<p>Looks like if you are not on the increasingly rare tenure track, you may make as much teaching nursery school with a early childhood certificate as working as a college prof.</p>
<p>Some adjuncts prefer to teach part-time for a variety of reasons and some teach in addition to a job in industry. However, it seems the increasing trend is adjuncts who can not find a full-time job in the field. Hiring adjuncts instead of full time employees with benefits, whether tenured or untenured, is a huge money saver for the university. So far, supply does exceed demand. Does it matter if our kids are taught by underpaid adjuncts with no benefits? Does it matter if the university decides to make undergraduate studies primarily an on-line experience? It seems to me many parents don’t find much point to professors. There even seems an increasing hostility. I have been wondering lately what, if any, correlation there is between the prestige of the university and the scholarly reputation of the professors working there. What happens to prestige if all universities offer the same on-line education? The long term adjuncts I know can only afford to teach in that way because they have other means of financial support. Perhaps we will go back to the era of dollar a year men. That will probably return the university to the sort of elitist institution it was before WWII. Right? I think it is probably a good thing that we now have tenured professors who didn’t necessarily come from economically advantaged backgrounds.</p>
<p>My D is at a college where 98% of professors are full time. It’s quite expensive.</p>
<p>My S is at a school where the majority of the professors are adjunct. It’s also quite expensive.</p>
<p>My S benefits from learning from adjuncts more than full time professors as a future artist at an art university but those schools are 2-3 times more expensive than most state schools.</p>
<p>At the end of it all though, I just don’t get why other people are held more responsible for the life of another and the choices a person makes than the person who makes the choices.</p>
<p>My S is going to school to be an artist. He knows the challenges that lie ahead. Neither one of us is demanding a minimum wage for artists or that a law be passed to make everyone purchase art they don’t want or for an union to negotiate the price of works of art. He’s taking a chance at doing what he loves without knowing whether or not anyone else will love it as much as he does. If the demand isn’t there to command high pay and benefits, then he has a choice - continue to do art for next to nothing or do something else. This is life. I don’t hate or slam anyone for doing what they enjoy. I just don’t want to hear complaints about how your choice sucked for you. And adjunct professors would command much higher pay if the supply of people able to do the job was drastically reduced. Therefore, people choosing not to do adjunct work is exactly what is needed to increase the pay and benefits for adjunct work. This 83 year old who died broke made it harder for others by not leaving the profession.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with this. It is a difficult situation though, because sometimes new graduates become adjuncts with the idea it will lead to a permanent job. How long should they give it? And when they give up, there is someone else to take their spot.</p>
<p>And I don’t want to say those in industry who want to share their knowledge shouldn’t be allowed to do so. That would just be silly. imho.</p>
<p>It is pretty easy (to me!) to see there is not a one size fits all solution.</p>
<p>adding:
Would the parents on this board support adjuncts, and maybe all college faculty, unionizing? Or disapprove of that response to the situation?</p>
<p>I haven’t read every post. It sounds like she was never married, so what was she doing for employment before becoming an adjunct prof?</p>
<p>Happymom…my kids’ private high does hire PhD’s to teach (and they do teach there). Some get their credentials while teaching. The school allows them to work for (I think) two years while getting certification. I don’t know the whole process, but they get some kind of temporary status first (maybe from a test?), and then they complete the process while teaching.</p>
<p>Many (most? except at for-profit schools) full-time college faculty are already unionized. Union contracts govern continuance and promotion procedures and incremental salary raises based on rank (instructor, lecturer, assistant, associate, full etc.). </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The “foot in the door” idea may work for many industries but not for academe. Adjuncts are hardly ever considered for full-time tenure-track employment at the same institution currently employing them. Searches for full-time candidates are national in scope and involve hundreds of applications. Adjuncts who have already gotten their PhDs some time ago are usually local people, tied through work or family to the area of the college, working part-time on the side. Their publications and professional records are not generally competitive in a national search against freshly minted PhDs or younger people who have been working full-time in the field. There is not much mid-life job switching in academe either. It’s a pretty rigid and saturated market.</p>
<p>I don’t think foot in the door works either. But I know new graduates working as adjuncts who are hoping that resume building helps in the next job cycle.</p>
<p>What do you think about the adjunct situation, NJSue? problem or not?</p>
