Quit lit

[mleok]

Caracal, it would seem that the analytics you seek can be found in the AFT report that polly_mer alluded to,

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/adjuncts_qualityworklife2020.pdf

How do you respond to the sobering statistics reported in it? While it might well be true that the adjuncts in the most dire financial situation can only sustain it for a short period of time, but the overproduction of humanities PhDs is such that they are replenished at a sufficient pace that overwhelming fraction of the people who are adjunctive are doing so on borrowed time. In particular, only 15% of adjuncts report being able to comfortably cover basic monthly expenses.

[dismalist]

Alas, people, what you see is the market working. Adjunct compensation is so low because ---- there are so many adjuncts relative to the demand for teaching!

One can of course point to a high rate of production of PhD's in whatever field to explain what's going on, but such people are getting their PhD's and becoming adjuncts voluntarily. And the choices are informed. Even in Athens the word got around.

This is all unpleasant for the adjuncts, but nothing more.

[mleok]

Alas, people, what you see is the market working. Adjunct compensation is so low because ---- there are so many adjuncts relative to the demand for teaching!

One can of course point to a high rate of production of PhD's in whatever field to explain what's going on, but such people are getting their PhD's and becoming adjuncts voluntarily. And the choices are informed. Even in Athens the word got around.

This is all unpleasant for the adjuncts, but nothing more.

Yes, it's ultimately a question of supply and demand. The reality is that for many of these adjuncts, a full-time minimum wage job that offers benefits, works out to better money on an hourly basis than what many of these contingent courses offer, and offers better job security and career advancement opportunities.

It's a bit like the joke I make about student parking permits, it's really a hunting license.

[bio-nonymous]

The big question is why some become career adjuncts. I knew a few who got TT jobs at smaller places after adjunction for 5-6 years. But you also hear stories of folks in their 40s and 50s who have not worked a FT job in their lives despite working FT hours.

This is similar in biomedical fields, except that instead of adjuncts we have postdocs (which admittedly are different since it is not part-time and does have benefits, but the pay is crappy under NIH scale when you figure in the 50-70 hour work weeks--and if you don't work that hard you might as well pack it in). It is sort of like playing the lottery I think. I happen to know someone who was a postdoc for 12 years and then finally got a tenure track position--lightning does strike somewhere, but it is tough to keep waiting for it to strike you. TO stop the endless postdoc'ing some institutions now only allow people to postdoc for 5 years total--after that they have to either become a research associate (another discussion all together) or go do something else like find an industry lab (or work in a winery--yep I know that person) if they can't get a job in academia.

[Caracal]

Caracal, it would seem that the analytics you seek can be found in the AFT report that polly_mer alluded to,

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/adjuncts_qualityworklife2020.pdf

How do you respond to the sobering statistics reported in it? While it might well be true that the adjuncts in the most dire financial situation can only sustain it for a short period of time, but the overproduction of humanities PhDs is such that they are replenished at a sufficient pace that overwhelming fraction of the people who are adjunctive are doing so on borrowed time. In particular, only 15% of adjuncts report being able to comfortably cover basic monthly expenses.

I'm in the humanities, but I actually think of myself as an empiricist in a lot of ways. I only believe things if the evidence suggests to me they are true. I'm skeptical about narratives that seem convenient. I'm also skeptical of evidence. That doesn't mean rejecting things out of hand, it means understanding how some piece of evidence was created and figuring out what that means for the claims it is advancing.

In this case, we're looking at a questionnaire sent out by a professional union. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but that's what it is. I'm more worried by all the information I can't find about it. They got a reasonable number of responses, but I can't find anything about how many people they sent out the survey to. I get especially worried about evidence when I can't assess the problems with it. Did they send this to 6,000 and got 3,500 responses. Or did they send it to 50,000 people to get those 3.5 thousand responses? If its closer to the latter, that's a very big problem.

[mleok]

Caracal, it would seem that the analytics you seek can be found in the AFT report that polly_mer alluded to,

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/adjuncts_qualityworklife2020.pdf

How do you respond to the sobering statistics reported in it? While it might well be true that the adjuncts in the most dire financial situation can only sustain it for a short period of time, but the overproduction of humanities PhDs is such that they are replenished at a sufficient pace that overwhelming fraction of the people who are adjunctive are doing so on borrowed time. In particular, only 15% of adjuncts report being able to comfortably cover basic monthly expenses.

I'm in the humanities, but I actually think of myself as an empiricist in a lot of ways. I only believe things if the evidence suggests to me they are true. I'm skeptical about narratives that seem convenient. I'm also skeptical of evidence. That doesn't mean rejecting things out of hand, it means understanding how some piece of evidence was created and figuring out what that means for the claims it is advancing.

In this case, we're looking at a questionnaire sent out by a professional union. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but that's what it is. I'm more worried by all the information I can't find about it. They got a reasonable number of responses, but I can't find anything about how many people they sent out the survey to. I get especially worried about evidence when I can't assess the problems with it. Did they send this to 6,000 and got 3,500 responses. Or did they send it to 50,000 people to get those 3.5 thousand responses? If its closer to the latter, that's a very big problem.

