
The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate - lvs
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206/adjunct-professor-dies-destitute-then-sparks-debate
======
michaelt

      Duquesne officials say there are no immediate plans to 
      allow adjunct professors to unionize, despite professors' 
      vote to do so.
    

I was under the impression unionisation usually happened against the wishes of
employers?

It's hardly realistic to expect employers to act with their employees' best
interests at heart.

~~~
mathattack
_It 's hardly realistic to expect employers to act with their employees' best
interests at heart._

This is a little harsh. Many companies do put their employees first, so that
they can keep the best ones. They just have to be in a position to capture
some of the value from the added talent. Universities aren't always in a
position to do that.

Unions can come with other problems such as reduced flexibility of the work
force, which in today's high-change environment for schools could be
crippling.

One should ask the deeper question - why are there so many underpaid adjuncts?
The oversimplified answer is that we're subsidizing the production of too many
Phds with non-transferable skills.

~~~
michaelt

      This is a little harsh. Many companies do put their
      employees first, so that they can keep the best ones.
    

I agree that employers often act in employees' best interests when there is no
more profitable alternative.

~~~
mathattack
In knowledge industries, it's frequently a case of long term versus short term
interests. Take training... It rarely pays off in the short term (when you
have the cost) but it frequently does in the long term. Another example is
severance. It doesn't pay in the short term, but abusing folks on the way out
doesn't pay in the long term either.

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eykanal
The sad thing is that the article is correct; that is HIGH for an adjunct
salary. When I finished my postdoc I applied to a few adjunct positions. The
salary would have been $2100/class, which, after factoring in the time needed
for preparing for the class, traveling, lecturing, being available for office
hours, grading, etc, would have come out to well below minumum wage. No thank
you very much.

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rayiner
Here's my beef with the story. I feel bad for the lady and all. But why didn't
she use any of the safety nets available to her? Medicare, social security,
etc? Did she have kids she could turn to? At bottom, she was a lady who
decided she should be able to live independently, turning away help
apparently, teaching a few French classes a year. Why is that the employer's
fault? Just because she was old?

I'm all for having a social safety net, but I think it should be a last ditch
remedy. People should save up for retirement, have kids who can support them,
and only if all that fails should the safety net kick in. I think the
government should have done something for her here, but it's not the
employer's fault.

Finally, I find the implication that we should care more because she was
educated. I'm much more concerned about the uneducated person who works as a
day laborer and doesn't have the opportunity to pursue a career that might
result in a secure retirement.

~~~
6d0debc071
> People should save up for retirement, have kids who can support them, and
> only if all that fails should the safety net kick in.

Saving up for retirement's not really practical when you're on such a limited
wage.

I can't agree with the kids thing either. People should have kids because they
want to show them the world - as children they reasonably expect to love and
cherish - not as some cynical insurance scheme.

> Why is that the employer's fault? Just because she was old?

It would be the employers fault whether or not she was old, exploiting people
in that manner is pretty disgraceful. It's just that as she aged the
probability of negative consequences increased.

~~~
rayiner
At the end of the day, love doesn't support 80 year olds who didn't save for
retirement. Working adults do, either those people's kids or other people's
kids. With respect to the latter, traditional families can support older
people much more efficiently than the model of paying enough state pension for
them to live independently.

~~~
6d0debc071
I think it would be wrong even if you're right. My point was that you
shouldn't have children as a cynical insurance scheme as an absolute, it's
cruel to bring unloved people into the world.

But if you're looking for pragmatism:

If you don't love them, children seem likely to be a bad investment. Having
children isn't free. It's actually one of the more expensive things you can
do. Both for yourself and for society. The USDA estimated cost of raising a
child to 18 in the US in 2011 as $169,080 (dual parent family, lowest income
bracket mentioned)

[http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2011.pdf](http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2011.pdf)

$169,080 (accounting for predicted inflation, actually closer to $212,000) is
a quite substantial pension fund, especially if you invest it early. $169,080
is £105,509 - that's enough to buy a flat outright; I mean you wouldn't, you'd
buy several flats with partial mortgages and leverage expected rent to expand,
but still. $169,080 is a new degree in a better class of work.

It seems probable, if you're coming from a low income family and have been
neglected, that you wouldn't even be _capable_ of it financially - poverty is
highly correlated across time; poor areas tend to stay poor.

I'm inclined to think it would be better to invest the money that might be
spent on those kids over their lifetime (and all the worse for the state if
the kids themselves live in poverty from an expense perspective) into a fund
to provide a better pension for the potential parents. It's true that working
adults provide for people, but the money that creates those working adults can
be more efficiently applied. It's better to have a new company funded that
provides employment to ten or twenty people and adds value to the economy than
it is to have another person for whom work doesn't really exist.

And this is before we get to the motivation of the children themselves:

Because, even from a pragmatic perspective, love is valuable. If your parents
don't love you, why would you love them? And if you don't love them, it's hard
to see why you'd support them. Living with your parents once you're an adult
is very difficult even when you think they're okay people.

~~~
aestra
Not to mention - you're assuming your children will grow up, move out,
establish themselves, become very successful working adults, have enough money
to support you and their own children (which are their "responsible financial
future investment,") and then wish to support you also.

These are all crazy assumptions.

What if your children are born with disabilities and can't work and require
care for the rest of their lives? You might be able to provide that care, but
they might also need expensive professional care. The State might have to step
in anyway. What if they move away? They might not be able to move closer even
if they wanted due to circumstances, like being in the military for example.
What if they can only find work part time, or minimum wage? What if they are
lazy or depressed and won't work and don't want to move out of the house? What
if they get into drugs? What if they become homeless? What if they simply
don't want to help you financially? They actually do have free will. They
might be willing, but not able. They might be willing, but upset they you
expect them to help you financially. What if they have medical problems also?
What if they die young, before you? They might have an accident, and lose
their ability to work.

I know of people where all of these things happened. These aren't super rare
occurrences. If you think these can't happen, think again.

Having children with the expectation or even assumption they will provide some
kind of services (financial or otherwise) to you in your old age is extremely
unfair to the children and to yourself.

