the adjunct problem

So the people who teach all the courses don't actually work there?

Teachers are important! They deserve a living wage and job stability and health insurance and retirement benefits and sick leave and....

LINKS:
Most of the facts and statistics on adjunct employment come from this survey (reported on here by inside higher ed):

Money Diary from BonAppetit:

Department of Labor contacts by State:

Ronald Reagan On Education:

[davidwilliams]

My message to department chairs is this: “Just say NO. And mean it. You have tenure. The worst upper admin can do is relieve you of that extra chair duty. And unless you're a little Hitler on a power trip, so what?” At the beginning of the first of my three years as a department chair at a mid-sized university in Georgia (and – YIPEE! – we were Division II national football champs several times), the dean asked me to hire adjuncts to cover more survey courses. This was the year after my department lost two full time positions to retirement, which were not replaced. I said, “Well, here's my standard. Our full-time faculty teach 4 courses per semester (yes, ridiculous load, but there it is). We now have one adjunct teaching two courses. I'll give him one more, but if we need more than that (which we did), then that means we need at least one more full-time position. I will not have more than three of our courses, upper or entry level, offered by adjuncts (for many of the same reasons you discuss).” By the end of that year, we had one of our full-time, tenure-track positions back. By the end of my third year, we had the other. In my experience, what it takes is department chairs with a little academic integrity, because you’ll certainly never get that from upper admin. Obviously, too much to hope for.

[ScienceAsylum]

This is why I made an effort to get out of academia. You're overworked and underpaid, but they dangle a carrot in front of you to keep you going. They'll say "If you put in your time now, you'll become full-time later." But that's a lie and it took me forever to realize it (because I'm gullible apparently). It took 8 years to realize the lie and another 4 to get out. It's a total garbage situation for everyone except the administration of the school.

As a STEM-lord BASc engineer with tons of "real world" work experience, it blew my mind when my English PhD partner explained how universities would waste so much money on a job search to hire the "best" professor, even though they have a fully qualified and tested VAP/adjunct. In the "real world, " if someone has proof they can do the job, and do the job well, you KEEP THAT GUY FOREVER. Don't let them slip away, don't try to hire the hot new thing, grasp desperately on them. It costs so much time and energy for the high level employees doing the review, and there's no guarantee that even after you higher that "hot-shot engineer fresh from MIT" that people can stand being in the same room as them, or that they know the difference between writing code that works or writing code that's smart.

[Conantas]

How else is the basketball coach going to feed his wife, three kids, two purebred dogs, and nanny with less than $5 million? He's out there telling people how to play basketball, what are you doing? Educating the next generation of humanity so that we don't go extinct? Pshh, get a real job

[rakino]

In my undergrad the university I studied at (University of Auckland) was adamant that when someone was teaching you they were always a current researching academic. I never realised why they were so proud of it at the time - like wouldn't that be the default, bare minimum?

Now I understand!

[katiekawaii]

I've even had 400-level classes where the professors had to run, literally run, after class to get to their car to drive to their next class at a different university.

[slowslow-uw]

The big problem is the number of well-paid full time with benefits administrators. This includes coordinators and directors who administer "programs" (most of which do little or nothing for real student success). And of course each administrator must have multiple full-time employees working for their department which helps justify their existence. There are all manner of made up reports, data collection, meetings, required training, etc. which are portrayed as "essential" and contributing to "student success". The accrediting bodies are complicit in this GRIFT. Eliminate all this and you can easily hire all full time instructors. The worst part is the student and parents do not understand that only a small part of their money is going directly for instruction.

[caret_shell]

So... _all_ of American higher education is now completely hollowed out? It's all just huge tuitions going to pay endless administrators (full-time, great-benefits-having administrators)?

[hnktbt]

I'm super late to this discussion (hi, binge watching your content) but I really wanted to add that the little undergrad students really just don't know what their adjunct profs are going through unless the adjunts speak out, but we absolutely care, at least my classes did. My FAVORITE professor was an adjunct who frequently vocalized how shitty her treatment was and how she had to work at both colleges across the street to feed her child. My classmates and I had her back, cut her slack often and comforted her as best we could, reassuring her she was GOOD and that it wasn't fair. She taught me a love for a field I didn't care about in the slightest before signing up for the "easy credit class" yet I have no idea where she is now. She's still in a big photo for the department site but her name is traceless. I hope now she's doing something better in every sense of the word, she deserves it. Abolish adjuncts!!

