PBS continues its coverage:
‘Parity” versus “Equity:” Why You Should Know the Diff, Bro
This post is a few years old, but its points out the importance of rhetoric, and is very current. As momentum builds for action on adjunct issues, we need to be careful what we ask for. We must define our language with precision. “Justice” is dollar parity. Equal pay is parity. This is justice. Aside from chairs, assistant chairs and a few program directors, tenured faculty at community colleges do not do more work than adjuncts. One I know teaches 17 hours a semester plus works much, much more for the general good. You want us to do work besides teach? Like what? Pay us equally, we’ll do it.
This cogent article needs to be read. Most tenured faculty, and many if not most adjunct faculty, still have their heads in the sand. I think “pop psychology” rationales are one of the main barriers to the self-awakening those adjuncts and tenured faculty who are in denial need. We who have recognized the actual conditions, and accepted the critiques of social critics like Giroux and Chomsky, need to continue our struggle to throw off the oppression of corporatization by convincing the majority faculty (85%!) to speak up, stand up, and demand justice. Equal pay for equal work! One pay scale for tenured and adjunct faculty!
A writing colleague who is a recent MFA graduate, recently posted a social media link to an article titled “Professors in Homeless Shelters: It is time to talk seriously about adjuncts,” along with the grim remark, “Now is the perfect time see an abundance of articles like these, right when I’m about to be searching the job market.” In that linked Salon article of March 17, Becky Tuch called adjunct abuse “one of higher education’s great sins” and asked why the Association of Writers and Writing Programs isn’t talking about it.
In the very last weeks of those specialized graduate programs for which college teaching is a logical career path, students might be cautioned, “It could take as long as eight years to secure a full-time, tenure-track job.” Try twelve. Try 15. Try it’s never going to happen! Try invade an area without…
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Getting a tenure track job, in your city of choice, is a lot like being a desperate suitor for an ugly, socially challenged, filthy rich jacka$$. You wouldn’t even think of looking at some of these jobs had they been in a different location like the Midwest (sorry Midwesterners, it’s not personal). You wouldn’t even sneeze at any other profession that offered you the same working conditions and pay. But you, and a hoard of other extremely accomplished and talented academics, are willing to gamble your highest earning years, sacrifice your family & loved ones, jeopardize your health and mental wellbeing, compromise your principles, degrade yourselves and pull each other’s hairs all for the chance of being picked by this ugly filthy rich jacka$$ who might marry you with a prenup agreement, and dump you in 5-7 years (if you are not putting out enough…publications) with no penny to your…
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The Adjunct Crisis 