Author Archives: jrhoskins

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Time for the Professoriate to Lead the Way

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I haven’t reblogged anything for quite some time, but this piece is timely and resonates with most of what I have written about the need for tenured faculty to recognize that higher education is near death and the crisis we face is an adjunct crisis because tenured faculty are becoming adjuncts. It is happening not because there isn’t enough funding but because tenured faculty, and adjunct faculty (the greatest number of whom suffer from some kind of complacency, even if it is just that they don’t have the time), are not resisting forcefully enough, a condition which has been ongoing for decades. Will we rise up, achieve true solidarity (beginning with equal pay for adjuncts), and muster the power of the full professoriate, tenured and adjunct?
Pancoast makes a number of cogent points here:

aiotb's avatarThe As It Ought to Be Archive

adjunct_prof

Time for the Professoriate to Lead the Way

by William Trent Pancoast

It’s about time for working folks to stand up for themselves. Walmart workers haven’t been able to get it done. The old line unions are still reeling from the ongoing attacks begun by Reagan and continued by the right wing.

It looks to me like it should happen on our college campuses, and it should for starters be about adjunct instructors having a chance to make a living wage with benefits. That will require that tenured faculty support adjuncts. Much of the bargaining success of the United Auto Workers resulted from skilled and unskilled (high wage and low wage) belonging to the same union. Tenured faculty, making $50,000-$175,000 annual pay with health care and retirement, and adjuncts, making piecework of roughly $400 to $1000 per credit hour taught with no benefits, must join together. They need to form…

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Testimony: Life as an Adjunct

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The following is an autobiographical narrative of a hard-working San Diego adjunct, Corinna Guenther. It is an excerpt from an email she posted in a thread that includes discussion between adjuncts and tenureds about how our union can represent the interests of both constituencies.

Our stories are our most powerful force for change. Corinna’s story is a powerful testimony.

My story is probably typical, so I will keep it brief: Teaching seven classes (and holding office hours) at various campuses– even when combined with my husband’s full time income– is barely cutting it for our family. Every semester I bite my nails to the nubs hoping that classes will be added at the last minute. We have no savings, so even just one semester with only three classes puts us back in debt and missing payments on things like student loans, car payments, legal fees, and medical bills, using our credit cards with the hopes of catching up on them next semester, when maybe more classes open up.

So, needless to say: The quality of life for me and my family would certainly improve if I could get a full time position: the idea of the same take home pay but only teach 5 classes at the same campus (instead of 7 classes at how ever many campuses all over the county) and have the time and compensation to participate in committees and clubs and campus life! It seems like a dream come true for me. I’d love to work on committees- not because I ‘have to’ as a full time faculty– but because I want to contribute to the campus and the student experience. I WANT TO be a part of the vibrant campus community, and I fully anticipated that as part of my career when I decided to become a teacher- I really believe I have something valuable to contribute!
Its just impossible for me right now given my schedule of classes, prep time, and driving time– not to mention arranging child care and trying to take care of my own health. And over the past several years, after applying for several full time positions, and never once getting a second interview, I have realized that the likelihood of gaining the full time position I believed I would have by now is very, very, very, slim, so now I feel the only chance for me is pay equity and job security. With my interdisciplinary master’s degree and 9 years of teaching experience, and all kinds of diverse faculty development and enrichment, I am fully qualified, but just not viewed as legitimate competition for applicants with PhDs. It is demoralizing to size up the competition for full time positions in my field.

Still, I consider myself a teacher first. It is my passion and my identity, and I will not give it up unless there is no other option. Adjuncts like me give a lot of our time and a lot of our soul with little or no compensation for those extra hours because we love what we do and we love our students and we love the process of learning and we believe in the value of education. I dont want to speak for everyone, but I assume that most of us want to be a bigger part of the union and the campus community! Its just really really hard to do on our pay and with so much uncertainty about our future employment.

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The Mesa Press Continues Its Coverage of the Adjunct Crisis

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Linda Nguyen covers NAWD for The Mesa Press: http://www.mesapress.com/staff/2015/03/10/national-adjunct-action-day/

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NAWD Impressions: A Report From the Rally at San Diego Mesa College

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NAWD at Mesa College was a consciousness raising event. 150 or so (maybe 200) students and professors showed up on a sunny San Diego day, at possibly the warmest location on campus, at noon, in direct sunlight, to hear and speak about the adjunct crisis in higher education. I emceed. Keynote speaker Jim Mahler, president of AFT local 1931 and of CFT CCC, outlined the general parameters of the adjunct crisis and made an appeal to support the AFT’s current campaign to fund unfunded budget items in the governor’s budget proposal that would increase adjunct pay (not that much, but might as well get it if we can) and create more full-time positions. Even the college president, Pam Luster, spoke. Most  importantly, students and adjuncts spoke.