[oasntet]

Adjuncts need their own union. Universities can't exist without them, so adjuncts do have the power to fix this, but only by striking or threatening a strike. ETA: dang, some good strategery to go with that, too. This is a textbook case where worker power can make a huge difference in a very short amount of time.

[Ocarinist_Drew]

I think one of the most concerning issues is that nobody seems to talk about this? I had never even heard the WORD "adjunct" until I was a senior in undergrad and thinking about getting into teaching myself. It was only after I went out of my way to do my own research that I discovered all my favorite "professors" weren't actually technically professors and were hovering around the poverty line.

It actually kinda steered me away from getting a PHD too, since it seemed like a waste of time and money. The only reason I was considering it was because I liked academia and wanted to teach. But then I learned I could make more money pushing boxes at a warehouse. (And get health insurance too!)

[mikg]

I left my adjunct job several years ago after listening to work friends who were 10 to 20 years older talk about how they couldn't afford to replace their car or considering applying for food stamps. A number of them died way too early. All were very smart and very dedicated instructors. Many would say I'm underemployed at my current job but I have benefits and savings now.

[MaximeFrjq]

I think your "vanity" argument is extremely valid, and there's also some kind of sunk cost fallacy to it. It makes adjuncts so easy to exploit.

[cerebralideas]

Great video! We actually live in Austin, and my GF teaches at the very school mentioned. Some of this was so spot on. Thank you for doing it!

[letitiabeausoleil]

This is a common experience. My BSc physics lab partner got a scholarship to Cambridge, co-wrote a quantum phys textbook and after surveying her prospects... quit physics and went to business school. My bff at Venturers got into Oxford for her Chem Eng PhD then lasted a year as a postdoc. The money vs hours again was the problem. She went into her uncle's dressage coaching business. Neither have touched STEM professionally since or have any intention to in the future.

[tuesdi]

I've been watching your videos all day and my takeaway is: don't do a postdoc, don't become an adjunct, don't study string theory, and it's ok that you don't know anyone who did graduate school. As a first-gen student who wants to pursue advanced physics education, genuinely, thank you for the insight.

[tehmakr]

Teachers deserve an order of magnitude better treatment and compensation than they are given.

I have a friend who was 'kept on her toes' by her university about whether or not she would have classes to teach. It was actively harmful to her health. It is in a small way comforting (at least she wasn't being singled out??) and in a large way disgusting to hear of how widespread the practice is. It needs to stop.

The examples you chose were vibrantly illustrative of the problems with the current situation. Thanks for making this video. I hope it helps.

[drmadjdsadjadi]

When I was an adjunct, I once taught 7 courses face-to-face in one semester at four different schools in one semester with every single one of those courses being an entirely different course. Despite publishing more and getting better reviews than the full-time professors, I had to leave the US to get a full-time job in academia and that was 7 years after receiving my PhD.. It took me an additional three years to become an Assistant Professor at a U.S. university but within 6 years of hiring I was promoted to full professor. That was 17 years ago and since then I have become a department chair and I have hired two different adjuncts into full-time positions, one as a full-time lecturer and the other, just last year, as an assistant professor.

I encourage my adjuncts to take advantage of every opportunity we offer our full-time professors for extra money such as training programs and professional development funding, I invite them to all of our department functions, and I back them up when the administration or students try to take advantage of them. As department chair, I might not have any power over their salaries but I do whatever I can do to treat them with respect and my department colleagues treat them like they are one of us, because they are, and we could not do our jobs without them.

[music_YT]

Not only are adjuncts considered subhuman, they are also the first to fall when budgetary shortages crop up (see DePaul University). Universities exploit and underpay so many positions, from the 'contracted' custodial crews, undergrad work studies and UGTAs to graduates and adjuncts. The only people who receive consistent and high salaries reside in the Deans' Offices and business departments of each school. :/

[Frankey]

Hm, in my old country (Russia) it's customary to have "101-level", 200-person lecture hall courses be taught exclusively by professors from the top of the internal food chain, and the more advanced the courses get, the younger the teachers are. To me, this makes sense from all angles: on one hand, you can give the elderly nomenclatura easy stuff to teach while still collecting salary (there's no such things as tenure or pension plans in USSR), on the other, the most fundamental courses seem to be a reasonable high priority when best teaching talent is allocated. You always see a bit of both.