A day in the life…of an adjunct:
Certainly, evidence of the far reaching impact of the adjunct crisis.
Is academia suffering from ‘adjunctivitis’? Low-paid adjunct professors struggle to make ends meet.
Reblogged from The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“…The report, “Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive: Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education,” says that new administrative positions—particularly in student services—drove a 28-percent expansion of the higher-ed work force from 2000 to 2012. The report was released by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science organization whose researchers analyze college finances.
What’s more, the report says, the number of full-time faculty and staff members per professional or managerial administrator has declined 40 percent, to around 2.5 to 1.
Full-time faculty members also lost ground to part-time instructors (who now compose half of the instructional staff at most types of colleges), particularly at public master’s and bachelor’s institutions.
And the kicker: You can’t blame faculty salaries for the rise in tuition. Faculty salaries were “essentially flat” from 2000 to 2012, the report says. And “we didn’t see the savings that we would have expected from the shift to part-time faculty,” said Donna M. Desrochers, an author of the report.”
For more, here’s the link:
http://chronicle.com/article/Administrator-Hiring-Drove-28-/144519/
Colorado Lawmakers Take Up Sweeping Overhaul of Adjucnt Working Conditions
We need this true pay equity in California. If I work a 60% assignment, why shouldn’t I receive 60% of a full-time salary? As it is, I receive about 30% of a full-time salary with the same degree and experience. How much is committee work worth? It seems to me that, even though it is necessary, committee work isn’t what is important in higher education.
The following is an NPR New piece from Feb. 3rd, 2014. I particular, I was struck by the following in the piece:
“We have to stop hiding in the shadows,” Maisto said. “We have to not be ashamed to tell our stories.”
Maria Maisto is an adjunct professor at Cuyahoga Community College and president of the national support group New Faculty Majority.
Claudio Sanchez/NPR
She says adjuncts here get about $8 an hour. A tall gangly man approached her, pecked at the calculator on his smartphone, and said Maisto’s figures were wrong. That was Rudy Stralka, a well-regarded, full-time, tenured business professor at Cuyahoga. He says adjuncts make $22 to $23 an hour, and if you do the math, adjuncts are paid fairly — $160 per class in Maisto’s case.
Maisto said she teaches one class that meets for three hours a week; Stralka said that’s $26 an hour.
But that’s not the case if you count the extra hours outside the classroom that adjuncts are not paid for, said Maisto. Those include preparing for class, grading papers, advising students — part-time professors absolutely get no more than $8 an hour, she says. Stralka wasn’t convinced, but he said even if adjuncts are right, their message is falling on deaf ears.
To hear more, go to the following:
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=268427156&m=271128083
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/03/268427156/part-time-professors-demand-higher-pay-will-colleges-listen
Tonight (3/4/14) at 5:30 (check time) a web-discussion with Noam Chomsky is taking place in the realms of Facebook through Hangtime.com
America’s foremost public intellectual, Noam Chomsky, will be joining us via Skype for a discussion on the state of part-time labor in higher education. All adjuncts and allies are welcome!!
Hosted by: Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steel Workers union.
http://www.hangtime.com/events/adjunct-labor-discussion-with-noam-chomsky/497714317008067
The Adjunct Crisis 