<p>Yes, it’s a problem. It’s a human tragedy for many people. I also think it undermines the long-term stability and quality of university education as a whole. My own view is that adjuncts should be brought in to teach classes for which they have certain unique professional qualifications. I do not believe that core undergraduate programs should be primarily taught by adjuncts. I do not think well of colleges and universities that rely heavily on adjunct labor to staff core academic programs. I didn’t want my own child to attend one of these institutions. </p>
<p>I need to say that I am not looking down on or judging adjunct instructors as individuals. Many are excellent. God knows they work hard for very little money. I am criticizing a system that exploits them and rips off students.</p>
<p>To be honest, who would want to teach on a k-12 schedule? Nothing against those teachers, not at all, but it takes a different fortitude.</p>
<p>How much do people think adjuncts should be paid? (And k-12, for that matter?) Even if a course paid 10k, then what? You’d need more courses. It’s not a viable career path for someone who needs a full income. Why is that a surprise? Is the solution to keep minting hordes of PhDs who just assume the degree = a job?</p>
<p>Do you realize this thread is split between those calling the use of adjuncts a threat to education and those calling for more pay and perks? </p>
<p>Can you really make that point? Or perhaps your “we” is a proxy for the world of academia! </p>
<p>We, as the recipient and ultimate FUNDERS, paying the bills. Directly, by borrowing massively, or through massive redistribution of public assets to education. </p>
<p>We do not have much of a voice, and are mostly accepting the rampant inflation of academic expenses tacitly. We are forced to accept subpar education, but we would hope for and … value a better system of education. We do not put pressure on schools to underpay adjuncts. The schools do that because they prefer to support the lifestyle of the chosen few.</p>
<p>And, perhaps, you should remember than our education is simply the most expensive in the world, accounting for its overall abysmal efficiency and ROI.</p>
<p>NJSue, at DH’s college, it is the use of adjuncts that allows the dept to offer a breadth in course offerings, a responsiveness to student interests and needs, in ways that hiring one specialist in X couldn’t allow. It IS for the students. The starting pay is over the average 3500/course. They also have part timers for some intro classes, then FT handle deeper materials. </p>
<p>Each U can be different. For me, the potential ripoff is any lousy class, classes so overfilled there is no interaction or classes closed by over enrollment.</p>
<p>Do some U’s rely too much on adjuncts? I don’t think one can say without looking at the quality of the actual classes. Do some underpay? I am sure.</p>
<p>A return to a decent system of compensation might be a good start. Followed by the expectation that teaching should be a full-year effort, and that tenured faculty revert to focus to … teaching, and a full load to boot. In so many words, bring an end to the sinecures and activities unrelated to interacting with students. </p>
<p>The question, of course, is what represent a decent wage scale.</p>
<p>^ xiggi, I wish I knew where your perspective comes from. What sort of ed experience and your involvement now. I think you see one slice. I think you are somehow involved. And angry. Perhaps we each bring different observations. Fine.</p>
<p>Decent compensation means what? The dream that when faculty for one or two extra courses is needed, those folks can raise a family and pay a mortgage? We should pay them consultants’ wages and somehow not have it affect U’s bottom line? Hire them FT and other teaching/course needs be damned? What?</p>
<p>In my perfect world, health care wouldn’t be tied to work, and adjuncts would be better paid–but I don’t think either one has much to do with this story.</p>
<p>As an elderly, low income person–unless she had money squirreled away or her house was worth a lot–there should have been lots of supports available to Ms. Vojtko–if not enough Social Security, then SSI, Medicare, possibly Medicaid, property tax relief, senior services, help from the hospital with medications. She shouldn’t have had “huge out of pocket bills” for her cancer treatment if she had asked for help.</p>
<p>Somebody called Protective Services called about her welfare. Maybe that was just a disgruntled neighbor upset at an unkempt lawn, but maybe that person was truly concerned. Sometimes that’s the only answer. But she did not want to meet with a caseworker. Clearly she needed help, but SHE SAID SHE DID NOT WANT HELP. The Director of Campus Ministry said he offered to have her furnace repaired or replaced but she would not let them help her, either–even though she apparently had no heat. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the family. Maybe your needy elderly relatives let you take them in, show you the bills so you can pay them, let you in their houses so you can help. If so, consider yourself lucky. It isn’t always that way, and it’s very hard to force help on someone who is mentally competent and does not want it. What if they won’t move, if they won’t sign power of attorney forms? I know two people whose parents had houses “literally falling in” on them due to hoarding issues, and in both cases it took an eventual hospital stay to get the homes condemned and the parents out. It’s very sad, but I really suspect there is more to this story than a big bad University and family not stepping up.</p>
<p>I think it’s worth noting that there are (at least) two kinds of adjuncts. One kind is the person who has another job, and does some adjunct teaching on the side. This person is less likely to really need the extra money, is more likely to be doing it for enjoyment, and (in my opinion) is reasonably likely to bring something useful to the classroom from the real world.
