“We are the stoop laborers of higher education: adjunct
professors. As colleges and universities rev for the fall semester, the stony
exploitation of the adjunct faculty continues, providing cheap labor for
America’s campuses, from small community colleges to knowledge factories with
40,000 students. The median salary for adjuncts, according to the American
Association of University Professors, is $2,700 per three-credit course.
“Some schools raise this slightly to $3,000 to $5,000; a
tiny few go higher. Others sink to $1,000. Pay scales vary from school to
school, course to course. Adjuncts teaching upper-level biophysics are likely
to earn more than those teaching freshman grammar.
“There is no uniformity, but similarities abound.
Benefits, retirement packages, health insurance? Hardly. Job security? Silly
question. An office? Good luck. A mailbox? Maybe. Free parking? Pray. Extra money
for mentoring and counseling students? Dream on. Chances for advancement? Get
serious. Teaching assistants? Don’t ask.
“AAUP reports that part-timers now make up
50 percent of total faculty. As adjuncts proliferate, the number of
tenured jobs falls. Why pay full salaries when you can get workers on the
cheap? Hordes of adjuncts slog like migrant workers from campus to campus.
Teaching for fall and for spring courses at $2,700 each generates an annual
salary of $21,600, below the
national poverty line for a family of four...
“In ‘Equality for
Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-tier System,’ Keith Hoeller,
an adjunct at Green River Community College in Auburn, Wash., writes that
‘throughout the country college administrators, often with the collaboration of
academic unions, have gone to great lengths to keep their increasing numbers of
adjunct faculty secret from students, parents, legislators, accreditors,
foundations and the public.’
“Schools boast of having, or nearly having, 100 percent
PhDs on the full-time faculty but stay mum on their numbers of adjuncts, even
though the distinction has little to do with the talents of the professors.
Earning a doctorate, too often a form of intellectual hazing, confers ascensive status, not teaching ability.
“Generally, schools hire two kinds of adjuncts: the
penuriously trapped who rely on their table-crumbs pay and those who have
incomes elsewhere... Recent years have seen efforts to deliver economic
fairness for single-income adjuncts at the grubby bottom of campus employment.
One organizing force is the nonprofit New Faculty Majority, led
by Maria Maisto, an adjunct at Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio. On April 16,
she said on NPR:
‘When my husband lost his job, I had to try to support my entire family as an
adjunct with no access to health insurance. I have kids. I know many adjuncts
who have been on food stamps. . . . This problem has evolved in such a way that
families and our society are subsidizing what colleges and universities won’t
provide.’
“For strapped adjuncts with no off-campus income, a
solution is to replace a minimum wage with a living wage — say, $15,000 a
course plus benefits. Where would the money come from? Start with cuts to
presidential salaries, which are at all-time highs. Annual pay packages from
$500,000 to more than $1 million are common. Meanwhile, the loan debts of
students — the pre-unemployed — soar.
“Until salaries at the top are trimmed — including
excessive pay to big-time football and basketball coaches — and those at the
bottom are raised, the demeaning of adjuncts is little more than structural
economic violence.
“It’s to be wondered why the collective conscience of a
college or university is rarely stirred by the salary inequality that has
persisted, and even grown, for decades, with little relief in sight. Some union
organizing is happening. Though promising, to date it is mostly an exercise in
tinkering. At graduations, students are grandly implored to go make the world a
better place. Every place, dear children, except your alma mater.”
Colman McCarthy, a
former editorial writer and columnist for The Post, directs the Center for
Teaching Peace in Washington. In April, American University honored him for
outstanding teaching in an adjunct appointment.
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