Adjuncts this fall

[Diogenes]

The purging has begun at my large community college. Classes aren't filling so us FT faculty are getting schedules changed and bumping PT faculty out of their classes.

[mahagonny]

I picked up three hours per week doing a course I haven't done before for the fall but it's mainly because enrollment is high. Either students can't wait to get into the classroom or the school may have relaxed admission requirements in order to make up for lost revenue.
Of course this doesn't mean I'll have three more hours per week on my contract (hourly) than I had last September, because now that I have those three hours they may decide to give some of my other hours to another part timer. But it's not a bad sign for people like who still like to keep busy and keep the wolf from the door.
Oh yeah the three hours are in another department.
And when enrollment is high they hire new part timers. This looks fine to everyone until enrollment dips again.
And then I have another school that provides some hours.
I kind of snicker when people get down on freeway flying and call it poor planning. If it were investing it would be known as 'diversifying your portfolio of stocks.'

[Ruralguy]

Yes, but its diversification with high cost, which is of marginal benefit.

[Wahoo Redux]

I personally have been several of the types of adjuncts on my list.

<snip>

There are costs and benefits to being an adjunct.... [T]he relative autonomy--as long as I remembered which day I was supposed to show up where, it was up to me how to structure my time, etc. I really liked the paycheck and benefits of a full-time job, but an actual full-time job, well, not so much.

I too have been several different kinds of adjunct and FT employee before getting my current NTT FT job.

I too miss certain aspects of the adjunct life, although I will admit that I had an easier time of it than many because I am a trailing spouse whose better half had a FT salary.

I too miss the autonomy and (confession here) the ability to not particularly care.  I always did enough to get good evals (I didn't want to rip off the students) but I only did the bare minimum.  I was not burdened with any committee work (which is not in my contract but I find myself doing anyway) and I had a LOT more free time (now I teach a 5/5 with some hefty prep and heftier grading). 

I have less time for research and writing, and my reading exploration is predicated on the classes I will teach.  I find that I am actually invested and entrenched.  Argh.  That's perhaps the worst part.

I do enjoy having a private, dedicated office (which makes a YUGE difference no matter what anyone says) and having a FT salary is, let's say, nice and makes saving up a lot easier for obvious reasons. 

Still, being an adjunct had a rare freedom for an employee.  My VAP was at a surprisingly dreadful private religious college----and no matter what, I knew it was coming to an end and I would never have to deal with those lazy slobs ever again. Big deal if I blew off a class or two; the students sure didn't care and there were no true repercussions to me.  Overall, I never worried that much about PT teaching---I often thought getting fired would be the best thing that happened to me, and I just didn't have that much to lose.  And when one is an adjunct one always has the possibility of some shiny new prospect on the horizon, no matter how quixotic----and now...well, it seems impossible that we would find two FT jobs in a relatively stable, pleasant uni in an area with a low cost of living and a very nice rental house with a cool landlord. 

The zest is kind of gone.  Now I just have a job.

I think I might be an example of one way the adjunct army is bad for academia.  Plenty of PTers teach their tails off and really care, but there is at least an equal number of us who perceive the scenario for what it is and teach accordingly.

Interesting how, no matter what the original post, these types of threads always turn to the nature of the adjunct army and its effect on colleges.

[marshwiggle]

I do not think that recognizing that there are several types of adjuncts means denying that the increasing casualization (adjunctification) of higher education reflects, and contributes to, a worsening situation in higher ed. Making sure that all people who teach in higher ed get paid enough to live (including benefits) would benefit everybody who teaches. The fact that there are people like me (who teach full-time and still moonlight elsewhere) is itself a reflection of the stagnant wages of higher education over the last period.

I have consistently said that if benefits and pensions were pro-rated, then the financial incentive for institutions to break up full-time positions into part-time ones would be eliminated, and it would not favour any particular category of adjuncts over any other. That is the most straightforward change that I can see that should get broad support.

[dr_codex]

Interesting how, no matter what the original post, these types of threads always turn to the nature of the adjunct army and its effect on colleges.

This one is probably on me. I only did it because the original post was about adjuncts, and extending what will happen in the Fall to the treatment of adjuncts generally seemed a short step.

mea culpa
dc

[jerseyjay]

Sometime before Covid, a friend of mine who teaches part-time in my department and I were sitting in my office before class and discussing being an adjunct vs being a tenure-track professor. My friend has a doctorate from an Ivy League university, several publications (including a book), and was tenure track for several years before becoming an adjunct. I was an adjunct for more than a decade before getting my current tenure-track job.