I'm sorry, but that's just rationalization on your part. You're dismissive of the AFT survey, but you're okay basing your arguments on your limited observations, even though your personal circumstances are very much an outlier? Why don't you just admit that you suffer from confirmation bias?

[Caracal]

Caracal, it would seem that the analytics you seek can be found in the AFT report that polly_mer alluded to,

https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/adjuncts_qualityworklife2020.pdf

How do you respond to the sobering statistics reported in it? While it might well be true that the adjuncts in the most dire financial situation can only sustain it for a short period of time, but the overproduction of humanities PhDs is such that they are replenished at a sufficient pace that overwhelming fraction of the people who are adjunctive are doing so on borrowed time. In particular, only 15% of adjuncts report being able to comfortably cover basic monthly expenses.

I'm in the humanities, but I actually think of myself as an empiricist in a lot of ways. I only believe things if the evidence suggests to me they are true. I'm skeptical about narratives that seem convenient. I'm also skeptical of evidence. That doesn't mean rejecting things out of hand, it means understanding how some piece of evidence was created and figuring out what that means for the claims it is advancing.

In this case, we're looking at a questionnaire sent out by a professional union. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but that's what it is. I'm more worried by all the information I can't find about it. They got a reasonable number of responses, but I can't find anything about how many people they sent out the survey to. I get especially worried about evidence when I can't assess the problems with it. Did they send this to 6,000 and got 3,500 responses. Or did they send it to 50,000 people to get those 3.5 thousand responses? If its closer to the latter, that's a very big problem.

I'm sorry, but that's just rationalization on your part. You're dismissive of the AFT survey, but you're okay basing your arguments on your limited observations, even though your personal circumstances are very much an outlier? Why don't you just admit that you suffer from confirmation bias?

Claims based on numbers and empirical evidence deserve the most skepticism precisely because they are claiming to be based on something besides personal observation. I've told you where my impressions are coming from and I'm not pretending to have detailed exact numbers. If you send out a survey to 20k people and 3k respond, and you have no way of knowing whether the 3k who respond are representative of the larger pool of people you send the survey to, do you know what those numbers are worth? Just about nothing. Of course they could be reflective of the actual picture, but they could easily not be.

Perhaps people who are in particularly dire financial straights are more likely to feel aggrieved and respond to a survey about being an adjunct. Or it could go the other way. Maybe adjuncts who live in their cars and sell blood to survive don't have any time to answer surveys from unions and the actual picture is worse. It would be like if you just called 1000 randomly generated numbers and asked the people who answered the phone, if they approved of the president and just took the straight percentages with no weighting. You'd be assuming that people who pick up the phone when weird numbers appear are the same as people who don't and you'd be wrong.

You're accusing me of ignoring evidence, but you seem wiling to just accept any old piece of evidence as long as it fits with what you already believe. I imagine you don't operate that way in your discipline any more than I do.

[mleok]

Claims based on numbers and empirical evidence deserve the most skepticism precisely because they are claiming to be based on something besides personal observation. I've told you where my impressions are coming from and I'm not pretending to have detailed exact numbers. If you send out a survey to 20k people and 3k respond, and you have no way of knowing whether the 3k who respond are representative of the larger pool of people you send the survey to, do you know what those numbers are worth? Just about nothing. Of course they could be reflective of the actual picture, but they could easily not be.

Perhaps people who are in particularly dire financial straights are more likely to feel aggrieved and respond to a survey about being an adjunct. Or it could go the other way. Maybe adjuncts who live in their cars and sell blood to survive don't have any time to answer surveys from unions and the actual picture is worse. It would be like if you just called 1000 randomly generated numbers and asked the people who answered the phone, if they approved of the president and just took the straight percentages with no weighting. You'd be assuming that people who pick up the phone when weird numbers appear are the same as people who don't and you'd be wrong.

You're accusing me of ignoring evidence, but you seem wiling to just accept any old piece of evidence as long as it fits with what you already believe. I imagine you don't operate that way in your discipline any more than I do.

I would be happy to consider any empirical evidence you have that contradicts the narrative in that AFT survey. I am not aware of any, but please go ahead and broaden our horizons by posting anything you are aware of.

[marshwiggle]

Perhaps people who are in particularly dire financial straights are more likely to feel aggrieved and respond to a survey about being an adjunct. Or it could go the other way. Maybe adjuncts who live in their cars and sell blood to survive don't have any time to answer surveys from unions and the actual picture is worse. It would be like if you just called 1000 randomly generated numbers and asked the people who answered the phone, if they approved of the president and just took the straight percentages with no weighting. You'd be assuming that people who pick up the phone when weird numbers appear are the same as people who don't and you'd be wrong.

On the couple of occasions I've been to meetings of the part-time faculty union the discussion has always been around the issue of how badly off many part-time instructors are, even though we have universal healthcare that isn't tied to employment, and our per-course pay is about $8000.

Also, in the monthly magazine of the national faculty association, every time it talks about part-time faculty it's to say how badly off they are. (Again, even with universal healthcare and more robust social programs like maternity leave than in the US.)

