If you’re a parent or guardian of someone debating or entering into college, I, an adjunct faculty member at a Chicago private, non-profit art school, have a few words of advice and some issues to consider for you and your new students, to accompany the recent article by Joe Fruscione at PBS NewsHour’s Making Sen$s:

Make them think long and hard about whether they’d rather set themselves up a cozy little bunker in case the shit goes down (or they just can’t find full-time work, which is exceedingly likely), or piecemeal work together like a patch on an Ellis Island jacket while owing tens of thousands of dollars. Tell them you aren’t kidding.

Then tell them about principle, interest, and how debt breeds when you go through deferment, forbearance, or default, because the concepts are in a language foreign to them. But the answer is easy, they’ll understand—like rabbits.

Put simply, universities traditionally have pursued a three-prong mission: 1) to provide excellent educational opportunities, 2) to support scholarly research and study, and 3) to encourage both professional and community service.

There has been a lot written recently about how the adjunct situation has negatively impacted our students’ education – and this blog will be addressing that extensive problem in a future post. But it is the second of the three-prong mission I’d like to talk about now, since I’m not seeing as much attention focused on this equally serious problem.

The adjunct labor abuse problem is becoming more widely reported: Seventy-five percent of America’s college faculty earn less than $25, 000 a year. Often hired one semester at a time with no healthcare or retirement benefits, paid per course an average of $2700, faculty are now academia’s migrant workers.

Historically, it has been the responsibility of our institutions of…

Interim Chair Bill Lipkin

This evening saw the first ever gathering of AFT’s Contingent Caucus.

It was organized by Bill Lipkin and attended by about 40 AFT contingent members and allies from around the country. Margaret Hanzimanolis acted as secretary.

This historic event will help to give contingent faculty a greater voice within the union of 1.6 million members, of whom perhaps 100,000 are contingent academics in higher education. Thanks to Bill, Richard Gomes and Margaret Hanzimanolis for pulling this off—it’s been a long time coming!

Yesterday and today saw the unanimous approval of a number of excellent resolutions that pertain directly to contingents. More to follow.

L-R: Margaret Hanzimanolis (CA), Bill Lipkin (NJ), Richard Gomes (NJ)

from Peter D.G. Brown, New Paltz, originally posted to the adj-l listserv

As I have finally accepted the futility of seeking a tenure track position I have decided to quit adjunction and focus my efforts on finding other types of employment. However, these efforts have also proven to be futile. Out of the fifty applications for the non-academic positions that I sent out the past few months, I’ve only been called for three interviews. None of these interviews have resulted in a job offer.

I am overqualified for most of the jobs that I’ve applied for, so one would think that employers would jump at the chance of having me on their team. But sadly, that is not the case. Employers don’t want to hire someone who is overqualified because they would have to pay them more. They also don’t trust that overqualified individuals would work at their institutions for the long haulI–and they’re right. Additionally, employers don’t want to hire employees who are more qualified and skilled than they…

How can American academia’s adjunct situation be improved?  What’s the best way to address this humanitarian crisis?  Can we fix this labor disaster?

This question surfaced during a Twitter discussion today.  Several of us were criticizing the increased casualization of academic labor, and sawfew ways forward.   Then VCVaile wondered,

hard to change attitude but is it impossible? what would it take?

This is a great question. Indeed, it should be one of the leading questions for academia to answer today.

How, then, can we improve the situation of adjuncts?

Let’s brainstorm.  And let’s seed the storm with some ideas:

1. State governments could be the hero here.  One common suggestion (one I’ve made) is that we need to reverse the decline in state support for public higher education.  Simply put, if states stopped cutting their subsidies but, instead, increased their support for colleges and universities, we could expand…