
I was a professor at four universities. I still couldn’t make ends meet - Perceptes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/06/i-was-a-professor-at-four-universities-i-still-couldnt-make-ends-meet/
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bloataway
It's an unpopular sentiment, but room for faculty like this can in my opinion
be made pretty easily by firing a lot of administrators. In my department
alone there are thirty staff whose responsibilities can be grouped under
"corporate communications/contracts/fundraising". Each are paid six figures.
If there was some tallying up of their money spent on salary alone vs. the
amount of donations or research gifts they were responsible for, they would be
far in the red. Yet for some reason, they have been allowed to persist for
years. Back-of-the-envelope calculations say that we could get about
$5,000,000 by doing a little belt tightening in our department alone (and they
would not be missed).

Why do we need so many provosts, deans, and vice presidents? They don't bring
in research money (professors do, writing grant proposals) and they don't
bring in alumni donations (nobody knows what does that). In the scheme of
things the larger problem is reduced state and federal spending on higher
education but in the short term it seems that the logical action is in front
of us, but we would instead prefer to milk the little people until they die.

~~~
Shivetya
I will go a different, likely even more unpopular direction.

The article stated the problem clearly, there are too many graduating with the
proper credentials who want these jobs. Resorting to union representation is
the sign of a system where oversupply being met with stubborn resistance to
that fact.

This is not to say that schools are not middle or top heavy. Education as a
whole has become far to expensive for the value of the education provided.
This is because of the simple fact money is loaned nearly without question to
what studies the students want or receive.

The real fix is reigning in the loans. Set costs either at the class or degree
level and have colleges comply with it to have students eligible to receive
the federal loans to attend that school. The government already restricts cost
in the payouts for medical treatments and such, there is little reason it
cannot do this in the realm of education if its the one providing the funds.
Just like how government money brings along rules with how students are
treated so can it do with how degrees if not courses are valued.

Surely many colleges will step up to the plate to offer acceptable cost
degrees. There is too much money on the table for them to ignore it.

Still as he points out, there is oversupply because colleges are not required
to tell students that while there may be jobs they don't pay what students
expect nor pay what they once did. Firing others to raise that pay is not the
solution, the solution is guiding students into good careers adn reigning in
the costs of obtaining the degrees necessary

~~~
superuser2
If you are offering elimination of credit availability as a solution to the
oversupply of professors, fine, but let's be clear that you believe _wealth of
parents_ is a good metric by which to decide who does and doesn't get to be a
professor. Let that sink in.

If you believe that colleges will lower costs to meet the lower supply of
tuition money, then we'd be looking at an even larger oversupply - more people
would be able to afford college.

Also, let's keep in mind that when you dump every liberal arts major into
engineering and computer science, engineering and computer science graduates
stop being hard to find and become worthless.

~~~
alistairSH
>If you are offering elimination of credit availability as a solution...you
believe wealth of parents is a good metric...

Perhaps a better solution would be merit-based grants. If you graduate in the
top 10% of your high school class, Uncle Sam will foot the bill for the
equivalent of in-state tuition/room/board. As long as you keep your GPA above
some threshold, we keep paying for 4 years.

~~~
dalke
This seems unworkable.

Why 10% and not, say, 90%? Or 100%? (100% and maintain a GPA seems the most
workable.)

What about someone in the 50% range who decides after 10 years in the
workforce to go to college? With no second chances, this is the tyranny of the
Permanent Record.

What about someone who gets a GED to graduate early, to start college early;
or someone who had to drop out to support the family and then get a GED finish
high school and go on to college? What of home schoolers?

I can also envision school swapping. If I'm at the border of 10% in a very
good school, then in my last semester (after the submissions for college have
gone out) of school I could switch schools to an academically poorer high
school and have a much better chance of getting the grade. It's worth $40,000
in tuition money, so some people will do it.

Or in my case, I took a lot of classes in high school, including some that
were dual-enrolled with the local community college. While AP calculus had an
extra boost in the GPA calculation, my differential equations class did not.
What luck it would be if by taking more advanced, unweighted classes I happen
to be below the 10% mark, filled by those who maximized GPA instead of
education.

------
declan
I've taught as an adjunct or equivalent at three universities. Two public, one
private. Two gigs were during the school year, and one was an abbreviated
summer program.

I don't remember the summer program rate, but I recall the school-year rates
were around $3,500 per course. That was fine if you had a full-time day job,
as I did, and the classes were in the late afternoon or evening and your
employer didn't mind your moonlighting.

I taught the classes because I enjoyed the experience, not for the money. I've
met plenty of people in the same position: Peter Thiel presumably did not
teach his now-famous Stanford course for the salary. So to that extent, the
Trinity administrator quoted in the linked article is correct.

