Why do you adjunct?

[ciao_yall]

I get quite a few applications where all I'm given for job experience is a list of classes taught. Almost all of those terrible applications come exclusively from community college perma-adjuncts. I really don't know what these people are thinking when they're writing their applications.

They're thinking 'this has worked before at similar schools where I've been hired.'

Red flags when I'm hiring.
1. This person's terminal degrees come from questionable universities
2. This person's degree transcripts are questionable (regarding specific coursework and/or course grades)
3. This person has no experience in teaching at the university level
4. This person has no professional experience in their discipline (outside the acquisition of their terminal degree)
5. This person has ludicrously high RMP ratings (yes, I check RMP its very effective in ferreting out severe grade inflators)
6. This person is already teaching at other universities (this is more a yellow flag - much depends on the details)
7. This person is wildly overloaded with teaching duties at other campuses or colleges

You don't know how much class preparation time they need. They're probably courses they've taught before.

Oh, I don't need to know that. Class prep is rarely a consideration. I just use the maximum teaching load value for full-time faculty at teaching-exclusive institutions. That's going to be 15-18 credit hours per term. That's a straight teaching load with no service or research buy-outs. 

So if I see some dude already teaching 12 credits online for Grand Canyon University Online and 9 credits at Nearby Rural College, I'm probably going to pass on his application. This person is already teaching a heavy course load; heck he's overloaded already by pretty much everybody's definition. It doesn't matter how many preps or how many different course types at that point. It's still at least seven different classes. That's bad even if he was just working at one institution.

Aren't you trying to micromanage this person's life?

What if they are wanting to get out of one of their commitments, or enrollment is declining and they might not have an assignment in the future?

As long as you make performance expectations and deliverables clear if they join your uni, then what they are doing right now is none of your business.

[mahagonny]

I get quite a few applications where all I'm given for job experience is a list of classes taught. Almost all of those terrible applications come exclusively from community college perma-adjuncts. I really don't know what these people are thinking when they're writing their applications.

They're thinking 'this has worked before at similar schools where I've been hired.'

Red flags when I'm hiring.
1. This person's terminal degrees come from questionable universities
2. This person's degree transcripts are questionable (regarding specific coursework and/or course grades)
3. This person has no experience in teaching at the university level
4. This person has no professional experience in their discipline (outside the acquisition of their terminal degree)
5. This person has ludicrously high RMP ratings (yes, I check RMP its very effective in ferreting out severe grade inflators)
6. This person is already teaching at other universities (this is more a yellow flag - much depends on the details)
7. This person is wildly overloaded with teaching duties at other campuses or colleges

You don't know how much class preparation time they need. They're probably courses they've taught before.

Oh, I don't need to know that. Class prep is rarely a consideration. I just use the maximum teaching load value for full-time faculty at teaching-exclusive institutions. That's going to be 15-18 credit hours per term. That's a straight teaching load with no service or research buy-outs. 

So if I see some dude already teaching 12 credits online for Grand Canyon University Online and 9 credits at Nearby Rural College, I'm probably going to pass on his application. This person is already teaching a heavy course load; heck he's overloaded already by pretty much everybody's definition. It doesn't matter how many preps or how many different course types at that point. It's still at least seven different classes. That's bad even if he was just working at one institution.

Well I can see why you wouldn't want to use someone who's already that busy. At the same time, I've seen full time visiting lecturers with schedules that heavy. The difference is they have plenty of money to live on (as long as they're not being crushed with student loan debt) so the college is staying out the adjuncts-living-in-their-cars controversy, to some degree. Also, I don't see why  we should assume the adjunct faculty someone has will or should put in more than the minimum amount of time that is justified by their earnings, regardless of their work schedule. I see you are meticulous, probably unusually so.
As for why being employed by another university concurrently should be a concern, I respect work ethic. If you're giving people negative vibes just because they like to keep busy, it's no wonder they would be on their guard during your interviews. Doesn't sound like great relationships.

[mahagonny]

I get quite a few applications where all I'm given for job experience is a list of classes taught. Almost all of those terrible applications come exclusively from community college perma-adjuncts. I really don't know what these people are thinking when they're writing their applications.

They're thinking 'this has worked before at similar schools where I've been hired.'

