The Locusts are Singing

My mother used to tell me that the droning of the locusts was a song. The lyrics? Summer's over, summer's over.

So as I'm digging out my pencil box, my plaid skirt, and my lunch bag, getting ready to return to the classroom, I'm reflecting on my summer's work. All to the tuneless song of the locusts.

I will say, it was pretty lazy by my usual standards. I attended a conference, where I presented a paper; I team-taught a week-long workshop for high school teachers; I went to a writers' conference in creative nonfiction, for which I had to write an essay; I developed a survey for a major research project I'm beginning with a colleague; and I proposed a chapter for an edited book which was accepted - all I have to do now is to write it.

I haven't begun the syllabus writing yet, but since I'm usually the last one in the department to send mine to the print shop, that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone - not even the print shop.

I also squeezed in a fabulous trip to Rome, Florence, and Paris with a colleague, and visited my new great niece in Akron.

I know that I have an unusually good life for someone with a PhD in English. I remember the years when I had to beg for summer courses to teach, just to keep a roof over my head. I remember when I had no research agenda or professional development funding or time to do anything but read student essays and sleep.

As I look ahead to the fall 2014 semester, I am excited: I have a new plan for my basic writing courses, I'm teaching a media theory course for the first time, and, as a third year teacher, I feel comfortable at my institution.

I also anticipate teaching an overload, for which I will be paid, but, of course, not enough. I will be in my office 10 hours a week, hoping students will come and talk to me. I will be on at least three committees, a team, and a task force.

And . . .   there's the usual three days of meetings and trainings and orientation events. I used to complain about these days - when I did, my husband said, well, why don't you quit? Why don't you go into another profession? As many professors have done - and then there's this:

I'm being positive right now, so it's he students, I say. I'm in it for the students. 

There's no other reason on earth for anyone to do this job.

And I'm very thankful for every day I spend with them.

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.

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!

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 . . ..

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.

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?

Dog Bites Man

This week, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) published its "Annual Report on the Academic Job Market"for creative writers. It reported just over 100 full-time, tenure-track jobs in creative writing. Yet over 4000 MFAs in creative writing are awarded every year. This is neither news nor new: the gap between creative writing degrees and creative writing jobs has been growing steadily, as my dissertation research showed.

In the report, Dinty Moore said, “I don’t think becoming an adjunct is the ladder you climb if you want a fulltime job with proper compensation.” Again, neither news nor new. Sadly, however, many of us got sucked into that path because we discovered that we love teaching. I am very much aware of how fortunate I am to have a tenure-track job teaching both composition and creative writing.

That said, I did not get my MFA planning to teach. I wanted to write. I wanted to write the Great American Novel. When that didn't happen I sought other options. Eventually I had the opportunity to teach - as an adjunct. Which led to my seven years teaching part-time for three institutions.

Which led me to pursue a PhD - also a risky move. When I had completed my course work, I got my first full-time job. It wasn't tenure track and there was no protection from non-renewal of the contract. When it wasn't renewed, I found another full-time job at an institution with no tenure. It quickly became apparent that there was no job security there - in my last two years there were so many layoffs that the empty hallways echoed.

And tenure is no protection from the massive layoffs happening in public education. Both Pennsylvania and West Virginia (my two home states) have cut funding so severely I believe we should cut the states' names from the public colleges and universities that are suffering.

For me, becoming an adjunct did allow me to get the full-time job (although I'm not so sure about the "proper compensation" part). I did not have a teaching assistantship in my master's program, so it gave me experience. It inspired me to pursue a teaching career. And, again, I got lucky. Very lucky.

I have friends being "retrenched" from the Pennsylvania state university system.  I hope they have even better luck. Because education, experience, and ability are no longer enough.

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.)

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.

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 . . .

Summers Off and Other Myths

It happened again. Yesterday a student said something about how lucky teachers are to get summers off. Also, he noted, I don't have a class on Friday afternoon.

Teachers everywhere are tired of hearing about how little they work. Six hour school days, summers off, a few weeks at Christmas . . .  And, yes, thank you, I do presume to speak for teachers everywhere.

College professors are rumored to have it even easier. They have fewer students, fewer classes, and the Christmas break is longer.

Here's my reality - and I have a much lighter teaching load than I did back in my for-profit education days. And certainly much lighter than the average adjunct.

This semester, I'm teaching five courses, although our typical load is four courses per semester. Of those five courses, only two are separate sections of the same course, which means I prepare for four different classes every week.

I serve on three committees (all of which are meeting this week). I am the secretary for one of them.

I am required to hold office hours 10 hours per week.

Because I teach writing, I read and comment on a lot of papers. A lot. I usually take them home over the weekend.

I'm directing the student play - six hours in auditions this week, and weeks of rehearsal coming up.

I'm going to emcee the open mike poetry reading next Wednesday.

I'm required to perform community service. Last summer, I spent 20 hours reading with elementary school children.

I wrote two conference proposals this week, and am working on an article to submit for publication. I still struggle to find time for my own personal research and creative writing - which, technically, is what we're supposed to be doing over the summer.

I go to college events - football games, art gallery openings, concerts.

I am not complaining about any of this. It's my job. It's my career. I chose it, and I came in with my eyes wide open. I love every minute. Well, almost every minute. Sometimes on the 53rd paper out of 60 on a Sunday afternoon I get a little bit cranky (Students: that might explain some of my comments.)

But the idea that teachers only work when they're in the class is absurd. No one believes that lawyers only work when they're in court or surgeons only work when they're in the operating room.

So, please - let us stop attacking the profession of teaching. In fact, let us begin to honor and respect it once again.

Please?

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.

And the Bigger Problem

The use and abuse of contingent labor in academia didn't just happen; it is, perhaps, a symptom rather than the disease itself. Higher education is under attack from all sides, including from within. While Duquesne University is a private school, the labor conditions in public education are often worse. Steven Ward writes that this is no accident. While to an outsider, his words may sound paranoid, as someone who has worked in the field for 14 years, I have seen all of these things in play.

And don't get me started on the idea of free markets and college-as-business. Anyone who knows me knows how I suffered working in the for-profit education world. I watched from within as Goldman Sachs destroyed a formerly prestigious 90-year-old institution. The day its parent company took the stock public and Goldman Sachs bought the controlling interest, it was as if the lights had been suddenly turned off. Layoffs started and eventually included the librarians, the advisors, department chairs, faculty . . .  Even worse, we were constantly pressured to dumb down the curriculum and to pass failing students, while support services for our most needy students were being cut. After all, offering counseling services doesn't bring in profits, does it?

None of this is happening in a vacuum. There is an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism, a fear of elitism, and a glorification of the average in our culture today. George W. Bush is proud of his C+ average at Yale. Highly educated and highly intelligent people have been stereotyped as helpless geeks who can't manage their own lives. In television, think about Ross from "Friends," the Crane brothers of "Frazier," and everyone but Penny in "The Big Bang Theory."

The next group to be glorified? Wildly successful dropouts, including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates (who suddenly knows how to fix education - but that's a story for another day). Early in President Obama's first term, he visited a school and gave a fairly routine "stay in school" speech, and leaders in the Republican party demanded rebuttal time. To say what? Drop out? And that is exactly the message the conservative media landed on: no need to go to school! Certainly Glenn Beck is doing just fine with just a high school degree!

What this ignores, of course, is that in order to succeed without education beyond high school, you need to be incredibly driven or a genius. It helps to be both.

My students who are receiving that message are neither. They are first generation college students in a state that has slashed funding to higher education. Their fathers and grandfathers were farmers or coal miners. Now they believe that there is a future in oil and gas that doesn't require education. And the governor is just fine with that.

In the formerly great state of Pennsylvania, the governor has made no secret of his agenda to destroy public education, starting with preschool and not stopping until the PhD programs are gone.

Combine these state efforts with the high interest on student loans and dwindling resources such as Pell Grants. Tuition goes up, financial aid sources dry up, and students fear (and rightly so) living the rest of their lives under crushing student loan debt. What happens then? Higher education, once considered a great equalizer, the gateway to opportunity for all Americans, will revert to its roots: a place for rich white guys to revel in their privilege.

Sad.

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 . . .