December 2008

Steve Street, a longtime adjunct, responded to the recent Jaeger and Eagan studies on part-timers and education.

Full-time faculty members are paid almost 75 percent more but are only 20 percent more effective than part-timers. If a 2-percent drop in students’ going on to four-year institutions results from a 10-percent increase in the use of part-time instructors, then replacing all the full-time faculty members with adjuncts would result in only a 20-percent drop in students’ continuing on. And there would still be a huge pay differential to come out of the hides of part-time faculty members.

He then goes on to talk about another study, by Umbach, which said that because adjuncts don’t work outside of class, full-timers who are paying attention to that don’t work outside of class either.

The researchers behind those studies qualify their results more than those who report and act on them. Jaeger called for more qualitative studies; Umbach set his numbers in the context of how academic institutions treat part-time faculty members, to use his qualitative term, “like crap.”

Now, I am also a longtime adjunct. I’ve been an adjunct for seven years. A full-time adjunct for a year now. My students have my home phone number. I have office hours. I’m as available for them as I can be. I’ve answered a phone call and an email today (Saturday, after finals and grades) from two students who called and emailed today. I think I have been just as accessible as any full-timer.

I teach just as many demanding courses as the full-timers. I have just as many (or more) graded essays as the full-time composition teachers. I have a PhD. But I’m not in a tenure track position.

I’d be interested in some studies that show how adjuncts have saved the colleges’ behinds. 1/4 of CC1 is full-time faculty. If CC1 had to pay triple their faculty salaries, I wonder if they could survive. I doubt it.

I’m an English teacher, so I’m used to MLA and use the OWL at Purdue to introduce it to my students.

My dissertation included first-person research, so I am familiar with APA.  

But the article I am working on, due soon, is in Chicago. And that I don’t know.

Diane Hacker has a description and a sample bibliography. University of Georgia has a good one page list of both bibliography and footnote references for all the major types of work in a literary paper.

I think I have also applied to write a work in another style, but that one hasn’t been accepted yet.

Mark Bauerlein of Minding the Campus says, “[T]here is little evidence that full-time faculty are better teachers than part-timers are.”

But others disagree.

Benjamin (2002) has suggested ways that overreliance on part-time faculty may undermine successful student integration. Not only did he find part-time faculty to be relatively unavailable, but he also found that many used less challenging instructional methods. Plausibly, then, reliance on part-time faculty may hinder both social and academic integration and may also be understood as a factor that connects the integration model to the Bean and Metzner barrier or “student attrition” model.

New Directions for Higher Education published a dedicated volume documenting concerns that poor institutional assimilation by part-time faculty adversely affects student learning. The effects included reduced instructional quality, lack of curricular cohesion, and weak advising (Benjamin, 2003a, 2003b; Cross & Goldenberg, 2003; Elman, 2003; Schuster, 2003; Thompson, 2003; Townsend, 2003). While successfully raising questions about the instructional effectiveness of part-time faculty, the quantitative evidence in that volume did not address the central question of whether heavy reliance on part-time faculty significantly alters student outcomes. This issue was directly assessed in two quantitative studies examining student persistence and graduation. Harrington and Schibik (2001) studied one large midwestern university and found that, when freshmen took a higher percentage of their courses with part-time faculty, they were less likely to persist towards their degree. Ehrenberg and Zhang (2004) tested a large sample of institutions for which there were multiple observations dating back to 1986. They concluded that for each 10% increase in the percentage of faculty employed part-time at four-year institutions, graduation rates decrease by 2.65%. [bolding mine, ed.]

That is a major point, I think. If taking more part-time teacher decreases your likelihood of graduation, wouldn’t a student want to take full-timers?

I will say, though, that when I have on-campus hours as a part-timer, I still don’t see many students. And the ones I do see are from two categories, the hardest-working and the troublesome. The hardest-working students are coming to see me with early versions of their papers and asking how they can be improved. They are doing their best to do their best and I love to help them. The troublesome ones are those who probably won’t make it through class or their degree, or will only get it because they are such pains when thwarted that no one is willing to turn them down. These are the ones that it actually hurts to help. I worked with one of these for sixteen hours (minimum) to thirty-two hours (maximum) personally outside of class. When she made a B in the class, she ripped me up on Rate My Professor. She’s the kind of student that makes me not want to have office hours, even when I can.

and

Student evaluations of full- and part-time faculty differ little (Hellman, 1998). Yet differences have been found in grading patterns, with part-time faculty grades being significantly higher (McArthur, 1999).

