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  • Adjuncts and Accreditation, Revisited

    By Dean Dad April 22, 2008 9:59 pm

    Adjuncts and Accreditation, Revisited
    Academic Cog and Lumpenprofessoriat posted some thoughtful pieces in response to my skepticism about using accreditation agencies to force colleges to reduce their percentages of adjunct coverage. I don't usually do two posts on the same topic in such short order, but their pieces deserve some attention.

    AC is, apparently, a TA for an adjunct - I'll admit never having heard of that before - and s/he reports that the adjunct in question is teaching distractedly, since the clock is about to run out on her current job so she's spending most of her time on interviews. At that university, apparently, you accumulate chits towards a full-time position as you adjunct there, so departments have taken to firing adjuncts before they hit the magic number.

    It's probably possible to come up with a worse idea, but I'd have to spend some time on it.

    The 'chits towards tenure-track' idea is one of those superficially appealing systems that makes no sense at all on the ground. It ignores the basic fact that adjunct hiring is driven by time-slot availability and geographic propinquity. It also ignores the basic fact that the trend towards adjuncts is driven by a lack of money. The fact that I can afford to hire someone at $2100 does not imply that I can afford to hire that same someone for $55,000, chits or no chits. So departments respond by gaming a system they can't afford to take literally. My modest proposal would be to do away with the chits, so you don't shove people out the door prematurely. If you're lucky, then use the revenues generated by improved retention to create a few more full-time positions.

    LP points out, correctly, that some studies have shown that having full-time faculty in the early gatekeeper courses produces better retention numbers than having adjuncts in them. From that, LP jumps to the assumption that adjunct percentages are therefore fair game for accreditation agencies.

    Well, no.

    The whole point of "outcomes assessment" is that it isn't "inputs assessment." If there's a retention issue, address that. If there isn't, then it isn't clear to me that there's an academic problem with adjuncts. (There's a fairness problem, but that's a different issue.)

    Given limited funding, there's a choice to be made. Fewer adjuncts, or smaller sections? Which is the best way to improve student performance? To my mind, the way to settle that is empirically. Run the numbers, and base decisions on the outcomes. To declare upfront that 'adjuncts are worse, therefore you shouldn't use them' assumes an infinite number of other options; in other words, it's missing the point. The only way to hire more full-timers within the existing budget would be to stuff their classes much fuller. The soulless bureaucrat in me understands it as an equation, but the academic in me recoils at the prospect. If you can't identify the huge, sustainable new funding source to make the dilemma go away, then you need to confront the dilemma.

    (Alternately, you could go with fewer programs, and just lay off everybody who teaches in the smaller and/or more expensive majors. Do fewer things, but do them well. There's an argument for that, and it's actually what I would prefer to do, given my druthers. But politically, it's a non-starter. Just look at the crap flying at USC in trying to eliminate its German program! Eliminating departments raises a kind of political hell that a gradual across-the-board watering-down just doesn't.)

    None of this is to disagree that people who entered the profession to catch the 'great wave of retirements' are now struggling to eke out livings on the margins; I concede that upfront, and suspect that there's a special circle of hell reserved for the folks who did that study. I consider the plight of adjuncts reason number 734 to support single-payer national health care, and the concept of an adjunct union makes perfect sense to me. But an adjunct who does a good job in the classroom - which most do - does a good job in the classroom. As long as that's happening, I don't see an accreditation issue. A union issue, yes. A political issue, yes. An accreditation issue, no.

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Comments on Adjuncts and Accreditation, Revisited

  • Posted by IR minded on April 23, 2008 at 9:30am EDT

  • Really enjoy the "Confessions" blog. But a question on the "solving it empirically" approach - - - run what numbers - - what outcomes? Just grades? That seems a little thin. And it just might stoke the fires of grade inflation even higher than they are already.

  • Posted by LumpenProf on April 23, 2008 at 9:50am EDT

  • Thanks for coming back to this issue again. I still have some reservations about your argument that this isn't an accreditation issue though.

