Adjunct professors unionize, revealing deeper malaise in higher ed

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2016/03/24/adjunct-professors-unionize-revealing-deeper-malaise-higher/NjqqU5YIToqhm8ZBjsK4yI/story.html



Students walk near Memorial church on the Harvard campus on March 13.

Adjunct professors unionize, revealing deeper malaise in higher ed
By Dante Ramos Globe Columnist March 24, 2016

When people outside academia think about life inside it, we often imagine tweedy tenured professors who are blithely innocent of all earthly concerns. Yet more than 40 percent of the teachers at US colleges and universities are adjuncts — part-time faculty members who are paid by the course. Like TaskRabbits and Uber drivers, these instructors are in the vanguard of an unpredictable freelance economy.

Adjuncts on more and more campuses are responding in an old-fashioned way: by turning to a labor movement that, despite its flaws, is their best option for handling specific types of grievances.

Amid a national freak-out over the cost of college, marginally employed professors aren’t obvious objects of sympathy. Yet the surge in union activism among adjuncts reveals cracks in the American higher-ed model that universities would just as soon paper over.

Recently, adjunct faculty members at Duke University voted to affiliate with the Service Employees International Union, following a trend that’s gained particular force in Greater Boston, the nation’s higher education capital. Adjuncts at Tufts, Lesley, Northeastern, Boston University, and other schools have voted to unionize. Some contracts are in force; others are in various stages of negotiation. Longtime Lesley adjunct Celia Morris, the president of the SEIU’s higher education unit for the Boston area, expects to have 3,500 members soon.

[whathehell]

1. You might find it hard to believe, but even unions have unions

in some cases. I worked in one way back in my temping days.

Good luck to.these adjuncts.. Unions are needed.

[rpannier]

2. Third paragraph is foolish

I'd be willing if you told the students how little an adjunct professor makes and how little job security they had, they'd get a lot of sympathy from the students they teach
Considering the level of anger at the people making wads of cash at the expense of those lower down, it's further proof of a broken system (IMO) that favors a small elite group at the expense of everyone else

[MH1]

3. It's just typical broad-brushing of the demonization.

Just because many colleges are overpriced, doesn't mean all are, and doesn't mean every professor is overpaid. (I'd bet that most professors are NOT overpaid ... the money is going somewhere else, IMO).

Just like people think "all doctors are rich" - demonstrably an untrue statement. (It may be that all plastic surgeons are rich. But certainly not all doctors.)

People just tend to categorize into larger categories than is warranted if they're then going to start demonizing by category.

[brush]

23. Isn't the post about the exploitation and lack of job security of the adjuncts rather than . . .

professors being overpaid?

Been there and done that. Adjuncts, most highly credentialed, are grossly underpaid. From semester to semester or quarter to quarter you never know if enough students will register for your classes to be held. You only get paid if there is a class (no tenure), there are no benefits such as health insurance, retirement fund matching or anything like that.

Your classes may be hours apart and there is no office space so you have to figure out whether to leave campus and waste gas to come back later or try to kill time in your car or somewhere on campus.

Job security is tenuous at best. Hope the union movement for these highly qualified professionals succeeds.

[Helen Borg]

4. Academic life is very stressful...

For the adjuncts because they have no job security and respect. For the tenure-track folks, because they are basically slaves due to the tenure carrot (that often is yanked away after multi-year exploitation and abuse. For the tenured folks, because there are ways of making your life hell even if you are not tenured and don't bring in the big grants.

[rjsquirrel]

5. Often yanked away?

The tenuring rate for tenure/track hired faculty in the US is north of 80%. It's as close to a slam dunk as it gets. If you are hired tenure track and don't get tenure that's on you, not "the system."

And some of those adjuncts seem to think that because they got a PhD in English writing about comic books or whatever (really, look at the topics of many humanities phd dissertations) that society owes them a professorship with tenure.