We both agreed that in some ways being an adjunct is better. There is no service. There is no requirement to publish. There is very little interaction with administrators and, as long as nobody complains, you have essentially freedom in the class room. There are student evaluations, but nobody really looks at them, unless there is a complaint. You can cancel class and, so long as none of the students complain, nobody really notices because nobody really pays attention to you. You get access to the gym and the library. There is no office, but the flip side is nobody expects to see you around. This is all more autonomy than for me, as a tenure-track professor, who has to do service, publish, and have my teaching regularly evaluated. If I do not come in one day, people notice. I get an office, but that also means people come by.

Of course, as a tenure track professor, I get health benefits, it is likely that I will have a job next year, I get paid about ten times an adjunct gets, and I sometimes get assistance for research and conference travel. And, once I get tenure, I will get more autonomy. There is something to be said for having economic and professional stability--and, not so strange, I decided to stop being an adjunct and get a full-time non-academic job (which I didn't really like) at the same time I got married (to somebody who was not able to support me). 

The conclusion, I think, is that if I were able to survive without my salary and my health benefits, it would be great to be an adjunct. Of course, that's probably true for a lot of jobs, too, that are not that good in real life. 

[mamselle]

Back to the OP's question:

I considered briefly checking around at some of my regular haunts for adjunct work in case my private student load drops, and decided I'd rather see about more online private teaching instead.

I might think through what online adjuncting would be like (that didn't come up in the past year since my P/T EA position for the N/P I was working for was ongoing as well) but I have zero interest in going onto a campus or being in a classroom.

Mes deux centimes.

M.

[lightning]

Back to the OP's question:

I considered briefly checking around at some of my regular haunts for adjunct work in case my private student load drops, and decided I'd rather see about more online private teaching instead.

I might think through what online adjuncting would be like (that didn't come up in the past year since my P/T EA position for the N/P I was working for was ongoing as well) but I have zero interest in going onto a campus or being in a classroom.

Mes deux centimes.

M.

Online adjuncting (doing mostly or all online/remote work for schools who do not require an in-person presence nor nearby residency requirements) was discussed in the fora, even before the pandemic. Unlike normal adjuncting, which draws from a geographically based local labor pool, online/remote jobs attract interested faculty from anywhere. It's viciously cut-throat.  And this was before the pandemic. In the past, I dabbled in this kind of work. It was hard to get a pure online gig, but even harder to keep it because there was always somebody who was better, younger, hipper, hungrier, and usually willing to work for less. It was next to impossible to maintain any kind of long-term professional relationship with anyone because there were no opportunities for socialization. I can't even imagine what it's like now, 1.5 years into the pandemic, with so many more out of work scholars, and with every single one of them more than qualified and able to teach online than I ever was.

[mahagonny]

I do not think that recognizing that there are several types of adjuncts means denying that the increasing casualization (adjunctification) of higher education reflects, and contributes to, a worsening situation in higher ed. Making sure that all people who teach in higher ed get paid enough to live (including benefits) would benefit everybody who teaches. The fact that there are people like me (who teach full-time and still moonlight elsewhere) is itself a reflection of the stagnant wages of higher education over the last period.

I have consistently said that if benefits and pensions were pro-rated, then the financial incentive for institutions to break up full-time positions into part-time ones would be eliminated, and it would not favour any particular category of adjuncts over any other. That is the most straightforward change that I can see that should get broad support.

How so? The adjunct would still be a much better deal since the hourly pay is still much less. Where I work the adjunct union has been trying for years to get benefits with zero support from the tenure track union.
What's really going on: the tenure track blames the administration for hiring adjunct faculty. The administration claims they would prefer not to hire adjunct faculty at all but have no choice. The tenure track complains that there are too many administrators. The administration complains that they need that many administrators because of the tasks that need to be done that tenure track faculty don't want to do.

However, if you analyze the situation according to what each party does as opposed to what each party says about itself while looking at the finances, you come up with: the administration and the tenure track agree to use adjuncts but fight over whose gold mine it is.  They agree that if we are willing to sign up for a job without benefits the school should have no concern about offering us benefits. They agree on almost everything except who should get the blame for the dysfunctional, polarized family that is the higher ed workforce. The finger pointing is B.S.

