Another unpaid adjunct job. This time from UCLA

[marshwiggle]

But, so, still, why is it such an issue?

Someone wants to waste the costs of posting an ad for however many days--what's that to the rest of the world?

It's similar to what many have pointed out is the dishonesty about "adjunct" (i.e. 'something in addition') positions when departments have more adjuncts than regular faculty; it's misleading because it refuses to reflect the reality of what's going on.

As I said earlier, I'd bet in many cases it's not government regulation but faculty collective agreements (i.e. internal to the institution) that make this necessary. Since virtually all of the people negotiating these agreements have PhDs, they should be able to  come up with agreements that don't require this degree of subterfuge to achieve the same goals, and clearly reflect the reason for these positions and their scope.

[mahagonny]

It's similar to what many have pointed out is the dishonesty about "adjunct" (i.e. 'something in addition') positions when departments have more adjuncts than regular faculty; it's misleading because it refuses to reflect the reality of what's going on.

Many have not pointed it out. Many have noticed it and stifled the obviously prompted reaction, for various reasons.

As I said earlier, I'd bet in many cases it's not government regulation but faculty collective agreements (i.e. internal to the institution) that make this necessary. Since virtually all of the people negotiating these agreements have PhDs, they should be able to  come up with agreements that don't require this degree of subterfuge to achieve the same goals, and clearly reflect the reason for these positions and their scope.

they basically have the agreements they want, including the lies they want.

[jimbogumbo]

2) The terms of the funding require teaching, but require that the post-doc obtain that teaching position on their own. In other words, the funder requires that they teach but UCLA is not their employer (typical for a federally funded post-doc). That means that they need a position as an employee to be able to teach (i.e., an add like this).

OK, but in that situation, since there's no pay, there aren't going to be a *lot of "legitimate" applicants to compete with. Only in the most trivial way can this be called obtaining the position "on their own".


*I once had a situation where I drove 14 hours for a job interview, and after the interview, I was told the other (single!) candidate had dropped out. Guess what? I got the job! Quelle surprise!

But that is exactly the point. The post-docs are already there, already being paid, and the Department doesn't want any applicants but them. It is in fact a trivial scheme around a stupid HR requirement. We have all encountered so many stupid HR rules that we just shouldn't ever be surprised by what they insist upon, and then what they are satisfied with.

[lightning]

I'm not buying all the after-the-fact apologist explanations. It is what it is. I don't care what they intended. They advertised for an unpaid adjunct faculty position, and that's that.

They should have included the missing context. They should have proofread and edited the poorly worded ad. No matter how or why they arrived at the advertising of an unpaid faculty position, the situation should be evaluated by what they said and not by what they forgot or neglected to say.

It is what it is.

Whatever scorn may be heaped upon UCLA, UCLA deserves all of it.

There is almost certainly a legal requirement that all jobs be posted for a certain length of time and officially open for anyone to apply to. Yes, it's stupid, but not something the people posting it, or even the university, could do anything about. They aren't allowed to say "this is a fake job posting to allow our postdocs to have the official position in the system that allows them to teach, which is in their training plan", as much as they might like to.

Of course if they wrote something like that, it would be stupid.

But putting in something along the lines of

"UCLA is looking for fully-funded post-docs who would like to accept an adjunct teaching position as part of their workload funded by external grants."

or

"Required qualifications: "Current holder of a post-doc with full funding."

would have probably avoided this completely asinine situation. Before a job ad gets posted, there are multiple steps where an ad can be checked. Nobody bothered or nobody cared. So, UCLA deserves all the scorn that they are getting.

It is what it is, no matter the reasons for how they arrived at the dumb ad and no matter what their intents were. They dropped the ball. They screwed up. They had an employment/HR system that lets or encourages these things to happen. Nobody should be coming to UCLA's defense.

And anyone that comes to their defense is only perpetuating the screwed up employment system and asinine HR rules that made this happen in the first place.

In terms of a response, the worst thing that we could do is think that this whole brouhaha is unfounded and we should just not make a bid deal out of it. The problem with that thinking is doing so would not only perpetuate screwed up employment systems and asinine HR rules and leaves them unchecked in future similar scenarios, it also validates the continuing de-valuation of the professoriate.