I know that this latter has been an issue for me as a part-timer. I wonder if I am grading too hard, if grading easier would improve student retention. (I already have glowing evaluations.)

So, as an adjunct, am I helping or hurting my students?

I have a PhD, which is an issue discussed by Benjamin. I have office hours (sometimes). I am available. (I give students my home phone number.) I use multiple techniques for teaching.

I guess I think that, if there is a problem with adjuncts, it isn’t me. Of course, all of us probably think that.

Erin O’Connor at Critical Mass wrote a post on tenure.

One reason people want tenure is for academic freedom. If you have tenure, the theory goes, you can oppose the administration politically at no cost to yourself.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

If you are opposing the administration, are you really going to wait until you are tenured? No, you’re not. And as a result, you won’t get tenure.

If you are opposing someone at no risk to yourself, isn’t it possible that you will oppose them out of vengefulness, pettiness, or simply desiring to be annoying? Yes, it is.

So tenure = academic freedom is a “get out of jail free card” for teachers who just want to make the administration miserable. No, everyone doesn’t do it, but some of them do. You probably know one or two.

Then there’s the idea that tenure rewards hard work. As my grampa used to say, “The reward for work well done is more work to do.” If a teacher is teaching (and researching, at a research institute), then they will be rewarded. No administration in the world wants to have to pay to go look for candidates to replace good people they already have. And they’re not going to do that, most of the time. Yes, sometimes someone gets in a squabble and maybe it isn’t the teacher’s fault, but most of the time this won’t happen.

My high school had tenure. (Yes, you read that right.) And there was a Spanish teacher who didn’t teach anything in her classes. She had tenure, so she didn’t have to. Now, there were forty teachers in my high school and only one wasn’t doing her job. But the 39 who were doing their job, would have done it without tenure. And the one who wasn’t, could have been let go without tenure.

On the other hand, if there’s no tenure, then full-time faculty may be increasingly replaced with part-timers, or, more likely, as new teachers are needed, only part-time faculty will be hired.

How can we get around that?

First, schools who are hiring lots of adjuncts don’t have high standing, in their communities or in academia. And, believe it or not, all schools want to have a high standing. So why are they hiring mostly adjuncts? It’s financial considerations. And tenure or not isn’t going to change the financial considerations for most of those schools.

Next, what about fixed term contracts? My SLAC has three-year fixed term contracts. Most of the teachers there have been there for the last twenty years on those contracts. They haven’t needed tenure to have job security, because they and the school fit each other.

Now, however, there are differences coming, and some of them may not have notice the changes in the wind. The SLAC is moving towards being a research institute. So without publications and presentations, a person won’t get hired there. I would not be surprised if, eventually, the school starts letting go people who don’t have the publications they want. But that won’t be soon. Remember what I said earlier? It’s way easier to keep what you have than to get something new. So even with the winds of change blowing, most of those teachers will keep their jobs for multiple more contract terms without needing to improve their publication/presentation rate. And those who want to stay on and who people want to keep, they’ll get the idea (either themselves or through a nudge) that they need to get to work.

Therefore, I am for fixed year contracts over tenure. I don’t think tenure does much for a school and I don’t think it really does a lot for the teachers.

Of course, I’m speaking from the outside, as someone without tenure, without a full-time position, so some may discount my opinion. But I think it makes sense. And I think we are moving towards that model in academia.

I regularly hit Uni of Penn’s English CFP to see what is out there. And I wish it changed everyday, since it gives me something besides the work I am doing to think about.

Do I need more CFPs? No, not right now. I just sent in a paper due Jan. 1. The editor wrote back, “Thanks for getting it in so early.” My other paper due Jan. 1 will, unfortunately, probably get in Jan. 1. I had hoped to do more on it, but either it is harder than I thought or I am making it more difficult.

I’m also soliciting information and collating it on a paper due Feb. 15…

So, no, I don’t need more CFPs. But they sure would be interesting.

Many students think so. And Bruce Fleming says it is because we have professionalized the teaching of literature.

