Overuse and Abuse of Adjuncts Threaten Core Academic Values

Parent Cafe
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<p>Supply and demand, again with the “fat cats” of education. Why does Professor A get offers from top schools all of the time and Professor H is grateful to have the job he has? Separating the reseach aspect from the teaching obligations has occurred at many of the research universities with some of the big name profs barely making an appearance in an undergrad time at the school, and often only in front of a stadium sized hall as a lecturer, flanked with grad students who do the actual work. SOmetimes the lectures bear little relevance to course materials. But the name is often a draw. It does bring in the students, the rankings, the ratings and the dollars. And the biggie wants his serfs in the form of grad students not selected for their teaching prowress but having to get teaching stipends to attend , and so we have a research university infrastucture. Harvard does not get its draw by providing excellent undergrad professors to its students. But is sells, so in our capitalistic structure, it stays. </p>

<p>I just had a timely conversation with a friend who is an adjunct professor and has been for 16 years at a medium sized Catholic university. She teaches two classes a term, up from one when her kids were younger. When they go off to college, she thinks she will go full time. It’s offered to her regularly; she turns it down, preferring the full time. She has a BA from an IVy Legaue school and a PHD from a highly regarded Catholic university. I asked her about the situation at her school, and she says unionization would not be a go there. Far less than a third of the adjuncts would want a change. More pay for courses, yes, but to lose the deals most of them now have, to chance it , no go. There are some stuck there, yes, and the school should probably cut them loose, but have had them there so long and those teachers are hanging on so tenaciously that to fire them would be a war declared. So, the problem is well and alive there, but no good solutions.</p>

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<p>The assertion you are disputing is a strawmen argument, as it is one I did not make. I never claimed that a teaching university is more affordable. The research by Morton Shapiro at Williams showed that LACs were subsidizing the tuition and that the real cost per capita might be closer to 100,000 than to the charged tuition. </p>

<p>The point raised here is about what schools pay adjuncts. I might have added a couple of words about what research universities “pay” their graduate assistants for their “teaching.” The model that is based on lowering the cost to provide the teaching of undergraduates is mostly used at research universities, and is obvious to lower the teaching duties of the tenured faculty to allow them to … do better things with their time. In so many words, you cannot compare the costs at a non-research university that employs mostly full-time professors with a school that delivers their education with a smorgasbord of divas, tenured faculty, adjuncts, and glorified apprentices with dubious qualifications and training, if not language skills. </p>

<p>And lastly, my main point was that the answer is not to find MORE money to prolong the failing model (and preserve the lifestyles of the chosen few) but to seriously restructure what tertiary education should be. And for the simplest of reasons, namely that we cannot afford the escalation in costs any further, and that time has come for education to learn to live with the forced austerity the private industry has had to live with for decades. </p>

<p>The unfettered escalation of expenses --including the cost of maintaining an aging faculty and an explosion in administrators’ costs-- is turning the ROI for a college education into a bad joke.</p>

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<p>Some interesting data being collected here: [Adjunct</a> Project Shows Wide Range in Pay and Working Conditions - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Adjunct Project Shows Wide Range in Pay and Working Conditions”>Adjunct Project Shows Wide Range in Pay and Working Conditions)</p>

<p>Also, some universities are attempting to be more helpful in explaining where exactly the tuition and fees are going: [Tuition</a> Dollars - Office of the President - Colorado State University](<a href=“http://president.colostate.edu/tuition-video.aspx]Tuition”>http://president.colostate.edu/tuition-video.aspx)</p>

<p>I wish more schools made an attempt to be as transparent! If I’m paying $20,000 a semester for my kid to attend a private college, it would be nice to know how much of that cost is going towards his instructors’ salaries. Is one course being taught by someone making $2500 and another by a professor making $180,000 a year? Why am I being charged the same for each class?</p>

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<p>I’m tired of seeing all the unfounded claims on this thread.</p>

<p>Here’s a list of average faculty salaries by field from the chronicle of higher education:
[Average</a> Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11 - Faculty Data - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11”>Average Faculty Salaries by Field and Rank at 4-Year Colleges and Universities, 2010-11)
Let’s look at a few examples:
Computer science. That would probably require a PhD, and possibly some postdoc experience. Average starting salary is $72k. What’s the average starting salary of a student coming out of a good undergrad program? How about University of Illinois:
“Average Starting Salaries: $68,650 (BS), $87,137 (MS), $102,728 (PhD)”</p>

<p>Yes, those “fat cat” professors are making less than their students will start at fresh out of school.</p>

<p>You say it’s not fair to look at computer science? Ok, let’s look at math. Starting salary, 56K. Do you really think a math PhD good enough to land a faculty position could not do far better than that as an actuary, on wall street, or at google?</p>

