Who's Got the Adjunct Blues?

According to a great song (and thanks to Matthew Ussia), we all do - professors, teachers, parents . . .  the only stakeholders (don't you just love how I've learned educational jargon?) not mentioned in the song are the administrators.

And that's because they're not blue at all. They're laughing all the way to the bank.

For now. But when we claim to be following the business model for education, it's a very specific business model based on short-term profit. So dedicating the budget to Taj Mahal*-style dorms makes sense - it brings in more customers, and they pay more for the privilege of living in the lap of luxury. Dedicating the budget to top-heavy administration makes sense, because, duh, it's the heavy administrators at the top who are setting the budget.

But dedicating the budget to education? To teachers, updated classrooms, better libraries? How would that appeal to the customer - the customer who is, by the way, an 18 year old. And, as every business person knows, the customer - at any age - is always right.

Here's a library story for any doubters out there: At a public university near and dear to my heart, the library steps were crumbling. Seems there was a spring or other source of water under them determined to bring them down. Did the university replace the sensible steps with new sensible steps, after solving the water problem? They did not. They constructed an elaborate marble staircase with the library name engraved on the wall.

Inside, the librarians were thinking, Really? When we keep asking for more books and data bases?

So when the full-time professors are gone; when the contents of the library are gone, what's left? Nothing. Colleges and universities will be just one more set of boarded up big box stores.



*And, yes, I know the Taj Mahal is a mausoleum. Wonder how many of the college students living in those dorms knows that.