Tag Archives: Education

“What is a an Adjunct?” has been Edited

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Good Adjuncts,

Thank you for coming to the blog. I know many of have read or downloaded the “What is an Adjunct?” piece.  When I initially posted the piece, I thought I had saved some changes to obvious errors in the text, so what many of you may have seen is a text with more than a few glaring grammatical and missing word errors.  In effect, I was a “bad” adjunct.  I have since edited to the document.  If you haven’t read it yet, check it out and give it to your students.

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow with another action item.

By the way, I’d love to get some of your ideas good adjuncts.  Post them in the comments, or if you want, you can email me at mixinminao@gmail.com, and we’ll post it as a main article.  We want contributors!

Keep strong and let’s make people pay attention on February 25th.

 

Geoff Johnson

A “good” adjunct

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What is An Adjunct? A Document to Prep Students for NAWD

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Good Adjuncts

Please prep your students for NAWD, or whatever you want to call it by giving them  this (See below my sign out)  to read.

The document I have posted here deals specifically with California, but you could easily download it an edit it to fit your reality wherever you are at.

Make people, and especially students, understand what’s going on.

Geoff Johnson

A Good Adjunct

                                                                                         

                                                       What is An Adjunct?

                                                     What You Should Know

What is an Adjunct?

The term “adjunct” which is often used interchangeably with “contingent” or “part time” is meant to refer to instructors who are limited in particular campus or district from teaching the same number of classes as a Full-time or “Contract” instructor.  California State Law defines these teachers as “temporary” employees, meaning that they were allegedly hired to teach, for a limited time, a number of classes, because the institution had to offer more classes than it has full-time employees to teach.

In other words, these were instructors originally to teach “extra” classes.

Today, on average, between 70-80% of college classes are taught by “adjunct” instructors, and at some institutions these “adjunct” instructors teach the majority of classes.  Many have done so for over 30 years or more.  It is more likely than not that the person teaching your classes right now is an adjunct.

This means they are not teaching extra, but in fact essential classes, and it’s also clear, they are not temporary workers.

So Then Adjuncts are Simply Less Qualified Teachers?

No.  Adjunct instructors, like their full-time counterparts, have advanced degrees like MA’s, MS’s, MFA’s, and Ph.D.’s.  Many may still be actively doing research or have written multiple books and articles.  Some have won national awards, and in fact, may at times be more “qualified” and “distinguished” than their full-time counterparts.

If These Teachers have Similar Qualifications, Why aren’t they Full-time, or Contract Instructors?

Well, first of all, there is a small minority of these teachers who choose to be part-time because they have another full-time job, may be a returning retiree, or are only interested in part-time work.  The vast majority of these adjuncts want to teach full-time, but the number of positions available is very small.  When a single full-time position becomes available, there may be as many as 200 applicants for a single position.

Why Are There so Few Positions Available?

Unlike an adjunct instructor, who is only generally paid for the hours he/she is teaching in the classroom, full-time instructors are given a salary which pays at a significantly higher proportional rate for a given class.  In addition, most institutions will provide full health insurance benefits to full-time instructors, and in some cases, their dependents as well.  There are other benefits as well offered to full-timers, such as sabbatical leave, which in the end means that full-time instructors cost more. Schools, which are either generally strapped for funding, or have other priorities simply choose to hire more adjuncts because they cost less and give administrators more flexibility.

What do You Mean By Flexibility?

To be blunt, it means to have the ability to hire and fire instructors at will.  Most full-time, or contract instructors have or can get “tenure”.  Tenure is essentially a promise made to full-time or contracted teachers after three or four years of satisfactory instruction that they will be guaranteed work for an additional three years, whereupon they will they will be re-evaluated for another three-year term. Usually, unless a full-time instructor’s teaching or professional behavior has become especially egregious, he or she will receive tenure again and again.