Red flags when I'm hiring.
1. This person's terminal degrees come from questionable universities
2. This person's degree transcripts are questionable (regarding specific coursework and/or course grades)
3. This person has no experience in teaching at the university level
4. This person has no professional experience in their discipline (outside the acquisition of their terminal degree)
5. This person has ludicrously high RMP ratings (yes, I check RMP its very effective in ferreting out severe grade inflators)
6. This person is already teaching at other universities (this is more a yellow flag - much depends on the details)
7. This person is wildly overloaded with teaching duties at other campuses or colleges

You don't know how much class preparation time they need. They're probably courses they've taught before.

Oh, I don't need to know that. Class prep is rarely a consideration. I just use the maximum teaching load value for full-time faculty at teaching-exclusive institutions. That's going to be 15-18 credit hours per term. That's a straight teaching load with no service or research buy-outs. 

So if I see some dude already teaching 12 credits online for Grand Canyon University Online and 9 credits at Nearby Rural College, I'm probably going to pass on his application. This person is already teaching a heavy course load; heck he's overloaded already by pretty much everybody's definition. It doesn't matter how many preps or how many different course types at that point. It's still at least seven different classes. That's bad even if he was just working at one institution.

Aren't you trying to micromanage this person's life?

What if they are wanting to get out of one of their commitments, or enrollment is declining and they might not have an assignment in the future?

As long as you make performance expectations and deliverables clear if they join your uni, then what they are doing right now is none of your business.

Wow, this is true also. Part of your job as an adjunct is to keep finding work every four months, year round. Nothing is certain until it happens.

[nonntt]

I don't want to get into the question of whether or not this is good teaching. Disciplines and classes vary quite a lot. Certainly, the amount of time I spend on prep has gone way down over the years. However, in my discipline, I consider multiple choice exams to be verging on malpractice. If I had 400 students a semester and no TA I might not have a choice, but it just isn't a good way to evaluate student knowledge and it misrepresents the discipline.

Ditto for meeting with students. I wouldn't say student meetings take up a huge proportion of my time, but I have students writing papers and doing projects and I couldn't reasonably just meet with them right after class.

As for the rest, I think your perspective might be quite different if you taught more classes and it was a larger portion of your life. At some point, teaching the same thing over and over again gets boring. I did promise myself last year that I wouldn't do any new classes for a couple years, but I'm sure I'll do it again eventually just because it keeps me engaged. Even without brand new classes, it gets depressing not to try to fix larger problems. I've been trying to rework some of my classes so that they engage more with things going on in the world. I have a gen ed course I've been teaching for a number of years and its ok, but I've been increasingly feeling like I should rework it so it feels more relevant to students.

I've arrived at where I am precisely through teaching a lot of classes. Over a decade in high-load NTT positions, in all areas of my discipline, from 101 to graduate level. At one time, the profession was my life. I built a program, redesigned the curriculum, supervised extracurricular activities, advised students, and tried out new technologies in the classroom. And I was publishing books and articles at the same time. I think it's fair to say that the profession was an extremely large portion of my life. My CV checks all the boxes on Aster's list.

One thing that experience taught me was efficiency. I don't have time to read an essay to determine if a student can tell the difference between zebras and striped horses when I can ask the students to circle the picture of a zebra. I don't actually use many MC questions at the moment, and I assign writing assignments when I need to know about students' writing ability, but everything I assign has to justify its cost in time. I'll redesign materials when I see that a given activity could be better in another format, and I'll retire activities that aren't working. But overhauling a course that's already working well isn't good teaching; it's dithering.

Another thing the experience taught me was that at some level, you and I and all the rest of us are replaceable if the price is right. The university is an extractive industry, and I was the raw material. I used to worry about fixing the big issues, but the experience of having no job and no backup plan and maybe 3 months until complete financial crack-up put things in new perspective. I've spent the last few years fixing that smaller problem, and it's had an effect on how I approach teaching (I've gained new respect for the concrete skills my humanities discipline includes but often takes for granted, but that's another topic). Just like the university reminds us frequently, in word and deed, that every unit needs to be financially self-sustaining, everything I do for the university now needs to make sense financially for me as well. I stand by the quality of my work, but I don't work for free for any of my clients. No course design funding? No can do. I am happy to describe the benefits of the VIP level of service, but it comes at a price.

[Caracal]

But overhauling a course that's already working well isn't good teaching; it's dithering.