<p>Psychology: 55K. How much do you think they’d make in private practice?</p>

<p>Here is the average pay for high school teachers in california: <a href=“http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp[/url]”>http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp&lt;/a&gt;
beginning 41K, midrange 55K, highest 85k–that is about the same as a tenured University professor with a PhD, who may only have achieved that rank about 15 years after earning their BA.</p>

<p>The fact is that many college professors earn no more than they would if they were teaching high school.</p>

<p>@Lucie, if a professor is making $180K a year, they are either some kind of academic superstar or else they are teaching at a med/law/business school. Or else they are an administrator, and professor in name only.</p>

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<p>yeah, guess what I do for a living? Let’s just say that I know first hand how hard it is to raise funds for the work that actually needs doing. </p>

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<p>Holy Opinion, Batman! (and, I heartily disagree. The “oh woe, the experienced teachers are draining the system” is a straw man at every grade level in my experience – a straw man mostly trotted out by ideologues with little to no classroom experience.)</p>

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<p>Adjuncts can actually provide a very useful and cost effective means for teaching basic courses while leaving more experienced faculty member to teach upper level courses. Let’s be honest- you really don’t need a tenured faculty PhD to teach basic calculus, chemistry or accounting courses. Many of these courses are used to weed out students who do not have the ability or work ethic to complete an undergraduate degree. An adjunct can teach these courses and the students that pass earn the right to be taught advanced courses by upper level faculty in smaller class sizes. It is important to make sure the adjunct is doing a good job teaching the material but that can be easily monitored by faculty members who teach the more advanced courses.</p>

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<p>Then stopping making them up. That or do a modicum of effort to understand the posts. </p>

<p>Here is a start. In a discussion about fat cats and academic divas, it should be obvious that those are hardly starting professors and recent professors. </p>

<p>Anyhow, I am done wasting my time correcting you in this thread! and in the future.</p>

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<p>And yet, as a parent, I’m charged the same for each course. How does that economic model make any sense to those actually paying the tuition dollars? And why on earth are these schools admitting students who have neither the ability nor the work ethic to complete an undergraduate degree???</p>

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<p>I understand that, and that was kind of my point. Nonetheless, as a student in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences (my alma mater) today, I (theoretically) could take a class with a Professor of Political Science (avg. salary: $187,000) and another with an adjunct Art History Instructor moonlighting from his full-time job on Temple’s Tyler School of Art faculty. I have no idea what Penn pays someone in that situation, but I can’t imagine it’s very much! The tuition bill is not affected by the difference in wages they receive however.</p>

<p>[University</a> Of Pennsylvania Jobs](<a href=“Company Salaries & Employee Pay Information”>Company Salaries & Employee Pay Information)
[AAUP</a> releases faculty salary data | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/09/aaup-releases-faculty-salary-data]AAUP”>AAUP releases faculty salary data)
[Adjunct</a> Faculty | History of Art](<a href=“History of Art Department Officers | Penn History of Art”>History of Art Department Officers | Penn History of Art)</p>

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<p>@xiggi, this whole thread was presented as adjuncts being exploited by colleges to protect the interests of their tenured faculty, whom you labeled “academic divas” and
“fat cats”, and implied that they do little work for excessive salaries. I know quite a few tenured college faculty and every one of them is very hard working and could have made more money in the private sector. Nearly all of them also take their undergraduate teaching quite seriously, although it is not always their highest priority if they are also charged with, and being evaluated on, their research, they do try to do a good job of it and spend a lot more time that you ignorantly represented them to be doing. I don’t care to see good people being slandered by those who obviously know very little about the profession. Your repeated insulting references to “tenured fat cats”, “academic divas”, ”sinecures", “plum job that will allow for the leisure life enjoyed by the tenured divas”, "deadwood” and opinion that "Endowed faculty and tenure are archaic monsters” are pretty offensive to those of us who know many individuals who are working very hard and trying to do a good job teaching with many other demands being placed on their time. </p>

<p>Yes, you were pitting the tenured profs against the adjuncts, blaming the tenured faculty for the whole system of exploiting the adjuncts. A whole system isn’t created by a handful of superstar academics. Don’t try to backpedal it now.</p>

<p>”They have no clue what working 50 hours in a factory means and a very loose concept of what working 12 hours straight really feels like.” OK, maybe not the factory part, but do you really believe that University professors don’t work 50 hours a week, and that a 12 hour day is foreign to them?</p>

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<p>Good for you. Your anecdotal knowledge obviously allows you to dismiss the opinions of others as ignorant or even slanderous – with the latter being a rare feat on a public forum that relies on the typed word.</p>

<p>Do I believe college professors work 2,500 hours a year on educating students or doing administrative tasks related to their alma mater? No, and not by a huge margin. One half would be remarkable. A fraction of that probably realistic.</p>

