<p>Sylvan, as I said, I’m speaking for myself. My courses don’t work that way, so there’s no possibility that someone who really wants in and who acts on this want appropriately will be shut out.</p>
<p>As for the situation you posit, I’m with oldfort. It’s for the students to complain and for the administration to do something about it. Adjuncts who take on extra students beyond what they can reasonably handle are only enabling bad behavior on the part of the administration.</p>
<p>I teach 200 and 300 level English. I assign reading response papers every week to the 25 students in each of my courses, because writing is a weakness for many and I want them to improve. My thoughtful commentary helps them. I can’t do 26.</p>
<p>sylvan: Under the circumstances you describe it will be possible for you to admit as many students to the class as the fire code for the classroom allows, right? How many more students want to take the class? What will you do if the school suggests you move to a lecture hall next week? How are you going to handle it when a student asks for an independent study? Because the class is full or because they had a conflict with the time? And they need that class to graduate?</p>
<p>I know I am exaggerating but maybe not so much in your case? A popular professor can build up quite a following. How do you deal with that?</p>
<p>The rules don’t allow them to pay you for another section. Why don’t they hire another adjunct? Well, they probably won’t if you teach the whole overload. Will that be a good outcome for you? the students? other job seekers?</p>
<p>Momizer, what makes you think students/parents have more power? Do you think most parents want poorly paid adjuncts? Do yo uthink parents do not question where money is going?</p>
<p>alh - the window for registration closes tomorrow, so there shouldn’t be any more requests after that. Funny that you should mention independent studies, because one of the engineering students has conflicts and I just told him he can “self-study” the course if he feels confident enough not to need to come to class. Of course, he will still need to come for the exams and labs and do all the same homework, etc. He just probably won’t be attending class that much. Since I am already familiar with his abilities, I felt that I could suggest it. As for hiring another adjunct, they probably will try to do so next Spring so that they can run two sections. </p>
<p>Unlike wherever mominizer teaches, getting adjuncts who can teach day courses at this school is not all that easy. Often the adjuncts are people with day jobs or grad students from the main University, or new PhD’s waiting to find tenure-track positions or post-docs. So even if they do find someone he/she is usually gone after a semester or two.</p>
<p>
I’m sure it’s not common to have military enlistees show up needing to take 300 level English :).</p>
<p>kayf: even though you addressed that question to Momizer, I am going to be outrageously rude and give my opinion.</p>
<p>Students and parents have more power than university employees because sometimes they have the power to take their tuition dollars and go elsewhere. Oldfort suggested this way upthread. All students don’t have this power, only some. In state systems they have power as voters to elect officials who support increased funding to universities and as taxpayers to willingly pay for that support. State residents could insist on only a tenured/tenure track faculty if they were willing to pay for it. imho Of course, regardless of tax increases, it will be impossible to pay the salaries required for anyone other than adjuncts in some fields.</p>
<p>kayf - I don’t understand your line or argument? Most people are saying that adjunct professors do not have any incentive to fight the administration to get more classes added. On the other hand, students and parents have great incentive in having sufficient course offerings so they could graduate on time. If it matters more to a group of people then they should be more proactive about it. </p>
<p>I think you are being awfully aggressive for no good reason.</p>
<p>I think kayf asks some good questions. I would be asking the same ones if I didn’t have lots of friends working at universities. It is sometimes a difficult environment to understand. I sure don’t understand what is happening.</p>
<p>I do not think either the usual parent (i.e., not a Board member) nor the adjunct has much power over the institution. Its take it or leave it. Oldfort, sorry if I offend you. I just find sterotyping of students as irresponsible as offensive.</p>
<p>Why not one full timer to teach three or four sections? Are you doing something else that makes it impossible for you to be employed full time at this school?</p>
<p>edit: oh wait - you seem to be well on your way to giving them more than “full-time” hours :eek: I am just not enthusiastic about that choice. It is your choice, though. Good luck!</p>
<p>The school may not be hiring full time faculty.
There could be funding issues.
There might not be sufficient rooms available to add that many classes to the schedule.
The department may not need another full time person.
The person may prefer teaching part time.
The school may require a degree or publication record for full time faculty that they do not require for part timers.