Another thing the experience taught me was that at some level, you and I and all the rest of us are replaceable if the price is right. The university is an extractive industry, and I was the raw material.

Just like the university reminds us frequently, in word and deed, that every unit needs to be financially self-sustaining, everything I do for the university now needs to make sense financially for me as well.
I stand by the quality of my work, but I don't work for free for any of my clients.
No course design funding? No can do. I am happy to describe the benefits of the VIP level of service, but it comes at a price.

Like I said, I'm not really here to argue about what anybody should be doing. I would just say that taking a mercenary approach would neither jibe very well with my beliefs about teaching, nor result in me getting much pleasure and satisfaction from my work.

I don't work myself to the bone. I agree with you that as an adjunct it is important not to exploit yourself. My goal is generally not to be spending more time on my teaching than what I would be doing if I was employed on a permanent basis. Full time faculty (whether Tenure Track or not) are being paid to advise students, go to meetings and all that other stuff. It can be easy to just fill up all that other time with teaching work and I don't do that anymore.

Part of that is realizing that, often, something is good enough. Maybe we just have a different way of talking about that point. For me though, a lot of what gives me enjoyment and satisfaction out of teaching is the experience of trying to make something interesting and relevant to students. I've been adding stuff to my survey course on Watergate over the last couple of semesters, for example. Other times it is about trying to figure out which parts of a course that I've been teaching for a while don't seem to be resonating with students and thinking about what I could to change that in terms of organization and themes. I don't know if that's "tinkering," and the results of it will probably be hard to measure, but if I get more engagement out of it, it will be worth it to me. Ditto for developing new courses.

I would just say that while, of course, I'm part of this larger extractive industry, I'm not willing to see the relationship between me and my students in those terms. I'm not naive about my replicability, but I have a relationship with my students for a semester and I don't want to think of that relationship strictly in monetary terms. That's where I try to draw the line. I'm not going to obsess about getting every exam back within a week or perfecting some lecture, but I don't want to be trying to find ways to limit my interactions with students.

[marshwiggle]

Like I said, I'm not really here to argue about what anybody should be doing. I would just say that taking a mercenary approach would neither jibe very well with my beliefs about teaching, nor result in me getting much pleasure and satisfaction from my work.

I don't see why it is "mercenary" to teach in a way that is the most useful for students with the least unnecessary work on the part of the instructor; that's just being smart.

Part of that is realizing that, often, something is good enough. Maybe we just have a different way of talking about that point. For me though, a lot of what gives me enjoyment and satisfaction out of teaching is the experience of trying to make something interesting and relevant to students. I've been adding stuff to my survey course on Watergate over the last couple of semesters, for example. Other times it is about trying to figure out which parts of a course that I've been teaching for a while don't seem to be resonating with students and thinking about what I could to change that in terms of organization and themes. I don't know if that's "tinkering," and the results of it will probably be hard to measure, but if I get more engagement out of it, it will be worth it to me. Ditto for developing new courses.

This seems to be discipline-specific. The idea that what actually gets covered in a course is somewhat arbitrary doesn't really work in STEM, where courses have very specific topics and where there are specific procedures and techniques which students MUST learn in each course. A topic which isn't "resonating" with students can't simply be dropped; the instructor must figure out a way to help students learn it, even if it doesn't "resonate".

For this reason, once an effective technique has been found, it makes little sense for an instructor to try and find a new one unless and until every other topic in the course is being learned as effectively.

I would just say that while, of course, I'm part of this larger extractive industry, I'm not willing to see the relationship between me and my students in those terms. I'm not naive about my replicability, but I have a relationship with my students for a semester and I don't want to think of that relationship strictly in monetary terms. That's where I try to draw the line.

I doubt many people think in strictly monetary terms, but I do often ask myself if some part of what I do which is particularly time- or labour-intensive is actually producing enough real benefit to students to justify it. If the answer is no, then I figure out a way to change it. To be blunt, I'm not getting paid for the amount of effort I put in; I'm getting paid for the amount of learning the students get out.

[downer]

I have one course I just basically repeat every semester with only very minor variation. With another two I make some variation every year or so. Other times I make major changes. The changes are mainly to keep it interesting for me, and also to see how the students respond to different material.

I'm not really sure where being efficient ends and being mercenary starts. These days I'm not too worried about it so long as everyone is happy.

