Splinter article: The Revenge of the Poverty-Stricken College Professors

[polly_mer]

https://splinternews.com/the-revenge-of-the-poverty-stricken-college-professors-1835381061

The article is a well-written piece for those who have never encountered an article detailing the tragedy that is being a death-marching adjunct or why unionization is a popular idea for adjuncts.

The big flaw in the article is zero discussion of what the union has accomplished or hopes to accomplish in sufficient detail that one could believe the adjuncts will be better off for having unionized.  Instead, there's a lot of magical thinking that somehow having a union will result in being better off for most of the members.

The bottom of the article has a slide show with posters/letters/etc. from the administrations.  Slide 4 on my screen explains the realities that:

a) the union cannot guarantee better wages or benefits because everything must be negotiated
b) the negotiations can take months and years


The adjuncts are probably correct that the universities in question are pushing hard against unions because the universities like having cheaper labor with fewer rules on termination.  That doesn't mean, though, that the union can actually fix the situation of people who prefer full-time employment with full-time middle-class pay at a given institution instead of the current situation of part-time positions that pay too little.

[marshwiggle]

From the article:

The accepted story of what an "adjunct professor" is—the myth that has drawn so many hopefuls into the world of professional academia—is that adjuncting is not a full-time job at all. It is something that retirees do to keep themselves busy; something that working professionals do on the side to educate people in their field; something that, perhaps, a young PhD might do for a year or two while looking for a full-time professorship, but certainly nothing that would constitute an actual career in itself.

Pretty spot-on, I'd say.

Continuing:

In fact, this is a big lie. The long term trend in higher education has been one of a shrinking number of full-time positions and an ever-growing number of adjunct positions. It is not hard to see why. University budgets are balanced on the backs of adjunct professors. In an adjunct, a school gets the same class taught for about half the salary of a full-time professor, and none of the benefits. The school also retains a god-like control over the schedules of adjuncts, who are literally laid off after every single semester, and then rehired as necessary for the following semester.

Ironically, the second part clarifies why it's not a full-time career, but then the rest of the article proceeds to tell about people who assumed it could be. The claim that it's a "big lie" is backwards; if the only people who considered it were in the categories listed, the death march wouldn't exist.

[ciao_yall]

Same with the arguments about minimum wage jobs. They are "supposed to be" for teenagers working part-time and "not supposed to be" living wages for people trying to live independently or support a family.

People trying to make it on minimum wage are blamed for not having "real" prospects as a way of deflecting the fact that it should be much higher to be a meaningful rate to actually support themselves and not need food stamps, housing aid, etc.

So, adjuncts are blamed for taking jobs that aren't meant to be for people who actually need them to, you know, pay the bills.

[marshwiggle]

Same with the arguments about minimum wage jobs. They are "supposed to be" for teenagers working part-time and "not supposed to be" living wages for people trying to live independently or support a family.

People trying to make it on minimum wage are blamed for not having "real" prospects as a way of deflecting the fact that it should be much higher to be a meaningful rate to actually support themselves and not need food stamps, housing aid, etc.

So, adjuncts are blamed for taking jobs that aren't meant to be for people who actually need them to, you know, pay the bills.

The irony is that the retired profs and people with well-paying full-time jobs would not be sufficient to staff all of the adjunct positions on their own. In other words, if desperate people stopped applying for those jobs, the wages would likely increase because people who weren't desperate wouldn't feel it was worth it. When I retire, continuing to teach my course for $8k is worth it, but I'm not sure it would be for $2k. (Because I don't desperately need the money, I can decide whether my time is worth it. For $8k, it is; for $2k-not so much.)

From the article, one of the people was a physician in Mexico who came to the US for "health reasons" and started adjuncting. It's hard to believe that the pay and health care for a physician in Mexico would be worse than for an adjunct in the US.

[polly_mer]

I'll do the math here again so we can talk concrete possibilities from the institutional side to address ciao_yall's assertion that we're looking at the wrong part of the problem.

Say we have 100 sections of general education required courses being covered by adjuncts at $2k a pop per term.  That's $200k as the budget.

A 4/4 load is common enough as a full-time position so we're looking at 25 people needed to cover those sections.