Nowadays we teach literature as if we were giving a tour of a grocery store to Martians who’ve just touched down on Earth. We professional storekeepers explain the vegetable section, the dairy section, the meat section, note similarities and differences among our wares, variations of texture and color, the fact that there’s no milk where the applesauce is, and perhaps the fact (which we bemoan) that there are no papayas. We’re teaching the store, not what’s in it. We don’t presuppose visitors know anything about where the things on display came from; if they do, it’s because we told them — that can be our work too, speaking of the world before it ended up in the grocery store. But we’re the ones who decide whether or not to include that world outside, and how much. We just want to rack up sales. All this fixation by the storekeepers on the store misses the point: People grow food in order to eat it. Similarly, books are meant to be read. Reading is the point of a book, not integrating it into a discipline.

Interesting. That simile doesn’t do it for you? How about this one?

Literary study in the classroom nowadays offers views of the work of literature rather like the views of Mt. Fuji in Hokusai’s celebrated spring series on “100 Views of Mt. Fuji.” In each view, the mountain, while present, is frequently tiny and in a corner, viewed (in the most famous print) beyond the crest of a wave whose foam seems to make fingers at the edges, or (in another) through a hoop that a barrel-maker is shaping.

Those are not the front-and-center shots on a postcard. They foreground the angle of the mountain, its treatment, much the way a literature professor does with a funky viewpoint that got him or her tenure. Of course the postcard shot has its own point, but in a real sense it’s more neutral than the angled treatment. It doesn’t push our noses in its approach: It defers to the object it is depicting. We’re far more conscious of the treatment of Mt. Fuji in an artsy Hokusai print than we are in a postcard shot. And that means, we’re all but compelled to see the mountain the way it’s presented, rather than being able to work on our own presentation.

The point of those two paragraphs, though, is the next sentence. “That’s why literary studies is intrinsically coercive.”

Whoa!

Teaching literature is coercive.

Here’s his discussion of that:

The power of the professor in the professionalized classroom — and the pressure on students to conform — is thus exponentially greater than it was before people started thinking that the point was the “View of Mt. Fuji” rather than Mt. Fuji viewed. If you want a good grade, you adopt that viewpoint. That’s what’s being taught, after all. Several generations of students have by now learned to give in to the power of the literary-studies professor — and hated every minute of it.

This is why I didn’t enjoy some of my graduate classes. You had to take the view of the teacher in order to write the paper and pass. That’s wrong. I like better the idea that the professor presents his view, through the red flag, perhaps, and I present mine, striated in a rainbow.

There is a point to college or university guidance of literature. Most people never read serious literature at all without a guide. Too, people get more sophisticated as they have things pointed out to them, or as they read more. And many people just don’t know what they may read to begin with. So there’s a reason for teaching. We professors just have to remember that the books are the point, not us. We need, in short, to get beyond literary studies. We’re not scientists, we’re coaches. We’re not transmitting information, at least not in the sense of teaching a discipline. But we do get to see our students react, question, develop, and grow. If you like life, that’s satisfaction enough.

This ending paragraph offers hope to me. Yes, we want a guide to the reading. But what could the students be getting out of the reading? That is up to the students. He does guide them, in thinking of literature as it relates to their lives.

And that is what I am trying to do with Brit Lit I in May. We’ll see how well I carry it out.

But consider, Everyman is about a man told he is going to die. Where does he seek comfort? Where does he find comfort? Those are issues my students-to-be can relate to. How could we use that information while we are still living and not dying? That’s another question.

This has come up twice in the last twenty-four hours so I felt like I had to address it.

A smart student at the local high school and a friend of my son’s asked for quotes for her quiz, since she had not read the book. What’s up with that? There are even excellent videos of the book in question which would give her sufficient quotes to actually know the context of them.

(I get around this problem by giving the students the quotes and asking them who said it and to whom.)

Then Matthew Yglesias, a Harvard grad, wrote about lying about books he’s read.

Folks, that is not something you should admit in public. Lying. Why would anyone who reads your blog and doesn’t know you personally ever trust you again? Shoot, some of the folks that know you won’t trust you.

I am a PhD in English and I have not read every book out there in English-language literature. I don’t like some of the ones I’ve read.

But I don’t lie about my reading.

I read The Scarlet Letter once and didn’t like it.

I’ve read Frankenstein a lot and love it, but hate the feminist criticism about it, though sometimes I think they have a point.

I think I had to read 1984 for school, but I don’t remember it.

I had to read Animal Farm for school and enjoyed it. My son had to read it for me and loved it.

I’ve read several Hardy and several Faulkner books, none of which I liked. I hope never to have to read another. I do fancy one of Hardy’s poems, though I don’t like the subject matter. But it’s easy to understand and very interesting. I teach it to my freshmen lit students.

