Adjuncts, Contingent Faculty

I was reading through AAUP’s Conversion of Appointment to the Tenure Track (2009) and found some interesting points.

Let me state up front that while I would like a full-time job, as far as I have been able to tell, at least half the adjuncts at both the schools I work with are perfectly happy in part-time positions. So I am not sure that converting to tenure would be in all the contingent faculty’s best interests.

Having said that, however, I think the AAUP does make some good points.

By 2007, however, almost 70 percent of faculty members were employed off the tenure track. Many institutions use contingent faculty appointments throughout their programs; some retain a tenurable faculty in their traditional or flagship programs while staffing others—such as branch campuses, online offerings, and overseas campuses—almost entirely with contingent faculty. Faculty serving contingently generally work at significantly lower wages, often without health coverage and other benefits, and in positions that do not incorporate all aspects of university life or the full range of faculty rights and responsibilities. The tenure track has not vanished, but it has ceased to be the norm for faculty.

I think this is interesting. 70% of the faculty are off the tenure track! If that is correct, then community colleges are not the only ones hiring significant numbers of adjuncts to save money.

I am not sure that all adjuncts want all aspects of university life, but I am sure that more want it than have it.

I was reading this line thinking, Oh, no, give me a break. Then I finished it.

Faculty on contingent appointments frequently purchase their own computers and office supplies, stay in touch with students through cell phones and Internet connections that are not subsidized by their employers, and dip into their own wallets for journal subscriptions and travel to conferences to stay current in their fields.

Yes, we do often purchase our own computers (so?), but staying in touch with cell phones that are not subsidized, I can see that. I think anyone who gets personal journal subscriptions is dipping into their own wallets and travel to conferences is seriously underfunded at all but R-1s, and, according to rumors, it is underfunded at some of those, too.

That’s not a legitimate gripe for adjuncts. It’s just a gripe we all have. Now, maybe the unis should be footing the bill for all the conference traveling we do, but I don’t think that is ever likely to happen at all levels. It’s just prohibitively expensive.

Now this, though, I totally and absolutely agree with. In fact, I developed this, in terms of adjuncts, for an article coming out in Teaching English in a Two-Year College’s FORUM.

In addition to the injuries to students, campuses that overuse contingent appointments show higher levels of disengagement and disaffection among faculty, even those with more secure positions.

There are too many contingent faculty at my CC for the full-time faculty to have an opportunity to get to know. It’s seriously a disengagement and disaffection issue.

I also agree with them on this:

The best practice for institutions of all types is to convert the status of faculty serving contingently to eligible for tenure with only minor changes in job description. This means that faculty hired contingently with teaching as the major component of their workload will become tenure-eligible primarily on the basis of successful teaching.

Here’s another issue I disagree with them on.

Several noteworthy forms of conversion to tenure have been implemented or proposed at different kinds of institutions. The most successful forms are those that convert the status of individuals hired contingently to eligible for tenure, as opposed to those that convert positions while potentially leaving behind the faculty in them.

Yes, I think converting jobs to tenure-track is a good idea. But if they are going to pay full-time wages, I think colleges should have the opportunity to hire the best for the position. Hopefully that will be the adjunct, but if it is not, I don’t see why keeping them in the position simply because they were willing to do it for less is useful to the college. If they are paying, they ought to be able to hire the best they can reach with that salary.

I recommend you read it for yourself and see if you agree or disagree with most of what they had to say.

and perhaps my students’ fondest hope.

Then, as I mounted the stairway to my apartment, I froze. Oh gosh. My grade book. How clueless, how antediluvian to be dependent on a paper-and-pencil construction in this age of Excel spreadsheets.

An article in The Chronicle about an adjunct whose backpack is stolen.

An interesting study is discussed in The Chronicle, When Adjuncts Push for Better Status, Better Pay Follows, Study Suggests is about exactly what its title says.

If adjunct faculty members want to improve their working conditions, they might be better off focusing less on bread-and-butter concerns and more on securing their place at the table, a new study suggests.

The study, being presented this week at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, examined 30 North American colleges at which full- and part-time adjunct faculty members had gained benefits or some other improvement in their workplace. It concluded that adjuncts had made the most progress at colleges where they tried to transform the campus climate to be more inclusive of them, rather than simply fighting to change one employer practice at a time.

