Denver Post Education Op-Ed by Former Client (& Bro of Good Friend & Travel Partner 2 Latin America)
OPINION
Guest Commentary: Adjunct professors are hiding in plain sight
POSTED: 04/29/2012
By Jonathan Rees
Retail employees, food service workers, call center operators: These, we are told, are the low-paying jobs of the future. Unfortunately, that list would be incomplete without including one of the fastest growing job titles at the business networking site LinkedIn: adjunct professors. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of people describing themselves there this way grew by almost 40 percent.
Adjunct professors are not a new presence in American universities. They have been around since the 1970s. However, their numbers have increased drastically recently just as tuition has spiked too. According to a recent report by the American Federation of Teachers' higher education division, three quarters of faculty employed in American colleges and universities are now part-time workers on limited term contracts.
The numbers in Colorado aren't much better than they are nationwide. At CU-Boulder, for example, government data shows only 54 percent of faculty are tenured or on the tenure track. Even at a private school like the University of Denver, 48 percent of the faculty are part-time. Thirty-one percent of faculty there are non-tenure track.
Despite their near-universal presence in American higher education, most students and their parents don't know anything about adjunct faculty members, nor do they understand the difference between adjuncts, lecturers and tenure-track faculty. After all, everyone tends to call whoever is at the front of the classroom "professor."
An adjunct professor is a faculty member who teaches on a limited-term contract for less than full time. A lecturer usually works full time, but is paid less than tenure-track faculty and, like an adjunct, is not eligible for tenure. Without tenure, these faculty members can be fired at will. While this kind of fear is common among workers today, what usually separates these professors from nearly every other worker around is their rock-bottom pay and total absence of benefits.
At some schools, adjunct faculty are paid as low as $800/course. Considering the hours it takes to prepare classes and grade, the pay is often less than minimum wage. Teach a full load of courses, and these professors will likely still be eligible for Food Stamps. In many places, faculty are forced to carve out a meager existence teaching at many schools at once, sometimes driving hours between them each day.
Fearing retribution, adjunct faculty are often reluctant to speak up about the terms and conditions of their employment. Yet college students and their parents need to understand who adjunct faculty members are and the conditions they work under because this affects the quality of the education for which they are paying so much.
Most adjunct faculty are well-qualified, dedicated teachers. However, any professor who has to struggle this way to make ends meet cannot invest all the time and energy into teaching that their students deserve. Yet universities charge the same amount in tuition for taking a class no matter how much the person teaching the course is getting paid.
That's why it's gratifying to see that these invisible faculty members are beginning to make themselves visible in large numbers for the first time. They are organizing into trade unions at schools like American University and NYU. They are petitioning Vice-President Biden after he claimed that high faculty salaries were behind the exploding cost of college. They aren't. The increase in the number of adjuncts more than compensates for whatever raises tenured folks like me have gotten over the years.
Here in Colorado, a bill that Governor Hickenlooper recently signed will make it possible for state universities to offer their adjunct faculty members contracts up to three years long. While this does not compensate for the poor pay, it at least offers these professors a measure of job security that adjunct faculty in other states seldom receive.
Adjuncts are also beginning to collect information about their working conditions and sharing them with the world so that everyone can understand the magnitude of the problems that they face. Before that can happen though, every college student and every American needs to be made aware of their existence. Once they are, improving pay and working conditions for adjunct professors can become the kind of higher education reform that should find great support among every political constituency.
Jonathan Rees is a professor of History at Colorado State University-Pueblo.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
Read more: Guest Commentary: Adjunct professors are hiding in plain sight - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_20490316?source=pop_section_opinion#ixzz1tiCo0hte
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
Guest Commentary: Adjunct professors are hiding in plain sight
POSTED: 04/29/2012
By Jonathan Rees
Retail employees, food service workers, call center operators: These, we are told, are the low-paying jobs of the future. Unfortunately, that list would be incomplete without including one of the fastest growing job titles at the business networking site LinkedIn: adjunct professors. Between 2007 and 2011, the number of people describing themselves there this way grew by almost 40 percent.
Adjunct professors are not a new presence in American universities. They have been around since the 1970s. However, their numbers have increased drastically recently just as tuition has spiked too. According to a recent report by the American Federation of Teachers' higher education division, three quarters of faculty employed in American colleges and universities are now part-time workers on limited term contracts.
The numbers in Colorado aren't much better than they are nationwide. At CU-Boulder, for example, government data shows only 54 percent of faculty are tenured or on the tenure track. Even at a private school like the University of Denver, 48 percent of the faculty are part-time. Thirty-one percent of faculty there are non-tenure track.
Despite their near-universal presence in American higher education, most students and their parents don't know anything about adjunct faculty members, nor do they understand the difference between adjuncts, lecturers and tenure-track faculty. After all, everyone tends to call whoever is at the front of the classroom "professor."
An adjunct professor is a faculty member who teaches on a limited-term contract for less than full time. A lecturer usually works full time, but is paid less than tenure-track faculty and, like an adjunct, is not eligible for tenure. Without tenure, these faculty members can be fired at will. While this kind of fear is common among workers today, what usually separates these professors from nearly every other worker around is their rock-bottom pay and total absence of benefits.
At some schools, adjunct faculty are paid as low as $800/course. Considering the hours it takes to prepare classes and grade, the pay is often less than minimum wage. Teach a full load of courses, and these professors will likely still be eligible for Food Stamps. In many places, faculty are forced to carve out a meager existence teaching at many schools at once, sometimes driving hours between them each day.
Fearing retribution, adjunct faculty are often reluctant to speak up about the terms and conditions of their employment. Yet college students and their parents need to understand who adjunct faculty members are and the conditions they work under because this affects the quality of the education for which they are paying so much.
Most adjunct faculty are well-qualified, dedicated teachers. However, any professor who has to struggle this way to make ends meet cannot invest all the time and energy into teaching that their students deserve. Yet universities charge the same amount in tuition for taking a class no matter how much the person teaching the course is getting paid.
That's why it's gratifying to see that these invisible faculty members are beginning to make themselves visible in large numbers for the first time. They are organizing into trade unions at schools like American University and NYU. They are petitioning Vice-President Biden after he claimed that high faculty salaries were behind the exploding cost of college. They aren't. The increase in the number of adjuncts more than compensates for whatever raises tenured folks like me have gotten over the years.
Here in Colorado, a bill that Governor Hickenlooper recently signed will make it possible for state universities to offer their adjunct faculty members contracts up to three years long. While this does not compensate for the poor pay, it at least offers these professors a measure of job security that adjunct faculty in other states seldom receive.
Adjuncts are also beginning to collect information about their working conditions and sharing them with the world so that everyone can understand the magnitude of the problems that they face. Before that can happen though, every college student and every American needs to be made aware of their existence. Once they are, improving pay and working conditions for adjunct professors can become the kind of higher education reform that should find great support among every political constituency.
Jonathan Rees is a professor of History at Colorado State University-Pueblo.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
Read more: Guest Commentary: Adjunct professors are hiding in plain sight - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_20490316?source=pop_section_opinion#ixzz1tiCo0hte
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse