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)

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.