By contrast, though some adjuncts have “preferred” or “priority of assignments” clauses in their contract, they are not guaranteed work from one term to the next.  Even one bad semester of teaching can result in termination, which is simply, to not be rehired.  Yet the situation for adjuncts is far more precarious, for one may simply not be rehired because there aren’t enough classes, or because a full-time instructor had low enrollment in his/her class and now wants the adjunct’s class.  At other times, office politics may play a role and the administrator can simply choose to give classes to his/her favorites for whatever reason that administrator chooses.

“Flexibility” means that an adjunct can be fired even when he/she is doing a good job.

You Said Some Schools Are Strapped For Funding?  Why is this?

The answer to this question basically has two parts.  First, the proportion of money spent by state governments on education has been steadily declining for the last 40 years, and second, since the late 1970’s in particular, the political environment has been increasingly averse to government spending and taxation.

While politicians will talk of how they value education, the last forty years suggest that most politicians are interested in things like being “tough or crime,” or engaging in a “war on drugs” which has bloated prison populations.   Notably, there is a reciprocal relationship between the steady decrease in educational funding as a part of state budgets, and the increase in funding for prisons.  At the same time, there has been reduction in tax rates, primarily on upper-income earners.

Another factor affecting school funding has been the rise of technology.  40 years ago, there were no banks of PC labs or smart rooms on campus.  Technology costs money and it has to come from somewhere.  In addition, in order to improve the “efficiency” of the education process, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people hired for administrative or non-instructional duties.  This again reduces the amount of monies available for instruction.

Why Should I Care?

Well, there are several reasons.

First, because adjuncts receive relative low pay and few if any benefits, many are compelled to take on teaching loads which exceed their full-time colleagues at multiple locations which reduces their availability to students as well as the time they have to grade student work or do prep.  According to Cornell Higher Education Research Institute scholars Ronald Ehrenberg and Liang Zhang increased reliance on part-time faculty has been found to negatively impact student retention and graduation rates.  This is fact is further supported by the work of  University of Washington researcher Daniel Jacoby, who finds that as the numbers of tenure and part-time (adjunct) faculty increase, retention and graduation rates fall.

Over just the last six years, the number of students either earning a two-year degree at a California community college, or transferring to a four-year institution has fallen by 2.6%.

Second, those who do not take on these teaching loads will live under financial duress, with some being compelled to get food stamps, or even be homeless.  While some teachers may hang on, others, who could have been a significant asset to a particular institution, will leave the profession altogether.

Third, the model for adjuntification is now expanding to other industries.  In the future one might see adjuntification happening even in supposedly solid STEM fields. Ultimately, the expansion of adjunctification would lead to the collapse of the middle class or clearly a society or “haves” and “have nots”.

The Teaching Class

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This article from Guernica, by Rachel Riederer, lays out the whole picture of the adjunctification machine, locating the phenomenon within the larger societal shift towards a temporary, disposable workforce which, in higher eduction, has resulted in two separate classes, the privileged tenure-track and the precariat adjunct. She describes the human cost to both professors and students. Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions. When adjuncts are exploited and oppressed, when their pay is so dismal that they can’t afford to pay for their student loans and they live paycheck to paycheck, how can they be expected to offer students an equal educational opportunity? Who will answer her piercing question: “If teaching is a supplementary rather than essential part of college, why go?” https://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-teaching-class/

NEA – The Politics of Contingent Academic Labor

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Here is a great analysis and overview of the privatization of higher education by Claire Golsdstene. It reaffirms my sense that lobbying for more full-time positions will never address the historical shift to majority contingent faculty. We, our unions and advocacy in general, need a new vision, one that seeks to  transform faculty conditions on a sweeping scale. We need to enfranchise adjunct faculty with economic parity, which is the first step to giving adjuncts the security they need fight the political fight.

NEA – The Politics of Contingent Academic Labor.

An Adjunct by Any Other Name

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An Adjunct by Any Other Name

Recently, the Academic Senate at Grossmont College cowered and resisted addressing the exploitation of adjuncts.  Instead, they presented a plan to give adjuncts “academic ranking,” an official title of “professor”.  At first, when I heard the Senate’s announcement, I thought it was a joke because adjuncts are institutionally disenfranchised, but as I read through the documents, I began to see the real significance of the Senate’s proclamation. The ranks are available to adjuncts according to seniority and other criteria as stated here. The  ranks are.