    You write: "But an adjunct who does a good job in the classroom – which most do – does a good job in the classroom. As long as that's happening, I don't see an accreditation issue."

    To my eye, this issue is a structural one, not an issue about the performance of individual adjuncts. Time and money are the two resources that universities can provide to their faculty, and adjuncts aren't given enough of either. Since this situation has a measurable impact on outcomes -- like graduation rates -- it does not seem any less appropriate for accreditation agencies to look at adjunct use than it is for them to look at the number of instructors with terminal degrees. This is because it's a question about how to best organize university instruction and not about the abilities of some particular teachers who may lack a terminal degree.

  • adjunct instructors
  • Posted by Paul Roehl on April 23, 2008 at 1:15pm EDT

  • As an adjunct instructor for 25 years, I think I speak with some authority when I say that the academic system, its very structure, is corrupt. The seven different institutions of higher ed. I’ve had the pleasure of working at all make Wal Mart look like a bunch of pikers! The terrible, simple truth is that there is a huge “new source” of money that could insure equity pay and medical benefits for adjunct instructors. It might even eliminate the category “adjunct” or part- time, and it’s available right now! What is it? Where is it? It’s simply the existing pool of funds that could/should be divided equitably between instructors both full and part time. But this will never happen. It is one of the great ironies of academe that its host of liberal, progressive, even Marxist minded full time professors has the same sense of entitlement of 17th century French aristocrats. Tenured positions have the same aura of magical efficacy as a royal coronation. Those achieving positions of an administrative nature become deified. Doubtless, the finest instructors I have observed over many semesters are those doing it by stringing part-time gigs together in order to make a living. They teach because they love it. Too bad they’re treated so poorly.

  • Funds
  • Posted by Paul Roehl on April 23, 2008 at 1:35pm EDT

  • It seems there is an illusion regarding a lack of funds. There are funds. The issue is not acquiring new funds, but changing the system so that existing funds are more equitably divided between adjunct and tenured faculty. New funds will only assure continued inequity. The use of adjunct labor as a device for saving money is a direct attack on the collegiality of any campus and should be a consideration during accreditation. Somehow this seems a self evident truth!

  • adjuncts
  • Posted by R. Alan James on April 23, 2008 at 3:30pm EDT

  • I confess to having taught as an adjunct. I am sorry, and not because I feel any deficiency in knowledge, experience or skill. I am sorry to participate in a system designed to exploit and ultimately humiliate professor seeking candidates. Adjunct policies engender cynicism and despair among many highly qualified and motivated persons who feel no relationship between their ability and effort and the probability of successfully making a living in a profession they cherish.

    Shame on deans, presidents, provosts who speak from their invulnerable seats of power in this exploitation.

  • Refusal
  • Posted by SoonUnemployedAcademic on April 23, 2008 at 3:30pm EDT

  • Perhaps I'm daft -- or maybe just naive -- but why don't departments simply refuse to teach any students they cannot afford to teach with tenure-track faculty? If the administration forces a department to hire adjuncts or takes punitive action, well, then the department can make a big stink -- go to the press, the ranking reports, etc. Then the horrific exploitation that is ruining the promise of university education is on the administrators' hands. Why do faculty continue to do the dirty work for grossly-overpaid administrators (I mean that relatively, not absolutely: faculty should all be paid in the range of mid-level administrators or, in other words, what used to be a middle-class salary decades ago).

    The sad fact of the matter is that administrators have been given an impossible task. There is no immediate exam that will measure outcomes across-the-board. Education is much more complex and long-term than that and the more administrators kow-tow to corporate trustees, the worse the system gets for everyone.

  • Academic Economics
  • Posted by CCPhysicist on April 24, 2008 at 5:15am EDT

  • I think the answer to "why don’t departments simply refuse to teach any students they cannot afford to teach with tenure-track faculty?" depends on where you are.

    At an R1, students are the excuse to bring in research money. They can't afford to take a professor out of the lab and into a classroom if it means losing a million dollars a year. At the other end, a CC, it would mean closing the doors (either literally or by raising tuition to cover increased costs) or going to huge classes (in composition? developmental classes?) without any personalized grading.

