
There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/higher-education-college-adjunct-professor-salary/404461/?single_page=true
======
jseliger
I'm an adjunct, and I've written about various aspects of being an adjunct
(e.g. here: [http://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-
youre...](http://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-youre-being-
insensitive-how-do-you-know-when-youre-funny/)). But I'll add that there is a
very good "excuse" why universities treat adjuncts how they do: because they
can. When people stop signing up for grad school and/or to be adjuncts,
universities will have to offer better pay and/or conditions.

Until that happens, universities won't. Markets are clearing.

~~~
refriedbeans3
It already is happening. So many graduates see the higher level of skill they
have and the _joke_ of a salary that adjuncts make and 'nope-ing' out into
industry. Academia is going to starve itself of it's best performers by low
pay and horrible standards for adjuncts and tenure track positions alike.

~~~
adrianN
I have a PhD in CS and seriously considered staying in academia. I really
enjoy teaching, so I would have been okay with making less than I could with
an industry job. But it's not the pay that pushed me to industry, but the
shitty contracts you get. I don't want to change cities or even continents
every two or three years. There are no permanent positions available at all
and even five year contracts are very rare.

~~~
otoburb
Given a stable‡ industry market wage job, would you ever become a part-time
adjunct based on your enjoyment of and passion for teaching?

‡ Presumably perceived by you as equally as permanent as a five year academia
contract.

------
bjd2385
My mother is an adjunct math professor at three universities in the Western NY
area. She teaches 7 classes to support the family while she's also going for
her PhD (she's got like a 3.98 GPA or something btw).

The thing that gets me is that we look around and the campuses have millions
to put up for new buildings and infrastructure and sports, etc. But here they
can't give my mother a full time job with benefits.

Education is nothing more than an industry. They don't care if I pass or
succeed, as long as they've got a job at the end of the day. I'm convinced of
that.

~~~
thomasahle
Where I'm from an adjunct is an assistant professor. That is somebody who
already has a PhD. Does adjunct mean something different in the US?

~~~
refriedbeans3
An assistant professor is a full time position. An adjunct is like the
contractor/part time version of an assistant professor. The result is that
adjuncts typically teach at multiple institutions, for example an R1 research
university, plus a couple of local community colleges because 1 or 2 classes
at one school is not enough to pay a livable wage.

In regards to credentials, in the US they can either have a PhD, be pursuing a
PhD or have completed their Masters, but it depends on the institution's
requirements to teach (and the classes they are teaching). You wouldn't have a
Masters grad teaching graduate classes or an ABD teaching PhDs. Most well
respected higher education institutions require a PhD to be an assistant
professor (full time) but only be pursuing a PhD to be an adjunct/part time
assistant professor teaching undergraduates.

------
jimmar
I'm faculty at a regional university in the U.S. Our enrollment is dropping by
5% a year, and short term positions are becoming the norm. Tenure track
positions are risky in that once you've got somebody with tenure, it's
difficult to get rid of them (intentionally). Short term positions give
universities flexibility. We are not a Harvard or Yale with billions of
dollars in endowments. Tuition is 80% of revenue, and our existence in 20
years is in no way guaranteed.

I don't know how many universities are flush with cash and are just being
stingy by using adjuncts, but where I work (small regional university), we
have intense budget pressure. We'd have to raise tuition a lot to cover the
cost of converting adjust to tenure-track positions.

I don't like how adjuncts are treated, but seeing the problem from our
administration's point of view, I know why we have so many adjuncts.

~~~
bjd2385
They're dropping for various reasons, I'm sure. But first and foremost because
a bachelor's degree isn't worth anything anymore. Both my sister and my father
have Bachelor's degrees and my dad's a janitor and my sister's a nurse.
Granted, a nurse isn't that bad, but cleaning up people's feces on top of
everyone in the practice being against her going to school to become a doctor
(so she doesn't have to "ask permission" or clean up after people anymore) is
a disgrace. And for my dad -- he's working with the lowest of the low. It's
just awful that someone can bury themselves in 100k of debt to barely make
more than minimum wage and clean up shit.

~~~
hueving
Your sister doesn't sound like a nurse to me. An RN doesn't clean up feces.

~~~
Omniusaspirer
They absolutely do in the US if the situation calls for it and more
appropriate staff aren't immediately available. You can't leave someone
sitting in their own feces for an hour just because the CNA's are currently
busy with other patients and you're somehow too good to do the dirty work.

------
kauffj
If you intern as a CS major, you will probably be paid somewhere between
$10-$25/hr. If you intern in Hollywood, you will make a nominal amount.