A. Adjunct Professor: Twenty semesters and 2 criteria from a list. (here)

B. Adjunct Associate Professor: Twelve semesters and 1 criterion

C.  Adjunct Assistant Professor:  Eight semesters and 1 criterion

These three ranks are new, but there is a forth rank that exists which is not certified and technically not a rank but should be on the list of statuses.

D. Adjunct Faculty

The Academic Senate states that, “Each person who is awarded academic rank will be accorded the benefits and recognition of rank. A Certificate of Rank, signed by the President of Grossmont College, the President of the Academic Senate and the Chancellor, will be presented to the Adjunct faculty member.”  

It sounds wonderful. I want a rank, too, but what does the rank give me?  At Grossmont College, adjuncts will get a certificate of recognition, but that is it. There are no specific, concrete benefits.  An adjunct receives a signed certificate, period.  There are no pay raises (thus, adjunct marginalization is still prevalent). There are no benefits other than what we might call “psychological wages” to make adjuncts feel better in their mistreatment. The Senate put a band-aid over the corruption, so the festering doesn’t look so bad. Psychological wages do not put food on the table.

I don’t blame the Senate. I know that there are pressures not to be strong on principles, I’ve met and conversed with many of the members and they also swim in the same currents of the dehumanization of higher education.  The Senate, after all, has to face the administration, which treats faculty as they would silly children. It is hard to act on principle when doing so is not inline with the “business first” mantra that trickles down from boardrooms of business, government, and governing boards.

This business first model has turned the Senate into placating advisors to the growing administration, who in turn wave their staffs and says yay or nay to the Senate’s recommendations and who are gainfully rewarded with business kudos while students languish under languishing professors. We are seeing the slow decay of shared governance in Academia and one of the signs is a weakened Senate that cannot publically declare that faculty marginalization is student exploitation. Why doesn’t the Academic Senate stand up? Perhaps, fear is a good answer? To state the truth that we cannot have the best possible education for our students if we abuse the majority faculty who are on the frontline of the educational experience is, perhaps, too offensive or disagreeable for those who sing the mantra of business first. It is not like the intuitional business model is eager to treat this large group of professors equitably; it is not economically prudent in the business model of college governance, a model where sports bring in more and gets more than the academics that produce higher functioning citizens and labor for our society.

The University of Illinois Chicago had a faculty strike a few weeks ago on this principle. Other Academic Senates, if they are worried about the success and credibility of their educational programs must recognize, stand up, and clearly state to the administrations that good academic institutions cannot continue to damage the students’ learning by giving students low wage, disenfranchised instructors who are harried with the stress of contingency, poverty, and multiple employers to pay the bills, all of which distract the majority of instructors from doing their best for the students, the college, and the community.  If the Senate would lead, we all will stand up to the bullying and perhaps regain the awareness that education is not business.  The faculty at UIC are our brothers and sisters in the fight for justice for our friends, family, and children. Academic senates around the country can look at UIC and see a strong academic senate, a senate that is really focused on the best possible academic environment for students, a senate that stands on principle.

I understand that there are some good intentions coming from the Grossmont College Academic Senate. Perhaps, they heard the adjuncts’ voices that are calling for dignity? Perhaps, the Senate at Grossmont thought that Academic Rank would give adjuncts that overdue dignity?  Someone might call it maverick that the Grossmont Academic Senate gives a title to adjuncts as “professors” rather than just “faculty.”

However, it seems apparent that the dignity is quite superficial.  Did they really think that adjuncts would say, “Yay, now I am an Adjunct Assistant Professor” and not in the next breath think aloud that, “I am still not able to pay the bills,” or “That doesn’t change the fact that I must find another two or three jobs outside of Grossmont to pay rent,” or “I am still excluded from full acceptance and participation on campus?”

Sadly, many adjuncts who have served for 20, 30, and more years will not be eligible for Academic Rank because they do not have one of the criterion that will give them a title, even though they have been rehired 60 times.  Also, many veteran adjuncts will find no need for a title because to the students, the community, and in their own minds they have been “professors” for a very long time already and are reliable and effective professors even without an arbitrary official title. Further, a title will mean nothing to a good number of adjuncts who are content only with part-time teaching.