The choices I see:

1) Reduce or change the general education requirements so we don't need to cover 100 sections.  $200k goes much farther if we're looking at paying only 8-10 people instead of 25.  As an example, some courses are currently being taught as several hundred person lecture sections across the US.  That's a terrible way to teach an introductory language, but maybe it's not such a terrible way to check a box in a lecture-based survey course that can do think-pair-share or polls to jump start discussions. 

2) Reduce the enrollment to what can be covered by full-time faculty by tightening up enrollment to those students who have demonstrated they are very likely to succeed in college.  Many higher education systems around the world limit enrollment to those likely to succeed.  We can redirect a lot of money by no longer needing the support structures for those who really aren't ready for college yet anyway.

2a) Eliminate freshman comp (usually the largest contributor to the adjunct army) and all developmental courses by requiring college-ready folks who can take writing-intensive courses in their fields and math classes that are college level instead of another trip through algebra that won't take this time either.  If we stop admitting people who need significant remediation in basic literacy and numeracy, then we can focus on a true college education with far fewer professors needed.

3) Crack down on the use of armies of adjuncts for primary mission teaching through accreditation requirements.  That allows for adjuncts as temporary fill-ins or the expert teaching a course or two, but means most classes are taught by full-time faculty.

4) Allow research institutions to abandon undergraduate education and focus on research.  Help redirect those students to other institutions where capacity exists with full-time people already employed who really want to teach.

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

As Marshwiggle points out, if the institution hadn't been able to staff positions at $2k a pop for the past several years, then we wouldn't now be looking at the trade-offs in how to cover all those sections at $8k-10k with full-time people who get salary and benefits (benefits can be 40-50% of the total budget for a person so making $50k gross per year may be almost $75k in the budget line for teaching 8 courses over the year).  Instead, we'd have already reduced enrollment, made concessions in general education requirements, and redistributed students to other institutions because the big schools wouldn't be substantially cheaper than the good small schools.

[ciao_yall]

Same with the arguments about minimum wage jobs. They are "supposed to be" for teenagers working part-time and "not supposed to be" living wages for people trying to live independently or support a family.

People trying to make it on minimum wage are blamed for not having "real" prospects as a way of deflecting the fact that it should be much higher to be a meaningful rate to actually support themselves and not need food stamps, housing aid, etc.

So, adjuncts are blamed for taking jobs that aren't meant to be for people who actually need them to, you know, pay the bills.

The irony is that the retired profs and people with well-paying full-time jobs would not be sufficient to staff all of the adjunct positions on their own. In other words, if desperate people stopped applying for those jobs, the wages would likely increase because people who weren't desperate wouldn't feel it was worth it. When I retire, continuing to teach my course for $8k is worth it, but I'm not sure it would be for $2k. (Because I don't desperately need the money, I can decide whether my time is worth it. For $8k, it is; for $2k-not so much.)

From the article, one of the people was a physician in Mexico who came to the US for "health reasons" and started adjuncting. It's hard to believe that the pay and health care for a physician in Mexico would be worse than for an adjunct in the US.

Exactly. And that's why the supply/demand argument doesn't work. It's called a "market failure."

Instead of having to raise wages to attract people to do the job, they have managed to find people willing to cobble together a ridiculous number of classes to barely make ends meet.

[Juvenal]

The irony is that the retired profs and people with well-paying full-time jobs would not be sufficient to staff all of the adjunct positions on their own. In other words, if desperate people stopped applying for those jobs, the wages would likely increase because people who weren't desperate wouldn't feel it was worth it. When I retire, continuing to teach my course for $8k is worth it, but I'm not sure it would be for $2k. (Because I don't desperately need the money, I can decide whether my time is worth it. For $8k, it is; for $2k-not so much.)

I'm one of those retired profs who creeps in to adjunct a course I taught for a time pre-septuagenarianism.  I certainly don't need the money--my closets are stuffed with high denomination bills; my financial advisor takes me out to lunch--you know, the usual retirement for anyone from the "lucky generation."  But I agree.  I am not wholly willing to give away my time for about nothing, and the $9K (lec/lab, pre-tax; I also have a perhaps uncommon perq) for the course makes it about worthwhile.  $2K?  I'd sleep in.  But if you need the work, well, I think the pay should be more ample than what my CC currently offers.