Does anyone find this surprising? There is a practically unlimited amount of
programming work to be done and not enough programmers to do it all. On the
other hand, there is a finite demand for movies and a very large number of
people who would like to do it.

Many people would like to be professors. Unsurprisingly, this depresses the
wage. What else is to be expected?

Adjunct salaries will rise and/or more tenured professorships will be offered
when either consumer demand rises or supply falls. Anything else is just
wishful thinking.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>There is a practically unlimited amount of programming work to be done and
not enough programmers to do it all.

I certainly find that statement surprising, considering that most of the
programming work already done is economically useless. Unicorn-balloon
inflation is not a real job.

------
chitowngal
There are many good points in this article, and I agree about the general gist
that adjuncts are not well-served in this situation. That being said, I think
that the article sets up an artificial binary between adjuncts and tenured
faculty. There is a whole third leg of employment that is contingent full-time
teaching. That is to say, one-year professorships, and
lecturer/instructor/preceptor positions that employ people full-time, but
without assurance of continued employment in the year to come (indeed, often
with an explicitly NON-renewable contract). There is a large chunk of academic
teaching from faculty who make an okay (not great) income for a year, but have
no security for years to come, and are forced to go through an extremely
grueling application process year after year (see this article from Slate.com
on more about that process:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/09/how_do_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/09/how_do_professors_get_hired_the_academic_job_search_explained.html)).

~~~
NoGravitas
The "visiting assistant professor" treadmill is definitely in the same badness
league as adjuncting. Another trap is the "tenure track positions" where no
one actually gets tenure, and they end up being re-advertised every three
years.

------
danieltillett
I used to be a tenured professor (senior lecturer) and while universities
treat adjuncts badly they also don't treat tenured professors any better.
While the job has a lot of good points respect from your employer is not one
of them.

At least here in Australia tenure really doesn't exist anymore. If they want
to get rid of you they just wait for the next departmental reshuffle (these
seem to occur every couple of years) and eliminate your position.

------
zanewill9
This is a dangerous trend (especially since I've noticed other articles
questioning a University education altogether).

I was first alerted to it by (of all places) The magic-the-gathering
professor:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcQ4KIOqNic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcQ4KIOqNic)

(bonus if you're looking for some great magic-the-gathering videos)

------
rhino369
Paying them more would increase tuition. Maybe colleges should shift the funds
from elsewhere but that not as simple as just paying them more.

What is never talked about in these articles about the plight of the adjunct
is that adjunct professor is supposed to be a fun side gig. Almost charity
work. You are supposed to do it for the experience. I'd had many adjuncts at
northwestern when I was getting my law degree. They were partners at major law
firms. They mad millions a year. They would have done this job for free. Maybe
they did.

My wife considered adjuncting at her old college for the same reason.

It seems a huge part of this problem is some are treating these jobs as real,
life supporting careers. They aren't meant that way. Maybe colleges are taking
advantage. But these adjuncts are also taking advantage of themselves
willingly.

~~~
nwjtkjn
Adjuncts are supposed to fill in the gaps when there are more classes than can
be taught by the full time faculty. The real problem is that as admissions
increase, rather than creating more tenure track jobs, they create an adjunct
position for 1/3 the pay, and use the other 2/3 to create an administrative
position. From the article:

"Even while keeping funding for instruction relatively flat, universities
increased the number of administrator positions by 60 percent between 1993 and
2009, 10 times the rate at which they added tenured positions. In the old
days, different professors would take their turn as dean for this or that and
then happily escape back to scholarship and teaching. Now the administration
exists as an end in itself and a career path disconnected from the faculty and
pursuit of knowledge. Writing a few years ago for this publication, the Johns
Hopkins professor Benjamin Ginsberg described colleges and universities as now
being “filled with armies of functionaries—vice presidents, associate vice
presidents, assistant vice presidents, provosts, associate provosts, vice
provosts, deans, deanlets, and deanlings, all of whom command staffers and
assistants—who, more and more, direct the operations of every school.” So
while college tuition surged from 2003 to 2013 by 94 percent at public
institutions and 74 percent at private, nonprofit schools, and student debt
has climbed to over $1.2 trillion, much of that money has been going to ensure
higher pay for a burgeoning legion of bureaucrats."

~~~
silasdunbar
There is some truth to what Ginsberg asserts (i.e., administration could most
certainly be leaner at a lot of places), but the notion that administrators
are disconnected from "the pursuit of knowledge" is a bit weak in my view. A
lot of the reason for the growth of Ginsberg's "administrative class" can be
attributed to the growth of research programs at universities. Administrators
are primarily there to worry about real-world issues that most faculty can't
be bothered with in the cut-throat world of publish or perish. These include
checking regulatory issues (i.e., establishing policies for IRBs and medical
research), aiding in grant preparation, outreach efforts, and balancing
academic freedom with legal issues. These are all things that faculty do not
have expertise in, as PhD programs do not train them for these kinds of
responsibilities. Frankly they shouldn't worry about these things- they're
there to do research or teach, not draft a policy. You could argue that
administrators might be overcompensated perhaps (especially at the upper-
level), or that there might be too many of them, but their necessity as a
distinct organ of the university is indisputable in my opinion. The halcyon
pre-70s days when faculty could regulate a university on their own are gone
(and it's questionable whether or not they ever did a particularly good job at
this to begin with).

It’s possible that Ginsberg doesn’t really see this as much because he lives
in the world of political science, which doesn’t require nearly as much
support infrastructure since it is so theory-centric.

You also might want to take what Ginsberg says with a grain of salt for the
very reason that he’s a tenured professor with a salary of around $157k a year
([http://web.jhu.edu/administration/provost/docs/JHU%20Fact%20...](http://web.jhu.edu/administration/provost/docs/JHU%20Fact%20Sheet%202011-12%20v8b%20NS.pdf))
while most administrative positions (perfectly fireable at the first sign of
economic trouble!) at JHU are in the $40k-$50k range (based on Glassdoor).
He’s not quite the victim of brutal administrative oppression that he claims
to be.

~~~
nwjtkjn
I don't think the Assistant Vice Provost of Academic Student Affairs Outreach
has any role so pragmatic as aiding in grant preparation. I think they spend
most of their time responding to emails and attending meetings about
recruitment strategies and whether the college is sufficiently committed to
diversity.

I would also say the fact that Ginsberg is not a victim only bolsters his
point. He really has nothing to gain by making these statements.

~~~
silasdunbar
I think that you're missing my point a bit with respect to Ginsberg's not
being a victim. As I attempted to express earlier, he is perhaps correct about
the value of upper-level management in universities (just as some management
in modern corporations have dubious merit). When it comes to issues such as
the adjunctification of academia or the tuition spiral, however, university
professors share in the culpability by commanding 6 digit salaries and
lifelong employment. It's not really fair to throw many extremely useful and
necessary administrators under the bus when they make a 1/3rd of what a
professor makes without any of the job security or power.

------
gamesbrainiac
Many articles regarding the mistreatment of part-time academics have been
making their way onto hacker news, and I feel that this isn't really going to
change any time soon.

More and more, universities are there to create a "brand image", not provide
decent education. This is why there is such an emphasis on administrators,
because decent academics just want to learn more and teach, not try to sell
you on a whole host of rubbish.

This is why things won't improve. If you have institutions that aim to provide
more luxury to their students, so that they have "great college memories",
then how do you expect colleges to pay more for better teachers.

------
jayess
So if someone is willing to teach a class for $2000 per semester, they
shouldn't be allowed to?

I've tried to get into adjunct teaching, but there are so many applicants that
it's almost impossible. Supply and demand. Adjuncts are paid what the market
dictates, and that's ok.

~~~
therobot24
Problem is a two-way street. Making only $2000 a semester may deter an adjunct
from 'going the extra mile'. Not that a full-time professor would do so
because they're full time. However, a low wage doesn't necessarily encourage
the adjunct to do more than the minimum.

Also, if you figure that the department head will just fire and hire until
they find someone what will put in that extra time you're kidding yourself.
They work on semester contracts, firing and hiring over and over again will be
throwing too many new/untrusted people into the classroom only to start-over
in another few months, not to mention the lag-time between hires. What ends up
happening is the department heads will maybe bring in a new candidate the next
year if there's a lot of complaints against an adjunct, but otherwise they
just keep the same scheduling.

------
bobochan
I am glad that employers that mislabel employees as independent contractors
are paying for their mistakes, but I am always a little disappointed when
these articles appear.

I am an adjunct professor, but I also have a full-time job as a programmer
that has spanned almost 30 years. Wikipedia says "adjunct professors are often
nominated in recognition of active involvement with the appointing
institution, while they are employed by government, industry, a profession or
another institution" and that definition fits me perfectly.

Sad articles about the "plight of adjuncts" come out frequently, but I hope
people understand that there is another side to the equation. The opportunity
to work with motivated and passionate students that really care about the
material is absolutely amazing, and it is a great way to give back to the
community. I have stayed in touch with a lot of students over the years, and
it is incredibly gratifying to hear how their careers have developed.