I want to think that there is something good about adjunct ranking and I can see that it may have the effect that an adjunct can apply for a position at this or another institution and remark that they do have “a rank.” Younger adjuncts will line up to distinguish themselves in job hunting. Sure, I can see it now, an adjunct will indeed use it with some ultra limited effectiveness to help them land a full-time job. I am sure, shortly, there will be adjuncts boasting of their rank in their competition for limited (statistically improbable) full–time positions.  We may hear, “At Grossmont College, I gained the rank of ‘Adjunct Assistant Professor’” with an air of superiority over other adjuncts who don’t have titles, over adjuncts with more experience and better credentials.

Obviously, Grossmont College administrators will boast about their “decorated” adjuncts to the media, the accreditation boards, and other oversight committees.  They will say, “Of the total adjuncts that we have here at Grossmont College,  30% are Adjunct Professors, 10% are Adjunct Associate Professors, and 3% are Adjunct Assistant Professors,” with a ringing crescendo,  “a testament to the high quality of instructors we have on campus.”  We should all be curious about what happens to the other 57% of adjuncts who are not decorated with a rank. We should also ask, what does rank mean when an adjunct is an Adjunct Professor, but a full timer is an Assistant Professor (lower ranked)?

To be fair, another positive is that getting a title might help with gaining some personal pride and a feeling that the district respects you as an adjunct faculty member. An adjunct will receive the official title and they can hold their heads up knowing that when a student calls them professor it is real and not some painful and shameful reminder that they are living a lie.  However, the other 57 percent will still be pained and shamed by the fact that they do the same things and have the same credentials as a professors, but are living the oxymoronic existence in a non-professorial professorship career. An equivalent analogy is hard to find because when someone performs the duties of an office, they have the title of that office. We never call the individual preforming the duties of a president a clerk. There is no real justification to call those who profess, adjuncts, and new rankings are merely missing the point of the problem with adjunctification.

The ranks will also affect the psychological well-being of those lacking ranks, revealing further to them their tenuous professional existence, degrading further the adjunct’s ability to perform their job. I can see many disenfranchised adjuncts feeling even more disenfranchised as they watch some adjuncts (more privileged adjuncts) attain rank while they, the less privileged are occupied by their divisive loyalties to various campuses.  They are the 57%, the new untouchables below Adjunct Professors. What will we call the non ranked adjuncts?

Providing academic rank will help many adjuncts escape living an oxymoronic existence. Many adjuncts with rank will think, “I am not ‘just’ an adjunct, I am an ‘Adjunct Associate Professor.’”  And, many might think, “The district will surely appreciate that I have accomplished this distinction and I bet they’re having some feelings of loyalty towards me.” (Don’t forget to cross your fingers and ignore that you are abused! Forget that you are paid a third of a full-time faculty member for the same work done, the same hours of teaching and grading for that third. Forget that you are relegated to less than full-time in the part-time limbo with no honest paths for advancement into full-time status other than though an insufficient, immoral, and unjust number of job openings in the state and country.)

I try to be patient and understanding, so I want to think that this push to give academic rank was well thought out and was set with good intentions, but I am far too critical to be gullible in the face of the facts that the ranks do not actually do anything to extend equity to the majority faculty on campus. Adjuncts receive inadequate wages; they lack job security, and are underrepresented in shared governance, in academic senates, in the unions, and in the departments. They are the silenced majority on campuses scattered to the winds, and where they fall, no one cares.

With ranking, the institution gains doubly from adjuncts and exploits them further.  First, the institution pays adjuncts nearly a 1/3rd of a full-time faculty member for the same work done, and now, with ranking, they will gain more hours of service from adjuncts without having to pay them.  Many adjuncts will scramble to attain a certificate signed by the Senate, President, and Chancellor in the hopes that they will win the lottery of a full-time position, a position that adjuncts don’t realize is statistically improbable to attain.

