Are the Professional Organizations Supporting Organization?

According to a recent article in Salon, not so much. At least not the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the organization of programs, professors, and students in creative writing.

In her article entitled "Professors in Homeless Shelters," Becky Tuch calls the organization out:

At this year’s conference in Seattle, the biggest AWP conference yet, you did not have a single panel dedicated to adjunct teaching. Nor were there any panels addressing this shift toward part-time faculty at colleges. Absent also were lectures, discussions or Q&A sessions addressing these changes in the academic climate.

 The involvement of AWP is especially important, I believe, because teachers with creative writing degrees are more likely to become adjuncts than many other faculty. While English departments have an embarrassment of riches in the number of potential teachers with advanced degrees in literature, composition, and creative writing, in many ways the creative writing graduates have the hardest time.

They have earned Masters of Fine Arts (MFAs), degrees considered terminal, and yet they are in competition with people who have earned PhDs. If they do not have a published book as well as a string of smaller publications, they are not considered for positions teaching creative writing in their genre. They fall back into the pool of candidates for jobs in composition, and often feel fortunate to find even part-time positions (as I did).

There is better news, however. The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), whose national conference starts today in Indianapolis has been paying attention. The Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) conference this summer is dedicated to the nature of work and workplace issues in writing programs (generally composition programs, to differentiate WPA and AWP). But they all - and we all - could do more. Tuch concludes:

But we working writers/teachers/students need to get our act together. We need to start talking about the treatment of adjuncts and graduate students. We need to stop pretending there is no problem. We need to work together to address these issues. You, AWP, are in a unique position to help us do that.

Please, AWP - connect with your fellow organizations as well as your own members, and join the conversation.

Feats of Strength I'd Like to See

On Festivus (see the whole story here),it's tempting to stress the importance of The Airing of the Grievances, but, because I've already done a fair amount of that on this blog, this year I'd like to emphasize the Feats of Strength. Here are some I'd like to see in the academic world, starting tonight under the Festivus Pole and extending into the New Year and beyond.

For Contingent Faculty Members:

• Be strong enough to juggle their many courses, long commutes, and economic insecurity just long enough for the the academic world to wake up and smell the gallons of coffee they're guzzling on the road.
• Be strong enough to continue to organize, protest, speak up, write, and whatever else it will take to get the word out and the world changed.
• Be strong enough to say no to anyone and everyone and catch up on sleep over whatever break they get.

For Full-Time, Tenured or Tenure-Track Faculty Members:

• Be strong enough to be kind to and inclusive of contingent faculty in their departments.
• Be strong enough to join in the organization of, protests for, and any other actions to help change academic labor conditions for those not as fortunate as them (us, that is. Us.).
• Be strong enough to support the needs of contingent faculty to their department chairs and other administrators.

For Campus Administrators:

• Be strong enough to recognize that the current system will eventually (or much sooner) destroy the system of higher education in America.
• Be strong enough to fight for better working conditions on your campus and beyond.
• Be strong enough to stand up for better working conditions to your boards, governors, funders, and whoever else is encouraging you to follow the business model - all the while knowing that the business model of treating you employees badly is bad business, as well as bad education policy.

For Politicians:

• Be strong enough to stand up for the importance of education, and back up that stand up with funding.
• Be strong enough to admit that you don't really care about the future of education if you refuse to provide restored funding.

For All:

• Be strong. It's going to be an interesting year at best.

Now, I'm off to put up my pole and cook the spaghetti dinner. I still got a lot of problems with (some of) you people, but I've decided to hope for the best. That is my Festivus Feat of Strength.

When your only tool is a spreadsheet . . .

 . . . every problem becomes a number. And this is exactly why expecting education to be run like a business and to treat students like customers is disastrous.

It might be remotely possible that not everything is quantifiable. Turning non-numeric things into statistics is forever pounding the square peg into the round hole. And we know what Mark Twain said about statistics.

School districts, colleges, and universities cut the things that don't make money: art, music, foreign languages . . .  But they ignore the (quantifiable) studies that say things like, students with a good background in music do better in math (take those numbers, you bean counters!).

We want our students to learn how to think critically, express themselves clearly in writing and speech, and reason scientifically and mathematically. And yet, we let core curriculum be eroded because the customer - the student - doesn't think that will matter in the real world.

And yet the student? The student came to us for an education. How is it possible that the student (the 18-year-old student) knows what will matter? That is the same student who orders a super-sized meal at the local fast food place because metabolism change is so far in the future.

This week, I discovered that half my students had never heard of Nelson Mandela. Just like not knowing that in ten years that unhappy meal will suddenly appear in their midsection, it's not their fault. They were never taught history - especially the ancient history of the 1970s and 80s - way before they were born.

When I ask them if they've seen Gone With the Wind, they say, No. It was made before we were born (So, weird that I've seen it, right? How old do they think I am?). But they have seen The Wizard of Oz and are amazed that those movies were made the same year. Before they were born. How can it matter?

These are the same students (and I love and respect them - they are so smart in ways I never was in college) whom we expect to choose the right things from the menu of the university. Colleges make more money offering courses, programs, and majors that purport to offer the fast track to a big money job. Who needs music, art, literature . . .  Let's just pack in all the calories we can at the lowest cost.

And this is exactly why the teaching profession is under attack. Just as the health insurance companies decided they knew more than doctors, bean counters have decided they know more about education than professors. Teaching is the new prostitution - a career to mock, to sneer at, to destroy.

