Consider the Impact of Curricula

There is much to commend about the advice presented here by A.G. Monaco from the University of Akron. But he misses the reason why adjuncts are paid so poorly: curricular expansion.

Tenured and tenure-eligible faculty keep adding courses to the master curricular file without understanding that they are adding to their own workload, and in doing so, they require adjuncts to teach not only basic courses, but many more courses than the average load for effective instruction.

Monaco mentions curriculum when he notes “the practice of many colleges with nine-month contracts” with tenured faculty teaching favorite courses rather than basic ones like composition, requiring adjuncts to teach those sections, except “during summer, when it means extra income.”

That’s true; but the issue is more complex than that. Tenure-eligible faculty are rewarded for curricular innovation that really only often ends up as courses related to their research or dissertation. Then they move on, but the courses remain on the books. Teaching excellence centers promote curricular expansion by their recent focus on “engagement and innovation” at all costs, which usually entail additional or virtual courses associated with new media and technology. Rather than add those components to existing classes, too often new courses are created for virtual worlds, Twitter, social networks and even clickers.

Add to that demands by tenured faculty to teach outdated pet courses that should have been deleted from the catalogs years ago.

Curricular glut is at the heart of poor adjunct pay, because pedagogical expansion costs money, leaving basic courses—those required for the degree—in the hands of too many adjuncts teaching with high loads and low pay. That, alas, is the only way to accommodate this inexplicable glut that adds to the unit’s workload to such extent that departments whose professors should be on 2-2 loads are teaching 3-2 or 3-3 or even 4-4 in an Internet age where most arcane topics can be researched in depth. After all, we no longer look to old media as the font of information; why should we look to the professor for the same reason on increasingly narrow topics.

Silo-building also adds to glut. Emphases, mere advising tracks, aspire to be sequences. Sequences aspire to be degree programs. Degree programs aspire to become independent from their discipline. And so on.

But there is a downside as well to ending curricular glut and increasing adjunct pay: there won’t be as many jobs for adjuncts. And it is a privilege to work in academe, especially at research institutions like mine, without terminal degrees. These are facts of life, too.

In the end, administrators have an obligation to explain curricular expansion to their faculties. We did so in the Greenlee School and have been able to streamline our curricula, reducing teaching loads so that tenured and tenure-track faculty have time to research and advise students one on one in their offices—the best method for retention, by the way.

Our lecturers are underpaid in my estimation, but not nearly to the extent as at other institutions. And many get multi-year contracts with faculty voting privileges if approved by P&T Committee as well as promotion to senior lecturer with raises for exemplary performance.

For those interested in the effects of curricular glut, especially on adjuncts at an institutions that transitioned from quarter to semester, see my article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i21/21a03301.htm

Michael Bugeja, Director, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, at 5:55 am EDT on October 14, 2008

Words and Actions

There is little I disagree with in Mr. Monaco’s argument of how and why adjunct faculty are treated so poorly. However, I take issue with Mr. Monaco’s mea culpa “pay me and I will come....” Changing the system requires the participants refusing to accept and engage in oppression. Mr. Monaco appears to have learned a very valuable skill from the academics he admonishes: the ease of rhetoric versus the challenge of personal action.

ethical citizen, administrator, at 9:50 am EDT on October 14, 2008

I am an HR director in a community college and I tend to agree with the points made. I see our long time adjuncts teaching heavier loads (up to seven sections) for low pay and no benefits (and we have no tenure system or unions in our state system.)

The public schools are funded with full time teachers and now teacher’s assistants in the classrooms. We are funded at the level where about half of our classes are taught by full time instructors. I would prefer to be able to hire full time faculty to cover all of our sections, but this is impossible under the current funding system. I am glad we are at least talking about the issue.

Concerned in HR, at 9:50 am EDT on October 14, 2008

Call to Arms for Adjuncts

Thank you for telling it like it is. It is time to get rid of the “plantation slave” status of us adjuncts.

