Just when it seemed like it couldn’t be worse to be an adjunct college teacher…
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Want-to-Be-a-Volunteer/243221
Working for free? Is that “employment” or is it simply “volunteering”? If it’s the latter, then call it that.
Heading out to “volunteer” at my local Burger King. Smh
Is it legal?
Exactly. If there re issues with students doing unpaid internships…in other words…working for no pay…how can a college possible condone this?
@thumper1 : Agree 100%. This needs to stop right now.
I can see an institution looking for good ways to encourage alumni to engage with current students, and offering opportunities to supplement current workshop/seminar offerings and to sit on committees if the alum has the specific expertise.
However, this needs to be clearly defined as enrichment and engagement. Not as “volunteer adjunct” positions which implies that the university doesn’t want to pay for qualified help needed to fully staff essential courses.
SIU doesn’t have the money to pay adjunct teachers. The state is broke and state schools have had budget cuts for several years now. WIU actually lost students after being forced to drop “few students” majors. There have also been money arguments between SIU and SIU-E where SIU is getting the larger chunk but E has more students. This has lead to the discussion of splitting the two schools so that each would have a separate controlling board instead of a board from SIU controlling both. That would increase SIU-E’s state funding and decrease SIU’s. If you like to party, SIU is the place to go.
I suspect that the university saw this as a way to encourage alumni involvement by giving them a title in return that they could then legitimately put on their resume (being sure to leave in the Volunteer part of the title - i wonder how many would conveniently drop that word.) It does not sound like they will expect them to teach semester-long classes. It actually doesn’t sound bad on the surface. Hoever, as an occasional adjunct, I have seen how some fellow adjuncts in my field at the same university with day jobs doing other thing inflate the level of their title and involvement and give the impression to students and those on the outside that they are full time favulty. Get over yourselves, people! You ate getting paid $4500 for the semester! I guess my concern would be more of abuse by the volunteer adjuncts themselves.
I don’t think it is much about alumni engagement, given the trouble Illinois had had funding their universities the past couple of years.
Is that a measure of our worth?
nm
Nothing surprises me anymore.