Truthfully, an adjunct is an adjunct, and all adjuncts by any other name remain exploited and disenfranchised.  Adjunctification is a major injustice to the adjuncts, the students, and our communities. We don’t have to go far in critical thinking to see that it is unwise to diminish the quality of our academics with a majority of part-time faculty.

What the titles will do is differentiate adjuncts from one another based on years of service and whether the adjunct has had the freedom (privileged leisure) to gain extra experiences like publishing, serving on committees, serving an educational programs etc.

Academic rank for adjuncts prejudicially favors adjuncts who are single, adjuncts with no children, adjuncts who are not the breadwinners with dependents, adjuncts that are working only in one college because their spouse covers the bills, and adjuncts that have well paid professional side practices.  Certification of Adjunct Academic Rank will occur more for the economically privileged members of the exploited group, those that have leisure to volunteer their time to attain the titled rank.

If we want to have a ranking system for adjuncts, then at least some avenues toward pay raises and job security in full-time employment would legitimize the ranking a bit better, but to give rank without real compensation is to give a title only, like “putting lipstick on a pig.” It is merely beautifying the ugly truth with a false impression, with the impression that you have better adjuncts because some have enough privilege to work for free to gain a title and a false sense of superiority.  Academic rank should equal full-time employment. It should not be an empty certificate signed by disingenuous administrators who ignore the exploitative business model. As stands, it looks like a pat on the back and a boot to the rump.

Academic Rank for adjuncts entices us to go against our conscience. It entices us to sacrifice our families, our dignity, and the dignity of our brother and sister adjuncts everywhere with lipstick to cover the swine.  Academic Senates everywhere must stand up and act justly and on principle by speaking the truth, the truth that adjunct working conditions are student-learning conditions.

“A Good Adjunct”

John D. Rall

Adjunct Labor Discussion with Noam Chomsky

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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

Adjunct Professors Academic Apartheid

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Adjunct Professors Academic Apartheid.

Academic apartheid: hard words to describe a hard truth. These words accurately describe the situation which is widely ignored,, by most faculty, adjunct and tenured, even as the adjunct crisis of higher education begins to get national media attention. Fuller’s right, too, about what needs to happen to counter our dismal circumstances. We need to work at local levels to “end the exploitation” of adjuncts “relegated to the back of the bus.” But we don’t just need equity for adjuncts: we need reversal of adjunctification.

Squandering Our Moral Capital

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re-blogged from:  https://chroniclevitae.com/news/164-squandering-our-moral-capital?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

by: William Pannapacker

Professor of English, Faculty Director of the Digital Liberal Arts Initiative of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, and Director of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholars Program in the Arts and Humanities at Hope College

November 19, 2013

As a parent of three children who are nearing college age, there is one question that I will ask repeatedly when we tour different campuses:

“What percentage of your courses is taught by tenure-line faculty members?”

I don’t think, for one second, that anyone who is leading a campus tour will have a good answer. Tour guides might not even know what I’m asking about. And if they don’t know that, they surely don’t know what their adjunct faculty members are paid. Or whether they have health benefits…

– See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/164-squandering-our-moral-capital?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#sthash.Qgdcd5lD.dpuf

 

Adminstrators’ Low Regard of Adjuncts and Their Students

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I don’t know whether to call this an “adjunct moment”, or rather a simply an incidence of educational neglect and mixed up priorities, but at any rate, it’s not one of those “happy” moments.

As an English adjunct at one of the institutions I teach at, I am afforded the benefit of an office I share with at least 20+ other adjuncts in fields ranging from English and Art History to Psychology and Sociology.  It’s not a bad office as adjunct offices go. Most adjuncts don’t have any space at other campuses.   The office has a number of partitioned spaces, a small conference room, and two computers for adjunct use.

It also has a printer, and well…this is the issue.

The college has a longstanding fear teachers wasting resources, which, more plainly put, means “they make too many photocopies for their classes.”  No teacher on campus, whether contract (full-timer or adjunct) has access to a copy machine unless they’re willing to put 20 cents per copy into a library copying machine.  This means submitting copies to the campus reprographic center which demands 24 hours advance notice on any order.

