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)

After the Deluge

The deluge in question is a long thread that has been running on the Council of Writing Program Administrators' list serve. It started with a simple, practical question and has morphed and morphed again into a discussion of tenure track and non-tenured teaching positions. This is positively a boon for me, as I am speaking at that very group's conference on that very subject on Saturday.

Ironically, if not absurdly, I submitted my proposal in the category of "conversation starter" - not a full paper, but a brief overview of a given topic which is then thrown open to the participants to discuss. It's obvious that this conversation has been started, and is not going to end any time soon.

And it's possible to squeeze out a tiny bit of hope for the future of labor conditions in American higher education. On June 26, adjunct faculty at Point Park University in Pittsburgh voted to join the Adjunct Faculty Association of the USW. Previously, part-time faculty members at Tufts, Leslie, and Northeastern Universities also voted to unionize. There are many more cases of organizing in process, including awaiting the results of Duquesne University's appeal of the union vote to the National Labor Relations Board.

There is currently a petition circulating to urge David Weil, the director of the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor to investigate working conditions and wages of adjunct faculty. (Read and sign the petition here.)

It may not seem like much, but the movement has gained steam quickly since the September 18 article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the life and death of spurned adjunct Mary Margaret Vojtko. I've seen more concern from people outside of academia, and more concern from tenured faculty, many of whom had sat above the fray.

All of those are positive things. Something that strikes me as less positive is a growing support for converting adjunct jobs into non-tenured, full-time teaching lines with benefits. On the surface, and certainly for the poor adjunct traveling to three or more schools, teaching an outrageously heavy load, and still walking the tightrope of the poverty line, it seems like a wonderful idea.

Here are my reservations. First, the online division of Southern New Hampshire University (a huge operation that has been called "the Amazon of education") has tested converting adjunct jobs to full-time. The workload, already heavy, increased. The pressure to follow the rules (respond to every assignment within 72 hours, for example) increased. And when the full-time jobs are created, the university has said that "some" of the current adjuncts will be hired in them.

Granted, there may be good reasons not to hire every single adjunct in a full-time position. Some may, for their own reasons, prefer to remain part-time. But every qualified and capable adjunct who has served the university well should be offered a full-time job, until those jobs are all filled. I was warned by a faculty member at one university where I applied to be an adjunct not to do it, as adjuncts were never considered for tenure-track jobs. Thank you for your service; please apply elsewhere.

The second concern is more urgent. Full-time, non-tenured teachers often have no support, no protection, and no job security. I worked one year in such a position,where I was assured that renewal was almost automatic. Sadly, someone with a strong vote and a weak grasp of my field didn't like the way I taught. I was a campus leader in service, scholarship, and teaching - at least to everyone else, but it didn't matter. In a tenure track job, I would have been protected from such pettiness.

So the conversation, once started, will not hush. Here are the questions I intend to raise on Saturday:

How can writing program administrators:

• create an atmosphere inclusive of contingent faculty
• advocate for better conditions, including increased pay, benefits, and working conditions such as office space, parking, and access to university services
• address gender inequality in contingent issues
• participate in activism on behalf of contingent labor beyond our own campuses
• build alliances among administration, tenured and tenure-track faculty, full-time nontenured faculty, and adjunct faculty, staff, students and parents for the improvement of the working conditions of contingent faculty as well as a longer-term goal of increasing the number of full-time, tenure-track positions?

If you have any answers, feel free to post a comment. And if you're going to Normal, Illinois this weekend, you'll be one step ahead of the rest of the participants at my panel.

The Will to Prepare

Tanzanian marathoner and trainer Juma Ikangaa said, "The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare." I've been thinking about these words of wisdom for two reasons.

The first is American runner Meb Keflezighi's win in Monday's Boston Marathon - the first American to win since 1985. I met Meb at the Pittsburgh Marathon Expo several years ago and have his autograph: he signs, "Run to Win" - and then explains that winning is personal, individual. Obviously, he could tell to look at me that I was not going to "win" the Pittsburgh marathon. But in my mid-50s at the time, persevering through a long run was (and still is) a win.


Earlier this month I joined friends in running the inaugural Scranton Half Marathon. I ran it with almost no training. It's not that I didn't have the will to prepare - I just didn't have the health to prepare. I went through two bouts of flu with a broken toe in between.

