<p>Is corporatization really to blame for increasing costs? How does one reconcile low salaries for adjuncts and purported low salaries for outsourced servants with the ever rising costs paid by the students and their families, government subsidies, and other philantropic largesse? </p>
<p>Isn't the problem of education one of expenses rising much faster than its return and value and the obsessive clinging to lifestyles and activities that are no longer compatible with a society that is expected to work around the clock. Can the education "system" really expect the "rest of us" to find ways to pay for the growing cost of education by working longer and longer, by sacrificing for decades to send kids to college but expect academic sinecures that amount to glorified part-time work. if that much. </p>
<p>Do cheap adjuncts serve the needs of the public, or do they mostly serve the needs of the established set of academic divas? </p>
<p>
[quote]
The increasing exploitation of contingent faculty members is one dimension of an employment strategy sometimes called the "two-tiered" or "multitiered" labor system. - </p>
<p>These developments in academic labor are the most troubling expressions of the so-called corporatization of higher education. "Corporatization" is the name sometimes given to what has happened to higher education over the last 30 years. </p>
<p>Corporatization is the reorganization of our great national resources, including higher education, in accordance with a shortsighted business model. Three decades of decline in public funding for higher education opened the door for increasing corporate influence, and since then the work of the university has been redirected to suit the corporate vision. The most striking symptoms of corporatization shift costs and risks downward and direct capital and authority upward. Rising tuition and debt loads for students limit access to education for working-class students. The faculty and many other campus workers suffer lower compensation as the number of managers, and their pay, rises sharply. Campus management concentrates resources on areas where wealth is created, and new ideas and technologies developed at public cost become the entitlement of the corporate sector. The privatization and outsourcing of university functions and jobs from food service to bookstores to instruction enrich a few businessmen and create more low-wage nonunion jobs. Increasingly authoritarian governance practices have become the "new normal."
<p>This whole issue of adjunct use and post grad students has been on the table since the dark ages when i was a student. So many of my former classmates who went on to graduate schools joined that career path and stayed on it for many years. Some still are. Some actually did so by choice and want the part time nature of that status as they consider it keeping their foot in the door of higher academia, adds panache to the resume, and fits inot their lifestyle of working part time. My accountant has a highly successful practice, lives in a multi million dollar home, but has been an adjunct to a major university for years and enjoys teaching the one or two courses a year as that status. Many major orchestra players compete for adjunct positions at music programs, wanting that on their resume. Those without such full time jobs often claim bitterly that those not needing them get first crack at such positions, and I’m sure that demand there helps keep the pay and status quo the way it is.</p>
<p>Where it crosses over to large scale abuse is the question? There is a market for adjuncts. I know many who would take such a job for a pittance for reasons I just stated. But then there are too many who are there in hopes of a full time opportunity that never comes. With the whole concept of supply and demand in place, this has become the outcome. </p>
<p>For my kids, I did look at the number of adjunts being used. Hard to get a grasp as at some schools the adjuncts have been a fixture and are treated as well or better than some full time faculty. My one son did choose a school rife with them as they are a deliberate culture of the school, and benefitted greatly. So the issue become when the line is crossed where it become exploitation as it has become in a number of scenarios.</p>
<p>I’d suggest that a lack of public funding for public education, first & foremost, threatens core academic values. The adjunct issue is merely a symptom.</p>
<p>Consider the drop in tax rates since, say, 1980. Consider further the increased concentration of wealth in the intervening years. Lastly, consider the heightened need for a Bachelor degree to earn a decent living. </p>
<p>Increased demand/need + decreased funding –> scarcity. Scarcity of a necessary resource leads to problems – problems such as a threat to core academic values.</p>
<p>In theory, more money should be beneficial. Unfortunately, in the world of academia, that merely sends a signal that more unfettered expenses are in order. All of us want more funding for the DELIVERY education, but the providers of service are more interested in protecting their own turf (read fat admin salaries, benefits, tenured life positions, teachers who rarely … teach) or spending on the superficial. While we need more dedicated teachers, what “we” get is more country clubs, fancy dorms, peanut-free cafeteria (or whatever “newly” found allergy is in) rock climbing walls, concert halls to “entertain” the students who “struggle” through a curriculum of 9 to 15 hours of classes a semester. </p>