Yes, but its diversification with high cost, which is of marginal benefit.

Perhaps we have a different definition of high cost. I can make more per hour as and adjunct than I can at other things. I wouldn't do it otherwise. I don't get an ego boost from teaching or identifying myself as someone associated with a university. We can live on less income than some. We live in house that's paid off, but it has no yard or off street parking. That's OK. I don't like yard work anyway and if I need flowers in my life I grow them on the city street. I've never bought a used car but I've always had one that starts and runs.

[marshwiggle]

I do not think that recognizing that there are several types of adjuncts means denying that the increasing casualization (adjunctification) of higher education reflects, and contributes to, a worsening situation in higher ed. Making sure that all people who teach in higher ed get paid enough to live (including benefits) would benefit everybody who teaches. The fact that there are people like me (who teach full-time and still moonlight elsewhere) is itself a reflection of the stagnant wages of higher education over the last period.

I have consistently said that if benefits and pensions were pro-rated, then the financial incentive for institutions to break up full-time positions into part-time ones would be eliminated, and it would not favour any particular category of adjuncts over any other. That is the most straightforward change that I can see that should get broad support.

How so? The adjunct would still be a much better deal since the hourly pay is still much less.

Not where I work. (And it seems pretty typical in Canada.) Pay per course is ~8k. Full course load for a prof is 5 courses. Given the typical teaching/research/service ratio of 40/40/20, that means the part-time pay would work out to a full-time equivalent salary of about $100k, which is reasonable. If benefits and pension were pro-rated, it would be right in line.

Guess what? The part-time union still claims part-timers are vastly underpaid. (Because they conveniently overlook the research and service obligations and pretend the full-time salary is only for teaching 5 courses.)

[jerseyjay]

Back to the OP's question:

I considered briefly checking around at some of my regular haunts for adjunct work in case my private student load drops, and decided I'd rather see about more online private teaching instead.

I might think through what online adjuncting would be like (that didn't come up in the past year since my P/T EA position for the N/P I was working for was ongoing as well) but I have zero interest in going onto a campus or being in a classroom.

Mes deux centimes.

M.

Online adjuncting (doing mostly or all online/remote work for schools who do not require an in-person presence nor nearby residency requirements) was discussed in the fora, even before the pandemic. Unlike normal adjuncting, which draws from a geographically based local labor pool, online/remote jobs attract interested faculty from anywhere. It's viciously cut-throat.  And this was before the pandemic. In the past, I dabbled in this kind of work. It was hard to get a pure online gig, but even harder to keep it because there was always somebody who was better, younger, hipper, hungrier, and usually willing to work for less. It was next to impossible to maintain any kind of long-term professional relationship with anyone because there were no opportunities for socialization. I can't even imagine what it's like now, 1.5 years into the pandemic, with so many more out of work scholars, and with every single one of them more than qualified and able to teach online than I ever was.

There was a time (>10 years ago) when I found it relatively easy to get online adjuncting positions teaching history. Many schools were starting to have some online courses, and many professors felt uncomfortable teaching online or were uninterested. I was able to get online gigs at schools across the country. Before the pandemic, however, online teaching had become common that it was almost impossible to get such jobs. A school was more likely to hire an online instructor out of its regular pool of teachers (full-time and adjunct) than to hire an unknown person, often sight unseen, from across the country. I still teach online at one community college in another state (it is part of the tristate area I live in, but far enough that I have only visited campus twice in more than ten years of teaching there), but this is more of a legacy thing: I have been there so long that I have union seniority and they like me so they keep offering me courses, but I doubt they would hire somebody in my situation now.

In the spring of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when my full-time school imposed a pay-cut on staff and professors, I sent out emails to many, many schools about the possibility of their needing online adjuncts. This included several local schools where I had taught in-person before. Of those who answered (because they knew me), the response was usually that they had been forced to cut adjunct positions and were not offering classes to new people now. I did get some nibbles for schools in the middle of nowhere (like rural Nevada) but in the end they didn't hire me either. The situation might be different now, although I imagine that many schools are offering fewer online courses than a year ago. At the end of the day, the very thing that makes teaching online attractive from an adjunct's perspective--you can teach from anywhere in the world--also makes it hard to get a position--since you are competing with qualified people from all over the world.