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<p>^^ Thanks mathyone. My H basically works from the moment he is up in the morning until he gets into bed at 2 am or later. Breaks for meals and exercise, but really his life is work. He likes it, more enjoyable than factory work I imagine, except for some of the administrative duties that eat up so much of his time, but as far as # of hours, 12 is just everyday routine, and Saturday and Sunday are workdays too. Basic teaching is just one part of his job. He takes it seriously, and yes preparing for class and grading papers into the wee hours take more time than many might guess, but there is so much more that is expected of him. Research of course, but carving out time for that is always a struggle. Editor of journals, evaluating job candidates, evaluating NSF proposals, writing up his own grant proposal, writing LOR, working with doctoral students, traveling and presenting at conferences, numerous committee meetings, peer reviewing articles. The list goes on and on. I don’t even know what else, but he is always working. Even when he is supposed to be taking time off, say to attend kids’ performances and events, he has his stuff with him, squeezing a few minutes in whenever there is a wait at the beginning, intermission, halftime, etc. No divas here.</p>

<p>And come to think of it, he works during meals as well.</p>

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<p>“And yet, as a parent, I’m charged the same for each course. How does that economic model make any sense to those actually paying the tuition dollars?”</p>

<p>The price of most items and services in the marketplace is based on the supply and demand of those items and not the cost to produce. Charging different prices based on cost for each course would be an administrative nightmare and the cost of the course per student could not be calculated until after the drop/add deadline and the total number of students was known. In addition the cost for a student who successfully completed a degree in 4 years would go up. The college is giving that student a volume discount as opposed to a student who drops out after 2 years. Providers of goods and services in the marketplace often offer volume and length of service discounts.</p>

<p>“And why on earth are these schools admitting students who have neither the ability nor the work ethic to complete an undergraduate degree???”</p>

<p>Every year, for various reasons, students drop out of Penn.</p>

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<p>A student could be far better off with an adjunct who likes to teach, knows how to teach, and knows the material that needs to be covered than being taught by some of the full professors who resent teaching, is a poor teacher, and has lost touch about what material is supposed to be covered in a course. THose students who are taking the foundation courses in particular can be seriously handicapped by instructors who are not addressing basics that are essentials to learn in moving on in the curriculum. It was a rampant problem at the research university where I went. Getting the full professor give the lectures, and then recitations, exams, questions were all fielded by grad students, many of the foreign who had never taken that particular course in that format, had no instruction as to how to teach, had not experience or knowledge about how an American university works and tended to reflect the scorn that the other researchers and the great prof himself would have towards teaching lower level courses. The reason some of these adjuncts are kept on is because they are good teachers. There is no shortage of adjuncts to hire, that I know, and so the ones that are kept, at least at the onset do well in teaching the materials and not creating waves. After a while…well, that is what can become the problem. </p>

<p>My friend teaches one basic course and a specialty course, and has done so for years. She is considered by students to be a great teacher, enjoys teaching, and her students tend to do well in the next step courses, all things that her university does track in terms of their adjuncts.</p>

<p>I am making sweeping generalities, as I have been taught by some “greats”, some “fat cats” that were incredible teachers as well. And, having a number of those on staff is often a drawing card for universities. The line to taking those courses is often long, the demand more than the space even in lecture hall classes. And the harried adjunct who is bitter about his job at a college who isn’t doing much in monitoring adjunct teaching quality, is certainly not a good deal.</p>

<p>As a rule, I do look at adjunct percentages at college, and if they are high, I want to know the reason. I don’t like the idea of spending the money for my kids being taught by those who are not an intricate part of the university community, whose office is the trunk of the car. And may or may not be around next term.</p>

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Yeah, who started this pointless thread, anyway? You should blame that person for wasting your time.</p>

<p>I think there’s a big difference between adjunct faculty who are trying to make a living doing that, and those who are teaching a course as a sideline to a separate, established career. Indeed, one thing mentioned above that I disagree with is the idea that in order to get (for example) a top partner from a law school to come in and teach a course, you have to pay a lot. I’ll bet many such people do it for very little, or even for nothing. They don’t do it to increase their income.</p>

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<p>Hunt- except that they don’t- they save their Pro Bono hours for wrongfully convicted death row cases and other “needy” legal issues- law schools pay for their adjuncts.</p>

<p>But I agree that there is a difference between survival wage adjuncts and well established professionals.</p>

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<p>I know a number of attorneys who teach a course or two, some at law schools, some teach undergraduate courses in their specialty areas. The adjuncts I know tend to be well established professionals who are teaching to just to affiliate with a university, enjoy doing it, for the exposure, and those wanting to work part time while they are SAHPs or doing something else but wanting to some extra money and resume build. They don’t want a full time position.</p>

