Fixing the higher-education adjunct crisis lies in truth-telling

By Rebecca Schuman

“Adjunct jobs aren’t nice, and many of us feel, in all frankness, that we have little to lose. But sympathy for the adjunct’s plight is limited. (Read any comments section, ever, on any article with the word “adjunct” in it.) We chose, after all, to devote our lives to something so stupid and useless. Supply and demand. Find another job. Bootstraps. I get it.

But here’s what they don’t get: It’s not that adjuncts deserve better. It’s that students deserve better than adjuncts. And the people who decide which colleges are the “best” should be telling you this, but they’re not. That’s why I’m calling on U.S. News, the leading college ranking service in the country, to track the percentage of classes taught by adjuncts in their rankings – and penalize schools that use too many.”