<p>Just as the history is clear in the K-12, the problem is not solved by throwing more money in the bottomless pit, but by drastically reevaluating what tertiary education should be and how much of the wasted money diverted from the basic raison d’etre could be regained. </p>
<p>As everything related to education, it will get worse before it gets better, as the establishment will continue to chase gimmicks and fads to cover their lack of interest in long-term solutions.</p>
<p>Astronomical tuition hikes are coexisting with crushing faculty cutbacks and it’s hard to say who’s the winner, if anyone. </p>
<p>When I was a student, I was taught almost fully by tenured or tenure-track Professors. Because I was at an LAC, grad students were not in the picture at all, and adjucts were conventionally used to fill in short-term staffing gaps or to offer a specialized course or occasionally whilst awaiting a dissertation defense, after which they had engaged a tenure-track position. Professors were well paid, and those at my college were part of a cooperative tuition plan with other LACs, so their children attended any one of about 20-30 schools for the cost of Room and Board. </p>
<p>The tide turned when I was in grad school. Faculty positions were few and far between, with a large number of baby-boomer aged tenured profs who were still far from retirement. In the meantime, when the older full profs retired, their vacancies were not filled by a new tenure-track position, but with part-time adjuncts who held PhDs and were even published, but could not find any other postions. Pay was and is TERRIBLE for these positions (I know one woman who teaches a 3 credit class each semester at a local university and is paid $1400 for the semester!) and does not include health or retirement benefits. Even full tenured professors are often no longer eligible for full tuition programs, and certainly not at other institutions.</p>
<p>So where are all those giant tuition checks going? To the “sexy” projects. Capital projects. New Chemistry lab buildings at schools that only graduate five or ten chemists a year. Dorms with single bedrooms and private baths. Wood fired pizza ovens in the dining hall. </p>
<p>How about we stop putting up new buildings and start paying a strong teaching faculty?</p>
<p>^^^And yet folks will argue on these very threads that “all colleges are the same” and that “it doesn’t matter where you go, just what you do with your degree.” As if if were that simple! Never mind the QUALITY of the education you’re receiving or the ACCESS (or lack of it) to mentors and professional connections.</p>
<p>In the end, it’s just parents pitted against low-wage faculty, and the fat cats in admin, along with all those benefiting from lucrative consulting and building contracts, continuing to benefit. Kind of a microcosm of what’s going on in the larger economy if you think about it.</p>
<p>Seriously, I’m afraid that until all adjunct faculty members across the nation declare a general strike, NOTHING will change. It’s heartbreaking to have to walk away from your passion and a vocation you’ve spent a decade or more preparing for, but when Ph.D.s accept positions that pay the equivalent of a fast-food worker’s wages, they’re feeding and empowering a voracious beast. These huge university administrations are betting that you can’t/won’t do it or you will be ignored if you do. Call their bluff.</p>
<p>I just want to add that, as a middle-class parent of a high school senior, and the spouse of someone who’s taught as an adjunct faculty member, I wrestle with all these issues! </p>
<p>I’d love for my kid to go to a college or university where adjunct faculty aren’t employed or are only used very selectively (and where they add real-world benefit), but when those types of schools don’t offer enough FA to make them affordable or they don’t accept your top-stats kid because he doesn’t meet their specific “institutional needs,” you find yourself stuck between choosing the “moral” choice of being nearly full-pay for the privilege of having full professors teach your kid and “taking the money and running” to the big state school that employs poorly paid adjuncts but is also throwing money at him!</p>
<p>Lucie, “calling their bluff” is only going to work if adjuncts get together and unionize. Which, I agree, might bring about needed changes, but I can’t see it happening. Organizing grad students would be like herding cats, except you never actually get to the herding bits because the grad students cannot agree on the existential nature of “CAT.” </p>
<p>/was grad student.<br>
/was also one who walked away from a PhD at dissertation time because the career writing was on the wall.</p>
<p>Yes, there are some overpaid administrators (and don’t get me started on sports coaches) but I think part of the problem is that costs of staff benefits (eg health insurance) have gone up so fast. There has also been a proliferation of government regulations which schools have to comply with. I’m guessing that schools now have a small army of employees who are charged with enforcing regulations on the percent of minority/women-owned businesses they source their supplies from, making sure that hiring practices and decisions comply with non-discrimination policies, evaluating and arranging accommodations for LD students, renovating buildings and arranging course schedules to provide access for the wheelchair-bound, etc, etc. These may be good social policies, but they do come with significant costs which the schools have no choice but to spend more money on. Can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the entire department of animal rights (my favorite bugaboo). Any university with a psych lab or a medical school needs a team of non-instructional employees who keep the PETA protesters at bay.</p>
