I am an adjunct professor who teaches five classes. I earn less than a pet-sitter

[KamaAina]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/adjunct-professor-earn-less-than-pet-sitter

Like most university teachers today, I am a low-paid contract worker. Now and then, a friend will ask: “Have you tried dog-walking on the side?” I have. Pet care, I can reveal, takes massive attention, energy and driving time. I’m friends with a full-time, professionally employed pet-sitter who’s done it for years, never topping $26,000 annually and never receiving health or other benefits.

The reason I field such questions is that, as an adjunct professor, whether teaching undergraduate or law-school courses, I make much less than a pet-sitter earns. This year I’m teaching five classes (15 credit hours, roughly comparable to the teaching loads of some tenure-track law or business school instructors). At $3,000 per course, I’ll pull in $15,000 for the year. I work year-round, 20 to 30 hours weekly – teaching, developing courses and drafting syllabi, offering academic advice, recommendation letters and course extensions for students who need them. As I write, in late June, my students are wrapping up their final week of the first summer term, and the second summer term will begin next week.

I receive no benefits, no office, no phone or stipend for the basic communication demands of teaching. I keep constant tabs on the media I use in my classes; if I exhaust my own 10GB monthly data plan early, I lose vital time for online discussions with my students. This, although the university requires my students to engage in discussions about legal issues and ethics six days a week, and I must guide as well as grade these discussions.

Three of my Philadelphia-area friends are adjuncts with doctorate degrees. One keeps moving to other states for temporary teaching posts. The others teach at multiple sites to keep afloat financially – one at no less than seven colleges and universities.

And yet tuition keeps going through the roof.

[Evergreen Emerald]

1. I have a full time job and worked as an adjunct on the side.

I taught a couple of classes a semester. The work you have to put in is so time consuming, every spare minute was preparing for classes and grading papers. The pay is peanuts. I stopped because I was paying more in gas to get there than I was making. At first I did not mind, because it gave me good resume stuff. But after a while it was not worth the effort.

[Blus4u]

72. Saddest story I ever read

appeared in Slate a couple years ago:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/2013/11/death_of_duquesne_adjunct_margaret_mary_vojtko_what_really_happened_to_her.html#section-1

Long article but at least worth scanning.

Peace

[ProfessorGAC]

107. Similar To Me

That's why i quit too. I was making way more money playing in a band, and although we rehearsed quite a bit, it was still far less time consuming and we rehearsed only 2 miles from my house.

Your last sentence i could use a direct lift.

[yeoman6987]

2. My university is getting rid of adjuncts

Perhaps yours will too sometime and you can get on permanent. Also try other universities. I have heard that many are doing away with the program. Good luck. With a PHD, you are employable in a wide variety of areas.

[KamaAina]

3. I am not the author.

All I have is a measly B.A., even if it is from Yale.

[yeoman6987]

4. .Oh wow. First of all congratulations on Yale

And second on getting that job. My university only hires PHDs. I know the pay sucks but you should be proud of the job. I am happy for you....yes money sucks but it will help having it on your resume. Best of luck!!!!!

[KamaAina]

5. What job?

Someone wrote that article in the first person. I am a $38,000-a-year cube rat.

[yeoman6987]

6. Oh....sorry.

[yeoman6987]

8. Oh I see. I reread your previous post

I thought you said you weren't an author not you are not an author....I thought you were saying that you haven't published for you dissertation or tenure which is why you were adjunct.....forget all my replies. that is me right now.

[ladjf]

13. Do what you can to "cobble" together a Masters. That would help. nt

[KamaAina]

14. Never have been sure what subject to specialize in

That, and of course cost, have been the issues over the years.

[ladjf]

20. What is your major field. What elated Masters might get you a better job?

You would need 30-36 semester hrs.

Idea, pick a Phd program that might think about getting in the future, then put together 30-36 hrs of that program making sure that the 30-36 hrs. could be used to gain your masters and you would have a good head start on the PHD. It's like getting two degrees for one.

Not easy. But that's life for most of us.

Another idea, how about teaching in a first rate high school? With a BA and MA you might pull down 60 to 89 k, especially after a few years in the system.

[KamaAina]

23. Major was psychology (computer science track)

First of its kind; and maybe the only one, since they have changed the name to the cognitive science track.

