Academia: Exploitation of Adjuncts
I’m starting a non-academic job on Monday, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Except for the schedule, I think it will be better than an academic job in almost every way. This is a bad time for higher education, especially in the humanities. I have several friends who are trying to survive at the edges and the beginnings, and after almost four years of trying to find an appropriate position, I have given up. I have adjuncted at a couple of schools, and although I loved the teaching – there was no support, a laughable paycheck, and at least one seriously unready-for-college class.
There is so much to say about the situation that I see in higher education, but perhaps an actual witnessing of the experience will be more effective. I have gotten permission to post an edited version of a letter that a very close friend sent me earlier today. This is an absolutely brilliant women, a woman that any university should be proud to hire and support – a jewel in every way. I have known her for several years, and the fact that she has to deal with this sort of situation makes me nauseous. She’s not the only one, but her missive is so nicely illustrative and fun to read that I think she can stand in for many, many others.
This letter was addressed to me and also to another fellow colleague from graduate school. This is quoted text, but I won’t blockquote it so that it is easier to read in its entirety. It’s worth it, trust me.
Well, hello ladies.
I’m sinking.
I’m six weeks into teaching two classes each of two different sections of Humanities survey for XXX Community College. Ordinarily, I am not one to complain about hard work. But this is ridiculous. Before taxes, I made $7.51 an hour last month. That’s with a PhD., teaching fully 1/3 of all the required humanities sections the school is offering this semester. Oh, and no benefits, of course. And no working phones in the “office” I share with an indeterminate number of other adjuncts, one of whom grew angry when I actually met with a student there to help her with her writing. So I use my own phone, my own e-mail and my own website to communicate with students – as I wasn’t even given access to their system until two weeks into the semester. And I suppose I’ll just start meeting with students in my car. The parking lot is nearby, at least.
I’m pretty certain that Florida pays less than any other state for its adjuncts, and I know it is well on the way to having the highest percentage of adjuncts in the country, thanks to the insane legislature and the insurance crisis here. Plus, they slashed tuition — it now costs less to go to the Florida state college I attended than I paid in 1983, and it was ridiculously cheap back then! I didn’t know this before I started. I didn’t know they would overload all my classes because they don’t have enough teachers to offer basic required curriculum for graduation. I didn’t understand that the utter absence of resources or planning that resulted in my being hired three days before classes started would continue into the semester, when desperate e-mails I sent about my inability to carry four overloaded classes simply went unanswered (for fear that they would have to find somebody else to teach them? Or actually help me with course materials, which nobody was willing to admit might be part of their job, or somebody’s job?). I didn’t know the full-time humanities instructor would actually refuse to provide me with the “department’s” canned visual materials because he apparently considers them his private property. Refused me to my face, saying, and I quote, “you’re not my responsibility” (he also said he doesn’t assign any readings, preferring to teach the Humanities through visual tools, which I really cannot comprehend, though instead of a term paper his students make cardboard displays of their favorite musicians or artists, apparently mostly contemporary).
Oh, I could go on. But I don’t have enough time to complain. Suffice to say, although I probably have some grounds to walk for violation of terms of my contract, I refuse to do this to my students, most of whom work full-time, have families, come to class exhausted, are struggling to graduate from a school that doesn’t offer the classes it advertises, and so on. They trust me, and I don’t even trust the school to replace me if I go.
So I’m stuck. Mainly, I’m stuck with a textbook (apparently) chosen by the non-text guy, and it shows. This is, without question, the most politically addled, historically inaccurate and utterly useless book I have encountered.
It also cost the students $140, which is itself a crime.
I could also go on about the textbook. And I probably will for the rest of my life. But in the meantime, being unable to teach with a book that contains no more than three entirely unrepresentative pages of any author (mostly less) written by a-historical fools who believe themselves to be rebelling against “the Canon” by excluding central texts (and, largely, texts at all) and including rightfully obscure, incoherent, fragmentary and minor crap, I have been forced to sneak into school after hours and photocopy real readings for my students. Here’s the really funny part: the introductions to many of these “readings” are as long as or longer than the selections themselves. I suppose the authors wanted to “free” the students from the hegemony of Western Civilization but not from the hegemony of the authors’ own INTERPRETATIONS of Western Civilization. Ah, the politics of personal exceptionalism.