<p>I am curious as to what the overall breakdowns are for adjuncts. How many are happy with the part time arrangement, and those who are hanging in there in hopes for other work and the jobs are their main sustenance. I truly don’t know what the stats are on all of this. At the college where my friends work, she claims most of them are voluntary part time adjuncts. Where I was on the board, the department where my focus was, again, had nearly all voluntary part time adjuncts. They would not accept a full time position if offered as they had full time jobs. Don’t know a single one that would have in the 9 years I was there. But other departments at the same school did not have that situation as there was a high profile ruckus on adjunct abuse for that school not long ago.</p>

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<p>It makes perfect sense in the context of students starting at cheap (open admission) community colleges, then (after proving their academic strength by doing well) transferring to more expensive four year schools for their upper division work to complete their bachelor’s degrees.</p>

<p>Going directly to a four year school as a frosh makes the most sense for students who will start taking the (more expensive) upper division courses in the first two years; students who will not do so (especially those who need remedial course work) should strongly consider starting at the community college if good transfer pathways from the community college exist.</p>

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<p>The original subject of the thread is not as waste of time. And, especially not when you add the dimension of the correlations between the costs charged by the colleges and the expenses represented by the salaries paid to the direct providers of the educational services. I believe that this precise element is front and center in discussions about the direction of tertiary education in our country. It might not create high waves in the rarified air of HYPS, but it surely affects plenty of schools that do not make the USNews first ranking page. </p>

<p>The time wasting arises when some are determined to play the strawmen game. There are no problems whatsover to add new dimensions to moving threads, but not by disputing the validity of assertions that were never made nor meant.</p>

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<p>Whatever is driving colleges to hike tuition at an alarming rate while increasingly relying on underpaid adjuncts to teach, it’s not exorbitant faculty salaries. Both these issues developed over the past few decades, when faculty salaries were not increasing particularly much. The number of non-teaching staff has increased quite a lot over the past few decades. If you’re interested in data, you might look at:<br>
[A</a> Very Slow Recovery: The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2011-12 | AAUP](<a href=“http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/2011-12salarysurvey]A”>http://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/2011-12salarysurvey)</p>

<p>This report concludes:
The evidence is unequivocal: faculty pay is not the source of rising tuition prices. And we’re not the only ones reaching that conclusion. The Delta Project concluded in its Trends in College Spending, 1998–2008 that “over the 1998 to 2008 period, the share of instruction spending declined against increased spending for academic support (libraries and computing), institutional support (administration), and student services. . . . The common myth that spending on faculty is responsible for continuing cost escalation is not true.”</p>

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<p>The thread is a valuable one. The article cited, has some information that really brings in the problems that are occurring in our universities when the model of a tenured professor is weakening. When you have a large number of adjuncts and temporary teachers, grad students rather than professors who have made a commitment to the university as their home, making a community, it changes the whole landscape of university. Perhaps for some colleges, that isn’t important when most of the students go there to just take classes and commute, working part or full time so that the focal point of their lives is not the university. But for those who go away to school, who have bought into this making the college a home, an integral part of ones life, a large number of adjunct professors can change the feel of the school.</p>

<p>So what percent adunct is too much? Depends upon the school, IMO. And depends upon the type of adjunct and their place in the college. My son had the same adjunct for two terms at his college,and the experience was a superb one. But he was a celebrity/mentor type that was well in place at the college and had the commitment and resources right there. Not someone struggling and praying for a renewal of his contract. So there are adjuncts and … well different kinds of adjuncts. </p>

<p>The writer of the article is from East Tennessee State university, I believe, a school I don’t know, but it sounds like it’s more of a local state univeristy with a large commuter population, and a large number of kids taking non liberal arts courses. What the composition of his school is, and how adjuncts are treated there, may likely be far more typical than what is happening at private colleges and flagships. But then, I don’t know.</p>

<p>Xiggi, what is your take on all of this? How big is the problem? What do you propose the movement should be in terms of adjuncts? That the pool of qualified employees for those positions is so high, does it make sense to pay more? There are always takers for those jobs for little pay, and the pickings are good since the market is so poor for many of these PHDs or others seeking to teach on the college level, or those who just want to teach a few courses, and money is not even the issue–the affiilation with the college is, and they might well do it for nothing in some cases. So what to do about this situation? Are the adjuncts being exploted, or are they trying to exploit this opportunity and get more pay than they are otherwise worth on the market? </p>

<p>I think that the move to more adjuncts on the part of colleges that are often chosen due to the community that they are, is going to be affect that community. It is disturbing ,the move to being administration heavy, which is going away from the academia that univerisites have had the reputation of upholding. Shifting to an adjunct heavy faculty is going to lean even more in that direction.</p>