Dear "Whining Adjuncts" - Keep Up the Good Work!

The web is alive with the sound of outrage. In a remarkably tone-deaf letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Catherine Stukel suggests - no, she flat-out states, that adjuncts may not be getting hired in full-time, tenure-track jobs because they are annoying, they are unlikable, they are mediocre, or they don't fully engage their students. You can read her letter here.

The most outrageous thing she does is attack Margaret MaryVojtko, referring to an article about a "dying, broken-hearted 83-year-old adjunct professor." Stukel is disgusted. She suggests that Professor Vojtko should "put on [her] big girl panties."

Apparently she didn't read the article, because Professor Vojtko was already dead.

She also suggests that, in placing the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article in her mailbox, the adjunct-teacher's union at her institution was whining. She never acknowledges that her so-called colleagues were taking action, as she later suggests they do (although unionizing and fighting the Walmartization of higher education is not what she has in mind for them).

And while the story of Professor Vojtko was simplified (in part, I suspect, because of the very limited word count of op-ed pieces)in the Post-Gazette article, and more fully formed stories of her life have been published, Stukel has no interest in finding the facts. Instead, she launches into one of the most appalling versions of blame the victim I have ever seen.

Stukel may be right on some points - if you are desperately unhappy, perhaps you should find another career - or at least, another job. I know of at least one adjunct who was inspired to quit by this article. I suspect that if more adjuncts walked away, and at the very last minute, when full-time schedules had been finalized, things might change. Might.

But Stukel's total oblivion to the system that created legions of "whiners" and the many benefits she receives from it that she would deny the adjuncts on her campus, is something that cannot continue in the ranks of the tenured faculty.

As a tenure-track faculty member who spent seven years in the trenches with the freeway flyers, I have made it my mission to keep the issue in front of both the academic community and its stakeholders: parents, students, fellow citizens desiring a system of higher education that focuses on teaching and learning rather than fancy dorms, athletic facilities, and the over-population of  over-paid administrative suites.

I hope tenured professors such as Stukel will wake up and understand that the very system they benefit from is destroying itself from within. If Professor Stukel hopes for higher education for her children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren, she had better acknowledge that the continued reliance on part-time workers will remove that opportunity within the next generations.

(Note: Cartoon courtesy of  Hugh MacLeod at gapevoid.com)

Awareness? Raised. Action? Not So Much.

Since I last wrote, at least half a dozen new adjunct blogs have begun. Several "I Quit Academe" essays have surfaced, and one "Academe Quit Me" essay roused some interest.

It's beginning to feel a lot like October.

Not the weather. It's a seasonal 32 degrees and lightly snowy here in Central West Virginia.

But in the conflict between awareness and action.

I know I've mentioned this before. October, as we all know, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Pink ribbons appear on products. NFL players wear fuschia shoes and gloves. The City of Pittsburgh dyes the water in the fountains pink.

But seriously. You'd have to have been raised by wolves, born in a barn, AND living in a remote cave not to be aware of breast cancer. Awareness is no longer the issue. Why can't we put all the money that goes into pinkness into research for prevention and cures? (And, yes, I know - some of the profits from these programs does go into those things, as well as providing mammograms for uninsured women. But still.)

Besides, I don't like pink much. When my sister and I were young, our mother often bought us almost-matching outfits - hers was blue; mine was pink. I've had enough.

The public conversation about working conditions for college and university faculty is feeling very pink to me now. There is no one with a pulse over 20 in academia who is not now aware of the problem. The road we are on - the road to all part-time faculty with low wages and no benefits - will destroy higher education in America sooner rather than later.

So what now? Do those of us actively working to improve working conditions in academia need to adopt a color and campaign for a month? I think blue would be appropriate . . .and how about February - we don't want people to be aware for too long.

Or is it time for those who have been lying low - administrators who believe that by hiring several adjuncts they're actually increasing the number of available jobs; tenured faculty near enough to retirement that they don't care; parents who believe that part-time faculty somehow means lower tuition*; students who don't know if their faculty members are full-time or not, simply because most adjuncts show the same dedication to their learning as tenured or tenure-track faculty members do; politicians; voters - is it time for them to add their voices and demand that some action be taken?

Yes.

*For the record, there is a definite correlation between increasing tuitions and increasing pat-time and contingent faculty. Not a causation perhaps, but definitely a correlation. Hmmmm . . ..