At the open mic, adjuncts shared stories of exploitation and made statements of love for the profession. We made confessions. We had a 33 year veteran and a rookie, with one year professing under her belt, both speak out. Several adjuncts spoke of poverty conditions, of years of commitment, of the meaningful life of teaching. And one or two tenured professors spoke, one quite powerfully pointing out that getting on the tenure-track is sheer luck and that his wife, an adjunct, makes 1/3 what he does for the same work. But Students were amazing. Really, more than anything else, this event raised the consciousness of the dozen or more students who spoke about their favorite adjunct professors, about their shock at the conditions of exploitation their favorites lived in, about their support for equal pay for adjuncts and for reversing adjunctification. From the mic and from the crowd, students called out “how can we help?”

This moment of national consciousness raising, of media coverage from NPR and Democracy Now!, reflected at Mesa today in the engagement with students, is a moment in which we should act. We can inform students and marshall a force that has effected long-reaching change. Adjunct working conditions are student learning conditions: the adjunct crisis is a student crisis.

NAWD in San Diego was a success. Now the task will be to keep this energy alive and use it to make radical change.  The question is: how do we organize students?

The revolution has  begun. Long live the revolution!

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Statement of Support From an Adjunct Ally At Mesa College

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Earlier today, Jennifer Cost, English Department Chair at San Diego Mesa College issued the following statement of support of National Adjunct Walkout Day actions across the nation but especially at Mesa. It is important to publicly note that adjuncts have allies and that this support is increasing as awareness of the human cost of adjunctification increases.

The statement:

Dear Adjunct Colleagues:

On this day of national action, I’d like to voice my admiration and support of our hard working adjunct colleagues, most working full time at a variety of different places, under a variety of different conditions. In our English department, we have 94 adjunct professors who teach 229 of our English classes.

I know I speak on behalf of our English Department at Mesa, and the Chairs here at Mesa when I say we support you and salute your advocacy for our collective fight for equity.

In Unity,

Jennifer Cost
Chair, English Department
Chair, Committee of Chairs
San Diego Mesa College

 

Thanks, Jennifer!

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San Diego Mesa College Academic Senate Calls for Action to Reverse Adjunctification

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The San Diego Mesa College Academic Senate voted to  pass a resolution asking Governor Jerry Brown to fully fund budgetary items to increase adjunct pay and provide more full-time positions.

In addition, the resolution calls for “[l]eaders and decision-makers on local, state, and national levels address the working conditions of our temporary faculty in order to greatly reduce the practice of adjunctification, or the hiring of part-time instructors in place of full-time contract faculty. This can has been kicked down the road for too many years. It’s time for action!”

The Mesa Senate is right: it’s time for action!

 

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A Call to Action and A NAWD Primer

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In a great, new article for the San Diego Free Press, Jim Miller, tenured English professor at San Diego City College, and Ian Duckles, adjunct philosophy professor everywhere, provide great historical context for NAWD.  Jim rightly observes that what has been happening to labor in academe has been happening to the workforce in America in general. This is the age of the precarious worker who lacks the financial means to resist the onslaught of policies that make income inequality the status quo. It is time to empower the precarious; in academe, this is the “exploited army of highly educated  part-time teachers” typically called adjuncts. Nationally, the adjunct army is rising to resist adjunctification. Tenured faculty, students, all precarious workers  and those who care about social justice are coming to their side. Truly, we’re all in this together.

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“I Am Somebody”: A Poem for NAWD by Lydia Snow

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❝I Am Somebody❞ an #adjunct poem for #NAWD
…inspired by Jesse Jackson’s rendition of “I Am – Somebody” written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, Sr., senior pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church and civil rights activist in Atlanta, GA.

 
I May be an Adjunct! I May be on Welfare!

I am Somebody.

I can’t afford suits so I pick them up at the Salvation Army,

My clothes are different

I Am Somebody!

I speak a different language, but I must be respected, protected, never rejected!

I may owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to the banks because I was educated

To teach a very detailed and important discipline

I am Somebody!

I may every day worry about students carrying guns into the hall,

I Am Somebody!

I may need a way to stay warm this month because I can’t pay my heating bill

I Am Somebody!

I may have no pension, no money in the bank, no credit rating

I am Somebody.

I may have no health insurance because I don’t get enough classes assigned to pay for it,

I am Somebody

My degrees are sitting on my wall staring back at me

I am Somebody!

I may love teaching period, and spend hours writing my thoughts and deleting them later.

I am Somebody!

I have a child or children who needs me to be strong

I am Somebody

I have to stand in line and get turned down for food stamps with them in my arms.

I am Somebody.

I may get my credit card turned down for gas on the way back from my teaching job

I am Somebody.

I must be respected, protected, never rejected.

I May Be an Adjunct

But I am Somebody.

Lydia Snow
Feb 23, 2015 10:40 am

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The Mesa Press Continues Its Coverage of Adjunctification

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The Mesa Press continues its coverage of the crisis of adjunctification in this article by Linda Nguyen: “Adjunct professors plan day of action.”

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NAWD Action Item: More Videos

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The Adjunct Revolution is taking place!

Here are a couple of videos to show your students this week. Students, who are being set up for a precariat life, are our natural allies. Let’s tell the the truth. Here’a  a documentary in the works that looks real:

Freeway Fliers

There is ongoing work from The Homeless Adjunct: ‘Junct: The Trashing of Higher Ed. in America

And, here is an excellent NAWD video from Ohio.

 

Show these to your students!