[marshwiggle]

At the end of the day, the very thing that makes teaching online attractive from an adjunct's perspective--you can teach from anywhere in the world--also makes it hard to get a position--since you are competing with qualified people from all over the world.

This (geographically-limited [in-person] / remote [online]) comparison is analogous to the hard skills/soft skills situation. While soft skills are valuable because they apply to many more jobs, there are many more people with them so the competition for those jobs is much more intense.

[Caracal]

I do not think that recognizing that there are several types of adjuncts means denying that the increasing casualization (adjunctification) of higher education reflects, and contributes to, a worsening situation in higher ed. Making sure that all people who teach in higher ed get paid enough to live (including benefits) would benefit everybody who teaches. The fact that there are people like me (who teach full-time and still moonlight elsewhere) is itself a reflection of the stagnant wages of higher education over the last period.

I have consistently said that if benefits and pensions were pro-rated, then the financial incentive for institutions to break up full-time positions into part-time ones would be eliminated, and it would not favour any particular category of adjuncts over any other. That is the most straightforward change that I can see that should get broad support.

How so? The adjunct would still be a much better deal since the hourly pay is still much less.

Not where I work. (And it seems pretty typical in Canada.) Pay per course is ~8k. Full course load for a prof is 5 courses. Given the typical teaching/research/service ratio of 40/40/20, that means the part-time pay would work out to a full-time equivalent salary of about $100k, which is reasonable. If benefits and pension were pro-rated, it would be right in line.

Guess what? The part-time union still claims part-timers are vastly underpaid. (Because they conveniently overlook the research and service obligations and pretend the full-time salary is only for teaching 5 courses.)

Unfortunately, the only places that pay that kind of money in the US are institutions that hire very few adjuncts. Also important to remember that one of the main issues in the US is health insurance, which isn't a concern at all in Canada.

[Caracal]

Sometime before Covid, a friend of mine who teaches part-time in my department and I were sitting in my office before class and discussing being an adjunct vs being a tenure-track professor. My friend has a doctorate from an Ivy League university, several publications (including a book), and was tenure track for several years before becoming an adjunct. I was an adjunct for more than a decade before getting my current tenure-track job.

We both agreed that in some ways being an adjunct is better. There is no service. There is no requirement to publish. There is very little interaction with administrators and, as long as nobody complains, you have essentially freedom in the class room. There are student evaluations, but nobody really looks at them, unless there is a complaint. You can cancel class and, so long as none of the students complain, nobody really notices because nobody really pays attention to you. You get access to the gym and the library. There is no office, but the flip side is nobody expects to see you around. This is all more autonomy than for me, as a tenure-track professor, who has to do service, publish, and have my teaching regularly evaluated. If I do not come in one day, people notice. I get an office, but that also means people come by.

Of course, as a tenure track professor, I get health benefits, it is likely that I will have a job next year, I get paid about ten times an adjunct gets, and I sometimes get assistance for research and conference travel. And, once I get tenure, I will get more autonomy. There is something to be said for having economic and professional stability--and, not so strange, I decided to stop being an adjunct and get a full-time non-academic job (which I didn't really like) at the same time I got married (to somebody who was not able to support me). 

The conclusion, I think, is that if I were able to survive without my salary and my health benefits, it would be great to be an adjunct. Of course, that's probably true for a lot of jobs, too, that are not that good in real life.

Yes, there are definitely some real benefits. My spouse is tenure track at a different institution so I get a close up view of a lot of what you are describing. Spouse has the standard obligations I don't deal with-meetings, committees, advising etc-but also there's all this other stuff that takes place in the evening. There are talks she should go to, student performances, end of year parties for major, and more. Now that she has tenure, she can skip more of these things, but it can be a lot, especially at the end of the semester. You also just get drawn into department politics and various stressful things around hiring and curriculum.

By contrast, I do none of that. I teach, and then I come home. I once gave a presentation in the evening to a student group. That's it. There's a whole mess going on in the department I teach in right now. I am completely uninvolved. A lot of this is great.

On the other hand even though I'm not dying to start attending lots of committee meetings, there are parts of this that I find dissatisfying. It can be frustrating to be completely uninvolved in decisions around the major and curriculum when you have to deal with the ramifications of those decisions. I teach enough to get to know some students, but because I'm not involved in advising my contact with them is really just though classes. I'm sure most advising is pretty annoying, but I think it would also be something I'd enjoy. Ditto for advising senior theses and things like that.