Quit lit

[dismalist]

Which goes back to supply and demand...

Yup.

[mleok]

Great, more data! That always helps. It actually appears to have dramatically different numbers than that previous survey. For example, the AFT survey reported that a majority of the people who responded were teaching at multiple schools. Here, that number appears to be only a quarter. I don't really have time right now to dig into the numbers and try to figure out if the survey methods are any better. It does look a bit more rigorous. I don't fault anyone's attempt to collect data, my concern is how they report it. A survey of your members is a perfectly good way to figure out concerns they face, it just doesn't lend itself to mathematical precision.

The sample size in the TIAA survey was 500, compared to the sample size of 3000 in the AFT survey, and neither of them report which fraction of the people solicited responded. So, does TIAA get a pass from you just because their conclusions are closer to what you believe?

Good lord, stop with the weird hostility. It doesn't really matter how big your sample size is if your methodology isn't any good. The AFT survey didn't include any methodology for how they selected the survey participants and they don't appear to have weighted their statistics at all. The TIAA survey includes a section on methodology where they at least tell you what they did-always a good sign. In the appendix, they tell you they used a professional survey company to get their sample, then they weighted that sample by using other information on the demographics of adjunct faculty. That's how you try to correct for things like response bias.

I would like to see error bars in any presented data, since those errors are unlikely to be uniform across all the presented data. And we still don't have any information about how representative a sample of 500 adjuncts actually is, given that the TIAA report breaks things down into such detailed categories. I think more generally, there is a need to subsample the responses and see how sensitive the resulting conclusions are on the choice of subsampling.

[Caracal]

Great, more data! That always helps. It actually appears to have dramatically different numbers than that previous survey. For example, the AFT survey reported that a majority of the people who responded were teaching at multiple schools. Here, that number appears to be only a quarter. I don't really have time right now to dig into the numbers and try to figure out if the survey methods are any better. It does look a bit more rigorous. I don't fault anyone's attempt to collect data, my concern is how they report it. A survey of your members is a perfectly good way to figure out concerns they face, it just doesn't lend itself to mathematical precision.

The sample size in the TIAA survey was 500, compared to the sample size of 3000 in the AFT survey, and neither of them report which fraction of the people solicited responded. So, does TIAA get a pass from you just because their conclusions are closer to what you believe?

Good lord, stop with the weird hostility. It doesn't really matter how big your sample size is if your methodology isn't any good. The AFT survey didn't include any methodology for how they selected the survey participants and they don't appear to have weighted their statistics at all. The TIAA survey includes a section on methodology where they at least tell you what they did-always a good sign. In the appendix, they tell you they used a professional survey company to get their sample, then they weighted that sample by using other information on the demographics of adjunct faculty. That's how you try to correct for things like response bias.

I would like to see error bars in any presented data, since those errors are unlikely to be uniform across all the presented data. And we still don't have any information about how representative a sample of 500 adjuncts actually is, given that the TIAA report breaks things down into such detailed categories. I think more generally, there is a need to subsample the responses and see how sensitive the resulting conclusions are on the choice of subsampling.

Fair points. Still, I'm more alarmed when a report comes with no methodology.

[Mobius]

Here's one: https://theithacan.org/opinion/commentary-a-farewell-to-ithaca-college-after-18-years/

Worked for 18 years and made $30k per year. Why do all this work for so little?

[marshwiggle]

Here's one: https://theithacan.org/opinion/commentary-a-farewell-to-ithaca-college-after-18-years/

Worked for 18 years and made $30k per year. Why do all this work for so little?

Perhaps a hint here:

In addition to teaching my own class within the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences (ENVS), I serve as a guest speaker across campus.

If she only had one class to teach, and everything else was guest speaking, projects, etc., that sounds like a pretty big sandbox to play in. The freedom was the payoff rather than cash.

[Mobius]

I am a jerk for stating this, but having a faculty member teach one class and serve as an evangelist regarding climate change guest lecturing isn't a good use of scarce resources.

Does she drive enrollment in those classes she guest lectures in?

[marshwiggle]

I am a jerk for stating this, but having a faculty member teach one class and serve as an evangelist regarding climate change guest lecturing isn't a good use of scarce resources.

Does she drive enrollment in those classes she guest lectures in?

Well, again quoting from the article:

For the past 18 years, I have served as our campus' scholar in residence, recruited by a previous provost with a vision for shaping the college into a laboratory for environmental sustainability.

The cynic in me notes that when there is pressure to make the campus more "environmentally friendly", compare the costs:

• Retrofit old building$, and de$ign and build better new one$
• Hire a "scholar in residence", "with a vision for shaping the college into a laboratory for environmental sustainability" for $30k* a year.

You can do a lot of virtue-signalling for $30k a year, but real action would cost a whole boatload more. So it may have been a shrewd, if not terribly effective, use of scarce resources originally.


*And if it's $30k now, it must have been somewhat less 18 years ago.