As for teaching, that would require way, WAY too much social interaction.

[SusanCalvin]

28. I thought the same thing

Before I started teaching (extremely shy and non-social), but I found out I like the interaction when I am in charge and I like the subject. It's non-structured social interaction I can't stand.

High school computer science teachers are in huge demand, at least in my area.

[KamaAina]

29. CS in high school?!

I never heard of such a thing -- and I live in $iliValley!

[Recursion]

34. We did CS in elementary school

I still remember the Logo programming language from 30 years ago... ah, those Commodore 64s...

[SusanCalvin]

37. That was my first computer,

though I was in my 30s at the time.

[SusanCalvin]

35. Oh yes.

Most schools offer at least through second semester college, although there's no AP test past the first semester anymore. This is the Houston suburban area - Houston proper offers CS in only a few schools.

[ladjf]

70. If you don't enjoy social interaction with students and their parents you probably

aren't going to enjoy being an educator. Teaching is fundamentally interaction with students. Are you familiar with the dialogs of Plato? If not, read some of them and notice the interaction between Socrates and the students.

I'm sympathetic with your situation but, somehow I get the feeling that maybe your are quite putting enough energy into the process.

By the way, from a psychological standpoint, I don't think that high school teaching and University teaching are fundamentally different processes, just subject levels.

[KamaAina]

90. This is why I'm not looking to become one

[tammywammy]

118. If you're good with statistics get a Business Analytics degree

It's called different things at different universities, but an analytics degree is in high demand with big data.

[Exilednight]

116. My advice, don't choose economics or an MBA. Everyone

And their brother is touting an MBA.

Finance degrees are more flexible.

[pnwmom]

59. The article reports that 76% of U.S. university instructional staff is now adjunct.

So it seems unlikely that many current professors have that option.

[Adrahil]

112. That's good to see.

My wife is a tenured Professor (thanks to her hard work and good luck). She adjuncted for 3 years after getting her PhD, before landing the tenure-track position. We were fortunate, since I had a good job that paid the bills. Otherwise, she may have had to get another job to cover basic living expenses (she would have been making about $15,000/yr in the Washington, DC area.... tough to live on), and she may not have ever been able to keep up her research and publishing which eventually got her the tenure-track job.

Fortunately, her new University does not use many adjuncts. Most non-tenure-track professors, are on annual contracts that pay a living wage (not GREAT pay, but livable, with benefits), and most are rehired on a year to year basis. When she arrived, there WAS a tendency to not replace tenured faculty, instead just trying to replace them with contract faculty, but a new President came in last year and halted that trend, though he hasn't reversed it yet. He saw that quality recruits were moving on to better jobs with a couple years, thwarting the schools ambitions to increase its reputation. Now they just have to pay the tenured faculty what they are worth.

[RadiationTherapy]

7. I am a 13 university staff person who works in a library. Adjunct and staff are abused and exploited

to such an extent that it overcomes my aversion to using the words "abused" and "exploited" when referring to an air conditioned, first world workplace that includes paid sick and vacation. The pay is so low and every skill set of every employee is fished out and thoroughly exploited to the maximum. It is a sickening environment and a twisted caricature of the notion of an "institution of higher learning."

[Skittles]

15. may I ask

how long has it been that way - when did this kind of abuse and exploitation start

[RadiationTherapy]

16. Where I am is very red and they hate taxes, state employees, and contemporary education

so they especially hate tax-paid state employees in education. I would say it has been 10 years at least. Our budget was cut deeply five years ago and the library extended its hours which required stretching staff over many more hours with no compensation. Two years ago, they extended the library hours to 24/7 during the last 2.5 weeks of fall/spring semesters - no staffing or pay increases, etc.

The pattern of increased skills through self-investment leading to increased responsibility with no compensation has been the norm here for a decade at least. Get the most and pay the least is what passes for "success driven leadership" these days. The last few hires at the entry "specialist" level have had master's degrees for $36k jobs. This in a very expensive cost of living town. One of the highest in the nation.

[SusanCalvin]

33. My gosh that's disgusting. nt

[Left coast liberal]

9. This is so wrong!

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Read a report that said the administrative side of colleges had quadrupled.

That colleges were using their loan funds to hire many more admins, and other college oriented perks, while teachers were being underpaid.