Is it too late for me to become a stripper? Because at least in that profession, your pay is based on your performance. In teaching, your pay is based on your dedication and love and blah blah blah. Stuff that this culture has no tolerance for . . . Stuff that hasn't proven its worth in numbers - at least not in numbers that the bean counters are willing to look at.

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?

Another Great Teacher the Field Could Lose . . .

Today I got an email from a wonderful friend who is an adjunct at a small Catholic university - not Duquesne, for those of you who have been following . . .

She had received an email from her dean asking all the faculty to consider how the addition of more adjunct faculty could benefit the university.

Ha. Why send that to the adjuncts?

So she explained her work load to me (and plans to explain it to the dean . . .) this way:

"One example is what I experienced Fall 2012. I asked for, and taught, 3 sections of College Composition. I had over 75 students, with some sections overenrolled. I taught 9 hours a week for 14 weeks, prepared for each class, spent hours answering student emails, and held office hours. Then on top of that, I graded hundreds of pages of written homework, 375 papers, and 75 portfolios. All for about $7500, a fraction of what the university pays full timers. I get no benefits, no health insurance, and no pension. I must walk sometimes four blocks in all kinds of weather hauling textbooks and papers to avoid paying parking fees."

I warned her about sending the letter. She could end up as a greeter at Walmart. And yet - she's my friend. She's like me: strong, outspoken, with a great sense of reckless abandon (thanks to another friend who paid me that compliment today!). She will speak truth to power.

If we all did - if all levels of faculty from fully tenured to barely hanging on - told the truth to the people who control our destinies, what would happen? Classes for one, or two, or ten adjuncts might disappear; tenure decisions could be delayed or go wrong; early retirement might be encouraged. But ultimately, administration will need someone to teach (I hope!).  If we stick together to demand decent working conditions, shouldn't that do something?

I'm a left-over hippie, and I remember the slogan of the 1960s: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came. Well. Suppose they had a university and nobody taught.

And that will be the outcome no matter what. Already people who are outspoken about the state of academic labor are being criticized for pursuing advanced degrees in the first place - if we're so smart, we should have known there would be no jobs.

Soon, young people will listen. They will be smart. They will not become teachers.

Then what?

Ah, the Irony . . .

Real irony, not the Alanis Morissette kind.

Here it is, Campus Equity Week, an event that could have been created for the sole purpose of giving me material to write about, and I've been too busy to write!

Although - the reason I'm too busy is the very heart of this blog. As a new faculty member in the second year of the tenure track, I have to be busy. As I mentioned before, I serve on three committees, and I'm directing the student theater group in a play I wrote. (Reminds me of a tee shirt I saw once:  "I can't . . .  I have a rehearsal") I leave after classes today for a conference, at which I present a paper at 7:45 tonight. The paper is not yet finished.

So I'll leave you with this graphic, and hope to be back a little more regularly next week. Thanks for sticking with me - there have been 1100 views, which absolutely blows me away!

(Get the rest of the story at the AAUP site.)

The Complicated Lives of Students in 2013

I received my undergraduate degree - a BA in English literature - in May of 1976. I was not a brilliant student. Duquesne University was too big and overwhelming for me. I was probably a student who would have benefitted from a year off between high school and college. I just wasn't ready.

I came from a low-income family. My father, a college graduate, had died when I was 15, and my experiences were more like those of first-generation college students. I had a horrible bout of depression my junior year, which caused me to get fired from my work study job - ironically, in the campus office that provided counseling.

But in spite of all that, I had a much simpler and easier time in college than my students do.

Because I encourage personal writing in my composition courses and I teach memoir writing, I probably know more about my students than most of my colleagues. I know which one was raped at 12, which one was beaten and locked in a closet by her father, which one's father came out as gay and left his family of six children and a bewildered wife.

My students are mostly first-generation college students. They are either very rural West Virginians or very urban inner-city athletes. The are from low socio-economic families and come unprepared from underperforming K-12 systems.

They are frequently from one parent homes, or raised by their grandparents. There is alcoholism, drug addiction, and jail in their backgrounds.

These are the students who deserve the best teachers, the most dedicated and knowledgable. They need programs like music and foreign language and ancient philosophies - the courses most frequently cut by public colleges and universities but remain a source of pride in elite universities.

Our approach to education at all levels is just wrong. Like corporations and individuals, for colleges, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. And there's nothing surer than this: The current system will increase the ever-increasing divide between rich and poor and head us for destruction or revolution.

Or both.

Once Upon a Time in Adjunctland

When I was an adjunct, I was desperately seeking full-time employment. One job I applied for required a reference from a current employer. I had three to pick from, and I thought I had chosen the one who would be most supportive.

And, in a way, I had. He wrote a wildly enthusiastic recommendation letter.

And then he took away the two classes he had scheduled for me to teach in the fall.

In his defense, he wasn't being vindictive. He sincerely believed, as he explained to me, that I would get the job since he couldn't imagine anyone better qualified.

What he was suffering from was insufficient imagination. I didn't even get an interview.

This is why full-time, tenured and tenure-track faculty need to be aware of the plight of the adjunct. Because there had not been an opening in his department for years (hello, we have adjuncts. Who needs an opening?), he didn't have any idea about the intense competition for every job out there. He didn't know how tenuous my grasp on my mortgage was. He probably didn't know I didn't have health insurance.

I was able to scrounge other courses at other colleges - fortunately, he had cut me from the schedule early. If I hadn't, I would have gone back to retail . . .

If I had, maybe you'd be reading a fashion blog right now instead of this one . . .

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 . . .