
The Cost of an Adjunct - jcater
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/the-cost-of-an-adjunct/394091/?single_page=true
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imgabe
It would be interesting if US News & World Report changed their ranking
algorithm to heavily factor in "Percentage of classes taught by adjuncts". I
know everyone complains about the methodology of the rankings, but almost
every college except for the few who are consistently in the top seem to go
out the way to improve their position. It could possibly reverse this
situation quickly.

~~~
rhino369
But nobody knows for certain if adjuncts are actually worse.

I know my personal experience with adjuncts has been good. They taught, not
because they had to, but because they wanted to and they enjoyed it. I studied
law these guys were partners making 1 million + a year. They had practical
experience which is very useful.

My wife is doing a maters in international relations and she had Madeline
Albright teach a class.

The article never really discusses the elephant in the room--adjuncts aren't
meant to be full time professors. In fact many schools ban them from teaching
more than a class or two at a time to prevent them from being full time. The
job is designed to be a part time side gig. It's not meant to be a way to earn
a living.

The people this article talks about are treating adjunct professors as a
tenure track gig when the entire system is not-so-gently telling them the
opposite.

The real issue is that PhD programs are like vampires on grad students and
then pump them out into a world where they aren't anywhere near enough jobs.
That's why these people are pretending adjunct jobs are full time professor
gigs.

~~~
imgabe
The people the article is talking about _do not want_ to be adjuncts. They
_want_ the tenure-track gig. The problem is universities have stopped offering
those positions in favor of only hiring adjuncts.

I agree there's a place for a few adjunct positions for people with unique
experience to teach without being a full-time professor. If they were used
appropriately, they would not be making up 65% of the faculty as they are at
some universities.

The flip side of there being an oversupply of newly minted PhDs is that there
must be a commensurately high demand for PhD-level courses. What's filling
that demand when the university refuses to hire full time professors?

~~~
rhino369
>The people the article is talking about do not want to be adjuncts. They want
the tenure-track gig. The problem is universities have stopped offering those
positions in favor of only hiring adjuncts.

Just because they want it does not mean that they should get it. This is like
taking walk on roles as extras or bit parts in Hollywood and complaining you
can't live on it. The world is saying you aren't going to be a professional
actor.

Worse, tenure track positions aren't very rarely hired from adjunct ranks. So
doing this isn't really increasing their chances.

The answer to this problem is for these people to come to their senses and
quit.

>The flip side of there being an oversupply of newly minted PhDs is that there
must be a commensurately high demand for PhD-level courses. What's filling
that demand when the university refuses to hire full time professors?

PhD's don't typically have a lot of courses and they typically go to school
for free.

~~~
imgabe
Some should quit, certainly. I'm not saying there isn't an oversupply.

That doesn't change the fact that people who are paying up to $60,000 per year
for an education should not be having classes taught by people who can't hold
office hours because they don't have an office.

The demand for college education at all levels is the highest it's ever been,
it _should_ follow that the demand for professors should be high. Instead
universities are charging premium prices and delivering a substandard product
and administrators are pocketing the difference.

We're not talking about making a cheap cell phone and some of your calls get
dropped, these institutions are charged with advancing and proliferating all
human knowledge. It seems like the sort of thing we should care if they do a
good job of it.

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zcdziura
My question is: if my (outrageous) tuition bill isn't going towards paying my
professors a livable wage, then were is all of that money going?

~~~
jrs235
[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-
re...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-reason-
college-tuition-costs-so-much.html?WT.mc_id=2015-MAY-WCASeq-
OPINION&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=WCARETARG)

"Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic
University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty
members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008,
the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent
increase."

~~~
misterbee
Note: no need to click, that quote is the only interesting fact in an op-ed
piece full of disjointed blather.

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crimsonalucard
This is a common problem in any capitalist economy. Wealth tends to aggregate
toward the top of the pyramid while people at the buttress, the people who do
the actual work, get shafted.

What you see in colleges and universities, you see the same thing in
corporations and almost every business organization in the world. This is a
common problem.

Why this occurs is very logical. It stems from a natural drive for people to
maximize wealth while minimizing work. Leaders acting rationally will minimize
their own work and maximize wealth. Thus, the leader, by being in control of
an organization, will structure it such that he meets this rational goal. The
side effect is unfair distribution of wealth and work.

What's the solution? In theory, Communism. In practice, only early pre-
civilization tribal cultures have had societies where leaders only get their
fair share.

~~~
nickff
In practice, pre-civilization cultures had some of the most rapacious,
kleptocratic, arbitrary, and vendictive leaders ever. Modern tribes in many
countries exhibit similar behaviour.

Large institutions are (in practice) the most communist organisations in the
western world (as they are managed top-down with a great deal of government
support), and yet they seem to exhibit the problems you describe more than
many 'capitalist' organizations.

You are using a Marxist analysis which is characterized by biased, myopic
comparisons, and thinking based on personal preferences and sentiments, as
well as the Cohen fallacy, and (unsurprisingly) reaching a Marxist result.