[pnwmom]

61. So that's where the money's going. A student I know just told me that

tuition alone at her private school is over $40K. In the dark ages when I graduated, my tuition, plus room and board, was in the $4k's.

So I've been trying to figure out where all the money is going, since it's clearly not going to faculty salaries.

[erronis]

122. And the vast majority is going to the "CEO"s of these money-making schemes.

They bring in new presidents and top level staff to economize the staffing. These high-level staff will be paid in the 6-7 digit range and the rest of the campus staff will be shafted.

Spending on fancy buildings and athletic stadiums are how this new crop views education.

We just kicked out a sleazeball at the University of Vermont who didn't even like to talk to students.

All of these places of higher education are looking for alumni donors and Daddy Megabucks who wants his name on a stadium.

Parents: Let your children find their dreams in the real world before you send your retirement funds to these thieves.

[olddots]

11. sickening ...this is the way to watch a country self destruct .

[philly_bob]

12. Another symptom of American Anti-Intellectualism. nm

[Recursion]

24. The opposite. It's a symptom of too many people wanting to be in academia

About twice as many people want to be professors as universities have room to employ as professors.

[panader0]

51. That's why I became a bricklayer (kidding)

But Mom and Grandfather were professors. I just didn't want to work indoors.
My brother has a Masters in History and never taught.

[paleotn]

68. Depends on the field.....

.... in the professions, Nursing, Accounting, some Management disciplines, qualified faculty are hard to come by even after the great recession. Many colleges and universities would love to expand their BSN program, but can't find the nursing faculty to do so. Liberal arts may be a different story. Not my area.

[JCMach1]

79. Not so, it's administrators pushing a business model that exploits labor

full-time, tenure track jobs are now a pipe-dream in academia...

[JCMach1]

80. I was offered an adjunct position the year after I returned to the states... I did the math

and it worked out to $2.11 per hour of work... less than I made working as a stock boy when I was 15.

Maybe I should go to prison, I hear they are paying $2 in some places.

[Recursion]

81. How do you keep pay high with thirty applicants for every job?

Do you know of a way?

[JCMach1]

84. it's actually worse than that for every job... but the point is... adjunct positions

are missing full-time positions.

Universities take advantage of a loophole that only counts classroom hours for calculating salary and benefits.

That is an easy thing to fix.

9 hours=full-time... now pay accordingly.

[Recursion]

85. Yeah I meant "thirty"

Why would universities make that change if the labor oversupply makes people willing to work as adjuncts for peanuts just to be in the Academy?

[Hissyspit]

92. Nope.

[philly_bob]

120. Pay is a reflection of the value society places on an activity.

You're right, Recursion, there are more applicants than jobs in academia. But that's a market consideration. The market does not/should not rule all.

[Recursion]

121. It's a pyramid scheme

If your average PhD level section in medieval literature is 7 students, and a professor leads 30 sections over her career, when she retires she will have taught 210 students who are now qualified to be medieval lit professors, but her retirement only opens up one job. But all 210 want to be professors.

How do you get the market out of that scenario? How do you forbid a postdoc from undercutting his classmates on costs?

[philly_bob]

123. I grew up in a time when schools were expanding...

...and when skilled Humanities graduates were valued in other industries.

Generally, I don't think education should be market-driven. The job of universities should NOT be to match job-seekers with jobs. Instead, universities should train well-informed citizens and advance knowledge.

I know, I'm idealistic and obsolete -- and no longer in the job market.

[Rex]

45. Yes with budget cuts all over the nation. They go after schools, any program to help women

and children. The GOPs greed is only matched by their evilness and stupidity. We read about it all the time.

[Starry Messenger]

17. This is why adjuncts need to unionize.

[Recursion]

22. The only thing that will fix this is fewer people trying to be professors

More people want to be professors than universities need to hire. Unionizing won't help that, unless the organizational process excludes a lot of current adjuncts.

[Starry Messenger]

25. I make twice what the adjunct in the OP makes for half the units.

I'm in a union.

[Recursion]

26. And the adjuncts aren't willing to risk not teaching at all

On the chance that their job might end up paying more like yours.

Academic labor just isn't as rare as it was 40 years ago.