I teach English, and, as any English teacher will tell you, often there are either those moments of inspiration when you see something in a magazine, newspaper, or an article on the internet that you want to use at the last minute, or because, as an adjunct teaching at multiple institutions, you may have simply forgotten to place a last-minute order.

As repro isn’t about to do last-minute orders, this means either going to Kinko’s Fed Ex and sometimes dropping over 20 dollars on copies for a class, or trying to print it out on the adjunct office computer.  Needless to say, most adjuncts head for option #2.   This means the printer, and hence its toner, gets used a lot, and will in fact eventually run out.

Because the school is ever diligent to save money on instruction, (but not necessarily on flashy activities like conferences, which I’ll get to later) anything needed by an instructor, down to a paperclip, must be requisitioned at the school supply room, down to even pencils, staples, and paperclips.  Toners, especially ones for 10+ year old Hewlett Packard hand-me-down printer from the Business office that our office uses, have a special category all to themselves.  Not only do you need to submit a form to get one, but because it’s a “big” ticket item (costing over 30 dollars), both the Dean and Department Chair need to be notified.  Then, because it’s a “special item”, they don’t keep one in stock, and then special order it from a supplier who will usually take a week to deliver it, despite this college is located in the middle of San Diego, California.

The whole process usually takes about two weeks if you’re diligent and apparently have nothing better to do that walk halfway across campus to submit the request then later pick up and install the toner yourself, and email both the Dean and Department Chair.

Unfortunately, the only warning sign one is given when the toner is running out is when the printer stops working, usually when a teacher is time pressed and in the middle of doing a print job.  This is to say nothing of the next two weeks where you either tell all your students to get the material off blackboard, or do the equivalent of that Old Testament practice of making bricks without straw.

Remember that 30 dollars I mentioned before?   At my college this is also your limit for copy orders submitted to repro.  About a month ago, I made an order for 80 copies of 16-page document I did not have an electronic copy of for two of my classes containing approximately 40 students each.  Several days after submitting the order, my assistant chair asked me, slightly annoyed, “why are you making such a large order of copies”?

This week, the school’s newspaper reported that the Associated Student Government spent over 16,000 dollars for a relatively small group of students to stay overnight a high-end seaside resort not 20 miles away from campus, and enjoy relatively lavish meals as part of a leadership conference.

I guess they must be grooming them to be administrators.

My takeaway from all this is that the administrators at my institution care very much about putting out a strong public face using their elite students, but really don’t care that much about meeting the needs of the average students, or at least students taught by adjunct instructors.

And you know what? I’m still waiting for the toner cartridge.

Geoff Johnson, a “good” adjunct.

Powerlessness in the Face of Heartlessness

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It is now the end of Week 10 of the 16-week semester and I am reflecting on last year’s crisis and wondering if it will happen again this year. My Union representative has assured me that the problem has been taken care of, but I am afraid that a similar disaster will occur. Perhaps, I don’t understand how the union could solve the problem so easily since adjuncts are not really part of the bargaining agreement process.

Although the union has assured me, that the same financial fiasco that most adjunct faculty fell victim to last spring will not occur this spring, I am still a bit unnerved and filled with trepidation.  Last Spring the majority faculty on my campus were hit with a financial crisis. Many faculty members, a majority in my district, were ill informed and unprepared for the impact of a change in the number of pay warrants.

A week before the Spring 2013 semester at the three campuses of the San Diego Community College District, a few adjuncts receive a clear message that their expectations of a pay warrant on the 10th of February was false and that the 1st pay warrant for Spring Semester would be March 10th.

I received the message and was shocked that I would not have the much-needed funds to feed my family and pay rent. I was shocked too because I wrongly assumed that because for the past 2 years we were receiving 10 pay warrants a year that we would receive 10 warrants this year.  In my shock and utter indignation at the easy manipulation of my subsistence by the district, I emailed my union president and asked why adjunct faculty were to receive only 4 pay warrants this Spring. The AFT president in a short, curt reply said that it was a contract thing from 10 years ago (thus, nothing can be done). I had signed the contract for hire in 2004. Admittedly, I am at fault for the financial crisis because I did not read carefully enough Appendix –IX 2 that states that the number of pay warrants was dependent on when the semester begins. It says that if a semester starts after the 25th, then 4 warrants will be given with the 1st to come on the 10th of the month after the 1st month of class.