But I suspect most adjuncts do not have non-academic careers. So they're
struggling, especially in expensive metro areas (in part because they're
competing against people like me that might be convinced to teach a single
seminar for virtually nothing if we get to pick the topic). But it's a bigger
problem than that: as <bloataway> suggests, it's middle management bloat,
coupled with an oversupply of qualified instructors, government-subsidized
loans, etc. Not a simple problem.

~~~
caminante
_> I taught the classes because I enjoyed the experience, not for the money._

This point's key. People will do it for "free" out of personal-fulfillment,
driving down costs.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also likely delivering a much higher-quality work. But this kind of better-
work-lower-pay situation is not something you can plan for or base your
business around. I can see this messing things up in interesting ways.

~~~
mgkimsal
Mixed thoughts on this. On one hand I can see "higher quality work", but on
the other I can see plenty of situations where the moonlighting adjunct prof
with a full time gig won't be 'higher quality'. They'll likely have much more
limited time to help students, grade papers, etc. They don't really have an
incentive to actually try to get better at the teaching part.

~~~
Chichikov
And they don't do it semester after semester, which of course can be a bad
thing or a good thing, but if anything surely hones an instructor's
understanding of the student body.

~~~
mgkimsal
right - that's sort of the point I was getting at, but not very well. There's
a certain nuance to successful teaching that takes time to master, regardless
of the subject material. Not everyone gets it, of course, but most of the
instructors I've had who were really good at it were, in fact, older and more
practiced instructors (across all disciplines). Using adjuncts to supplement
gaps now and then is OK, but when a large portion of your staff is temp
adjuncts, the quality of instruction has to be lower.

------
caminante
_" I taught as many as five classes each semester at four campuses in D.C. and
Maryland, crisscrossing town by bike and public transportation during work
days that sometimes lasted 13 hours. I never knew what my employment would
look like the following term and constantly applied for part- and full-time
teaching positions in case I didn’t get rehired."_

That sounds like excessive churn for $27-35K/year.

I'm sympathetic to improving the adjunct eco-system, but how much of the blame
should be placed on people taking on debt to finance careers with fading
prospects? Maybe the folks who went in right as the system shifted get a pass,
but have we passed a point (like with law schools) where you lose the ability
to complain and should've known better?

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jldugger
Protip: Adjunct faculty is not a job. It is a side-gig that you take while
working a day job in industry. It is not something you settle for instead of a
tenure track position. And if adjunct positions are all you're landing, this
is academia's hint to go find a job in industry.

You were planning that as a fallback, right?

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
What industry are history and political science adjuncts supposed to work in?
Government?

~~~
jldugger
> What industry are history and political science adjuncts supposed to work
> in? Government?

This is something you should have figured out before borrowing money for grad
school. If there's truly no outlets commensurate with the debt, that's a
powerful signal you should pay attention to.

Which brings up rule #2: if you can't convince someone to pay your way through
grad school, don't borrow for one.

~~~
niels_olson
Uncle Sam was happy to pay for my grad school, including books, a stipend, and
even travel. But I still had to take out money to cover the cost of tuition
for my kids to go to a school where teaching occurred. But that's a New
Orleans problem, not a grad school problem.

Did that make economic sense? Homo economicus math said yes. I still say yes.
But I sure would like that $1000 a month back.

------
twblalock
Despite the assertions made in the article, the adjunct system is sustainable,
because there is no shortage of naive, delusional people who will complete
graduate degrees despite knowing full well the state of the academic job
market.

I know people stuck on the treadmill of adjuncting, and their resistance to
the idea of working outside of academia is amazing. They are still holding out
for the impossible.

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tsotha
Instead of unions or new laws or strong-arming from DoE, what really needs to
happen is people need to realize there are far too many people trying to teach
at the college level. Stories like this in WaPo are a good start.

There's no reason anyone should feel they're entitled to a career in academia
anymore than we can all make a living as park rangers or porn stars.

~~~
swatow
Yes. This is just the sound of the free market telling you to get a different
job.

------
jkot
Could someone confirm what "professor" exactly means in this case? In Europe
it is very prestige academic position. Professor at four universities would be
something like winning Nobel price.

~~~
bachmeier
The terminology is chosen selectively to deliver a provocative headline. At
most US universities, the title "professor" is the highest academic rank
(there are chaired professors, but that is just a full professor with the
benefits of a chair). "I taught classes at four universities" doesn't draw the
same number of clicks.

~~~
jfoutz
In the US, there's the internal title system [1] that varies from university
to university. Sometimes adjunct is synonymous with lecturer, sometimes
lecturer is above adjunct.

Few undergrads really pick up on the internal ranking, and just call their
instructors professors. Anyone outside of academia is just going to call
somebody who teaches at college professor, even if they're not a Professor.
it's kind of like talking to a paleontologist about dinosaurs, or complaining
to an astronomer that pluto should be a planet. You know, it's internal
technical jargon.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_(United_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_\(United_States\))

~~~
bachmeier
Anyone writing such an article surely knows the difference (or at least should
know the difference). It's even worse if the title was written to take
advantage of the fact that the average reader thinks everyone teaching college
classes is a "professor" with all that the term implies.