[Starry Messenger]

30. Adjunct unionization is at an all-time high.

I think it was the biggest organizing sector last year. Unionization for adjuncts is very successful, as far as gaining pay and benefits for adjuncts.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/07/26/adjunct-union-contracts-ensure-real-gains-including-better-pay

John Curtis, director of research at the American Association of University Professors, reviewed adjunct union gains as part of his analysis of the 2012 Coalition on the Academic Workforce report on part-time faculty working conditions. Median pay per course was 25 percent higher for adjuncts where part-time faculty had union representation ($3,100 on average, compared to $2,475) he said, but those “concrete benefits” don’t stop at pay.

Adjuncts with union representation also were more likely to have access to certain health and retirement benefits and had greater access to institutional support. For example, 18 percent of adjuncts on unionized campuses said they were paid for course cancellations, compared to 10 percent of their non-union peers. Fifteen percent of unionized campus adjuncts had paid office hours, compared to 4 percent of other adjuncts, and 20 percent union adjuncts said they had some kind of job security – something only 4 percent of their non-union counterparts reported enjoying.

Highly paid administrators are also no longer rare, but I see no one suggesting they should make a career change for the good of academia, since most of them are about as useful as tits on a boar-hog.

[Rex]

47. Besides the 'too may teachers' is garbage RWing dogma.

It is the ever shrinking school budget in favor of corporate greed. Done for decades now by the GOP. Anyone that pays attention to the news would know that.

Good for them, you have the real answer as to why they are getting fired and laid off - unions means collective negotiating.

[Starry Messenger]

53. The universities are doing the hiring.

They don't hire more teachers than they want, they just want to pay their workforce as little as possible. Those expanding tuition dollars are going into the pockets of the higher-ups.

Over the last 35 years, top administrators pay increased at 3 times the rate of faculty.[1]

From 1978-79 to 2013-14, the average salary of CEOs at public institutions rose by 75 percent, the average increase for CEOs at private institutions was about 170 percent.[2]

http://seiufacultyforward.org/facts/

I'm an evil labor organizer for adjuncts, so I eat, sleep, and breathe this issue.

[DeadLetterOffice]

106. And those of us who are facing adjunct status for life...

... thank you for your service.

If you're not in academia I don't think it's possible to truly understand just how much adjuncts (and doctoral students) are used & abused by the system. Like all industries, if the goal is to maximize profits then you hire the cheapest and most desperate labor force you can and give them bupkis by way of benefits & compensation.

[Starry Messenger]

115. ((Hugs))

PM me if you ever want to. No, people don't know. There's a deep seated illusion that higher ed is full of professors who have nice long talks with students in their beautiful offices while plinking over their next book.

No one wants to face the reality of what a grinding lack of dignity it has become.

[MadDAsHell]

91. You can put your fingers in your ears and call it dogma...

if you want too...

But denying reality and continuing to encourage students to "study what they love" and continue to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on degrees for which there are no associated jobs, simply because the idea that universities are graduating too many post-secondary educators doesn't fit your political narrative, is awfully selfish.

[nashville_brook]

100. well, you can put your fingers in *your* ears and pretend we don't need

educators and an educated public...but blah blah blah.

it's just awfully selfish when it's a societal problem, and folks blame the victims. and oh yeah -- you're the victim here.

[arikara]

86. There's too many people for every job

not just teachers, hence the race to the bottom for wages.

That is by design.

[LanternWaste]

119. You've certainly got the whole make-allegations-lacking-any-objective-or-supporting-evidence thing d

You've certainly got the whole make-allegations-lacking-any-objective-or-supporting-evidence thing down. No doubt though-- it's a good tool to validate one's own biases...

[burfman]

18. and the head of UMCP a state college earns about 1/2 million a year......

I remember way back in the 60's when you could attend most colleges without taking on life long debt. Doesn't seem too fair that the system today depends on extracting obscene amounts of money from the student and their family while saving money on your back. The whole college scene today is just as detached from reality as our health care system.....It seems like in a few years one will be working mostly to pay for education and health care......

Burfman......

[DesertFlower]

19. i know someone who was a professor of philosophy

at purdue. he said "he took a vow of poverty" and after many years of struggling changed professions.

[Recursion]

21. Too many people want to teach at the University level

As long as that remains true, adjuncts will be underpaid.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

32. You keep saying this, but it's only true if universities are businesses with a fiduciary duty to

shareholders. That's why businesses always proclaim the need to treat employees like crap and pay them as little as possible. "We have to!" they whine.