George, CSULB, at 10:20 am EDT on October 14, 2008

“tyranny of tenure”

As my union’s part-time representative, I once brought to a labor management meeting an email from a department chair announcing her new policy that she wouldn’t write letters of recommendation for serving adjuncts applying for full-time jobs in her department, only for applications to other schools. Administrators at that meeting were embarrassed, concerned, and willing to listen — until the chapter president burst in with news of a last-minute vote by his Executive Board, which was composed mostly of department chairs or former department chairs, forbidding discussion of this particular agenda item.

Tenure is necessary to preserve whatever remnants of high-mindness might be left in academia, but as AG Monaco suggests, its defense often reduces it to the level of base self-interest. Many such tenured faculty would rather preserve their own privileges and even minor conveniences than accord their contingent colleagues a living wage.

SUNY Steve, adjunct Lecturer at SUNY Buffalo State College, at 10:35 am EDT on October 14, 2008

It is particularly interesting that avoiding a union would be the most enticing reason for administrators to treat adjuncts well. I would say that we, tenured faculty, can apply the same logic that AFL-CIO has in relation to immigrant labor: support their labor rights. If adjuncts become unionized, then they can put pressure on improved wages and getting benefits, among other factors affecting their working conditions. As they become more expensive, the universities will realize they might as well give them permanent positions, either within a tenure system or a continuing contract system. Getting rid of tenure is a sure way to open the doors to also undo academic freedom. We should study academic labor history of the 1960s and 1970s to understand this. (Guess why AAUP turned to contract negotiations?)Finally, it is particularly interesting that this attack on unions for adjuncts comes when unionization of adjuncts in Canada and also parts of the USA is gaining strength.

Sarah, Associate Professor, at 1:15 pm EDT on October 14, 2008

Unions

I posted the Chronicle of Higher Ed article about this on PEN-L and got the following responses:

this reads to me like the guy’s presentation was essentially a warning to avoid unions. and frankly more full-time employment is great, but in my experience, it’s not departments begging for adjuncts they can exploit while they rebuff administrative offers of tenure lines or even full-time non-tenure positions. it’s departments begging for more full-time positions and not getting them. if that’s the case, then “taking on” those “tenured, permanent faculty” (as if they are the same thing) is hardly the answer. and i don’t mean ivy institutions with 2-1 or 2-2 loads. i mean small colleges with 4-4 (including 4 preps, which is where i was recently), and 3-3 (but with higher expectations for scholarly productivity, which is where i am now). even at the places with higher requirements for scholarly production, let’s acknowledge that research and writing takes time and energy. especially if it’s going to be any good. ahem. so acknowledge what it would mean to increase teaching loads.

i have no doubt that there are elitist departmental feudal lords who get a sick charge out of walking all over their adjuncts, but if you ask me, this is not the real problem, and his solution about administrators taking on tenured faculty is the reverse of what has to happen. what has to happen is that tenured faculty have to take on administrators to get full-time slots and better pay and treatment for adjuncts. there are places where this happens. others where it does not.

in my experience, when tenured faculty oppose hiring adjuncts, it is precisely because they think it’s exploitative and, simultaneously, gets in the way of making a case for FT and tenure line slots. i might disagree with the strategy, depending on the seriousness of the case, but the principle is hardly one of exploitation.

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This article was pretty amazing considering that Angelo-Gene Monaco comes from a school, the University of Akron, that spent approximately a million dollars of taxpayer money fighting unionization of its faculty. It took over two years for faculty to win their first contract. The University did all that it could to prevent the faculty from unionizing and then used standard tactics to break the union after it one its election. The dirtier the tactics the more the faculty supported the union. One of the issues in negotiations surrounded agency fee. The union agreed to allow all members of the bargaining unit vote on whether or not they should have agency fee. Incredibly the vote in favor of agency fee was won by the union by a larger margin than the original vote in favor of collective bargaining which the faculty won by more than a 2:1 margin if memory serves me.

