Data vs. Reality

While the numbers relating to full-time and adjunct positions are interesting, they give us less information about the reality of the situation than I, at least, would hope. Here are some questions that really aren’t addressed by the data:

How many active adjunct positions equate to a single full-time position?

How many adjunct positions in each region are being taken by each adjunct? In other words, how much is overlap caused by single-worker loads spread across multiple employers?

How do changes in class sizes (if any), funding models, and use of technology (online instruction being the most important here) affect these figures?

Andrew Purvis, at 6:55 am EDT on August 3, 2006

Motive for Trend

If the motive is to cut the fringe costs and tenure obligations — ugh. To attract instructors with work experience in the subject matter taught is value added. Would like the study to address those issues by subject matter and institution.

William Sumner Scott, J.D.

Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 9:30 am EDT on August 3, 2006

Cut costs where they are needing the cutting

It’s all a matter of mixed up priorities and a severe lack of leadership in top positions in the administration. First of all, universities being “for-profit” nowadays is crazy. If a university is running itself like a business (as we see more of nowadays), why is it then accepting tax payers’ money? They might save some funding if they, second of all, got rid of “the assistant to the assistant to the Assistant Vice-Provost.” Third of all, a learning institution is supposed to be what it is called — a LEARNING institution, NOT Club Med, which is what students are demanding (feeding into that competition and “for profit” crapola we are all hearing about) — designer dorms, designer foods. I got through 4 years of undergrad and about 10 years of grad school without these perks because I was at college to LEARN, not eat at the Russian Tea Room every night. Thus, in an effort to provide perk services, well, you guessed it, no full-time faculty hired (misplaced priority AGAIN), more administration hired (to run budget for the designer food or this is one of my favorites: Administrator of Budget and Costs, mainly reponsible for seeking out and destroying what administrators perceive as “wasteful spending") One university president I knew about just constantly threw his hands up in the air, stating, “Well, if we could just be private instead of public, we’d be better off!” When’s THAT gonna happen, Great Leader? You have to work with what you have, but make it better, not just wish and pray.) Point is, unless the faculty group together and start pointing a lot of this out, it’s just going to get worse. And enough of the brown nosers who just play the administration’s games — get those Associate Profs and Full-Profs together and start pointing out the administration’s wastefulness. Point it out to parents and other taxpayers. I have been alone in this for many years; however, from what I have gathered, a lot of people are starting to come around. I guess better “a day late and a dollar short” than never.

Hannah, Assistant Professor at Anywhere University, at 11:10 am EDT on August 3, 2006

More to this story

While I appreciate this study drawing attention to an important problem in the academy, it does not go far enough.

First, the rise in part-time faculty has come with a rise in enrollments at colleges and universities of all kinds, and it is certainly due to the main reasons cited in earlier responses, most importantly cost-cutting and flexibility. Part-timers cost dramatically little for the work that they do, and they rarely receive benefits of any kind. They are also much easier to let go at the end of a semester or year when fewer courses are to be offered. This creates a work culture that sees these workers as not just temporary but temporary because they are “less capable” than their colleagues with job security, which is patently false, as demonstrated by a number of studies on academic labor.

One thing this study doesn’t examine because of its category structure is the growth in non-tenure track, full-time faculty, who also have little job protection. They receive one-year, “renewable” contracts to teach a full load at a school, but they are paid less than tenure-line faculty. They do get benefits, but they also tend to get the heaviest course loads made up of the largest and least interesting classes. They are also forced to job search for the following year while learning the culture of a new department, sitting on committees, and sorting out new syllabi/curriculum. Even when these contract employees are renewed for another year or even many years, they are running on a lower pay scale than colleagues doing the same work down the hall. This study groups those underserved teachers with other full-timers, despite these differences, when their problems and concerns are more in line with those of part-time faculty. They are all contingent, unprotected faculty used by the academy to save money in the least beneficial place. Administrators sometimes claim that full-time contingents provide more consistency than a core of adjuncts, but little evidence supports this in terms of curriculum or even support and advising.

Studies like this mask the real faculty distribution. Without a large percentage of tenured and tenure-line faculty within a department or in a university, faculty have no voice. How can contingent faculty voice concerns over curriculum, regulations, or any administrative matter when they have no job security? They can’t and don’t.

I cannot conclude, however, without acknowledging the importance of this issue exclusive of other rhetoric. Awareness is first, but action must be second. I must also respectfully disagree with the comment above that claims nothing can be done. Yes, certain schools won’t let teachers breath the word “union,” but there are ways to organize and advocate outside of a particular institution or a union. Many disciplinary associations have programs or groups for part-time or contingent faculty, national conferences are held on these labor issues, and a great deal more research than this is conducted and produced on higher education staffing and issues within the academic workforce. I highly recommend the AAUP’s page on contingent faculty (http://www.aaup.org/Issues/Contingent/index.htm) for more information on the ways part-time and full-time contingent faculty can contribute to a movement to better their situation, which ultimately betters the position of faculty as a whole in the academy.

Monica F. Jacobe, Contingent Faculty Member & Researcher, at 12:20 pm EDT on August 4, 2006