[ciao_yall]

When I was teaching I managed my time pretty well. I did a good job teaching and my students really enjoyed my class. I used that extra time to the benefit of the college - committees, coordinating a program, that sort of thing.

People wondered how I had time to do "all the extra stuff." Not sure what took so much time for them.

[Caracal]

I doubt many people think in strictly monetary terms, but I do often ask myself if some part of what I do which is particularly time- or labour-intensive is actually producing enough real benefit to students to justify it. If the answer is no, then I figure out a way to change it. To be blunt, I'm not getting paid for the amount of effort I put in; I'm getting paid for the amount of learning the students get out.

Oh sure, why spend a lot of time on thing of marginal benefit to anyone? Its why I don't assign traditional papers to student in my lower level classes anymore. Different sorts of assignments can work on the same skills and aren't as much of a pain to deal with and grade. 

[mahagonny]

Aster sees the issues in terms of ethics. The question presents itself, how ethical is the college dean who implements a system where we may expect the job applicant to feel a need to hide benign information about his weekly work experience, while the chair feels the need to snoop around to find out what he's up to during those hours in which he is not obligated to them in any way?

I have one course I just basically repeat every semester with only very minor variation. With another two I make some variation every year or so. Other times I make major changes. The changes are mainly to keep it interesting for me, and also to see how the students respond to different material.

I'm not really sure where being efficient ends and being mercenary starts. These days I'm not too worried about it so long as everyone is happy.

I do pretty much that, still the question nags at me: most students are happy enough with a grade of B and all of the credits they think they deserve. Some will even complain about the B. Others are a little better than the students who expect a B and won't be happy without an A minus, despite that they are still pretty lazy. Others actually think about learning, not grades, and would be happier with a department that didn't admit slackers. If people being happy is what I'm worried about, there are too many games to squeeze into the same ballpark. The endgame is some sort of compromise between opposing pressures is reached and a calculation of how much fear I can live with, the grades get submitted, and the cocktail hour beings.
Higher ed, including tenure culture, pretends that someday soon, somehow, job security and due process for firing will somehow be restored to levels that were common before 1970, and balancing the budget won't be so dependent on kicking enrollment levels up higher to grab more tuition and fees, so the instructor will have the standing to award the grades that were earned without threatening his future employment and the students who are mostly legitimately doing passing college level work. They've been fantasizing about this for decades.

[revert79]

In terms of time spent on each course by an adjunct: I adjuncted for years.  I developed new syllabi for almost every course, but taught the same ones a lot of times.  I spent very little prep time aside from assembling slide lectures, still-lives, demos, etc (these were art studio classes).  My students got lots of attention from me, as a group and as individuals, and I was a good departmental colleagues.  My courseload was up to five classes per semester: please note that studio classes meet twice a week, in 3-hour blocks.  So ten three-hour meetings per week plus advisees and independent study students.  I also maintained an active studio practice as an artist.  It never really seemed like too much.

How did I do this?  I only gave students 2 grades per semester.  A midterm grade and a final grade.  Plus I never took anything home to grade, I just did it all during critiques where it was displayed on the wall (sometimes I would take a snapshot for reference).  I was always happy to meet individually (in private during class time) to discuss progress, but I never graded more that this.  It was totally fine, it never bothered anyone.  This structure was clear in my syllabi.  I never accepted a course that would have resulted in lots of grading, other than 2D Design which has like 4 grades involved.  This is my tip to you...for what it's worth!

[polly_mer]

And yet, we still see articles like: http://www.ccnycampus.org/2018/12/special-report-the-adjunct-crisis/

The observation continues that the problem is not too many PhDs, but hiring master's educated folk to do the teaching instead of the whole professor job.  While 80% of part-time CUNY faculty would take a full-time job if offered, it's also clear that a national search that prefers the PhD means those folks would not be eligible.

I continue to watch higher ed because I'm very interested in how the confluence of:

* requiring classes people don't want to take and don't form an indisputable prerequisite baseline knowledge (e.g., the contrast between "one course from column A of the general education list" and "premed needs organic chemistry")

* teaching those classes primarily with adjuncts

and
* being so far down the resources chain that the school is open enrollment for those who have no other choices and staffing with faculty who are essentially volunteers even if they need the money

will play out when my daily life is filled with the constant mantra of "we must build and maintain the pipeline of people who can function effectively in areas of human knowledge where a decade of targeted, formal study is a good start and we're so short on teachers that we can't get high school teachers and faculty searches at excellent universities also fail at worrying rates."