~~~
crimsonalucard
>In practice, pre-civilization cultures had some of the most rapacious,
kleptocratic, arbitrary, and vendictive leaders ever. Modern tribes in many
countries exhibit similar behaviour

One could say the same of modern cultures. I'm not talking about the quality
of the leader, I'm referring to the amount of power he has to redirect wealth
and work. The only difference between modern leaders and tribal is in pre-
civilization cultures, leaders had very limited power because the concept of
wealth has not been fully established; leaders in the modern age, however,
derive power from wealth. Thus as a result leaders in tribes are more or less
relatively equal in power with all the other members of the tribe. See this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_man_%28anthropology%29)

>Large institutions are (in practice) the most communist organisations in the
western world (as they are managed top-down with a great deal of government
support), and yet they seem to exhibit the problems you describe more than
many 'capitalist' organizations.

They do. I never said they didn't. I only said communism was a solution in
theory as opposed to how in practice in doesn't work. Read what I said again.

>You are using a Marxist analysis which is characterized by biased, myopic
comparisons, and thinking based on personal preferences and sentiments, as
well as the Cohen fallacy, and (unsurprisingly) reaching a Marxist result.

Not only is this not true. But it is an unnecessary and veiled insult. I did
not reach a marxist result. Read it again: The only two possible solutions was
communism (which only works in theory, and has been shown to be flawed in
practice) and some pre-civilization tribal culture, both of which are worse
then the current system.

There is no need to make comments about my character by saying I'm biased or
myopic. It makes me angry and makes you look bad. What if I said something
along the lines of: "When someone sits on the top for too long they develop
harsh and protective views to justify their superior and unfair positions."
Would that be an accurate description of you? Maybe, maybe not, but either way
totally unnecessary.

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OneOneOneOne
Not trying to offend... but why do these teachers work for so little? This
seems like an oversupply scenario. There has to be some other factor present.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
1) Sunk cost fallacy.

2) What _else_ are you going to do when all your training is academic?

~~~
therobot24
Not always. My wife is an adjunct at two different colleges. She would love to
be full time, not just for pay or benefits, but because it would mean that her
opinions and class proposals would actually be taken seriously by the
department.

As for why she does it?

>> Sunk cost fallacy

I'm assuming this is based on the phrase "those who can, do; those who can't,
teach". That all of her time has been teaching, so she might as well keep
teaching. I'm also assuming you've never met someone who is _actually_
passionate about their work. Is willing to work at 70% salary because funding
is tight, or will take a pay cut to do something they love versus something
they have little emotional investment in.

>> 2) What else are you going to do when all your training is academic?

I'm assuming here that you've never talked to anyone concerning their
experience in getting a PhD. While many go on to academia, very little do it
specifically to teach, many enjoy the prestige, pure research communities, and
subject matter they study.

~~~
nowarninglabel
I think you are mis understanding "Sunk cost fallacy".

What the parent comment was saying, and something I'm quite familiar with, is
that when you have invested a lot of time and money in getting a Phd, and then
find the job prospects slim to none, you are likely not to just give up and
take a different job outside your field because you have "sunk costs" into
becoming an academic. Thus, you may take a job as an adjunct in hopes of
getting to be a professor someday, even if your economic position may be
better to just get a job in industry somewhere.

~~~
rconti
Well, you need to pay the massive student loan bills somehow, and you've been
studying something you are interested in and enjoy.

What's the alternative? Flipping burgers for the same pay?

Or do you imagine there are tons of industry jobs out there for folks without
experience.. who will probably be considered overeducated but underqualified?

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Lavery
Since many of the other angles here have been covered already, I'll just point
out that fair pay and benefits aren't the only thing absent when universities
move towards a heavily adjuncted workforce. One additional vulnerability of
adjuncts is that without the protection from being fired that's part of a
tenured position, political (or whatever people have decided to make political
these days) speech could be held hostage by threatening someone's job.

This sounds pretty outlandish, but just recently we saw an attempt at this
very thing in Oklahoma[0]. While that didn't succeed, if a massive donation
was tied to a professor's dismissal, would every university resist that?
Florida officials are now banned from using the phrase "climate change"[1];
it's also not inconceivable that state schools could be subject to similar
restriction.

[0][http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/oil-
tycoon...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-15/oil-tycoon-
harold-hamm-wanted-scientists-dismissed-dean-s-e-mail-says)

[1][http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article1298372...](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html)

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cousin_it
Possibly dumb question: why don't they unionize?

~~~
cafard
At some places they have. I know that George Washington University's adjuncts,
at least in the School of Professional Studies, belong to an SEIU local. (If
they want--the school is located in Virginia, which is a right-to-work state.)
However, unionization drives do face many difficulties.

~~~
mtbcoder
GWU is located in Washington, DC, which as far as I know, doesn't have "right
to work" laws as neighbouring Virginia does.