[pedanticromantic]

The irony is that the retired profs and people with well-paying full-time jobs would not be sufficient to staff all of the adjunct positions on their own. In other words, if desperate people stopped applying for those jobs, the wages would likely increase because people who weren't desperate wouldn't feel it was worth it. When I retire, continuing to teach my course for $8k is worth it, but I'm not sure it would be for $2k. (Because I don't desperately need the money, I can decide whether my time is worth it. For $8k, it is; for $2k-not so much.)

I'm one of those retired profs who creeps in to adjunct a course I taught for a time pre-septuagenarianism.  I certainly don't need the money--my closets are stuffed with high denomination bills; my financial advisor takes me out to lunch--you know, the usual retirement for anyone from the "lucky generation."  But I agree.  I am not wholly willing to give away my time for about nothing, and the $9K (lec/lab, pre-tax; I also have a perhaps uncommon perq) for the course makes it about worthwhile.  $2K?  I'd sleep in.  But if you need the work, well, I think the pay should be more ample than what my CC currently offers.

As a tenured prof, I would HAPPILY farm out my teaching to someone else for $2k/course (or in fact much more). In fact, if i could pay someone $8k/course out of my own pocket and not have to teach at all I'd be quite content with focusing on all the research and service.
I used to be an adjunct, and I was willing to do it for a few years as a stepping stone, but I think if you haven't made that step out in 3 years, then go do something else with your life.

But on the note about unionization, I was as an adjunct a member of a union, and about a year after I left the job I got a cheque for several hundred $ after the union negotiated a retroactive pay increase. It does take them time to negotiate, but a good union will make it retroactive.

[Conjugate]

A couple of  quibbles:

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

As Marshwiggle points out, if the institution hadn't been able to staff positions at $2k a pop for the past several years, then we wouldn't now be looking at the trade-offs in how to cover all those sections at $8k-10k with full-time people who get salary and benefits (benefits can be 40-50% of the total budget for a person so making $50k gross per year may be almost $75k in the budget line for teaching 8 courses over the year).  Instead, we'd have already reduced enrollment, made concessions in general education requirements, and redistributed students to other institutions because the big schools wouldn't be substantially cheaper than the good small schools.

First, with regard to #5, "make explicit" won't get you very far when the state legislature or board of trustees (or whoever) decide that you can handle more students and make you take them. It's not clear what you do when people who can fire the entire administration tell them to increase enrollment OR ELSE.

Second, if benefits are 40%-50% of the total budget, a gross salary of $50K means benefits are 40% to 50% of (salary plus benefits), so benefits would be at most $50K (because total budget is $50K salary + $50K benefits; then benefits are half of the total $100K budget, right?) so perhaps 40% to 50% of salary instead of total budget?

[ciao_yall]

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

Newsflash... plenty of bureaucrats out there who don't care if they turn students away. Not their problem. Those is the rules.

[Hibush]

A couple of  quibbles:

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

First, with regard to #5, "make explicit" won't get you very far when the state legislature or board of trustees (or whoever) decide that you can handle more students and make you take them. It's not clear what you do when people who can fire the entire administration tell them to increase enrollment OR ELSE.

This is a battle that UC Chancellor Napolitano has been fighting with the California legislature. The legislators are telling the campuses to accept more students, charge less in tuition, and accept a smaller allocation of state funds. (And remain the highest quality public university system in the country.) Napolitano is mainly saying that you can do two out of three, but then the third will go far the other direction.

That California, of all places, is strangling this engine of statewide prosperity and opportunity for its diverse populace is just appalling.

Of course, the students are protesting against Napolitano for the tuition increases. I wish they could figure out that she is fighting for them. How do you get smart people to team up for their common cause rather than denounce each other?

[Morris Zapp]

Same with the arguments about minimum wage jobs. They are "supposed to be" for teenagers working part-time and "not supposed to be" living wages for people trying to live independently or support a family.

People trying to make it on minimum wage are blamed for not having "real" prospects as a way of deflecting the fact that it should be much higher to be a meaningful rate to actually support themselves and not need food stamps, housing aid, etc.

So, adjuncts are blamed for taking jobs that aren't meant to be for people who actually need them to, you know, pay the bills.