~~~
rayiner
> These are all crazy assumptions.

They're really not. Even western society relied on them almost exclusively to
support old people until just 60-70 years ago.

~~~
aestra
No. Only life on farms where children were labor, and not since the industrial
revolution.

The United State's page on the history of Social Security gives us some more
information:

[http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v66n1/v66n1p1.html](http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v66n1/v66n1p1.html)

>The Great Depression was clearly a catalyst for the Social Security Act of
1935, and some of its provisions—notably the means-tested programs—were
intended to offer immediate relief to families. However, the old-age insurance
program—the precursor to today's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance,
or Social Security, program—was not designed specifically to deal with the
economic crisis of that era. Indeed, monthly benefit payments, under the
original Act, were not scheduled to begin until 1942. In addition, from the
beginning, the Social Security program has embodied social insurance
principles that were widely discussed even before the onset of the Great
Depression.

>Although the Great Depression was a catalyst for the creation of the Social
Security program, the idea of social insurance predated the committee's work
and the Depression. As early as the 1880s, Germany had built a social
insurance program (one requiring contributions from workers) that provided for
sickness, maternity, and old-age benefits.1 Some authors have linked Germany's
early adoption of social insurance programs to its rapid industrialization in
the latter half of the 19th century (Schottland 1963, 15; Schieber and Shoven
1999, 17). A significant period of industrialization and urbanization also
preceded the advent of social insurance programs in the United States. In
1880, the populations of farm and nonfarm workers were about equally balanced,
but by 1930, workers in farm occupations accounted for only 21 percent of the
workforce (Census Bureau 1956, 195).

>As the nation industrialized, increasing numbers of Americans depended on
wage income (and less on family-based structures typical of a farm economy).
Further, Schieber and Shoven (1999) argue that wage income, even before the
Depression, was volatile. From 1905 to 1909, the nonfarm unemployment rate
varied widely (ranging from 3.9 percent to 16.4 percent), with a similarly
wide range (4.1 percent to 19.5 percent) occurring from 1920 to 1924 (Schieber
and Shoven 1999, 19). Older workers, in particular, often bore the brunt of
economic downturns.2 Cyclical swings in the economy were not the only concern.
Lost wages due to disability, death, or retirement were also seen as problems
not adequately dealt with by the structures of an industrial economy. Academic
and political interest grew in social insurance plans that would smooth out
the volatility of income or, said differently, insure against fluctuations in
labor-market income.

Second of all, the life expectancy in 1935 was 61.7. Lots of people work until
61.7.

------
DanielBMarkham
I always find it amusing when media outlets try to gin up controversy by
pointing at other people arguing and saying something like "Hey, there's a big
debate over here!"

Never mind that they have this huge megaphone, that they choose which stories
to run or not, and that it's in their best interests to have as many people as
possible arguing about it in public as possible while linking to their article
-- the faux storyline is that some other people think some issue is important.

I think education in the U.S. is in bad enough shape already. The last thing
it needs is more vested interests with political agendas involved.

------
aestra
75% of college instructors are adjunct professors? REALLY? That's the most
surprising statistic I've read in a long time. We only had a couple in my
school, and they were pretty temporary positions.

------
finin
It's ironic that the full name of the university is "Duquesne University of
the Holy Spirit".

------
amerika_blog
It's worth reading the school's response before you let the Crowdist media
whip you into a hive-mind:

[http://www.post-
gazette.com/stories/news/education/duquesne-...](http://www.post-
gazette.com/stories/news/education/duquesne-disputes-claims-over-death-of-
adjunct-professor-704143/)

~~~
chrisro
So they knew she was in a bad place financially and still terminated her
contract? There's not much to their response that changes this story. They
didn't dispute her lack of benefits or the amount of her wages and they
confirmed that she was in financial distress (so much so that the priests
invited her to live in campus housing but still later the university stopped
employing her).

~~~
wmeredith
Is the University not allowed to terminate contracts of staff "in a bad place
financially"? That makes no sense. The college clearly reached out and tried
to help her. The pay their adjuncts better than most and why would a part time
professor teaching a class or two per semester have benefits? She was also 83
and died of cancer. This was not a 30 year old professor working full time,
who couldn't afford treatment for a cold and died. It's a sad story, but the
outrage seemed misplaced.

------
rorrr2
Why didn't she get a full time job?

I can't see how the school is responsible for her horrible career and long
term financial planning.

If you're making $10,000/year is the US, while having an education, it's your
own damn fault.

~~~
wisty
She was 80. For a woman born around 1930, getting a job as a French teacher
was more than she'd be expected to do. Her circumstances have more to do with
the US social safety net than her planning a poor career.

But it does highlight the fact that working in academia can be a worse career
than working in retail.

~~~
jimhefferon
> the fact that working in academia can be a worse career than working in
> retail

I agree; it is exploitative.

But why do people keep showing up to do it? For every person who quits finally
there are another dozen lined up to take the job. Perhaps that may be a little
exaggeration, and no doubt it varies by region and subject matter, but people
doing adjunct work must be getting compensation that is not salary or else why
are they doing it? (Maybe I should say that I work in higher ed; I've often
been puzzled by people's motivations about this.)

~~~
brazzy
> But why do people keep showing up to do it?

Social status. Nobody gets looked down upon when they say that they're an
adjunct professor at a university.

And of course it's rewarding and stimulating work.