[eigen]

I'm not buying all the after-the-fact apologist explanations. It is what it is. I don't care what they intended. They advertised for an unpaid adjunct faculty position, and that's that.

They should have included the missing context. They should have proofread and edited the poorly worded ad. No matter how or why they arrived at the advertising of an unpaid faculty position, the situation should be evaluated by what they said and not by what they forgot or neglected to say.

It is what it is.

Whatever scorn may be heaped upon UCLA, UCLA deserves all of it.

There is almost certainly a legal requirement that all jobs be posted for a certain length of time and officially open for anyone to apply to. Yes, it's stupid, but not something the people posting it, or even the university, could do anything about. They aren't allowed to say "this is a fake job posting to allow our postdocs to have the official position in the system that allows them to teach, which is in their training plan", as much as they might like to.

Of course if they wrote something like that, it would be stupid.

But putting in something along the lines of

"UCLA is looking for fully-funded post-docs who would like to accept an adjunct teaching position as part of their workload funded by external grants."

or

"Required qualifications: "Current holder of a post-doc with full funding."

would have probably avoided this completely asinine situation. Before a job ad gets posted, there are multiple steps where an ad can be checked. Nobody bothered or nobody cared. So, UCLA deserves all the scorn that they are getting.

It is what it is, no matter the reasons for how they arrived at the dumb ad and no matter what their intents were. They dropped the ball. They screwed up. They had an employment/HR system that lets or encourages these things to happen. Nobody should be coming to UCLA's defense.

And anyone that comes to their defense is only perpetuating the screwed up employment system and asinine HR rules that made this happen in the first place.

In terms of a response, the worst thing that we could do is think that this whole brouhaha is unfounded and we should just not make a bid deal out of it. The problem with that thinking is doing so would not only perpetuate screwed up employment systems and asinine HR rules and leaves them unchecked in future similar scenarios, it also validates the continuing de-valuation of the professoriate.

You realize ads like this are posted all the time, right? This one just happened to get picked up by the social media rumor mill and spread around enough to cause a problem.

The ad wasn't the issue, and we don't need to start adding additional stupid contextualization to ads that are already stupid to have to post.

The vast majority of people I saw outraged about this have not been routinely speaking up about equally egregious (or, I warrant) more egregious issues at their own institutions. This one was just easy to pile on because it was a "big deal" nationally.

[lightning]

I'm not buying all the after-the-fact apologist explanations. It is what it is. I don't care what they intended. They advertised for an unpaid adjunct faculty position, and that's that.

They should have included the missing context. They should have proofread and edited the poorly worded ad. No matter how or why they arrived at the advertising of an unpaid faculty position, the situation should be evaluated by what they said and not by what they forgot or neglected to say.

It is what it is.

Whatever scorn may be heaped upon UCLA, UCLA deserves all of it.

There is almost certainly a legal requirement that all jobs be posted for a certain length of time and officially open for anyone to apply to. Yes, it's stupid, but not something the people posting it, or even the university, could do anything about. They aren't allowed to say "this is a fake job posting to allow our postdocs to have the official position in the system that allows them to teach, which is in their training plan", as much as they might like to.

Of course if they wrote something like that, it would be stupid.

But putting in something along the lines of

"UCLA is looking for fully-funded post-docs who would like to accept an adjunct teaching position as part of their workload funded by external grants."

or

"Required qualifications: "Current holder of a post-doc with full funding."

would have probably avoided this completely asinine situation. Before a job ad gets posted, there are multiple steps where an ad can be checked. Nobody bothered or nobody cared. So, UCLA deserves all the scorn that they are getting.

It is what it is, no matter the reasons for how they arrived at the dumb ad and no matter what their intents were. They dropped the ball. They screwed up. They had an employment/HR system that lets or encourages these things to happen. Nobody should be coming to UCLA's defense.

And anyone that comes to their defense is only perpetuating the screwed up employment system and asinine HR rules that made this happen in the first place.

In terms of a response, the worst thing that we could do is think that this whole brouhaha is unfounded and we should just not make a bid deal out of it. The problem with that thinking is doing so would not only perpetuate screwed up employment systems and asinine HR rules and leaves them unchecked in future similar scenarios, it also validates the continuing de-valuation of the professoriate.