Long Time No Blog

It's that magical time of year - finals! So my blog has been strangely silent, in spite of the many interesting developments in the faculty labor world.

Probably the most interesting is the delivery of a petition to Duquesne University supporting unionization of adjuncts there. As you may remember, it was the death of an adjunct at Duquesne that set off the national discussion - I'd like to call it national outrage, but as a nation, we reserve that for sleazy awards show performances and bad NFL calls.

Pittsburgh CityPaper posted this on its blog (blogh - the h is silent - clever!) Check this out.

Meanwhile, here is their picture, featuring front and center a friend and colleague with whom I served as an adjunct at a Pittsburgh university:

Love the language (after all, we do teach writing): Tenuous Track. 

Frankly, adjunct, contingent, tenure track or tenured - at this point all faculty jobs are tenuous. It is time for national outrage. Students, parents, faculty, staff, strangers on the street - we all need to step up and address the importance of higher education (ok, all education). If we don't, more great teachers will give up and move on. And then who will teach my grandsons when it's their turn for college?

Brian O'Neill Nails It - As Usual . . .

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Brian O'Neill has weighed in on the case of Duquesne University adjunct, Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko. And, yes, I am calling her Professor (not adjunct, not visiting, not instructor) on purpose, because that is the title she deserved.

In it, O'Neill does some disturbing math. Read his column (brilliant as always) here.

In case you don't want to go to the link, O'Neill writes this: "Money charged to students covers 108 percent of instructional costs. The overflow goes to university research, public service and overhead. That would be where dwindling state budget money devoted to universities goes, too -- not to instruction. Thus college costs have soared even as more instruction comes from part-time professors who squeeze in classes with their real jobs. Public universities have done this largely because state appropriations have shrunk. In Pennsylvania, state appropriations cover only 18 percent of university core revenue. Only Colorado and Vermont offer a lower percentage."

So thank you, Brian. This is exactly where I was planning to go next. Duquesne University, a private school where undergraduate tuition ranges from $29,000 to $34,000 a year, chooses to exploit its workers, it's wrong. It's evil. But it's the free market economy - they do because they can. (I'm not excusing them from the Catholic commitment to labor issues. Apparently they have done that themselves.)

But when public education does the same, it's unspeakable. I was blessed to get my PhD from Indiana University of Pennsylvania paying in-state tuition - a fraction of what my out-of-state classmates paid. But I spent my whole life paying Pennsylvania state taxes. I finally got something for it (other than the occasionally paved pot hole). I pay my state taxes, in part, hoping to allow others get the education they need to succeed in the world.

When O'Neill says "overhead," a lot of that money is administrative salaries. The teachers in the trenches are suffering while presidents and football coaches are getting rich. This is what the defunding of public colleges and universities is truly defunding: teaching. The heart and soul of the university. There is no move to cut administrative salaries. And, strangely, no move to cut governors' salaries.

One of O'Neill's sources refers to "educational consumers." As problematic as that term is, if you are, in fact, an "educational consumer" - a student or parent of a student - step up. Demand teachers who are treated with respect, health insurance, and a living wage.

The Big Picture

My high school driver's ed teacher, Mr. Raso, was known for his sayings. One of my favorites was "Always get the big picture."

So as the public outrage over the conditions of Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko's life and death fades and focusses on other issues (like the government shutdown - and rightly so), I hope we can allow her to rest in peace while still moving forward on the important work of improving working conditions in academia.

Many years ago, during my seven years as an adjunct, I was railing at my sister about the injustice of it all - the long hours in the car, the low pay, the lack of benefits, the lack of respect - she calmly said, Well, when you get a full-time job, you can work to help other adjuncts.

And here I am.

As I wrote before, my current institution uses few adjuncts. This may be a matter of convenience, as there are very few people with advanced degrees in rural central West Virginia who aren't already affiliated with the college. So the issue did not come to mind in the midst of settling into a new job and a new home.

But I'm ba-a-a-a-a-ck.

This blog is a start, but it is just that. What next? Post advice, support, comments please . . .

It's All About the Union - Or Is It?

Today's entry includes a great cartoon from Rob Rogers in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Unfortunately, I think too many people are making this an issue of unionization, and the anti-union climate today is perhaps obscuring the bigger issue. Union or no, contingent faculty should not be abused. If a union is the only way to get fair treatment, a union it must be. 

