“With days to go before classes begin, it's not uncommon for
department heads, or even deans, to ask adjunct professors to take on
last-minute teaching assignments. For one professor, this offer was tempting.
She was a ‘part-time’ professor and her husband was unemployed. She had taken
on more classes at several area colleges in order to support her family and
afford health insurance. Despite the extra work, she was still making under
$25K per year. The professor knew that refusing the offer could mark her
as ‘uncooperative’ and torpedo her chances for a full-time teaching position.
Yet she knew there was no way she—or any of her colleagues—could take on yet
another class. Better to cancel the class, she suggested to the dean, than to
give students a teacher who cannot serve her students.
“The dean nodded gravely and said with some urgency, ‘But we don't
want to cancel the class. Really, all we need is a warm body in the classroom.’
The dean's words reflect a grossly utilitarian managerial approach now common
in higher education, one that is not well known to the public. Students are
exposed to this approach when they peruse class schedules and observe that one
remarkable professor seems to teach the majority of classes. This teacher is
called ‘Professor Staff.’
“Professor
Staff is actually the majority of the faculty known as adjuncts, lecturers,
part-time Profs and other confusing titles. In the U.S., they number roughly
one million. These teachers work on temporary, low-wage contracts, largely
ineligible for basic job protections that support academic quality in the
classroom.
“At the community college where I teach, the percentage of
‘part-time’ professors has gone from 14.1 percent in 1995 to 77.7 percent in
2009, according to a database maintained by the Modern Language Association. The shift in faculty employment from
secure, living-wage jobs to temporary, un-benefited, low-wage work is
consistent with what is occurring in the economy. The National Employment Law
Project calls it a ‘good jobs deficit.’
“At colleges
and universities, this deficit has existed for decades. It has gone unnoticed
only because faculty regularly make enormous sacrifices to shield their
students from its worst effects. Those effects, documented in a report I co-wrote
with the grassroots Campaign for the Future of Higher Education and based on a
fall 2011 nationwide survey of adjunct professors, include teaching assignments
with three weeks or fewer to prepare and scanty access to critical campus
resources, from phones, computers, and other technology to offices, textbooks,
orientation, and professional development.
“Adjuncts prepare to teach on their own dime, knowing that their
classes can be, and often are, canceled or reassigned at the last minute, for
any reason. Generally denied benefits or retirement unless they are part of the
30 percent of all adjuncts who are unionized, these faculty have found
themselves in increasingly dire economic circumstances.
“The Chronicle of Higher Education
reported in May that the percentage of graduate degree holders who receive food
stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010. While there
are no statistics indicating exactly how many of those people are adjuncts, the
documented average annualized income that adjuncts receive likely qualifies
them for various forms of assistance. However, they are often reluctant to take
advantage of it. In two recent cases, students and colleagues extended private
aid to adjuncts in the form of fundraisers and food drives.
“Meanwhile, colleges and universities regularly misrepresent their
employment status to federal and state agencies, thereby blocking their access
to economic lifelines like unemployment insurance, student loan forgiveness,
and now, the healthcare meant to be provided under the Affordable Care Act.
“Professors without independent financial support work elsewhere
to make a living, lessening the time they have for students. This creates an
odd twist on class-based access in higher education: A professor's individual economic circumstances, rather than her
dedication or qualifications, becomes disproportionately important in
determining her effectiveness.
“Our report calls these practices ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) hiring,
after the business model that higher education has adopted so uncritically.
Treating faculty as an interchangeable, inventory of warm bodies is an example
of the harm the approach inflicts on both faculty and students.
“As a faculty member, I have experienced this shockingly
unprofessional treatment firsthand. When I've spoken up against it, I've been
told that if I don't like it, I should simply leave. Instead, I have dedicated
myself to exposing and reforming these practices by co-founding and building
the New Faculty Majority and the New Faculty Majority Foundation, national
nonprofits that work exclusively on improving the quality of higher
education by improving the working conditions of the majority of its
faculty. I do this work not just because I am a professor, but also
because my children, including one with Asperger's Syndrome, are future college
students, and because I believe firmly that faculty working conditions are
student learning conditions.
“JIT faculty hiring means students cannot plan to take classes
with adjuncts they know or were recommended. Without offices or time to meet,
these professors are hard pressed to provide the help and mentoring that
research shows is crucial to student success. They can be hard to track down
for letters of reference.
“Students seem to understand the problem. In a recent Gates
Foundation-funded survey, community college students said introductory courses,
the ones most likely to be taught by adjuncts and subject to JIT hiring, ‘are
not offered in a way to help them succeed.’ Faculty who give their support and
guidance are in high demand but ‘hard to come by.’
“Many administrators understand the problem too. In 2008, the
then-vice president for human resources at the University of Akron, A.G.
Monaco, declared, ‘Wal-Mart is a more honest employer of part-time [faculty]
than are most colleges and universities.’
“Those who pin their hopes for a more robust economic recovery on
higher education need to pay attention to the lessons ‘Professor Staff’ is
teaching us. Higher education needs to be more transparent about its adjunct
faculty employment practices—and correct them. We cannot expect college
students to learn the skills of the future if we treat the majority of their
professors with the dehumanizing managerial practices of the past.”
Maria Maisto is a once and
future adjunct professor, president of the national nonprofit advocacy group
New Faculty Majority and the executive director of the New Faculty Majority
Foundation. She is co-author of the report “Who is Professor “Staff” and how
can this person teach so many classes?” as well as several other publications
on the effect of faculty hiring practices on the quality of higher education.
This article was originally published in
Takepart.com.
Glen - Well, well I know this world. All too well indeed. From 1994-2002, I was a combination of adjunct faculty member and part-time employee at a local junior college. (Oh hell, let's play the name-them-and-shame-them game: It was Triton College.) This is all very, very true. In adult ed like GED and ESL (where I worked since all I had was a BA) it is almost 100% part-time. A full time job teaching adult ESL in Chicagoland is like a place on the US Supreme Court it seemed like - only one opened every few years and sometimes literally hundreds would apply for it. Mostly, it is about saving on health care costs, and only secondarily about the flexibility in hiring it gives, although that plays a role. I routinely worked from 7:00 am to 9:45 pm at three or four different jobs, usually with an hour off for lunch and for dinner. I worked weekends. I left because I could not make a living doing it. Those low taxes you pay for your junior college district have a steep, steep cost in human well-being
ReplyDeleteI see this creeping into the high schools as well. There are more and more part time high school teachers.
ReplyDeleteAnd watch out for the next trend--- high school students taking community college courses for college credit at their high school campus. Boards like it because it looks like rigor, or whatever, but in reality it's likely to be staffed by another stressed out, economically marginalized part-timer working basically just trying to survive.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points made in all three comments so far. I was part of that whole system when it first was introduced at COD and their "satellite" facilities. Which, as we have seen, has been adopted by the 4 year institutions, NIU etc. and their off site campuses. I fought part-time counseling at the high school for years with little if any support from anyone. Nobody seemed to be able to see the big picture and all the negative ramifications for staff and student alike. Very sad, just circling around the drain.
ReplyDelete