You realize ads like this are posted all the time, right? This one just happened to get picked up by the social media rumor mill and spread around enough to cause a problem.

The ad wasn't the issue, and we don't need to start adding additional stupid contextualization to ads that are already stupid to have to post.

The vast majority of people I saw outraged about this have not been routinely speaking up about equally egregious (or, I warrant) more egregious issues at their own institutions. This one was just easy to pile on because it was a "big deal" nationally.

No. The kind of ad posted by UCLA is not "posted all the time," at least in my field. Maybe in your field, it is commonplace, but that doesn't make it OK.

And how exactly do you know that "The vast majority of people" you saw who were outraged about this have not been routinely speaking up about equally egregious or more egregious issues at their own institutions? Even if this were true and they were not as vocal about other issues at their own institutions, that does not negate the conviction of their vocal opposition to UCLA's ad, nor does it negate the heinous absurdity of UCLA's ad.

At least we are in agreement about one thing: the ad was stupid and there is no need to add context, because it is what it is.

[jimbogumbo]

lightning: does your field have many postdocs?

[lightning]

lightning: does your field have many postdocs?

Yes, we have post-docs. Yes, they sometimes teach. I don't know what we would have done without them and their availability to teach. Some course topics in my field and unit are just so esoteric. I can think of 4 instances in the last 3 years where a post-doc on soft money helped out my unit (bailed us out) by teaching one course. At least at my institution, no, we don't advertise like UCLA, because that would be asinine. Things just got worked out internally. Each situation was unique in coming up with a solution, but we never resorted to posting a bs ad that would make us or the profession look bad. And, yes, we paid them. And, no, we don't exploit them.

[jimbogumbo]

My field doesn't have many postdocs, and I haven't seen that kind of fake ad. The ones blatantly exploited in my field (at pretty much every public below a research intensive flagship) are...

mahogany? you want to take this one?

[dismalist]

I don't know what all the hubbub's about.

Whatever moronic things in the ad, it did say that price = 0. So, don't apply. Save a stamp, or a click.

Anyway, judging between evil intent and incompetence, I will go with incompetence.

[lightning]

My field doesn't have many postdocs, and I haven't seen that kind of fake ad. The ones blatantly exploited in my field (at pretty much every public below a research intensive flagship) are...

mahogany? you want to take this one?

Oh, please don't. I was talking about our post-docs.

[marshwiggle]

But putting in something along the lines of

"UCLA is looking for fully-funded post-docs who would like to accept an adjunct teaching position as part of their workload funded by external grants."

or

"Required qualifications: "Current holder of a post-doc with full funding."

would have probably avoided this completely asinine situation. Before a job ad gets posted, there are multiple steps where an ad can be checked. Nobody bothered or nobody cared. So, UCLA deserves all the scorn that they are getting.

It is what it is, no matter the reasons for how they arrived at the dumb ad and no matter what their intents were. They dropped the ball. They screwed up. They had an employment/HR system that lets or encourages these things to happen. Nobody should be coming to UCLA's defense.

And anyone that comes to their defense is only perpetuating the screwed up employment system and asinine HR rules that made this happen in the first place.

Those are great examples. Perpetuating stupid procedures rather than aligning them with reality is unprofessional and lazy for an institution that claims to be filled with brilliant minds with expertise from all kinds of fields, typically including relevant things like  labour law.

It's likely that this practice has been going on for years, if not decades, and no-one has ever had enough of a brain or a conscience to fix it.

[Wahoo Redux]

for an institution that claims to be filled with brilliant minds with expertise from all kinds of fields

You know, though, aside from the PR materials, I have NEVER heard an academic say this about their own institutions or academia in general.

Usually it is something essentially opposite.

[TreadingLife]

for an institution that claims to be filled with brilliant minds with expertise from all kinds of fields

You know, though, aside from the PR materials, I have NEVER heard an academic say this about their own institutions or academia in general.

Usually it is something essentially opposite.

Lol. So true.

It is too bad we do not have the ability to like or dislike comments on this board. This one gets a big like from me.

[mahagonny]

I nominate any/all of the posters on the thread to contact the university and helpfully change the wording of the ad to make the improvements you identify, Good luck. I'm sure you'll find someone with clout who tells you to STFU and go away, in so many words, and has a good reason.