Meb might have said that I hobbled to win that day.

It was not the smartest thing I ever did - the chances of getting injured were huge, especially considering that a few miles of the race were on an uneven and rocky trail. I was lucky - and I had enough residual fitness from before the triple health whammy to finish, and to recover quickly.

How, you may be wondering, is any of this relevant to labor conditions in academia?

When I began my PhD program, I had already run seven marathons, and I ran my eighth during my first year there. I don't think I would have had the nerve to go back to school if I hadn't learned about the will to prepare through long-distance running. Both events are more about tenacity than native talent - and tenacity is learned.

And, again, I was lucky. Two years after finishing my degree, I landed a tenure-track job. I had taught as an adjunct for seven years, in a one-year contract job for exactly one year, and in a job with no tenure or rank for four years. I was prepared.

But sadly, preparation isn't always enough. My electronic devices are being flooded with stories about the glut of PhDs on the market and the ever decreasing number of full-time, tenure-track jobs for them. So many of my friends are prepared - prepared for a marathon that was cancelled while they were lacing their shoes for the first training run.

I realize more and more that if he problem of contingent faculty is to be solved, it falls on the shoulders of full-timers, tenured and tenure-track faculty to stand up and say, no more. We must help our unemployed and underemployed colleagues run to win.

Why I Didn't Quit

As the new essay genre "Why I Quit Academia" continues to be populated with stories of poverty, lack of respect, anger and frustration, I thought I would respond with why I didn't quit - and why "Why don't you quit?" is not the best thing to say to contingent faculty expressing their concerns about their situations.

I didn't quit because finally, in my 40s, I found my calling. I had bounced around in a variety of jobs from journalism to make-up artist, hoping that eventually I would write the Great American Novel. Instead, I got an MFA in fiction writing, wrote the Not So Bad American Novella (yet to be published), and managed a high-end women's shoe store.

The opportunity to teach composition as an adjunct came through a connection - it certainly wasn't what I knew, because I had never taught. It was who I knew, and that was good enough for me.

My first job wasn't just teaching composition. It was teaching a section of basic writing (a course for students not prepared for college-level composition courses) and a section of students who had just that moment arrived in the United States from Africa.

I was in heaven. I fell for basic writing, and I fell hard. I still consider it the most important part of my career. I also consider it a calling, even a gift. I understand students who struggle academically, who don't know how to navigate the unknown territory of academia. And I loved working with the African students, who were new to both academia and America (and I'm not sure which culture was stranger to them).

And so, as I have reported here before, I spent seven years cobbling together teaching jobs at three colleges, freelance editing, and part-time make-up artist work until, after finishing my coursework for my PhD, I found my first full-time teaching job.

I know I've been lucky. I have a husband with a good job, so those semesters when I was down a course, we didn't have to struggle as single teachers do. I got that first full-time job. And the second. And, finally, the tenure-track dream job (note: slight irony intended).

But I know many adjuncts will not find the path I stumbled upon (in both senses). And yet, they don't quit. They are dedicated teachers who dream -futilely, far too often- of a real career. They believed the Great American Lie: Get an education, and you will live the Great American Dream.

Friends who told me I should quit were often the same friends who were unhappy in their jobs - in or out of academia. Why didn't they quit? And what would I have done if I did quit? Return to the shoe trade? I had already reimagined myself too often.

So if contingent faculty choose to labor on, in spite of the conditions, in spite of the odds against ever finding full-time employment, I hope it is for the same reason I did: the love of teaching.

This, however, does not justify the continued abuse of contingent faculty. And, yes, if adjuncts all quit, the academy might have to rethink its labor policies.

But more likely it would just churn out thousands more MAs to take their places.

So instead of suggesting that your adjunct friends just quit, take to the streets. Write to your local college administration, your newspaper, whoever might listen. Don't send your kids to colleges that abuse faculty labor pools. Help your friends in ways that might help the academic world.

Adjunct Earns $62.50 per Hour! Film at 11!

Apparently, no matter how often we talk about it, many people still believe that teachers are actually working only during their classroom hours.

In an email that went through a real university email system, it was suggested that adjuncts earning $2818 for a three-credit course were earning $62.50 per hour: 15 weeks, 3 hours per week equals 45 hours - divide that into 2818 and voila! $62.50! (I get $62.62 - perhaps the writer was no better at math than at having a clue what teachers do.)