I remember a while back, either here or on the old fora, where someone was considering teaching at an institution that required a commute, and the pay was low enough that it wouldn't even cover the gas, but it was being considered in case it might lead to some sort of full-time employment down the road.

There are endless examples of where this is assumed to be the norm. If it's a tiny fringe, it gets grossly disproportionate publicity.

The one claim you make which could have merit is the question of how long people keep trying to make part-time teaching their primary source of income. I can't recall whether the surveys have included that sort of information. However, even if it's a very small proportion who stay at it for long, since they dominate all of the discussions it makes long-term progress elusive since the picture is so distorted by their influence.

[jimbogumbo]

On the couple of occasions I've been to meetings of the part-time faculty union the discussion has always been around the issue of how badly off many part-time instructors are, even though we have universal healthcare that isn't tied to employment, and our per-course pay is about $8000.

So, here in Midwest State this is not even remotely the case. On my campus adjuncts (except for those in Business and Engineering) are paid on average $2500 per three credit course. With no health care or retirement benefits.

[Aster]

$2500 would be well above average in my region of the U.S. for a 3-credit course. The adjuncts would be tearing each other apart to get a "plum" assignment like that.

I'm more used to seeing a $1700-2000 rate. Heck, at one of the more deplorable state universities in our area, some of the adjuncts are paid $1200 per 3-credit course. That's lower than even the for-profit institutions compensate their instructors.

[Caracal]

Claims based on numbers and empirical evidence deserve the most skepticism precisely because they are claiming to be based on something besides personal observation. I've told you where my impressions are coming from and I'm not pretending to have detailed exact numbers. If you send out a survey to 20k people and 3k respond, and you have no way of knowing whether the 3k who respond are representative of the larger pool of people you send the survey to, do you know what those numbers are worth? Just about nothing. Of course they could be reflective of the actual picture, but they could easily not be.

Perhaps people who are in particularly dire financial straights are more likely to feel aggrieved and respond to a survey about being an adjunct. Or it could go the other way. Maybe adjuncts who live in their cars and sell blood to survive don't have any time to answer surveys from unions and the actual picture is worse. It would be like if you just called 1000 randomly generated numbers and asked the people who answered the phone, if they approved of the president and just took the straight percentages with no weighting. You'd be assuming that people who pick up the phone when weird numbers appear are the same as people who don't and you'd be wrong.

You're accusing me of ignoring evidence, but you seem wiling to just accept any old piece of evidence as long as it fits with what you already believe. I imagine you don't operate that way in your discipline any more than I do.

I would be happy to consider any empirical evidence you have that contradicts the narrative in that AFT survey. I am not aware of any, but please go ahead and broaden our horizons by posting anything you are aware of.

I've looked and haven't found it. I think its mostly a problem with data collection. Universities don't make much data available on adjuncts-for obvious reasons and it makes it hard to study them. But seriously, if the data is bad, it doesn't mean anything. You can't just take unreliable data and assume its true because you don't have reliable data.

[mleok]

I've looked and haven't found it. I think its mostly a problem with data collection. Universities don't make much data available on adjuncts-for obvious reasons and it makes it hard to study them. But seriously, if the data is bad, it doesn't mean anything. You can't just take unreliable data and assume its true because you don't have reliable data.

This is another adjunct survey by TIAA, which presumably has less of a political agenda than the AFT,

https://www.tiaainstitute.org/sites/default/files/presentations/2019-07/TIAA%20Institute_2018%20Adjunct%20Faculty%20Survey_November%202018.pdf

In any case, I would happily rely on these broader surveys, even the AFT survey, than rely on your protestations based on your even more biased and selective sample.

[marshwiggle]

I've looked and haven't found it. I think its mostly a problem with data collection. Universities don't make much data available on adjuncts-for obvious reasons and it makes it hard to study them. But seriously, if the data is bad, it doesn't mean anything. You can't just take unreliable data and assume its true because you don't have reliable data.

This is another adjunct survey by TIAA, which presumably has less of a political agenda than the AFT,

https://www.tiaainstitute.org/sites/default/files/presentations/2019-07/TIAA%20Institute_2018%20Adjunct%20Faculty%20Survey_November%202018.pdf

In any case, I would happily rely on these broader surveys, even the AFT survey, than rely on your protestations based on your even more biased and selective sample.

That one certainly is in line with the studies I've seen in the past. (I recall one from about 2011 or so, from either here or the old fora.)

[marshwiggle]

Sorry for the double post, but here's an interesting point from the survey:

In addition, adjuncts receiving lower pay per course are
more likely to be in households with lower household
incomes. Among those averaging less than $2,000
per course, 38% report household income of less
than $50,000 and 30% report $100,000 or more. By
comparison, among those averaging $4,000 or more
per course, 21% report household income of less than
$50,000, while 44% report $100,000 or more.

It's fascinating that people with higher household income are more likely to be getting more pay per course. (Since most people are teaching a single course, the extra income from that course is not remotely sufficient to explain the difference in household income.) It seems that people with higher household income are more selective about what part-time work they will take. If they were teaching mainly for enjoyment, they could in principle be less concerned with the pay. One interpretation is that the people with low household incomes taking low paying courses are just generally making less financially-astute choices.