Incidentally the bargaining unit at the University of Akron includes not only tenured and tenure track faculty but non-tenured full-time faculty as well. Ohio law explicitly prohibits collective bargaining for part-time faculty so no part-time faculty are unionized in Ohio. Rather than creating more tenure and tenure track positions Monaco wants to have tenured and tenure track faculty do more teaching and less research since in his view the research that faculty do at non-elite universities is worthless except for research that brings in grant dollars.

Louis Proyect, at 4:35 pm EDT on October 14, 2008

Tenure and Adjuncts

I truly hope that the treatment of adjuncts against which Mr. Monaco rails is not widespread; actually, I hope that some of it has never occurred at all. I know that my college does not treat our adjunct faculty with such disrespect and cruelty, but I also know they are at the bottom of the faculty heap and are very underpaid. But why think getting rid of tenure is the way to take better care of part-time faculty? This argument strikes me as committing several fallacies of irrelevance as well as playing into the hands of those who would like all faculty to be underpaid and unsafe. We have recently implemented a plan to provide raises for our longer-term adjunct faculty and are exploring ways to extend more benefits to them. (We are tuition- driven and under-endowed, so resources are always a problem.) It is our policy that all faculty have space for meeting with students, have phones, computer access, etc. — although shortage of offices may mean that some adjuncts share a larger office. We are trying to find other ways of helping the adjunct faculty we have, including multiple year contracts. But, our primary weapon against the abuse of adjunct faculty is to limit how many we have! We do not want to become a college staffed by underpaid faculty with few rights; we want to have as many tenured or tenure-track faculty as are needed to teach our students.Oh, and by the way: in my department, at least, we all teach introductory courses every semester.

cts, at 5:30 pm EDT on October 14, 2008

History

I’m an adjunct; my friend is tenured. I’m in history; she’s in archaeology. We have the same degrees (Ph.D. from the same college) except that I have an extra M.A. I rely on the research from people who have the time to get into the minutae of Roman pottery; she researchs the minutae of Roman pottery. We make about the same amount of money. I have three schools to teach for online (c.700 students/year); she puts in something like an extra six weeks of fulltime work on committee each year as well as doing research. We’re both tired all the time.

We’re all being used but that’s just the nature of the beast. It has to do with growing populations and the growing awareness that a college degree is the way to go. What I wonder is if the parents of the kids who go into deep debt to pay for our expertise know what’s going on. Probably not.

And would someone, please, take the time to teach these kids English grammar before I have to grade a paper from one? That’s where much of my time goes: correcting grammar.

Dory, adjunct at three of them, at 10:50 pm EDT on October 14, 2008

Where are all the tenured faculty?

While I would certainly pay attention to the fact that the law barring p-t faculty unions in Ohio is likely to change in the near future, I think it’s clear that whatever you think of Monaco, you have to admire the fact that he is taking a public stand, unlike tenured faculty who sit silently by, reaping the benefits of exploited contingent labor,refusing to say a word or do a thing. And though AAUP has recently been more vocally supportive of contingent academics, I have always had the uneasy feeling that their support really stems from their desire to replace us, not to promote us. So I say, it’s nice, for a change, to be in the position of having administrators and faculty fighting over who loves us more. Let’s now see who can prove it with deeds rather than words.

AdjunctMom, at 4:55 am EDT on October 15, 2008

Encore!

Coming from a mostly online, lowly migrant worker — Adjunct Faculty (without benefits) HOORAH FOR YOU SIR!!!

FYI — Colleges are stooping so low now as to hire online adjuncts as w-99 contractors.

THE BIG LOSERS: The students.WHY: You get what you pay for people. Duh!

Patrick Williams, Professor at Central Texas College, at 7:35 pm EDT on October 16, 2008

Monaco’s right in many respects, but wrong that avoiding unionization is the best course. For unflinching analysis, see Marc Bousquet’s new book, “How the University Works.” Bousquet questions whether reform “from within” can work given the ways tenured faculty and administrators have been socialized. He suspects that, as with most major institutional transformations in American history, the kind of changes that are needed will be collectively won at the bargaining table and in the courts.

Karen Cardozo, at 1:30 pm EDT on October 20, 2008