<p>At my age, and in my circles, all of the adjunct professors are in that position by their choice and they like the way things are just fine. So it was when I was on the board of music school. What the % of those type are, I don’t know, but they would not want to unionize or want any changes in the adjunct structure.</p>
<p>Well, at my age and in my circles, that’s not the case. Granted, I do think that adjuncts bear some of the responsibility for not seeking other employment when it should be clear that holding on to a subsistence level paycheck for the mere chance of a tenure-track job isn’t worth it, but that doesn’t mean colleges get a pass for exploiting them, or that doing so doesn’t wind up having a net ill effect on students.</p>
<p>Remember that there’s a difference between adjuncts and teaching faculty. An adjunct is paid by the course, and teaching is not their primary source of income. Teaching faculty have no research obligations, and do not have tenure, but do have contracts for at least one and often multiple years, salaries and benefits. Some disciplines use the teaching faculty to hire brilliant teachers for the courses that need the best, most talented instruction (like intro-level courses). Sometimes it’s hard to tell from faculty rosters which are one-course adjuncts and which are valued parts of the department.</p>
<p>I wish that were true, IJustDrive, but there are indeed adjuncts for whom that is their primary job. The problem is that if you take a job outside of academia after graduating a PhD program, it is very, very difficult to get back on a professional academic track. Cobbling together a bunch of adjunct courses is the only way to earn at least a little money while still being able to be part of the academic community - and still being in position to have a chance at the coveted tenure track job. </p>
<p>As I said in my last post, I think adjuncts in this position who do this for more than a year or two are often being irresponsible and foolish, but on the other hand, depending on what your degree is in and how old you are, you may not find it too easy to find a non-academic job either.</p>
<p>IJD, that demarkation really only applies to large research institutions, I think. At my undergrad school there was no such thing as a professor who did not teach. To my knowledge, that remains true. Even at the University where I went to grad school, this was largely the case. A professor who was not teaching was on sabbatical – faculty is there to teach. I do have family that held non-tenured research “faculty” positions at Penn State, though. It took me forever to wrap my head around the idea that they could be employed as faculty without teaching. </p>
<p>Even as an applying-for-positions PhD candidate, I never once encountered a separate “teaching faculty” tier. There were professors, tenure-track professors/lecturers, and adjuncts. And, while at one time, most adjuncts were as cptofthehouse describes, many, MANY are now people who are settling for a job that is beneath them, because the tenure track positions are being phased out, and courses that were once taught by professors are now being assigned to adjuncts. No, they don’t want to be paid minimal sums or lack benefits, but they are being faced with that or going on the dole in many cases. Or, they can do that AND be on the dole, Lord knows they make so little they often qualify.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that women/minority owned business advantages in bidding is really costing universities massive sums. ADA-mandated building alterations, however, are quite expensive, and that is a real cost. Doesn’t explain the need for flashy new buildings or fancier dorms, though.</p>
<p>Most “fancy” dorms pay for themselves are a response to consumer demands. Upper middle-class kids want private baths and rooms, etc. There still are plenty of them around and they are you cash cows.</p>
<p>Funny how things change. I’m not that old, and I well remember my fellow students leaving 4-to-a-room dorm rooms with a shared hall bath to go meet their parents who had taken the helicopter up for the evening. They had shared rooms at their tony boarding schools, they had shared tents at their exclusive Maine summer camps, and they pretty much expected to share a college dorm room. </p>
<p>At the school where I was on a board, those adjuncts who depended on those jobs as their main sustenance clung to them for dear life and some of them should have been let go, but do to the fact that they had taught those courses for so long, there was some ownership of them and problems would have arisen if they were cut. They were not wanted and were not considered for full time positions, and for them to harbor any hope for such things was a pipe dream. </p>
<p>I don’t have any answers as to how to deal with this. There are adjuncts that a college would hire as full time in a heart beat, many of them celebrity status or very much experts in their fields that a college truly wants on faculty and having them as adjuncts is the best they can do. THen there are those who were hired to fill in some needs and due to some unwritten seniority situation have hung in there in that position for years and one can’t easily let them go without problems, yet keeping them is now becoming an issue too.</p>