I was thinking about this the other day while reading a novel in which one of the characters is actually a "famous writer".  The famous writer apparently makes millions of dollars a year, has a swanky apartment in NYC, hangs around with wealthy people in Martha's Vineyard and the like, and the only indicator that he's actually a writer is that he wears a tweed sportcoat or something like that.  Meanwhile, I was noting (since I read a lot of novels, mostly from the library), that the vast majority of "novelists" are actually:
1.  retired people who made all their money doing something else, mostly lawyers, it appears
2.  People who have a real job doing something in Hollywood like screenwriting, but who write novels for fun (some of them are college professors, some of which actually have TT jobs)
3.  people who are married to other wealthy people.
It appears that these days most of America's literary output is written by adjuncts!  Adjunct 'famous writers'!  Nobody for the most part actually makes a living as a novelist.  Or a professional musician. (Our city' symphony orchestra pays less than 30K a year to its principal musicians).  Or as an artist, etc.
But yet this myth persists that there are people who make a living from writing novels.  Because it's a character that appears on TV, in movies, and even in novels.

I'm realizing that professors are more and more in that same barrel with the 'famous writer', the 'famous artist' and the 'famous musician'.  It's a construct, or a figment of someone's imagination.  Maybe once there were people who supported themselves as novelists (though I'm pretty sure most of those people were independently wealthy, and they lived in their family's extra home, as one does, etc.), but the lack of state support for the arts in America means that most people pursue it as an avocation or a hobby.  It's not a living.
I think the tweedy professor is eventually going to be as much a literary invention as the tweedy writer.

[polly_mer]

5) Enforce budget decisions at the state level for the public institutions that explicitly make the trade-offs in how many students can be served by paying real wages to hard-working folks.  Make explicit that the community college can only serve N students with the resources available and refuse to admit more than N students without a plus-up in resources to address larger enrollment.

Newsflash... plenty of bureaucrats out there who don't care if they turn students away. Not their problem. Those is the rules.

You've missed my point: we probably should be turning away students so that the ones who are enrolled are actually getting an education.  As Hibush points out, the system can support good education, broad education, or low cost education with at most two of those three at any one time.

Personally, I'd rather we opt for good education that is free to the small number of people who can benefit instead of pretending that a degree is the same as an education and that either degree or education is really going to help the rapidly approaching future where we don't need all the people we have.

[Conjugate]

You've missed my point: we probably should be turning away students so that the ones who are enrolled are actually getting an education.  As Hibush points out, the system can support good education, broad education, or low cost education with at most two of those three at any one time.

Personally, I'd rather we opt for good education that is free to the small number of people who can benefit instead of pretending that a degree is the same as an education and that either degree or education is really going to help the rapidly approaching future where we don't need all the people we have.

In my state, we have a few "access institutions" which are designed to take students who are not ready for college and get them there. Over the past several years, we have progressed from (a) having up to a year's worth of "pre-college" courses in each of English, Math, and Reading, to (b) having a single semester's worth of such courses, to (c) having "co-requisite learning labs" that students take at the same time as the college-level course, which are supposed to bring them up to speed.

The co-requisite model is widely touted as a great solution, but it works best for students who are almost ready for college; for those with deeper deficits, it doesn't help. Sadly, our institution gets a good many of the "deeper deficit" crowd.

The state legislature, however, keeps resisting calls to allow colleges to teach not-ready-for-college students, and insisting that high schools are doing their jobs in preparing the students, so, there we are. Sigh.

[polly_mer]

The state legislature, however, keeps resisting calls to allow colleges to teach not-ready-for-college students, and insisting that high schools are doing their jobs in preparing the students, so, there we are. Sigh.

That's the other part of the equation: why are there so many high school graduates who aren't ready for college and yet aren't already solidly on some other life track?

<hitches up pants and steps on the soapbox>
When I was a kid in the small rural town, few in high school were enrolled in the college prep classes; those who were planning for college were thinking teacher, nurse, a fair number of doctors/dentists/vets, and the occasional engineer.  Instead, most people in high school were in general education preparing for life after high school as people who would likely either enlist in the military or do some on-the-job training as a literate person.  Some students were already working in apprenticeships because they were not academically minded.  Middle-school included mandatory shop classes for everyone with the idea that people should try working with their hands along side the academics to make better choices since so few people would end up in college.


I have to wonder why we keep insisting that everyone be academically minded once basic literacy and numeracy through algebra has been achieved.  We have other needs in society and enough people who like to do many of those needs that we should be doing better at helping people pick something they like to do that needs doing.

<steps off soapbox>