Ken Gormley claims that Duquesne University pays its adjuncts more than many other Pittsburgh area colleges and universities, and from my experience, that is true. But the argument that some colleges treat their adjuncts well sounds vaguely like the claim that some slave owners didn't beat their slaves. Nice to know, but it doesn't make owning slaves all right. Paying more than other universities is nice, but it still resulted in abject poverty for Professor Vojtko.

A Great Day for the Great Race

Don't say I didn't warn you - there will be occasional blogs about running. And, since it's Sunday, I decided to lighten up a bit . . .

Today was the thirty-sixth running of the Richard S. Caliguiri City of Pittsburgh Great Race. I have run the 10K event almost every year since I started running in 1999. I couldn't be there this year - I'm living about three hours south in Glenville, West Virginia, and I couldn't get a dog sitter (long story for another time, perhaps).

The Great Race is known for its long uphill climb from mile four to mile five - it goes up the Boulevard of the Allies out of Oakland to Mercy Hospital (Pittsburghers will get this immediately). The elevation chart doesn't do it justice. There is no shade and the road is concrete. Although the second, third, and fourth miles are rolling hills and the overall elevation of the course is downhill, it's a tough mile. Often, it's hot.

I'm a slow runner, so it's almost always hot by the time i get there. My favorite part of the course is where the hill crests right behind Duquesne University. There are always cheerleaders and band members and other students cheering the runners on, and there's a water stop. From that point, it truly is downhill all the way to the finish line at Point State Park.

Interesting that the expression "downhill all the way" can be used to describe a happy circumstance, at least for runners, or an unhappy circumstance, something like "down the tubes."

I ran over four miles in my tee shirt from last year's Great Race today. Don't know how I would have felt about running past my alma mater.

In other news, as the world's worst transition puts it, "Death of an Adjunct" letters earned The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's "Issue One" position today.

And the Beat Goes On

Yesterday I mentioned that the furor over Professor Margaret Mary Vojtko's life and death seemed to have died down. Not so: there were several more letters to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can find them here.

Tobias Wolff wrote, "A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life." I believe that all of the writing on this subject, starting with Daniel Kovalik's original essay, can change lives. Please keep sharing the articles that you find, and spread them as far as you can - to students and their parents, to administration, to politicians (not that you expect anything to come of that). The wonderful thing about Mr. Kovalik's story is that it brought an issue that has long been festering within academia out of the ivory tower and into the world. Let's keep it there.

In the Interest of Full Disclosure

I should have mentioned this earlier: I am a graduate of Duquesne University. I earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1976 (ok, I can here you all doing the math in your heads). Back in those dark ages when we chiseled our research papers on stone tablets, guess what? All my professors were full-time, tenure-track or tenured teacher/scholars. Graduate students led discussion groups for the large introductory lecture courses, but that was the only experience I had with contingent faculty.

The system seemed so secure that my professors encouraged me to go to graduate school and become a college teacher. Perhaps if I had taken their advice at the time, I would have entered the profession before the glut of English post-graduates hit the market. Perhaps I would have avoided the seven years of insecurity. Perhaps I would be able to anticipate retirement.

But my field - English composition - was in its infancy. I would have been directed into some subfield within literature. And it turns out I really don't like teaching literature. I love helping students - especially underprepared students - discover that they can write.

So instead of going directly to graduate school, I worked in journalism, public relations, fund development, and retail. I got an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh 20 years after my graduation from Duquesne. I had not intended to teach - I was going to write the best-selling, critically-acclaimed Great American Novel.

Back to retail.

I started teaching through a series of fortuitous connections. It was love at first sight. I was a part-time make-up artist in a downtown department store and taught two classes a semester.

It took a while before I felt used, abused, and exploited.

Back to school - I began doctoral studies almost 10 years after my master's program.

And everyone warned me: you still might not get a job. It took two years on the market and well over 100 applications before I landed my current tenure-track job.

Many of my friends and classmates have not been as fortunate. While Professor Vojtko's story makes the rounds of social media, some very good friends and very good teachers have posted their intent to leave teaching because they need health care, or steady income, or some sense of job security.

We will continue to lose good teachers. We will lose good teachers who never became teachers.