I was only responding to the question of how someone could be a professor at
four universities. The questioner is correct and the title is not accurate.

~~~
et2o
I agree. It is somewhat misleading to represent yourself as a "Professor" when
you are an adjunct, non-tenure track instructor/faculty member.

In response to the earlier question which you also answered:

In general, in American Universities it goes Assistant Professor --> Associate
Professor --> Professor at ~5-10 years between each step (the exact details
vary depending upon discipline and University). In science, these are usually
the people who are writing grants and are at the heads of labs. Usually you
must be tenure-track to advise graduate students.

Then there may be another class of 'lecturers' who are not-tenure track but
are still considered faculty-members. There is not always a distinction here
between lecturers and adjunct instructors, however. Lecturers' main role is
usually instruction of undergraduate or graduate students.

Finally, there are the adjunct instructors, whose primary role is the
education of undergraduates and who are paid much smaller amounts of money for
their work relative to tenure-track faculty. This is a relatively newer class
of University employee, and it is definitely a very difficult career. I
imagine most adjuncts either have other careers or are attempting to break
into the tenure-track rank, although I do no know how often this happens.

In addition, in science there might be 'Research Scientists,' 'Research
professors," or 'Staff Scientists' who work under a tenure-track faculty
member. They are often somewhat equivalent to lecturers, except they do not
instruct undergraduates but instead are usually full devoted to research. It's
essentially a "Super-Post Doc," but hopefully with a salary one can reasonably
live on modestly.

And for completeness: In science, people do Post-Docs following the completion
of their PhD. They are non-faculty jobs under a tenure-track professor where
one conducts full-time research, usually for 2-3 years, although some people
must complete multiple Post-Docs. The usually idea is to find a faculty job
after your post-doc, but I think a majority of people end up filling some
ancillary position in science or leaving science entirely, because there are
unfortunately many more post-docs than there are faculty positions.

It gets even more complicated when you add in MDs and hospitals to this
academic situation.

~~~
nmrm2
> It's essentially a "Super-Post Doc," but hopefully with a salary one can
> reasonably live on modestly.

My impression was always that research scientists/professors are paid
reasonably well (e.g., what you might get in industry after leaving a phd).

------
personlurking
This 4-minute video came out the other day, titled "What's It Like Being An
Adjunct Professor? The sad, secret lives of community college teachers."

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

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Now being a full time community college instructor isn't bad-I remember
looking up the salaries for my instructors at DeAnza College, and they were
fairly respectable (high 5 figures salary plus bennies).

~~~
twblalock
De Anza is one of the better community colleges in an area with high cost of
living. In other places, community college instructors make a lot less.

------
dogma1138
So basically a substitute teacher for the Academia complaining she can't get
enough hours? Jeesh.

Too many professors, not enough classes, and most likely many of the adjuncts
do not teach classes that could justify any type of full time position at the
institute to begin with.

I would be much more concerned at the fact that many full time K-12 teachers
do not make ends meet.

My GF worked as a PE teacher for 2-3 years and was in the same boat, many
schools do not hire full time PE teachers, or just hire one and use 2-3 more
part time each week. Since you are not full time you get much less benefits
(e.g. no summer pay, no additional "non-teaching" work hours etc.) you also
tend to be paid at the lowest band of salaries regardless of you experience.
But she wasn't complaining that the system was broken, she understood very
well how the system works for many subjects. When you only teach 10 or so
hours a week it's kinda hard to justify a full time position.

And while the 13 hours work days might seem back breaking (and they are) these
are because you work at 3 schools, and have to travel in between, if 5-6 hours
of your day is travel it might suck but you can't really claim you are forced
to work 13 hours either.

------
guard-of-terra
Serious question: why don't they go overseas, at least some of them? Is
situation equally bad everywhere? Even if it is, maybe there's a sweet slot or
two for certified americans?

~~~
sampo
At least European countries, they also have an oversupply of academic people.

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dataminded
"I never knew what my employment would look like the following term and
constantly applied for part- and full-time teaching positions in case I didn’t
get rehired."

Why is the right answer to invest more money in adjuncts and not to encourage
adjuncts to find other jobs? If he loves to teach, why not become a public
school teacher? Many districts are experiencing critical shortages.

Nobody is entitled to a job in academia and if you are educated enough to do
that, you are almost certainly educated enough to do many other more lucrative
things. To the extent that an adjunct is a PhD that did not succeed in the
academic job market, the right answer is not to force universities to make
room for them anyway.

Universities have a perverse incentive to saturate the market with graduates
that they can hire back for little to no money. That needs to change also.

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frozenport
Not all disciplines are alike, for example a lecturer in Electrical
Engineering at my Alma mater makes 80k.

~~~
rhino369
Lecturers and adjuncts are not the same thing. The former is a fulltime job
and the latter is a part time job. Lecturer just means you aren't tenure track
and don't do research.

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yzh
I read the title as: I was a professor at four universes, which changes
everything.