On the other hand, there is the adjunct who is used to fill out the multiple sections of some basic course, such as a foreign language. It appears that this is what the person in the article was. Folks in this situation might really benefit from a union, while the other kind of adjunct is not likely to be all that interested.</p>
<p>I’m wondering if people know how <em>little</em> Social Security, SSI pay and how insufficient Medicare (even with Medicaid tossed in but I suspect she probably didn’t qualify) covers. Between this and an adjunct pay (per course), I’m not surprised the woman couldn’t cover housing upkeep AND cancer treatment. Healthcare costs are enormous - that alone would bankrupt many people, even those with health insurance. Medicare covers a lot (Part A and B) but it’s not like free medical care. </p>
<p>I was in the drugstore getting medication behind an elderly lady who recently had some jaw surgery (to remove a malignancy? ) She opened her wallet and only had about 3 dollars and the medication cost $5. She told them to put it back when I stepped forward and paid the $5. I’ve never done anything like that but it was so obvious that she needed that medicine and she just didn’t have the money. </p>
<p>I am curious about this woman’s history and how she got to this point; and I also don’t think the university could really do anything in this specific case (although I do think the department could have stepped up somewhere). But it is a broken system where there are fewer and fewer tenure-track positions and more and more of these itinerant workers</p>
<p>Lookingforward, I wish you’d know that I no longer get “angry” about those types of issues. My position is more disappointment and annoyance than anger. </p>
<p>My perspective stems from witnessing the … lack of proper perspective among educators when it comes to balancing duties and compensation. Teaching versus researching. July versus October. I gladly admit to be annoyed when family members who are full-time faculty complain online and at family reunions about the hackneyed subject of teaching loads, grading, the bad students, but fail to mention that scheduling vacations, finding babysitters when school is out, and other pesky life issues that afflict most common mortals is simply not in their vocabulary. Simply stated, they do not see what others who work in a different sector have to do and how much they make, especially on a net basis. </p>
<p>I do NOT resent their less taxing lifestyle, especially since I could easily have joined the club! I do resent the complaining in July about having to prepare for the next semester! I do resent the implication of a six-figures salary being too low. </p>
<p>I’m surprised few others are disturbed that college teachers are seen as a disposable commodity meant to be purchased at the lowest possible price.</p>
<p>At its most basic level, class tuition is a transaction between a student and an instructor to share knowledge. People seem to resent the money paid to the instructor, but the money going to everyone else pulling a wage out of that transaction is somehow more deserving. </p>
<p>My wife got paid about $100 per student working as an adjunct in the School of Nursing, about 10% of the actual tuition. Her pay was a negligible portion of actual cost to the student.</p>
You mean just like every other employee in every other field? And while universities may be offering tenure track positions to an ever declining number of instructors, the rest of us don’t have anything like tenure to even aspire to, ever.
Not at all. Tuition is a transaction between the student and the institution, and salary is a transaction between the institution and the instructor.</p>