[spork]

I am a jerk for stating this, but having a faculty member teach one class and serve as an evangelist regarding climate change guest lecturing isn't a good use of scarce resources.

I don't see this as a jerky statement at all.

Does she drive enrollment in those classes she guest lectures in?

Hah. Impossible.

From the article: "The bad news: both faculty co-chairs of the Climate Action Group are now among those losing their jobs . . . All told, at least nine IC professors who teach some aspect of the climate crisis — in five different departments — are on the chopping block."

What's ironic is that there seems to be increasing interest in climate change and environmental sustainability among first-time, full-time undergraduates. Instead of altering the curriculum, faculty appointments, and programs -- basically reallocate existing resources -- to capitalize on that interest, Ithaca College chooses to amputate traditionally-organized programs with low enrollments along with the faculty associated with them. And in the process it loses a grant that would have helped finance that reallocation. That's one way of looking at it, at least.

[Mobius]

None of the nine teaching climate action being let go were tenured or are the tenure track (unless they already planned to leave). Using a bunch of adjuncts and NTTs indicates IC didn't have much of a commitment besides having something to put in a brochure or web page.

[spork]

None of the nine teaching climate action being let go were tenured or are the tenure track (unless they already planned to leave). Using a bunch of adjuncts and NTTs indicates IC didn't have much of a commitment besides having something to put in a brochure or web page.

The usual college/university version of the Potemkin village.

[Wahoo Redux]

Here's one: https://theithacan.org/opinion/commentary-a-farewell-to-ithaca-college-after-18-years/

Worked for 18 years and made $30k per year. Why do all this work for so little?

People do what they do for reasons other than money, even if they shouldn't.  We've been trying to convince young people not to leave our 12th-rate MA program to pursue their English PhDs at the local 5th rate, financially stumbling land-grant university (or one with an equally dismal reputation) for several years.  Some listen.  Some simply refuse to give up their dream of the academic lifestyle or refuse to accept the reality.

I've known platoons of adjuncts at a number of different schools.  I've posted many times on my anecdotal observations about the slurry of good and bad in the adjunct pool----and I've largely given up commenting because we have the same conversation ad nauseum. 

I haven't gotten a chance to read the reports yet (although I saved and linked them), but Caracal brings up some valid points, at least from my experience. 

In addition to the human issue, whether or not one has any sympathy for the people who take on the adjunct mantel in the age of information, is the effect of the adjunct army on education, which I believe overall is pretty deleterious.

[kaysixteen]

Assuming they take your advice and do not attempt to get a PhD at the 5th rate doctoral dept down the road, what exactly do you expect your students at your 12th rate MA English program to do with said degree?   Why, IOW, does your program exist?

[Mobius]

💵🐮

[Wahoo Redux]

Assuming they take your advice and do not attempt to get a PhD at the 5th rate doctoral dept down the road, what exactly do you expect your students at your 12th rate MA English program to do with said degree?   Why, IOW, does your program exist?

Honestly...that is an excellent question...

If it were up to me I would kill the program. 

I've actually posted on this before. 

Every year we seem to have one single student of talent among a herd of poorly trained, poorly motivated, not-really-talented-at-all grad students who seem to have no idea why they are doing what they are doing.  It is very demoralizing to teach them.  Evaluating final projects (not an MA thesis) is awful.

To be fair, some are high school teachers getting a credential.  And some just want the education, which seems legitimate to me.  A few get jobs as professional writers for local corporations.  Some, if they do anything with the degree at all, will end up as adjuncts in our massive pool of semi-qualified teachers. 

I've heard that the program generates income for the department.  So there's that ethical quagmire...

If we had academic jobs for these people we could be a conduit for local talent, and one of the things I've posted about before, and would like to know more about, is what the pool of jobs would look like if we actually hired people as academics, not adjunct labor.  There really is a huge market for college teachers out there, even with the uncertain future and COVID; these jobs have simply been chopped into little tiny bits, and in part this is how we end up with a sub-sub-par program like the one we have and a small but steady stream of future under-employed teachers.

[marshwiggle]

If we had academic jobs for these people we could be a conduit for local talent, and one of the things I've posted about before, and would like to know more about, is what the pool of jobs would look like if we actually hired people as academics, not adjunct labor. There really is a huge market for college teachers out there, even with the uncertain future and COVID; these jobs have simply been chopped into little tiny bits, and in part this is how we end up with a sub-sub-par program like the one we have and a small but steady stream of future under-employed teachers.

There are two problems with this.

• If all of those adjunct jobs were rolled into full-time jobs, there would be many fewer of them.
• People with an MA, 12th rate or otherwise, wouldn't be eligible for them.

FWIW, I'd be in favour of pushing for legal changes to require pro-rated pensions and benefits, so there would be no economic incentive to breaking up full-time positions into part-time ones. This would benefit people in all kinds of industries. However, as I stated above that wouldn't help the people in question; it would make them more likely to be completely unemployed.