But the most revealing and/or painful part of the article, from my point of view, was this:

Ms. Kezar said she was surprised at the extent to which mobilization was hindered by adjunct faculty members themselves, many of whom had absorbed the negative images that full-time faculty members had of them and did not think they deserved better working conditions.

Ouch. Just ouch.

A good adjunct article from The Chronicle has some interesting ideas. I particularly like this one:

“Teaching writing is a way to show students they have a voice,” says Ms. Williams, whose writing courses are geared toward students whose first language isn’t English. “I think teaching at UIC in this discipline allows me to enact my idea of social justice. I do feel like I’m making a difference.”

Sometimes, I admit, I haven’t even read my own assigned reading for the day. It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s just that I had to take on those extra two courses at the community college and finish up the freelance article so I could pay the mortgage for the month. Winging it usually works OK. But sometimes it doesn’t.

My not being prepared for class is only one way in which the students suffer. More and more, I find myself completely drained by the end of the day. In the middle of a great discussion, a student directs a comment to me. To the detriment of the discussion, I stopped listening a few comments ago, thinking instead about my decreasing checkbook balance or the dishes that have been piling up as I have been grading papers. Or I stopped listening just because I have had similar discussions four times already today, and I am, frankly, bored and/or exhausted. At least once, I stopped listening because of the loud construction across the street, where the university is building a new performance center. And I couldn’t help but remember the news a week earlier that budget cuts had put my job in jeopardy.

from The Chronicle

I have a plethora of thoughts.

One: I am teaching six classes and I don’t do this. So he can do it too.
Two: Even if you are doing it, why would you let someone know?
Three: He put his name on the article. What was he thinking?
Four: Is this why adjuncts have a bad name?
Five: I can’t believe he does that.
Six: I really can’t believe he wrote that, even if he does it.
Seven: Maybe my husband was right. Maybe I am the exception among adjuncts. (Though I don’t think so.)

There is so much wrong with what he wrote that I just can’t get my head around it.

Yes, his students are losing out. And, yes, it would be easier to pay the bills if he were working full-time.

But he could have kept working full-time and taught part-time if he really wanted to teach and eat.

I tell my business students not to quit a job until they have their next job lined up because it is far easier to get a job when you are already working. Shouldn’t he have thought of that?

I sent out an identical CFP to both the faculty at CC1 and at SLAC.

From SLAC I received three “thank you” emails back and one response on the issue. That’s out of twelve teachers.

From CC1 I received nothing. That’s out of forty teachers.

There may be, after all, some reasons for my feelings of isolation as an adjunct.

I love taking tests, surveys, and any introspective quizzes. So… Here are my answers to the adjunct survey from the Chronicle.

Highest Degree
PhD

# of institutions June 2008-May 2009
2

Which type of class did you teach most often?
Introductory
This year, however, at SLAC I am primarily teaching majors courses.

Estimate your total income from adjuncting
Okay.
Oh, they want numbers. Between $15K and 20K. I taught full-time last year.

What is the primary reason you work as an adjunct?
Up until last year, to fit with demands of family life.
Now, because I can’t get a full-time job.

Did the institution provide:
offices –Yes
money for conferences –No
professional development –Yes
support services –Yes

Did you:
help develop courses –Yes
serve on faculty committees –No
attend department meetings –No

Advising?
None

Pursue own writing and research?
Yes

Considering all aspects as an adjunct,
I am satisfied.

If you want to know more about who I am, even though the person discussed is NOT me, read what the Chronicle has to say about Nancy Christensen. I am a little farther along in the process, but two years ago, I was her.

The article section starts out with:
“Using adjunct teaching to provide balance in their lives, like Mr. Anderson does, is a common theme among adjuncts, particularly those seeking to level the work-life seesaw.”

Exactly.

Another money quote, pardon the pun:
“The desire for more money is shared by many adjuncts, of course. But for some, it can be overpowered by the desire to teach.”

I’ve mentioned before that adjuncts are in the position women were in forty years ago. We have to be twice as good to get half the credit.

…the idea that if someone hasn’t made it into the full-time ranks it must be because there is something wrong with him or her. “We are not part of the actual family here,” he says. “It is like we are servants.”

Feeling unimportant, says Mr. Knapp, comes with a price. “There is no incentive to give 100 percent,” he says. “Mediocrity is built into the system.”

from the Chronicle article on adjuncts at Oakton