The Cruelty of the Adjunct System by Alexandra Bradner

[dismalist]

...

To me the story is people staying a college way too long and then forming a self-identity built entirely around their scholarship. It becomes a kind of addiction.

This phenomenon has to play a big role. It is the most parsimonious explanation for a lot of otherwise irrational situations. An addict of this sort is ripe for having their addiction exploited, and there are plenty of people eager to do so.

One should resist the temptation to call many things addiction or irrational. Every job has some combination of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits. Not every worker goes for exclusive or maximum pecuniary compensation. Adjuncting allows teaching something one likes, hanging around students and universities, and so on.

There is no exploitation going on. All this is voluntary. Labor market is working. Pay is low because there are so many willing to adjunct.

[mahagonny]

One should resist the temptation to call many things addiction or irrational.

I'm trying to. I just can seem to stop.

And you think that is extent of the dysfunction in the family?

Not at all, just enough of a nugget to get you going...

OK, fair enough. Speaking for me and I also believe my workplace fellow adjuncts, it's really too late for mutual respect between the tiers of faculty, most of the time. The task is using what's there with a minimum of hassle.

ETA: One thing the tenure track faculty do a lot of in our neck of the woods is fight with each other.

[Mobius]

Heck, there are people I've come across enrolling in part-time international unfunded online Ph.D. programs in the hopes they can be a freeway flyer. I hope these folks really don't think they have a shot at TT positions. I'm not trying to be snooty, but trying to be realistic about their prospects.

Adjuncting is easier and more prestigious than cleaning toilets or delivering DoorDash (I've worked both types of jobs during grad school).

[ciao_yall]

The solution here is easy. Push for legislation requiring pro-rated benefits. The notion of "full-time" vs. "part-time" labour is outdated; if pension and benefits are required to be a certain percentage of salary, then that removes the incentive to break up "full-time" jobs into several "part-time" jobs just to avoid paying benefits.

This is a labour force problem; it's not limited to academia. That one change would affect the entire landscape.

The difference is that a full-time faculty can build a career and threaten a lazy overpaid admin who relies on jerking adjuncts around with a schedule to keep everyone kissing his behind.

[mahagonny]

"With the average part-timer having a total personal income from all sources of only $52,500 ($12,100) from teaching) it disputes the notion that most part-timers are well-paid professionals who lend their expertise to academia for their own pleasure or as a favor to the educational enterprise. Most need their teaching income..."

From Reclaiming the Ivory Tower by Dr. Joe Berry, 2010

Regarding

The expectation is that they have a full-time job elsewhere, or are retired, and adjuncting is just something they do on the side.

There is no basis for such an expectation if it exists. It's not a serious statement about anything. It's an attitude.

ETA:...of entitlement, actually. As if someone deserves for highly trained people to come a long and donate service, through the whole semester, to the college.

[Caracal]

There are full-time adjuncts out there who make $24,000 in salary a year.  I have staff members making state minimum wage (and we're a red state) who make nearly that.

I'm not technically full time, but I make quite a bit more than that. If all my classes actually run (which usually happens but isn't guaranteed) and I teach a summer class, it can go north of 40k.

I agree about the overblown rhetoric. I'm constantly questioning my decision to keep adjuncting. I could probably find a job that would pay more money and offer more security. Heck, maybe it would be something I would enjoy more. However, I haven't been tricked into this. I've never thought "well, what I need to do is adjunct for three more years and then I'll get a full time position." I get to teach a subject to students that I care about and have been trained in, and I have a lot of autonomy in how I do that. I also got extensive control of my own time. So no, mostly not dull, and certainly not dirty or dangerous.

Of course, it still might be a bad idea to keep doing this. I could be prizing these advantages too highly and ignoring the disadvantages, but I find the suggestion that I must be addicted or laboring under a delusion, offensive.

I do think the system is cruel. It's cruel not because it is wrecking my life and driving me into poverty. The cruelty is mostly in the stupidity of it. The institution is saving a rather small amount of money by paying me per course instead of in salary. For that fairly small amount of money, they could get me as an actual member of the department who does service work, advises students and has an actual stake in the institution. If the issue is they don't think I'm good enough for that, they should probably stop getting me to teach four courses a semester to their students. It's a stupid way to cut costs.

[marshwiggle]

I do think the system is cruel. It's cruel not because it is wrecking my life and driving me into poverty. The cruelty is mostly in the stupidity of it. The institution is saving a rather small amount of money by paying me per course instead of in salary. For that fairly small amount of money, they could get me as an actual member of the department who does service work, advises students and has an actual stake in the institution. If the issue is they don't think I'm good enough for that, they should probably stop getting me to teach four courses a semester to their students. It's a stupid way to cut costs.