So, because I actually trust my students to read the material instead of describing it to them (I even trust them to think about it on their own), I’m going nuts finding on-line sources for primary materials and photocopying ENTIRE CHAPTERS OF STUFF and the like. But I have now been informed that this is against the rules (not making the photocopies, but deviating from the textbook), and that I am also in violation of the rules if I tell my students they do not need to buy the textbook. That will play out as it will (since I wasn’t given this information until last week, it’s pretty hard for them to enforce it), but meanwhile, after great, unpaid effort (and tremendous assistance from Husband) I have devised a partly workable syllabus.
BECAUSE I CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW TO TALK FOR THREE HOURS A WEEK ABOUT ONE PAGE EACH OF A VARIETY OF MAJOR AND MINOR AUTHORS, AND I DEFY ANYBODY ELSE TO DO THE SAME.
Here’s where I am asking for your advice. G., I remember the fabulous survey course you taught with the stuff about primates and cyborgs — I could not find the syllabus for it, and I was wondering if you would look at my syllabi and suggest some readings to plug in. Ditto, H. Also, as I design units on philosophers, particularly the 18th and 19th century stuff and the early Christian fathers, I would be grateful for any advice regarding specific readings by the authors I’ve chosen that would appeal to relatively unsophisticated readers.
Here are the big trouble areas: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche and Tillich (I sort of know the Tillich, but it’s been decades).
We did have a wonderful moment in one class. The textbook describes Plato as “the first feminist” and features a passage about letting women compete nude in gymnastics (apparently, to the authors, about the only interesting
passage in The Republic). I had my students read it, then gave them the very next few paragraphs, in which Plato admits he’s only kidding about women being as good as men at anything but “making pancakes.” They got it.
And I had a staggering moment teaching The Iliad, as well: because of the location of the school, several of my students are military or retired military, mostly middle-aged women. And one of them came to me and told me this story: she served in the Middle East in the first Gulf War, spent 8 years there. Then she came home to raise her three kids. She was retired. The 9/11 happened, and she was called up again and forced to spend four more years overseas. So she’s reading the Iliad, with all the men camped outside the walls of Troy, wishing they could go home again, and she wants to tell me, this happened to her. And it happened in exactly the same place. ONLY SHE WAS GONE FOR LONGER: the Trojan War only lasted ten years. And we just sat there, and she had tears in her eyes, and I thought to myself, well, too bad this doesn’t pay the bills, because then I’d be f*cking rich enough to pay off all the student loans I took to get paid $7.51 an hour teaching full time.
Without benefits.
Except knowing this woman.
And to my fellow (tenured) professors here in the fine state of Florida, those of you desperately trying to pretend you’re just too busy defending your precious academic freedom of speech to speak up about the fact that increasing percentages of their peers are being treated this way, I have something to tell you:
Sure, speech is free. It only costs something if you use it.
So, to all of you in the faculty unions who quietly agreed to the raw deal given adjuncts and quietly agreed to exclude adjuncts from your unions, you who preen about your commitment to principles: go f*ck yourselves, you
pissing, spotted-bellied pseudo-Marxist arseholes. Go on, look away, cowards. I’m not contagious: I’m just a searing reminder of the fact that you completely abandoned all of your principles the very first time they were actually tested in the most trivially discomfiting way.
Nice work if you can get it, comrades.
I’m sorry to dump this on you guys, but I’m basically desperate. And, as you know, I’m hopelessly quotidian. I can do the literature, but philosophy makes my head hurt. I have a smallish outlook.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!!
This is from one of the smartest women I know. And this is how the university system, as it is now configured, treats people like her, like me, like my friends, like us.
I can collect similar letters from several other people. And it’s not just the adjuncts, either, although they are clearly the slaves.
Before you shell out those big bucks for your child’s college education, ask one question. How many of your kid’s classes will be taught by professors? They seem to be in the process of being phased out…