Barring that fiduciary duty, there's no reason to continue to underpay your teachers while continuously jacking up tuition. No one is forcing not-for-profit universities to treat their adjuncts like crap. They could raise pay scales and cut costs somewhere else, instead of always emulating RW business owners.

[d_r]

43. State legislators

Keep slashing university budgets. Yes there are too many highly paid administrators, but the budgets keep shrinking as well.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

46. Unless they're also micromanaging, they can slash the budget somewhere else.

Administrators are, as you just pointed out, a prime target for such cuts.

[d_r]

49. What happens is

They put in hiring freezes. So no new tenure track lines. So young PhD s can't find jobs and are saddled with debt. At the same time, those classes still need to be taught. So the young PhD takes on some adjunct classes, and ends up in a spiral. The root of it is the GOP state legislatures.

[former9thward]

65. This also happens in private colleges.

State legislatures have nothing to do with them. It is also happening everywhere. GOP does not control every state.

[Rex]

50. Then the fault is with the state for cutting budgets they should be expanding on.

To pretend there are too many professors is something Glenn Beck would say.

[d_r]

52. Yes it is

And it is a huge problem. It will destroy university education.

[Rex]

48. It's not true at all, the poster must have got their news from a RWing rag.

No doubt by mistake.

[bbgrunt]

54. Well, as long as admin can get away with increasing class sizes and

classes taught in large lecture halls with grad students to fill in gaps, your contention that "too many people want to teach at the Uni level" will be true. It is truly sad that the reputation for quality of education lags so far behind that admins can continue to use these techniques to squeeze uni faculty to the brink while destroying the quality of their product.

so your contention that "too many people want to teach..." can also be restated as "too few jobs are being offered...."

[randys1]

27. Righty HATES education and HATES teachers.

They think teachers have the easiest job in the world, plus they simply dont want an educated public, makes them feel insecure.

[RKP5637]

31. And they bow to the Gods of Idiocracy! n/t

[kairos12]

40. Exactly. The Reich Wing wants a nation of Faux Spews sheep. Education is lethal to ignorance.

The astro turf Teabaggers can't have an educated population. Garlic to Dracula.

[randys1]

42. And they truly believe teachers go in late, leave early, get all summer off, have a grand life

fucking bigot assholes

[seveneyes]

36. The rich don't know a damn thing

[Omaha Steve]

38. Adjunct's continue to union organize around the US

The success rate was about 80% last I heard.

[YOHABLO]

39. And University coaches are making millions per year. Tells you where their priorities are.

I mean who wants to go to a school dedicated to academics that has a losing football or basketball team. I say, if you want to really learn, go to a library and read. It's free.

[d_r]

41. My teaching load is

10 courses per year, 4 each spring and fall plus two summer.

[aikoaiko]

44. Adjunct/part-time instructing as a main source of income is like AA minor league baseball.

Part-time jobs were never meant to be cobbled together as a full-time job.

Do it because you love it, you don't want to do anything else, you want library privileges, you like impressing 20 year olds, etc., but its rarely a path to the big leagues.

And there are increasingly fewer tenure-track spots opening up. Although no one is quite sure what will happen with the community colleges if Obama can deliver on free CC tuition. I'd keep a foot in the door there.

[stopwastingmymoney]

58. That's an interesting topic right there, what may happen with CCs

I'm someone who fooled around in high school and went back to CC when I was 24. I graduated cum laude with a bs from a state university.

I never could have done that without the CC system. Big advocate here.

I'm fortunate to live in a small city with an excellent Junior College. It's a wonderful resource for a community and expanding that system could only bring good things. Including more good teaching jobs of course!

[daleanime]

55. So much work ahead of us....

[6chars]

56. so you could hire four people like this professor for < 1 yr private univ cost

sounds like exploitation to me. what do tenured profs make? $100,000?

[DeadLetterOffice]

71. Bwahahahaha

Not at SUNY they don't.

Newly tenured profs in department X at the SUNY school I am most familiar with make about $48K.

[6chars]

74. this is a puzzle

even that tenured prof salary is about 1 yrs private tuition.

[DeadLetterOffice]

76. I don't know where the $$ is going...

... but it certainly isn't going to the average tenure-track or tenured faculty member, or grad assistant or post-doc, or library staffer. It isn't paying for decent equipment for those folks either, or habitable office space, or air conditioners that work.