As I've pointed out, these are largely consequences of tax laws and government regulations that incentivize artificially breaking up "full-time" positions into "part-time" ones. The place to push for changes is at that level, rather than at the institutional level. Since this would affect lots of other industries, then it also stands to get a lot more support from voters outside academia when discussed in that broader context.

[downer]

I don't think deans or university presidents are making judgments about the worth of different faculty in any higher sense. They just do what they need to do to get by, to keep their schools going.

As far as I know, there's no evidence that full time faculty do a better job teaching the gen ed courses than the adjunct faculty. This also speaks to problems with the effort put in by FT faculty if they can't be demonstrably better then the PT faculty teaching 7 courses at 3 different places. As things stand, that provides no incentive for admin to have a higher proportion of FT faculty.

[jimbogumbo]

I do think the system is cruel. It's cruel not because it is wrecking my life and driving me into poverty. The cruelty is mostly in the stupidity of it. The institution is saving a rather small amount of money by paying me per course instead of in salary. For that fairly small amount of money, they could get me as an actual member of the department who does service work, advises students and has an actual stake in the institution. If the issue is they don't think I'm good enough for that, they should probably stop getting me to teach four courses a semester to their students. It's a stupid way to cut costs.

A colleague and I made that argument for decades (literally). It made no difference. We also argued that paying into SSA, and providing healthcare even if they wouldn't agree to full time would make tons of sense in terms of commitment and loyalty to the institution, not to mention just being the right damn thing to do. It never made a difference in the hiring thought process of our upper admins.

[mamselle]

As I recall these arguments from past settings (not all the fora), one of the issues is that some of these expenses come out of different pots of money, some of which can be handled more flexibly, and others of which affect the final bottom line more directly.

Benefits and other salary-related costs may be among these; the same issue arises where building expenses are involved.

You can expense a building differently than you can faculty salary, and it shows up with some positives in other columns that look good after a bit, so there are (as someone just said) incentives beyond those people see in the close-up short-term optics they're aware of for themselves.

M.

[jimbogumbo]

Different pots of money always made me angry.

The pants that re the university do indeed have many pockets. However, in the end it is just one pair of pants.

[mahagonny]

Different pots of money always made me angry.

The pants that re the university do indeed have many pockets. However, in the end it is just one pair of pants.

And one cannot shit the pants without getting everyone dirty.

[mamselle]

Umm, it's just called budget allocations, and it's nothing subversive.

M.

[jimbogumbo]

I know what it is. I also have been on enough budget committees to know that the restrictions are not nearly as restrictive as the admins say. In the example I'm referencing the state budget allocation is based on credit hours, with extra tossed in for retention and graduation. So what is budgeting for adjuncts every year could easily be recurring funds, and effectively is. Spending a little bit more is what Caracal is suggesting, and getting much more in return for the money re retention in lower level classes. And to be a little more clear, I'm talking about high DFW classes front-loaded in mainly Math, English, Communication and Sciences.

[dismalist]

I do think the system is cruel. It's cruel not because it is wrecking my life and driving me into poverty. The cruelty is mostly in the stupidity of it. The institution is saving a rather small amount of money by paying me per course instead of in salary. For that fairly small amount of money, they could get me as an actual member of the department who does service work, advises students and has an actual stake in the institution. If the issue is they don't think I'm good enough for that, they should probably stop getting me to teach four courses a semester to their students. It's a stupid way to cut costs.

A colleague and I made that argument for decades (literally). It made no difference. We also argued that paying into SSA, and providing healthcare even if they wouldn't agree to full time would make tons of sense in terms of commitment and loyalty to the institution, not to mention just being the right damn thing to do. It never made a difference in the hiring thought process of our upper admins.

There's even a name for that idea. It's called "efficiency wages": Pay them more and they will do good.

It's a cogent theory when workers can't be monitored. But, hell, all faculty are monitored, the adjuncts by the students with teaching evaluations, and the tenure trackers by teaching evaluations and the rest of the academy, and that, all the time.

The root of widespread adjuncting is deeper than limited contracts. Indeed, it's the other way around. Limited contracts are desirable from the point of view of the university. It goes to the heart of contemporary US higher education -- it's mostly a signalling, not a learning, enterprise. Thus, from the point of view of the university, it doesn't matter who teaches. Maybe here it was always thus. Anybody remember the gentleman's C?

But even in 19th and 20th centuries in Austria and Germany, there have been adjuncts -- Privatdozenten , private instructors. Invariably, they were rich, for who else could afford to do this with little or no pay? Ages ago they were paid [some] by student fees. Now there's a faculty evaluation! But  even nowadays, thousands are without pay.

This is the nature of the academic beast: Up or out. Situation normal.