Demand for humanities PhDs has been falling steadily for 30 years now. Yet people keep doing them in mediocre programs that bring in phd students as cheaper labor even than adjuncts. How you could get through two years, let alone 5-7, as a PhD student in a mediocre program and not see that you were training for jobs that don't exist is beyond me.

[mark67]

13. Yours is a strawman argument...

None of these adjunct professors are demanding tenure. They are basically working for peanuts, grabbing whatever they can in the process. Most went into the system knowing the prospect for an academic job was slim and resolved to instead work in the shadow "of a university" until something opened up.

I'm in Grad School now, but comfortably retired and just following my passion. My academic peers are a somewhat pathetic lot...in terms of finances and professional opportunities...no need to beat them up for the misery they choose for themselves.

[rjsquirrel]

14. You misunderstand

I'm responding to the comment saying those on the tenure track have the rug "yanked out from under them." Bullshit. Those are not the adjuncts but the f/t assistant professors. If you can't get tenure from that position that's on you. I'm saying nothing about adjuncts.

I am a tenured full professor at an R1 so I know a lot about this subject. The biggest problem is too many useless PhDs in fields where we don't need them (and not enough in fields where we do), and a reliance on grad student labor that leads to overproducing humanities and social science PhDs at least.

I agree adjuncts are exploited. Unfortunately that is a fact of supply and demand.

[mark67]

18. We both agree on that...

I'm already retired in one profession so if I were hired on as an adjunct it would be an honor and a privilege. But for the adjuncts I know, it's like slave labor.

As a student in a Graduate Program now, what I see is a real lack of counseling and advising for my younger peers. They are clueless about their future opportunities. It also seems many of them are just hanging around b/c they don't know what to do with their lives. I see a real lack of leadership in the department. I don't know if from your position, you have any thoughts on the matter?

[mascarax]

19. Which fields need more PhDs?

I'm interested in your comment...wondering about the specific areas, in your opinion.

[Alkene]

6. I've worked in both academia and the private sector.

In the private sector it's dog eat dog.

In academia it's the other way around.

Everyone who sells labor for wages needs to be unionized- with a union that will actually represent their interests (cough, cough).

[Android3.14]

8. Brilliant!

[Android3.14]

7. The basic problem is lack of state funding

Over the past 50 years, percentage of state funding for university costs has dropped from 70 percent to around 33 percent or lower.

This has forced universities to raise tuition and increase the use of adjunct professors prompting a reduction of academic rigor and and increasing the cost of college to levels that keep the middle class from going to college or insuring students from middle class families graduate with a debt that is greater than many mortgages.

This is one of several reasons I cannot understand why anyone would support Hillary Clinton. Anyone who supports Clinton is forcing their children and grandchildren into a lifetime of debt, and they should be ashamed.

[Alkene]

10. An offshoot of declining funding is the impact on enrollment

as universities pursue higher percentages of non-resident students with massively higher tuition rates.
It's a pity when academic excellence isn't sufficient to get accepted into the best institutions of the state in which you live.

[rjsquirrel]

15. Your numbers are half right

State funding has flowed to other worthy things. Corporate and federal funding has filled in lots of he gaps. At research universities tuition is not the major source of operating revenue.

[abelenkpe]

20. +1000

[malthaussen]

9. What, he just noticed?

"revealing deeper malaise in higher ed," forsooth! That malaise has been around a long time, so nice it has been finally "revealed" for him.

When colleges are run for profit, then they will follow classic rules of corporatism: bloated executive salaries, extensive funding to marketing, and the cheapest labor money can buy for the actual production staff. Since in this case, labor follows straightforward supply-and-demand patterns, and since the supply far exceeds the demand, then compensation becomes minimal except for those positions that can bring in the cash, in the form of grants or sports receipts. Which does not apply to those who teach.

