the wind, because they don't really want these things. They want the cheap disenfranchised labor and the opportunity to insinuate they aren't reputable and professional.

Part-time unions are either redundant or in conflict with full-time unions, whether there is tenure or not. If the part-time union sees the "ideal" situation as maximizing full-time employment over part-time, then they're just duplicating the efforts of the full-time union, so they're redundant. If the part-time union sees the "ideal" situation as having long-term ongoing part-time positions, then they're in conflict with the full-time union who want to maximize full-time employment.

Theoretically, if the full-time union and the part-time union could agree on an appropriate role for part-time faculty, teaching a fixed and identifiable proportion of courses, they could peacefully co-exist, but that would prevent either from the opportunity to grow (and get more powerful) at the expense of the other.

[mahagonny]

'Part-time unions are either redundant or in conflict with full-time unions, whether there is tenure or not. If the part-time union sees the "ideal" situation as maximizing full-time employment over part-time, then they're just duplicating the efforts of the full-time union, so they're redundant. If the part-time union sees the "ideal" situation as having long-term ongoing part-time positions, then they're in conflict with the full-time union who want to maximize full-time employment.'

Beg to differ here. If a tenure track union at a university has a signed  bargaining agreement that says no more than 50 adjunct faculty may be employed in any given semester and the university has, in fact, had 200 every semester for the last twenty years (this sort of thing is common; I don't think I need to name a data source since everyone here already believes it.), then it's not plausible to say 'the tenure track faculty union wants no more than 50 adjuncts in any semester.' They may want fewer than 220, but they do not want fifty, because they know the same thing all of us know. There isn't enough money to pay that many people to churn out publications that no one reads, that benefit the students only marginally, and a hard and fast rule like that would bankrupt the place overnight or at least draw even more scrutiny and criticism to the academic tenure than there is now.. What they want is the nice jobs for their members and the right amount of cheap disposable laborers whose work can be considered suspect to keep the whole thing going. These are the people who need and have special freedom-of-speech protections because we are so dependent on their truth discovering and telling for everyone's benefit.
However, if you say TT unions are often in conflict with adjunct unions it's still true. Because whether they say they want the same thing or not the TT union wants the adjunct union stifled.