There could be a demographic bump in the number of people needing the course now that will disappear in a year or two.</p>
<p>Sylvan, you say, “So even if they do find someone he/she is usually gone after a semester or two.” (I’ve got to learn how to use the quote function here…)</p>
<p>I don’t think the admin cares if they have to replace adjuncts, even if it’s every semester. They don’t have to train them, they can pay new adjuncts less than seasoned ones and if they don’t work out, they can replace 'em with the aforementioned lined-up ones. (I’m in the NYC metro area.)</p>
<p>kayf, as for stereotyping students as irresponsible, I don’t. I’ve come across my share of both irresponsible and responsible ones, and, whichever type they may be, I still am not able to attend to more than the allotted number in my courses.</p>
<p>^I understand and sympathize with the sentiment that you feel maxed out at the cap the school has already set - there is going to be an upper limit for everyone. At least that puts it on you as the one who can’t accommodate more, rather than on the student who may or may not have a good reason why they didn’t beat the other students to registration. </p>
<p>To use the quote (and do lots of other things) put QUOTE=name in brackets [] the quote and /QUOTE in [] at the end. This also works with boldface ** and italics *.</p>
<p>No overrides. I only take them if I get a call from the department head specifically requesting that I do so, and this rarely happens. As many others have said here, more work deserves more pay, and in my case, more pay is out of the question. </p>
<p>So I smile sweetly and say, “I’m sorry, I don’t take overrides.” I think one of the important things to learn in college is to do things in a timely manner. (My own child has unfortunately not learned this.) Bearing the consequences of their actions should be on the students, not on you. You neither have to let them in nor feel guilty about it. </p>
<hr>
<p>You say you do not stereotype students as irresponsbile, yet the only “solution” you put forth is for is for kids to be more responsible. You said in a follow up that your classes do not close out immediately – yet that ignores issues that tranfer students may have. I never said you had to give overrides.</p>
<p>This was true of my own experience at a state university as well.</p>
<p>Then, as now, the registration priority system took into account the student’s major, class standing, and class level to determine priority for courses, or to reserve a portion of the seats for specific students (e.g. declared majors for upper division courses required for the major). They also had it (and still have it) so that students had a portion of the schedule registered at higher priority than the rest, so that a student could get priority for his/her most important courses (the idea being that if the first choice breadth or free electives are full, s/he can choose some other course instead).</p>
<p>Particularly heavily impacted courses may have additional restrictions, like mandatory attendance until the drop deadline (miss class and you lose your seat in the class or place on the waiting list).</p>
<p>Also, majors have capacity limits; those majors which are at capacity have competitive admissions processes to declare or change into.</p>
<p>Looks like the school that the OP is adjuncting at needs to seriously consider some of these measures to avoid the problems that are being dumped onto the OP.</p>
<p>The university in question only accepts transfer students at the junior level; these students are expected to have completed the lower division core courses before transfer (most come from same-state community colleges where a course articulation agreement exists, so they know what to take*). Most of the cases where a course has no widely available equivalent at community colleges are courses where the department or division (e.g. engineering) has control over the course and its enrollment, so that it can plan course capacity taking into account transfer admissions and expected yield to the major.</p>
<p>*Of course, getting into courses at community colleges can be tough, because they are open admission, unlike the four year colleges which can tune their admissions so that they enroll at capacity but not over capacity.</p>
<p>kayf - you are talking about a very specific school, your kid’s school, for transfer students. If transfer was that difficult then she should have taken that into consideration. It does not become the professor’s problem. Your angst about your kid’s difficulty just seem to spill over every professor who doesn’t want to take exceptions. This kind of problem is clearly be best addressed at a higher level, not by adjunct professors. By taking in every student with a sob story also doesn’t address core of this problem, and it doesn’t make those professors better people either.</p>
<p>I am still trying to figure out how it is a good solution to admit a student who has a schedule conflict by excusing him from going to class. How is that fair to other students? If going to class is not a pre-requisite then it should be the same for all other students.</p>
<p>At the heart of the problem is that the school is admitting more students to the school (or majors) than it has course capacity to accommodate, or the school is right at full capacity but does not have a sensible registration priority system to allow those who need a specific course for their major to get it. The first problem is solvable (in the short term) at the admissions office (unless the school is an open admission school like a community college), while the second problem has been solved before at many schools, so the school should just take a look at what other schools have done.</p>
How are you going to handle it when a student asks for an independent study? Because the class is full or because they had a conflict with the time? And they need that class to graduate?</p>