College has interesting parallels to banking, in fact: far more revenue is made from sources other than actually servicing people. Indeed, it's not too extreme to say that the people the institution is ostensibly designed to accommodate are nothing more than a big pain in the butt.

As for the cost of college, why is it so difficult to see that when revenue is directed toward profit, expenses balloon?

-- Mal

[llmart]

11. So true....

I work at a public university. Our university is top heavy with administrators who do next to nothing and get paid like a corporate executive. In fact, they are now getting rid of academic types in administration and going with executives from large corporations who were let go from said large corporations for failure to produce. It is disgusting to me how much they get paid for so little and how they then bring in their cohorts from their prior employer. These people know nothing about running an institution of higher education and want to use a corporate business model to run the place.

I would like to disavow anyone on this board from thinking that tenure track professors get paid tons of money. Yes, they do enjoy job security moreso than in the corporate world, but they could be making so much more money in the corporate world. In fact, it is very difficult for us to find people who want to become full time professors, at least in the STEM courses where they can make much more money outside of academia. Also, in the corporate world, they can get a job without the expense of getting advanced degrees that cost them thousands of dollars.

Our full time professors are union as are some of our adjuncts.

[malthaussen]

12. Eh, I have a friend with a PhD in physics.

She's been an adjunct for years, there are virtually no tenure-track positions available, and the ones that are have 100 applicants as well qualified as she. And that's a STEM field.

I remember a Doonesbury comic from 40-odd years ago where one of the professors at Walden was grumbling about his salary, and threatening to move to the private sector to be paid what he was worth. The punch line? "You're a Latin professor!" Let's not pretend that many in the liberal arts would be able to market themselves in the private sector: PhDs driving cabs and serving coffee are a byword.

But yeah, the amount of time and effort spent getting the degree and doing the research even to be eligible for a tenure-track position takes considerably more opportunity cost than getting your MBA ticket punched and shmoozing your way into an executive position in business (to say nothing of government). Back in my grad school days, the profs went on strike, and for the most part they were being paid modestly, albeit comfortably. Even then, the pressure was mounting; he who could get the grants was the fair-haired boy, and teaching was only secondary to publishing and researching. That is the reason why the "product" of universities has been shifting for so long, from educating people to getting the bucks from government and industry. The result has been a proliferation of community colleges, where there is more of an emphasis on actually teaching, and where conditions for staff are at least as appalling, if not more so, than in four-year institutions.

Even thirty-odd years ago, these trends could be seen, and my advisor in grad school (I was in the history program, as it happens) told me my best shot would be to get into administration. (Largely because I had a rep as a hard-ass, but that's another story) Smart man, that prof.

-- Mal

[mark67]

16. Also people refuse to retire...

I had a friend who worked at Duke in one of the Library Research Departments and couldn't get promoted because the "70-ish women" he worked for refused to retire...even thought she didn't understand basic technology/advanced Google searches and he would end up doing all of the work.

The same is true in the classrooms. I'm in a Grad Program now at a public university. Some of the older professors are truly inspirational...experts in their fields. But others teach and live from 20 years ago...and I dont' mean that in a good way. Others have developed a "cult of personality" status and bring their political BS and otherwise into the classrooms. The younger students have to take it because they don't know any better.

But I can see right through their BS--I had to drop one class because it was so bad.

[malthaussen]

21. Yeah, you'll get that.

I was so unfortunate as to have an ideological conflict with a prof teaching a course that I was required to take. Even though I was careful to mind my manners, it didn't end well.

As for "refusing to retire," I'd imagine those with longer experience are more in sympathy with the librarian in question than younger people wanting to progress. Given the economic situation today, one might find retirement fiscally impossible, or difficult. Also, for many people their work is their life. What are they going to do if they retire? Our society is simply not equipped to deal with the reality of a large number of older people who aren't working; and if they are working, then they clog up the machinery for younger people in the same career-track. I doubt there's a solution, short of some kind of Swiftian proposal.

