In response to the call for testimony, I submitted the following to Congress:

1. For how long have you worked as a contingent faculty or instructor?

* 1993-2003, Graduate Assistant, Teaching Assistant at private and public colleges and universities in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Switzerland. (this is a form of unregulated contingency, too).

*2003-2011, Adjunct in Liberal Arts and Humanities in Vermont and New Hampshire.
2. How would you describe the working conditions of contingent faculty and instructors at your college or university, including matters like compensation, benefits, opportunities for growth and advancement, job stability, and administrative and professional support?

* compensation: on an average 20 student enrollment, I was paid less than 15%; with a doctorate I was paid less than 20%; “contact hours” are 3-4 per section per week with a minumum of 7-9 hours “donated” for prep, grading, advising, electronic communications, phone, tutorials. Please read: http://migrantintellectual.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-contact-hour-lie/

Guest blogger Jeanne Zaino is professor of political science and international studies at Iona College.

In his provocative and deeply depressing The Last Professors Frank Donoghue warns that corporate logic has taken over the academy.  His findings are confirmed by Andrew DeBlanco who, in his award winning College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be not only bemoans the demise of liberal arts education, but attributes it to several factors including the “commercialization of American higher education.”

Tellingly neither Donoghue nor DeBlanco call on humanists to rise up. Nor do they offer any real hope that the liberal arts generally, or the humanities in particular, can be resuscitated. Far from a call to arms, these books are elegies, laments, requiems. As Donoghue writes, “the conditions to which many seek a return – healthy humanities departments populated by tenure-track professors who discuss books with adoring students in a cloistered setting – have…