A friend at one large university told me he\u2019s been watching the eerie spread of administrators at his school: they\u2019ve been taking over office space and even parking spaces like something out of a horror movie. Meanwhile, just like most other colleges and universities around the country, his school spends less money every year on tenure-track faculty, hiring adjuncts who do the same work at much less than half the pay.<\/p>\n
More than 50% of the faculty at many schools are adjuncts. At some, it\u2019s closer to two thirds, and without them, colleges and universities wouldn\u2019t function. As NPR has reported, \u201cto get a full course load, many adjuncts have to teach on multiple campuses, miles apart. Like academic nomads, their cars are their offices, and their backpacks are their filing cabinets.\u201d<\/p>\n
These \u201ccontingent\u201d faculty form a vast underclass. Without real offices, many end up having to meet their students in lounges or cafeterias. Not only do they have piss-poor working conditions and health insurance, but they lack respect. That might seem low on the list, but it\u2019s actually very important. Tenured faculty and department chairs often treat them like servants–or worse.<\/p>\n
One adjunct I know was rudely dismissed from a one-on-one meeting with the department chair as if she was a Victorian-era maid who had begged her haughty mistress for an extra day off to take care of her sick mother. Her sin? She\u2019d inquired about teaching a certain course she was actually over-qualified for.<\/p>\n
Another reported being lied to about being reassigned from upper level courses and finding out later that the real reason was resentment from tenure-track \u201ccolleagues.\u201d The psychological atmosphere is consistently draining, but too many adjuncts can\u2019t quit because they need the jobs and have to swallow the insults\u2014and teaching is their passion.<\/p>\n
Day to day, adjuncts don\u2019t just deal with arrogant and inflexible administrators. Sometimes even support staff treat them badly, because they know they can, and not enough campuses have fixed-term faculty unions that will stand up for them. And when there are unions, if tenure-stream faculty aren\u2019t unionized, those faculty can regard the adjuncts\u2019 unions with contempt, and may even feel threatened.<\/p>\n
Adjuncts can have just as many credentials and publications as their tenured colleagues\u2014but that doesn\u2019t matter. The magical word \u201ctenure\u201d bestows an exalted status that they lack and reduces them to second-class citizens or worse in the madly hierarchical academic world.<\/p>\n
College and universities profit obscenely from this cheap labor source. The system is arbitrary, corrupt, and unjust, nestled in the heart of an institution which supposedly enshrines humanistic values.<\/p>\n
Are you an adjunct?\u00a0 Have you been mistreated or discriminated against?\u00a0 Feel free to share your story in the comments section below.<\/em><\/p>\n Lev Raphael\u2019s Nick Hoffman mysteries are set at the fictional State University of Michigan and have been praised by the New York Times Book Review<\/em> and many other newspapers and magazines.\u00a0 A veteran of university teaching, he now teaches creative writing online at writewithoutborders.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Registration for his memoir workshop closes very soon.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A friend at one large university told me he\u2019s been watching the eerie spread of administrators at his school: they\u2019ve been taking over office space and even parking spaces like something out of a horror movie. Meanwhile, just like most other colleges and universities around the country, his school spends less money every year on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240],"tags":[1409,1404,1406,776,244,276,288,1103,1408,272,1405,1251,241,1407,245,485],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","tag-academic-underclass","tag-adjunct-faulty","tag-adjunct-unions","tag-adjuncts","tag-college-teaching","tag-colleges","tag-colleges-and-universities","tag-contingent-faculty","tag-exploitation","tag-professors","tag-teacher-unions","tag-teachers","tag-teaching","tag-unfair-labor-practices","tag-universities","tag-university-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3754,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}