So, the consequence of this contract rule is that adjunct faculty work from Jan 28th to March 10th without a pay warrant.  Six weeks of labor without a sign of pay is abusive in most other fields and illegal in the state of California, but the practice is perfectly acceptable when it comes to a work force like Adjunct Professors.  What is really painful is that Adjuncts do not receive pay for the interim between semesters, so many adjuncts are really going from January 10th to March 10th without a paycheck even though they are working. What professional goes 2 months without pay? Some of you might scream, “Get into a new line of work!”  I too scream this in my thoughts. It is no wonder that the profession of teaching is a profession that our society generally tells us to avoid.  I love teaching, but I do not love the economic abuse the profession faces.

I am reminded of the emails that spread through the district that were generally ignored by administration. One instructor had sent out bills before she realized that there was no money in her bank. Other adjunct professors slid further into debt to pay their rent and to buy groceries over the 48+ days of no pay.

Pain was dispersed generally and widely across the majority faculty at the three campuses and the union gave no sign that it was going to take up the issue or help get some emergency relief. We are usually reminded that the Union can get us food stamps or emergency funding for rent. But, a loan from the union is debt too.

I can understand some thoughtful onlookers of this situation saying to themselves that,  “since it was in the contract, adjuncts have no one to blame but themselves for the financial pain. Adjunct professors should have known that their contract allowed for their pay warrants to move from 8 or 9 or 10 warrants a year depending on when the semester starts.”  I can understand that the onus is on adjunct professors, but what I can’t understand is how the district can morally, ethically, or legally withhold pay from work done for 48 days. Or how the union could have agreed to this type of pay manipulation by the administration for its majority members.

Here-in lies the problem. Adjunct professors have very little power in the bargaining agreements. The fact that Adjuncts have not had a say in whether they would like to receive 10 pay warrants rather than 8 warrants points to the fact that their interests have not been fully represented by the union.  This is wrong.  While the AFT 1931 can be credited with providing one of the best packages available for Adjunct faculty (i.e. health insurance & priority assignment), there still remains a great amount of misrepresentation.  What Adjunct faculty want is parity, they want to work, work hard, and to not be exploited, yet exploitation is apparent and the union is making little headway in changing the ethics of San Diego Community College District’s business model. The business model of SDCCD allows for an unethical exploitation of the majority of its employees through unrepresented negotiation.

In the meantime, many adjuncts have lost savings or incurred debt as a result of the delayed pay warrants.  Others simply ignore the issue and turn their heads with a refrain suggesting that it is the status quo for adjunct faculty.  In conversations with adjunct faculty about the pay warrant manipulations, it was suggested that the administration pay some kind of compensation. A retainer fee ought to be part of the time period where adjuncts are not being paid for class hours. In the months of December, January, June, July, and August there ought to be a price that the colleges pay to keep Adjunct faculty afloat in the periods between semesters so that the faculty can put their energies to their profession and not to the dire economic situation that the business model of education has placed the majority of faculty into. A retention fee is a minimum of decency to offer the faculty that keep the institution moving in its success. Without quality faculty, the institution fades into obscurity as a valuable resource for the well being of the community. I refuse to let this happen.

Who cares?

This is the question of the hour. I truly want to who cares about the fact that our education system is seriously in shambles. Who cares that we are producing citizens without the skills necessary to participate effectively both in a modern democracy and in the job markets of the future? Who cares that high school teachers face more demands from the administration than from parents themselves or that our education system is moving towards govermental authoritarianism? Who cares that higher education has a number of crises forecasting the demise of the humanistic agenda that has been the task of higher learning since the time of Socrates? Who cares that our health and prosperity is sliding toward chronic disease and poverty? In the face of  heartlessness, we seem to be powerless.