The adjunct problem only registers because I read the CHE/IHE and was an administrator interacting with adjuncts.  Were I to have remained solely in engineering, adjuncting as a widespread problem would never show up.

[Wahoo Redux]

And yet, we still see articles like: http://www.ccnycampus.org/2018/12/special-report-the-adjunct-crisis/

The observation continues that the problem is not too many PhDs, but hiring master's educated folk to do the teaching instead of the whole professor job.  While 80% of part-time CUNY faculty would take a full-time job if offered, it's also clear that a national search that prefers the PhD means those folks would not be eligible.

I continue to watch higher ed because I'm very interested in how the confluence of:

* requiring classes people don't want to take and don't form an indisputable prerequisite baseline knowledge (e.g., the contrast between "one course from column A of the general education list" and "premed needs organic chemistry")

* teaching those classes primarily with adjuncts

and
* being so far down the resources chain that the school is open enrollment for those who have no other choices and staffing with faculty who are essentially volunteers even if they need the money

will play out when my daily life is filled with the constant mantra of "we must build and maintain the pipeline of people who can function effectively in areas of human knowledge where a decade of targeted, formal study is a good start and we're so short on teachers that we can't get high school teachers and faculty searches at excellent universities also fail at worrying rates."

The adjunct problem only registers because I read the CHE/IHE and was an administrator interacting with adjuncts.  Were I to have remained solely in engineering, adjuncting as a widespread problem would never show up.

All of which points out that as a society we need to resolve the adjunct conundrum. 

I've said all along that there are plenty of classes and thus plenty of FT jobs for academics of every stripe; we have simply allowed the profession to be whittled down to a massive slush-pile of PT para-professional positions that are serving no one well.

Yes, allow me to preemptively thank you Polly for pointing out that we have highways and byways and school children to pay for----most of us knew how the system worked in junior high or thereabouts. 

But we are also capable of paying football coaches four times what the president of the United States makes and building Disney World, so somehow we can begin the process of annealing our higher education system.  It will take a while and cause some pain, but I suspect if we can put a man on the moon we can figure out how to finance actual jobs in higher ed.

And no, it is not simply a matter of "snapping our finger" (the old fora phrase used whenever someone got irritable with the irrational demand for ethical working conditions) but conversation and protest are one of the prime ways we resolve things in our society.

Polly is correct that a corrective of FT positions would put a lot of MAs out of work----and a healthy FT job market will probably re-enroll the ranks of PhD programs and/or will simply cut down on the number of unqualified &/or not-very-good teachers we have out there.

We will simply agree to disagree about the nature of gen ed requirements.

[mahagonny]

And yet, we still see articles like: http://www.ccnycampus.org/2018/12/special-report-the-adjunct-crisis/

The observation continues that the problem is not too many PhDs, but hiring master's educated folk to do the teaching instead of the whole professor job.  While 80% of part-time CUNY faculty would take a full-time job if offered, it's also clear that a national search that prefers the PhD means those folks would not be eligible.

Incorrect. They would eligible for full time positions off the tenure track if there were not PhD's in abundance who want those same jobs, jobs which higher ed also would profit from creating. This is just a smear against the adjunct for not being qualified for a job he doesn't hold (tenure track). An attitude that informs most or all of your many posts on the topic.

[Wahoo Redux]

And yet, we still see articles like: http://www.ccnycampus.org/2018/12/special-report-the-adjunct-crisis/

The observation continues that the problem is not too many PhDs, but hiring master's educated folk to do the teaching instead of the whole professor job.  While 80% of part-time CUNY faculty would take a full-time job if offered, it's also clear that a national search that prefers the PhD means those folks would not be eligible.

Incorrect. They would eligible for full time positions off the tenure track if there were not PhD's in abundance who want those same jobs, jobs which higher ed also would profit from creating. This is just a smear against the adjunct for not being qualified for a job he doesn't hold (tenure track). An attitude that informs most or all of your many posts on the

Degree does not designate teaching ability, of course, and I hope there'd be a place for the excellent teachers no matter their pedigrees.   I think we'd have more peeps seeking the doctorate too.