Do colleges exploit their professors?
(MoneyWatch) While teenagers and parents who visit college campuses understandably ask many of the same questions, there is one that schools never get asked: How well are you treating your professors?
It's an excellent question because in fact many college teacher are treated shabbily. Some make such paltry salaries that they qualify for food stamps. The Des Moines Register recently examined pay of state employees and discovered that adjunct professors represented two of the five lowest paid jobs in Iowa. The other lowest-paid occupations were laborers, parking lot attendants and food workers.
Unlike full-time staff professors, many adjunct professors are part-timers and typically do not enjoy job security or workplace benefits. Their job situation is starkly different than tenured professors, who enjoy lifetime job security, health care, pensions and often light teaching loads with plenty of time for research.
The number of adjunct professors in the U.S. has been climbing. Today roughly 70 percent of college professors are not "tenure track." Their presence is more common at regional state schools and at mid-tier private universities. (You can learn more about their plight at the website of New Faculty Majority, which aims to improve conditions for these professors.)
Why should students care if a highly educated teacher is working for peanuts? The grim working conditions can impact the quality of education that students receive. For instance, adjuncts often lack offices where they can meet with students, and they may be difficult to see outside of class because many often also teach at a different campus or school.
Adjuncts also can be tempted to make classes easier because poor student evaluations can jeopardize their chances of getting another teaching contract. These vulnerable teachers may also censor themselves in class for fear of saying anything that might offend students. This can limit students' chances of engaging in meaningful discussions.
Students should look for schools that do a better job of hiring professors who are on the tenure track. You can find the breakdown of tenure-tenure track versus adjunct professors at any institution by using an extremely helpful search tool at the Modern Language Association.
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Nothing about the corporatization of EVERYTHING, including community colleges, where deans and VPs and presidents and others in ADMIN muddy the waters and soil the air? Not reportable? In a time of fear of companies, fear of taxing corporations for their endless farm teams -- the schools that teach their workers, who train their consumers/customers -- and fear of education and more of it, well, what can we expect.
What a scam, really, encouraging people to get PhDs, to go into education, then to ensure that there is this multi-tiered system, an apartheid of sorts, where they learn the lessons of what it is to be part of the lower rung of the 99 Percent.
Life might be hard teaching as a freeway flyer, but the reality is that without a single payer health care system, we are screwed -- the American worker, that is. Without forcing a new discussion on hone ownership or affordable rental housing, and making renting the new norm, then we are screwed. If we can't create viable and elegant public transportation systems, then, yes, the lower portion of the 99 percent -- the majority -- are screwed.
You want 50 or 60 percent of the faculty teaching as temps who are looking for a full-time job to continue helping the deanlets and higher admin folk make their retirement goals on the backs of faculty? Then support public infrastructure, support medical care for people teaching students how to think, how to think for themselves, and how to be the leaders and workers of this country.
Dog-eat-dog is what these One Percenters and their 19 percenter minions are hoping for while the majority -- 80 percent -- scramble to find a drop out from veterinarian school in debt to the tune of $100 K to repair that torn hernia from carrying around six bags of books and essays from their six various campus workplaces.
Tenured professors, if they are lucky, "supervise" one or two doctoral theses a year. At mid-level schools -- let's face it -- these dissertations are of mediocre quality and there's only so much that can be done with them. State U isn't going to produce the next Saul Kripke. Tenure-track profs also have the leeway to say "no" to graduate students who propose to work with them. Advising undergraduates? How much time does that take? Once a semester, for two weeks, you have a parade of kids into your office whom you barely know -- all it takes is a minimal grasp of university requirements and your signature to sign off on their registration forms. And in my program, most of the tenured folks published one or two books, tops, after attaining that holy grail. Most don't keep up with the literature in their field after they turn 50 or 55, teach the same classes year after year, have research assistants to do their library and photocopying work -- all they have to do is think. (Which is what adjuncts are expected to do, too, by the way.)
All of that aside, the whole point is compensation. The tenure-track professor sits in one office, all day, working, with every amenity available to him or her. This is comparable to every other job in America -- yeah, you put in eight or nine hours of work, you read, you teach three classes, and you write. For that, you earn anywhere from 50K to 70K. It's not a bad living. You're not digging ditches or driving an 18-wheeler for days on end. It's a cushy life, I'm sorry. You won't get any sympathy from manual laborers, people in retail, or most of the American population. Tenured-track profs -- and tenured ones -- have essentially won the lottery.
The adjunct has none of that. It's a miserable existence, and they work just as long, and as hard, as a TT professor. The difference is that they're paid 40K less (or even more) with no guarantee of future employment, and are treated like domestic help in the 1700s by the regular faculty and administration (and even secretaries)...after putting in just the same amount of effort toward their doctorate as anyone else.
If you'd like to trade positions, let me know. I have a doctorate, two master's, and would love to have the chance to take on all of the responsibilities you mention.
Don't be fooled by the economic argument. Colleges and universities have simply become addicted to cheap, contingent labor, and the resources that could be used to support classroom instruction are being spent on other things such as the half billion in campus improvements completed at UA over the past 14 years. Just for good measure, though, they've embarked on another half billion dollar campaign to further improve the campus.
What impact is this having on the quality of education? UA boasts of a 6-year graduation rate of around 30%, and the African American male graduation rate is only about 10%. It verges on the criminal.
Unfortunately, part-time faculty are specifically excluded from the definition of state employees for public collective bargaining purposes in Ohio, so they can't even collective bargain for better working conditions. If there are any lawyers out there, we need help fighting the law so that part-time faculty can re-balance the equation.
Don't be fooled by the economic argument. Colleges and universities have simply become addicted to cheap, contingent labor, and the resources that could be used to support classroom instruction are being spent on other things such as the half billion in campus improvements completed at UA over the past 14 years. Just for good measure, though, they've embarked on another half billion dollar campaign to further improve the campus.
What impact is this having on the quality of education? UA boasts of a 6-year graduation rate of around 30%, and the African American male graduation rate is only about 10%. It verges on the criminal.
Unfortunately, part-time faculty are specifically excluded from the definition of state employees for public collective bargaining purposes in Ohio, so they can't even collective bargain for better working conditions. If there are any lawyers out there, we need help fighting the law so that part-time faculty can re-balance the equation.