“I am what's called an adjunct. I teach four courses per semester
at two different colleges, and I am paid just $24,000 a year and receive no
health or pension benefits. Recently, I was profiled in the New
York Times as the face of adjunct exploitation, and though I was initially
happy to share my story because I care about the issue, the profile has its
limits. Rather than use my situation to explain the systemic problem of
academic labor, the article personalized – even romanticized – my situation as
little more than the deferred dream of a struggling PhD with a penchant for
poetry.
“But the adjunct problem is not about PhDs struggling to find jobs
or people being forced to give up their dreams. The adjunct problem is about the continued exploitation of a large,
growing and diverse group of highly educated and dedicated college teachers who
have been asked to settle for less pay (sometimes as little as $21,000 a year
for full-time work) because the institutions they work for have callously
calculated that they can get away with it. The adjunct problem is
institutional, not personal, and its affects reach deep into our culture and society.
“Though there are tens of thousands of personal stories like mine
of economic hardship and lives ruined or put on hold, it is not to these
stories that we should turn when we consider the exploitation of adjuncts in
academia, but to our universal sense of justice. For the continued exploitation
of adjuncts is, to put it bluntly, nothing less than unjust. Here's why:
Using adjuncts devalues higher education:
“According to the American
Association of University Professors, adjuncts and other contingent
employees made up 70% of the faculty at American universities and colleges in
2007. Though the numbers differ drastically from one campus to the next, all
but the most elite college students are being taught by overworked and
underpaid adjunct lecturers. These faculty are essentially paid contractors,
who come in, do a quick job, and then head out. Maintaining high standards and
expectations, performing research, and providing honest and accurate assessment
under such conditions is incredibly difficult, and the continued use of
adjuncts is destroying the integrity and value of higher education.
Paying adjuncts less creates a hierarchy
within academia:
“It is unjust because it creates an ugly hierarchy within academia
that mirrors the increasingly gross divide within American society. While the
private sector has seen a startling loss of living wage jobs, the erosion of
benefits, and the destruction of unions, academia has undergone its own slow
transformation. While the average faculty
member makes anywhere from $60,000
to $198,000 a year
(frequently for a course load of two or three courses per semester), most adjuncts
are paid somewhere between $2,500 to $4,000 per course. They also have little
to no control over their course assignments, except to refuse offered courses
(which can lead to less work and less pay) and they have absolutely no job
security, meaning they are subject to sudden termination at the whims of
department chairs and administrators, without any explanation or any process
for grievance or appeal.
Universities spend more on administration
than teachers:
“It is unjust because it takes power away from the practitioners
of higher education – teachers and researchers – and puts it in the hands of
administrators. While the academe has
become increasingly reliant upon temporary and disposable adjuncts, who live in
constant fear of poverty, the administrative classes within those institutions
have steadily grown. As Benjamin Ginsberg documented in The
Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It
Matters, between 1985 and 2005 administrative spending increased by 85%,
while administrative support staff increased by a dramatic 240%. Meanwhile
spending on faculty increased by only around 50%. Such wasteful spending on
non-essential staff is out of proportion to the actual goals of academic
institutions, which are charged to teach and research, not administer.
Using adjuncts betrays the students who
are most in need:
“The students who frequently need the most help – poor and working
class students, first generation college students, and students of color – are
also the ones most likely to be taught by adjuncts. It is no accident that the
increased use of adjuncts followed quickly on the heels of a massive shift in
the demography of college attendance in the late sixties and early seventies.
As more and more working class people and people of color began attending
public universities in California and New York, state funding was quickly
reduced. Rather than continue to offer the best to these students, universities
decided instead to expand the use of adjuncts. Just as the doors of academia
were opened to the most underprivileged students, the feast of knowledge that
lay behind was quietly hidden from view, and the paper plates and frozen
dinners brought out instead.
Under-paying adjuncts makes full-time teaching unaffordable:
“Lastly, it is unjust because it cynically manipulates the better
angels of the human spirit – the desire to help and to share one's interests
and values, to cultivate meaningful relationships, to inspire, and to teach –
in order to save a few bucks. Like
federal and state governments, which are expected to subsidize the wages of
full-time fast food workers, adjuncts – who frequently subsidize their earnings
with other jobs – are voluntarily underwriting the institutions they work for.
Though many of these adjuncts would be thrilled to dedicate themselves
exclusively to teaching, few of them can, because none of them can afford to.
“Many people ask me why, given all of this, I would continue to
work as an adjunct, but that is the wrong question to ask. The work I do is
important, it's what I was trained to do, and there's a clear and growing
demand for it. Rather than asking why
adjuncts don't find other work, or why they don't ‘just quit’ as so many
well-meaning commentators have suggested, people should instead be asking
colleges and universities why they think it's OK to pay so little for such
important work.”
James D Hoff teaches writing and literature in New York City. He
received his PhD in English Literature from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2012.
This article is from The Guardian.
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