And, eventually, we will lose higher education.

Adjunctivitis: The Heartbreak Continues

Although it's hard to imagine anything worse than the sad story of Margaret Mary Vojtko, the Duquesne University adjunct professor who died in abject poverty, there is something worse: the official responses of the university to that story.

The first came in a letter to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from the Reverend Daniel Walsh, the university chaplain. He is appalled - not by the treatment of Professor Vojtko, but by the idea that the story was told at all. After all, when she was living in squalor and dying of cancer, they offered her charity! They visited her! That should make it all better, right? Read his letter here.

Then we have this gem from Ken Gormley, dean of the law school, who could not be more clueless. He claims that part-time faculty bring real-world experience into the classroom. This is true in many fields - a working lawyer teaching a course in law school would be an asset to the classroom. But Professor Vojtko's field was French - there is no "real world" job to bring to the classroom. My own field, English composition, is one in which there are no "real world" jobs - the field is the classroom. And yet it is probably the biggest user and abuser of contingent faculty in the academy.

Gormley also points a finger at "individuals who seek to build full-time careers by combining multiple part-time contracts, often at several institutions." In his rosy world view, where all adjuncts are merely supplementing their income and sharing their real world experience, it is the adjuncts themselves who want full-time careers who are the problem.

Let me say this right now: I know many many contingent faculty members. Not one of them seeks the life of a freeway flyer. They have been seeking full-time employment. And yet the academy continues to churn out qualified teachers with master's degrees and doctorates, creating a labor pool so large it is easily exploited.

Next, we have a letter from a staff member. This is probably not an official university response, but it does lead me to believe that the school is serving Kool-aid. The article, she claims, is "unfair to the university." Her letter contains at least one factual error (Professor Vojtko never slept in a classroom. She did sleep in her office sometimes.). She blames Professor Vojtko's family for not rescuing her from the poverty that a combination of university policy and cancer created. I wonder if she has any idea of what "family" that might be. She also claims that Professor Vojtko was receiving Social Security and Medicare. I wonder how she knows this. If Professor Vojtko's wages were as low as reported - and the university has not disputed that - her payment into Social Security would not have been very much - therefore her payments from Social Security wouldn't have been very much either.

But none of this matters. Neither charity nor defensiveness nor mansplaining justifies the exploitation of a woman who, from all reports, was both a good teacher and a good Catholic, by an institution that prides itself on instilling Catholic values in its students.

Adjunctivitis: The Search for the Cure

That's the title of a paper I wrote in my doctoral program about six years ago. It told the stories of my woes as a "freeway flyer" - a part-time faculty member working for several institutions of higher education at the same time to fool myself into believing I had a full-time job.

My worst semester (out of seven years) I taught six courses for three colleges in five different locations. I had a Monday/Wednesday/Friday book bag, a Tuesday/Thursday book bag, and a Wednesday night book bag. God help me if I ever grabbed the wrong bag or pointed the car the wrong direction.

I also edited newsletters for two local government bodies.

My best year I earned almost $30,000. I had no health insurance most of the time - I finally caved in and bought an individual plan that cost about $200 a month.

But I was living in the lap of luxury compared to Margaret Mary Vojtko, whose sad story, written by Daniel Kovalik, appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on September 18 - read the story here if you haven't already.

The story has, as they say, gone viral. But its fifteen minutes of fame seem to be fading, after just a week. Groups that were already focused on the exploitation of part-time faculty are still spreading the story and the many and varied reactions to it, but the general public seems to have moved on. No more letters to the editor in the P-G. No more outrage from Catholic publications. Hey! There's a new iPhone! and did you read about the 40-foot rubber ducky coming to Pittsburgh?

I talked to my students about the story. They were shocked. We are fortunate to be in a remote, rural area of West Virginia where there is no labor pool to exploit. Pittsburgh is very different - with such a rich collection of colleges and universities, there are many many people with masters' degrees and even doctorates who are eager to teach. So - supply and demand, right? Why even pretend to pay them a living wage?

Of course, there are many good reasons to, apart from the obvious ethical issues. Or are they obvious?

This blog will continue to share the writing on this subject as well as my own experience. Professor Vojtko's nephew's wish is that the story is so powerful that there will be no more Margaret Marys. From his lips to God's ear . . .