-- Mal

[llmart]

24. Yes, that is a problem we face also.....

There is no easy solution to it either. We have quite a few older professors, even one in his 80's, who for varying reasons will not retire, though the union contract has tried to deal with the issue by offering more incentives for them to retire. I don't want to paint the issue with a broad brushstroke here and have to qualify my comments by first saying that I'm one of those "70'ish women" you speak of, though I'm in faculty administration, not a professor. The main reason we're given for most of the older professors who won't retire is that they have never built a life outside of their career and cannot fathom not getting up and going to work every day. The money is no longer an incentive for them, so telling them that we'll offer them a payout bonus to leave doesn't make any difference. We also have a few who have kept current over all these years and are excellent teachers, but I would say the majority of those who have been there 45+ years are just going through the motions.

Having said that though there are just as many in administration that haven't kept current themselves and I work for one of them. She is actually younger than I am and is able to get by on her b.s. and schmoozing with almost zero technology skills.

I feel the students are getting ripped off in many ways because the money goes into marketing and the top 1% of the organization and not in recruiting new, exciting professors.

[llmart]

26. We have at least 80-100 applicants for each STEM position....

and most of our engineering hires are on visas. They will and do work for less. I'm not saying that's right or ethical or whatever, I'm just stating what is the truth. I do have to say that we have more openings in the STEM departments than we ever do in the arts.

[rjsquirrel]

17. Anyone who pays for their own PhD

let alone "hundreds of thousands of dollars" ( which is bs) should not do a PhD.

Period.

[malthaussen]

22. While that position has merit...

... it rather ignores the larger issue, which is that of rising expenses due to exploitive management. Indeed, it could be taken to imply that the mulcting by administrators is not a problem at all, that the real problem is those whose reach exceeds their grasp. If one wished to be combative, he might see in such a declaration an inclination to side with the authoritarians and sharp operators, and damn the unfortunate who refused to stay in his place. One should be careful, IMO, how one makes such statements, and should indeed not make them at all if he is not willing to provide more explanation than a simple one-liner.

-- Mal

[rjsquirrel]

28. Lol whut?

No one should ever go into debt for a PhD. All good PhD programs (the ones that place their students in jobs) offer full ride funding. By definition a PhD program that is not paying its students to attend is a low quality program unlikely to lead to employment. This has zero to do with administrative costs . It's been true for 50 years in the US.

Therefore any story that is premised on someone "going into debt for a PhD" is full of shit. That person should never have been advised to do a PhD as they simply weren't good enough to get into a funded program. Their fault for believing bulllshit.

I am a tenured science professor at an R1. In general I find strident opinions like yours indicate that you actually know nothing about how higher education works in America.

[llmart]

25. Not sure what your comment is supposed to mean....

I'm curious as to what your credentials are. If someone wishes to become a professor they have to have a PhD to even get an interview.

[rjsquirrel]

29. Yes I know that

My Credentials? Lol. I'm a tenured full professor of science at an R1 university where I've taught for almost 30 years. My PhD students number in the dozens and are faculty members all over the world. My grants from major funding agencies add up to well over a million dollars. I've been in administrative positions at high levels of PhD education.

And every PhD student I've ever trained has been fully funded for 5-7 years. All tuition paid. All fees paid. Housing subsidized. Health insurance. And a stipend that amounts to a working class paycheck. Their work is in my lab.

Of course you have to have a PhD to be a professor. But if you paid for it you weren't smart enough or disciplined enough to get into one of the better programs, in ANY field including humanities, where you'd actually have a fighting chance at a career.

If you pay cash or take out loans to get a PhD you are doing it wrong and making a very serious life mistake because you are not competitive for the academic career. Most professors in American universities of any quality did not pay for their PhD degrees. It's been that way for generations. Sorry to disappoint your expectation that I was writing from a position of ignorance. Is suspect no one on DU knows more than I do about this subject.

[TBF]

27. K&R nt