I haven’t read the book my high school friend didn’t read for her quiz. But if I ever have to teach it, I will read it before presenting it to the class.

There are many “classic” works which I have not read. There are other works which I think should be classics that most people have not read.

I do not read to show off my brain. I read to feed my brain and my soul. And so I try to avoid literature most of the time because it is thoroughly depressing.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is the relatively high percentage of the upper- division undergraduate courses taught by non- tenure- track faculty members across all three institutional types. English departments do sometimes hire journalists, artists, actors, technical writers, and members of the legal profession for upper-division undergraduate courses in literature, composition, film, and writing. But the numbers here suggest that there are not enough tenured or tenure- track faculty members to cover upper-division under-graduate courses. Or, perhaps, for tenured or tenure- track faculty members to maintain their involvement in the lower division, department chairs have had to turn to non- tenure- track faculty members to teach courses for majors—even a very small percentage of courses for graduate students. (8) 

So said MLA’s “Education in the Balance,” their 2007 report.

Obviously at my CCs there are no upper-division courses. The sophomore courses are 99% taught by the tenure-track instructors. The 1% is the May-term class which doesn’t count toward the 10.5 month contract and is taught by whatever willing adjunct can be found, which in this case was me.

At SLAC, I know the upper-division grammar class is taught by an adjunct, but I think that is the only course that is done that way. And they have enough faculty to teach it; no one wants to though. That teacher has a PhD and is a grammar specialist, though, so her work is not a sloughing off of a bad job to a poor adjunct.

MLA seemed to be surprised that full-time faculty in baccalaureate institutes taught just as many first-year courses as they taught upper-division classes. But there are a lot more first-year courses than upper-division classes and in most BA schools, there are still plenty of faculty teaching and not focusing on research.

These figures show that, of all the faculty members hired by departments, no more than one in seven was hired to a tenure-track position. (9)

This is not surprising at all. For every tenure-track position, most colleges have to hire two part-timers to cover the same amount of classes. But they can afford to hire six for the same amount of money. So they get the equivalent of three full-timers for less pay. Of course they are going to hire part-timers as long as the emphasis is on finances.

The committee is drawn, on the one hand, to the argument that the concept of a non- tenure-track faculty is an illegitimate exercise of institutional authority; it is, and it ought to be, contested by whatever means available. (15)

I do not understand why hiring non-tenure-track faculty is illegitimate. My SLAC has three-year renewable contracts. Those have been stable for decades, although they are changing now as the president moves the college towards more research-intense work. Even when the letting go of traditional faculty who have not been publishing happens, as I expect it will in a few years, most of these teachers know it is coming and can do something about it now.

Neither of my SLACs, including the one where I taught as ft, are mostly staffed by part-timers. 90% or more of their English departments are full-time. Obviously one has no tenure-track, but even so most of its faculty has been there for years, with the exception of two new hires last year who replaced people who left four years ago when the college was in a downturn. (They retired.) The other has one position in the department that is full-time, non-tenure track. It is staffed by an MFA who does not intend to get a PhD. This is exactly the position she wants.

At a time when the percentage of undergraduate courses taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty members is in decline, it seems imperative that we set standards for the appropriate levels and areas of participation by tenure-line and full-time non-tenure-track faculty members in the undergraduate curriculum. We understand that the first obligation of the tenured and tenure- track faculty is to majors and graduate students. (17)

This goes back to a discussion I started in Adjunct Crunching as a response to Erin O’Connor’s “Adjunct Crunch.

Erin is arguing in her post that freshman composition should be the main focus of teachers in the English departments. Obviously MLA disagrees with her.

What do I think? I think that most English departments are supported by their freshman composition classes and they should give support back to those classes. In a CC most of the tenure-track teachers are teaching two freshman and three sophomore classes every semester. Some teach three freshman and two sophomores. But that means that in a year they teach 7 or 8 freshman comp classes. An adjunct, who can now teach 7 classes a year, will teach all 7 as freshman comp. And at CC1 there are three adjuncts for every full-timer. At CC2 it is a 1 to 1 ratio. There are as many full-timers as there are part-timers. At SLAC, there is a ratio in favor of full-timers, but not by much. This means that at CC1 far more of the freshman classes are taught by adjuncts than are taught by full-timers.

I found this very illuminating… and depressing. I haven’t even published yet, and this is a comic for grad students. But I’m getting there.

Go read the whole archive at PhD Comics.