    One way to look at it at your college is to consider how you go about adding a new section. Multiply tuition times the minimum number of bodies that are needed and see how much you have available for pay and benefits. Is it enough for a full-time position? Will that money be there for 30 years?

    Just as I'd like to see Dean Dad blog on the "what outcomes?" question asked by the Institutional Researcher, perhaps we can ask him to blog about the economics of his CC. Or maybe an IHE regular could write about how it works. I learned a lot about our college this year and it was an eye opener.

  • Posted by SoonUnemployedAcademic on April 25, 2008 at 5:20am EDT

  • Sorry, CCPhysicist, I'm not quite that naive. What I meant was why do tenure-stream faculty accept that it is their job to meet the outrageous demands of administrations? Why do they acquiesce so readily to administration demands, especially when they know that it shortchanges students and even themselves (lecturing in front of a classroom of 200 students surfing the internet who will really be taught by grad TAs really sucks the lifeblood out of teaching). When the budget is cut or the department loses a tenure line, why do faculty do administrators' dirty work by hiring adjuncts or teaching increased class sizes? Why, to top it all off, do they then make up some fancy webpage crowing about the wonderful education they are providing? Tenure-stream faculty can create a bottleneck of students who need a required course if they simply refuse to hire enough adjuncts to teach the number of students the administration tries to shove down their throats. Tenure-stream faculty would, of course, have to tell students what the problem is in order to redirect student anger at the administration. Right now, most students treat the faculty as the primary cause of their woes -- a reasonable position since student evaluations only rate instructors and not class size or setup, placing all the blame on instructors for the inadequacies of the system.

    And, yes, there is an accreditation issue here. Adjuncts teach some of the most difficult classes, the ones that require broad perspectives and years of insight to synthesize diverse topics and explain why boring (to students) subject X is important. Say what you will about adjunct enthusiasm and devotion, but few adjuncts have the experience to critique the biases of master narratives and comprehensive approaches to their fields. And, they'll never get it as adjuncts, spit out when the initial attractiveness of their Ph.D. is usd up. Universities risk poor instruction from junior tenure-stream faculty because they know it is one of the start-up costs to getting a mature faculty member. What, aside from the financial savings, justifies less experienced instruction in gen. ed. courses? That has to speak to quality.

  • Faculty do not hire adjuncts
  • Posted by CCPhysicist on April 26, 2008 at 5:00am EDT

  • That last comment is a very strong argument for an article about Academic Economics. Those rhetorical questions scream naivete, because the faculty at our CC do not hire adjuncts. We supervise them, and some quasi-admin faculty (department chairs) select them, but they are hired and fired by the college administration. Similarly, the faculty do not determine the number of classes taught or (in most cases) even the size of our own classes. Those are set by contract.

    The class sizes at my CC are tightly constrained (most are smaller than a recitation at a University) and I get paid extra in the cases where I choose (and it is a choice) to add a few more kids to a class. And I'll tell you that every one of the kids who shook my hand at the end of class today would be personally insulted if they thought you meant that I let anything get in the way of teaching them.

    Further, I don't know of any college or university where the faculty have any say AT ALL about the assignment of t-t lines. That happens at the Dean, Provost, and/or President level. It may even be dictated by outside forces (the Board or the Legislature).

    Now you are probably correct when you "blame" my friend at the University who gladly took a semester of reduced teaching so he could work on the research project that generates the grant money and papers required to earn tenure. Selfish, but also quite rational if you know that the University does not hire him to teach gen ed classes. Now it happens that he does teach them, and even teaches them really well, but the University wants its cut of the research grant.

    As for adjuncts and the quality of an education, I do not accept the premise that they are always bad. I have plenty of anecdotes (the plural of which are data) on both sides, which is why I am particularly interested in seeing DD blog about outcome measures. Also see my comments in the much longer threads on DD's blogspot version and hidden deep in one of my recent blogs.

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