There are two egregious errors in logic being made here. The first is that even if you are earning $62.50 per hour, if your entire income is $2818, you are not exactly rolling in cash. And  many contingent faculty members are assigned only one or two courses per semester - at the institution paying $2818/course, that would be an annual high income of $11,272. You would earn more in 40 hours a week at a minimum wage job* (assuming you could find a full-time minimum wage job).

The more serious problem is the assumption that face-to-face time with students in the classroom is the sum of the work of a teacher.

Why, as a profession, do we need to continue explaining this? No one believes that a surgeon only works when he is in the operating room, or that a lawyer only works when she is in the courtroom. And yet, here I go again: Prep time! Grading time! Individual conferences with students! Committee work! Advising! Scholarship! We do it all!

Hello? Hello? Anybody out there?



*I will address the question of Why not? Why not go for the minimum wage job! in a later post.

More of This, Please!

Point Park University students have formed a Student Solidarity Organization to demand fair labor practices. Point Park was one of the three colleges that I taught part-time for, and while I had a great relationship with my department chair (I still count him as a friend), I received the lowest pay there - and since it was downtown Pittsburgh, I often had to pay outrageous parking rates, adding insult to injury.

It was the only school where I frequently had students who had no full-time faculty members teaching them in any given semester. There was no office space, not even the usual tiny room with one computer to serve a dozen adjuncts. And this is a private university with full-time tuition ranging from about $25,00 - $32,000 per year. Just tuition - not room and board, not any of the dozen fees that colleges add.

On the plus side, the students were bright and interesting - with majors ranging from musical theater to mortuary science/business, and it was the only school that offered undergraudate tuition benefits for adjuncts and their dependents. Sadly, I could not avail myself of that.

Student activism is crucial to changing the system. If administrations are going to insist on considering students customers, they will have to give the customers the product that they claim to be selling them: a quality education. And students, parents, and other key players are going to have to step up and demand that they do. Congratulations, Point Park students - this is a great start!

On a Football Sunday

In order for the Pittsburgh Steelers to get into the playoffs, they have to beat the Cleveland Browns this afternoon. But that's the least of their worries. They must depend on the Miami Dolphins, the San Diego Chargers, and the Baltimore Ravens to lose.

Why do I mention this on a blog about academic labor conditions? Steeler Coach Mike Tomlin has repeatedly said he would prefer the team to be in charge of its own destiny.

There's a strongly entrenched belief in American culture that we are all in charge of our own destiny: that if we work hard, get an education, keep a positive attitude and get up every time we are knocked down, we will be successful. We are in control of our own destiny, and if we are unemployed, underemployed, poor, sick, or disabled, it is somehow because we didn't have the right stuff. We didn't work hard, get an education, yaddada yaddada yaddada, blah blah blah.

Now, in the case of the Steelers, they truly did dig themselves into the hole they now occupy. They lost their first four games, and then four more during the season. In today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Gerry Dulac lists 10 mistakes that led to those losses.

But when I look to my friends and colleagues in the academic world, what mistakes might I list? Getting PhDs? Working hard as adjuncts or non-tenure-track instructors? Keeping at it in spite of low wages, no benefits, and often, little or no respect from their tenured colleagues and administration?

But wait: those are all the things that we're encouraged to do; the things that put us in charge of our own destiny.

We've been sold a bill of goods, dear readers. The Steelers did, in fact, blow it early and often. But college and university faculty members, especially those in the contingent labor pool,  are in no way responsible for the Walmartization of higher education in America.

I'm always glad to see the Steelers succeed, especially when it involves the Browns and the Ravens losing, but it's a game. (A game, incidentally, that is one of the largest nonprofit organizations in America - maybe if we taxed the NFL and used that money for education . . .  but I digress . . .)

Higher education is not a game, and highly educated and talented teachers are not rookies to be benched or cut at will.

It's Boxing Day!

No, not the day you put your presents in boxes. No, not a day to go a few rounds in the ring. Boxing Day is the traditional European holiday (although I always associate it with England, where it is still a Bank Holiday) when people give Christmas Boxes (gifts) to servants and tradesmen.

What if we applied that to contingent faculty? How about it, administration - a grudging recognition of the importance of the faculty that, quite frankly, are frequently rated below "servants and tradesmen" - could it happen?

Should it? a question for another day . . .