New stadiums? You betcha. And insane amounts of landscaping -- gotta look good apparently.

At least at the state schools. I have no idea what they spend money on at private colleges. Though I think it's probably administrative salaries, e.g. RPI in Troy NY.

[6chars]

78. it should be possible to both pay profs and to make school affordable

instead of neither. there has to be another model

[alcibiades_mystery]

83. I was offered that from a SUNY starting off tenure line

This was years ago. There's a significant bump at tenure, so I don't think that's right. I turned the offer down, mainly because I got a better offer elsewhere. That said, most tenured professors (I'm one of them) don't make anywhere close to 100k a year; that drew a belly laugh from me as well.

[DeadLetterOffice]

99. I suspect my particular field gets paid bupkis compared to others...

...in academia. The gods know we do in real life.
(Social Welfare & Social Work, you see. )

[alcibiades_mystery]

103. Dang

That's still pretty low relative to tenured faculty nationwide, I gotta think. It was striking to me because that's the exact number offered to me as a brand new assistant professor at a SUNY - and this wasn't one of the research centers (or Geneseo). And it was way low to me even then. I'm in the liberal arts, too, not law or even a STEM field. Do most of y'all have MSW's or PhD's?

[DeadLetterOffice]

104. For tenure track faculty positions...

...you gotta have that PhD. Adjuncts in my dept. get paid about $3800 per class (adjuncts in other depts. get paid considerably more I think). And of course there's a tenure-track hiring freeze on (Thank you New York State), so there's LOTS of adjuncts teaching lots of classes. I made more as a grad assistant than I can now teaching 3 classes a semester. It's crazy.

[pnwmom]

57. So where is the sky-rocketing tuition going? At many private colleges, the tuition

ALONE now is 10 times what FULL ANNUAL COSTS were (room and board included) when I was in college.

All that money's not going to faculty salaries, obviously. So where is it going?

[yeoman6987]

63. You should see the doors and other amenities

Makes me wish I was in school again. The dorms are elite and the cafeterias and student unions are state of the art. So that is one area.

[Recursion]

64. When I was at BU they announced a tuition increase and the new Lazy River

on the same day. Different emails, at least.

[Starry Messenger]

69. Admins.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all

[pnwmom]

75. Thanks for the link. n/t

[The Wizard]

60. Everyone makes more than adjuncts

I tried to get a job at the school as a janitor because they made more money. The administration said no dice, what will the students think. It was fun and rewarding in the realm of contributing to a greater good. As for keeping a roof over my head and food on my table, nah. Unemployment paid better.

[restorefreedom]

62. it will probably be moot soon enough

with the growing popularity of moocs and paid for-credit moocs that are very reasonably priced, many people will opt for alternative ways of getting an education.

premed, nursing, things like that, those people are probably screwed because they will always need a traditional degree. but for many others, the options are increasing.

[Recursion]

66. It will probably be hard to get paid to teach 20 years from now

There will still be "boutique" places like Harvard, but I doubt most teaching will be done via physical human presence in 2035.

[restorefreedom]

67. agreed. i for one am glad

i did it the "old fashioned way," but then when i went, a state u was affordable. i also enjoy moocs.

[Hissyspit]

98. MOOCs have been only partially successful and have their drawbacks.

Plenty of those who experience digital learning come to understand that they crave the human presence and interaction. There are plenty of subjects that do not lend themselves to digital learning.

Clearly change will occur. I have taught all three ways - face-to-face, digital only, and hybrid - for years now, and your prediction is questionable.

[Township75]

73. And supposed education intellectual liberal minded tenured professors are all talk about changing it

They voice outrage with the treatment of adjuncts, but take no action to help them, and in many cases treat them like they are an outsourced cleaning service. It enrages me!

[boomer55]

77. Sounds like they need to make a different career choice

[JCMach1]

82. would you say that to a Medical Doctor... most of us have trained 8-12yrs for our positions

[Recursion]

87. If there were no non-poverty positions for him, yes

However, the AMA protects doctors' salaries by keeping med school classes small. The equivalent body for Medieval literature does not.

[JCMach1]

88. But, they haven't starting turning all heart doctors magically into part-timers as old ones retire

that's a key difference...