------
joesmo
It's completely clear to me that universities using adjuncts as consultants
are violating federal laws and likely many state laws as well. Like most other
such problems, the only solution is a major class action lawsuit like the one
against Uber. I have no doubt whatsoever that given a fair trial, any
competent judge or jury would see abuse here, if for no other reason than they
are forced to work at specific times in a specific place. There is just
absolutely no way you can justify this as consulting work when they cannot
decide either the time or location of the work being done. There are other
obvious violations but these are so egregious, it's revolting. Of course, you
have to see the lawsuit to its conclusion because the Labor department doesn't
give a shit about labor laws being broken and will tell you as much when you
try to bring that up.

------
alberte
The solution is get on the administration track
[https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey...](https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=30)

e.g. Chief Student Financial Aid Officer $83,726

~~~
alberte
...actually when you think about it - if the market forces argument was all
there was to it administrators would be getting paid very little to, there's
an abundance of administrators

------
Animats
Think of it as capitalism in action.

At least it's a step up from "do you want fries with that?"

~~~
danharaj
It's funny how the most essential work in society is under constant pressure
of debasement. Feeding people is considered an ignominious job. Teaching
people too is constantly debased. Now it's affecting higher education. The
neoliberal transformation of capitalism decouples the value of goods and
services from their value to humanity and instead pegs them against markets.
Markets no longer merely transmit information about value. They are the
_definition_ of value. This is the ideological difference between liberal free
market capitalism and neoliberalism; at least the former paid lip service to
the idea that truth and value are ours to define. Not so. Capital determines
value.

Universities are capitalist entities. They are trying to compete and
appreciate in value for their shareholders. The market has replaced whatever
value systems justified universities in the past.

~~~
_yosefk
Erm... isn't the actual root cause of the problem raised in TFA _the opposite
of debasement_? Namely excess supply of people who're willing to go into
academia to "do the most essential work in society", whatever the terms, as a
sister comment from an insider pointed out? If the perceived value of being in
academia was low enough, the market would force the universities to treat
adjuncts better.

Also, aren't most or at least a great many of the most famous universities
non-profits, competing for donations instead of trying to maximize shareholder
value? I hear that in for-profit education, the average student is treated
better and so is the average lecturer (you want to please your students whose
money feeds you and you want to attract lecturers whose primary motivation is
financial and who're good enough to please your students, so the for-profit
institution kinda has to treat both well to survive.) Somebody living off
donations, on the other hand, only has to please people donating the money
(and someone living off taxes only has to please government officials), while
pleasing either students or the teaching staff is no longer essential.

(I don't have firm or specific opinions on how higher education should be run,
in general, just commenting on your points.)

~~~
danharaj
> Erm... isn't the actual root cause of the problem raised in TFA the opposite
> of debasement? Namely excess supply of people who're willing to go into
> academia to "do the most essential work in society", whatever the terms, as
> a sister comment from an insider pointed out? If the perceived value of
> being in academia was low enough, the market would force the universities to
> treat adjuncts better.

this eerily sounds similar to the kind of logic i was rejecting. this is an
appeal to the logic of markets and the assumption that they are efficient to
derive truth. this is exactly neoliberalism. at least in old school liberalism
we could acknowledge markets' shortcomings via externalities and the idea of
market failure! Otherwise i think the sibling comment is a good response.

~~~
_yosefk
Neither your comment nor the comment you cite replies directly to mine -
meaning, neither of you addresses the question what happens if people refuse
to work for universities at the current level of compensation (perhaps some do
not have a better option right now, but those who studied STEM certainly do.)
I claim that comp will have to go up, boom, problem solved. Where am I wrong?
What other solution would you propose that cannot be circumvented by the
employer as long as the employees are willing to help circumvent it, for the
same reasons making them willing to accept a raw deal now?

Instead, your comment in particular rejects what I said because it's
"neoliberalism." All I said was that employers will tend to give you shit as
long as you take it, be it for-profits, non-profits, government or
individuals. I don't think that's quite the same as denying externalities or
market failure or generally arguing about neoliberalism and other abstract
concepts at a great distance from the issue at hand.

In concrete terms, I believe the someone quitting a bad job or not taking it
in the first place is better off than someone who does take it and then broods
about the debasement brought about by neoliberalism or whatever the supposed
root cause of their condition is. In other words, my angle is more productive
than yours as a basis for action.