My generation (Gen X) faced generational (at least I did) age discrimination when we finished Grad. School. The hiring that happened was new professors who were the same generation.

Go through most university faculty lists and see how many tenured Professors are from Gen X.

We got the short stick again as administrators pushed business models and business ideology and began hiring more adjuncts, spamming TA's. At the same time, they also began tightening the screws even tighter for people to earn tenure even IF you are lucky enough to land a full-time position.

Now it's long-term hangers-on... Check the average age of full-time tenured faculty, and lots of McAdjuncts.

I escaped this BS for 10 years by working overseas, earning tenure there and getting paid a decent wage and benefits. I came back 2 years ago to find stagnant salaries (they haven't really changed since the 1990's) and virtually no work in academia.

I am just thankful I also run a small business..., otherwise I would be just like the author of this article.

[Hissyspit]

96. No, clearly you had a character flaw or were just stupid about the wonderful invisible hand of the

free market. I'm being sarcastic, of course.

10 years ago I was doing fairly great as an adjunct. Now I'm in trouble. What did I do to make this happen? Nothing.

[Pooka Fey]

97. Great post. +1

[Recursion]

102. There's no limit on the number of people who can get humanities PhDs

There's a strict limit set on the number of people who can get MDS, because the AMA doesn't want what's happening to Medieval Lit professors to happen to doctors.

[DeadLetterOffice]

105. Really. You think so?

Because they only let 5 people a year into my doctoral program. And I am very much in the humanities, as you call them.

[Recursion]

108. Yes. The AMA limits how many medical schools the county as a whole can have

And how many students each program can take. There's no equivalent in the humanities.

[Hissyspit]

95. Ugh.

[Liberal_in_LA]

89. omg. thank you for posting this

[sellitman]

94. Our society is sick

You are our future.

[One_Life_To_Give]

101. My night school adjuncts were some of the best

Bit of a shame some of the very best Prof's I had were adjuncts. Most of them held full time positions in private industry and taught 1 or 2 classes in the evening. Found them to be very good. But if you try to compete against them for a job. These Prof's already have a full set of benefits from their day job.

[stevenleser]

109. Education in general is deliberately undervalued by Conservatives and I think George Carlin

hit on why:

[pogglethrope]

110. You should consider getting a job as a summer intern at Apple.

My grandson worked there two months last summer. He earned ~$38,000 plus housing.

[Sunlei]

111. colleges are 'for profit' now, they can fill with the wealthy, those who can get a loan & foreigners

online colleges are on the upswing. can also search online high school diploma- plenty of places let teens take tests free, over & over and pay couple hundred when they pass.

Some online college free classes too but not many for credit, yet.. perhaps if all the new online free college business owners get Federal subsidies .



online college credit courses

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=online+college+credit+courses

[PatrickforO]

113. Yes. Once again we must wonder WHERE

all that money is going. I'm sure the college presidents are getting some good bonuses.

[COLGATE4]

114. My wife is a Professor Emeritus from a private

Michigan college with some 30-odd years of teaching under her belt. While at her university she won every teaching award the school had to offer. We both retired in 2008 and moved to Florida for the weather.

It occurred to her that she might like to teach a course or two, just to keep her hand in, so she talked with the University of South Florida here in Tampa who readily hired her as an adjunct. She wound up teaching 2 three-credit courses, i.e. five classes a week for each group. Of course as an adjunct no benefits of any kind were provided, no office, or other support. In addition, USF also required that she pay for her parking - some $200 a semester.

Our home is about a 45 minute drive from USF. Once we saw her paycheck after deductions and taking into account the cost of gasoline for the daily commute and the costs of her parking, her net pay worked out to be about $3.50 an hour!

Needless to say, she didn't continue as an adjunct professor. The slave wages they pay these very qualified and extremely hard-working people are criminal.

[Romulox]

117. We can't sacrifice all workers in our society to greed, *except* adjunct professors...

If adjunct professors want to stand up for themselves, they will have to stand up for others, first. We have a race to the bottom society where workers are treated worse than at any time in modern history.

In order to improve conditions for adjunct professors, we will have to stop all of that. We can't have an economy made up of poor, desperate people, on one hand, and well remunerated adjunct professors, on the other.

TL;DR: we are all hanging separately.