Travelmonkey said:
l regarding the article
[font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]https://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206...rks-debate [/font]it's very sad story. Cancer sucks. But I don't think her circumstances are entirely the university's fault. She worked in that part time position for 25 years. Why was she surprised she didn't qualify for a pension? At some point, she should have moved on but she didn't. Was the university supposed to grant a tenured position for a subject that probably had very little demand (she was a prof of french). She died at 83 so that means she probably started teaching in her 50's. That means she had around 25 years before she started teaching to potentially have another career (that could have provided for retirement). I don't see how unionizing could help in her case...
So the TL;DR version would be: renting in the Bay Area is expensive increases over time have been less than rent control. Unskilled need to learn skills now. Don't be a prof of french at a small college .
That university charged over $30k a year in base tuition the year she died. They were paying their adjuncts about $2500 per semester per three credit course at that time. Do the math. In a class of 20- 30 students, only one student in her class was paying her salary. Where was the rest of the money going? At the time of her death 51 percent of undergraduate courses at that school were taught by adjunct, contingent faculty. Why are so many unwilling to look at the questionable employment practices of a university that proudly advertises itself as a "Catholic values" institution? What about their non-profit status and the numerous tax-exemptions they get? This isn't a for-profit entity. They are, in various ways, subsidized based on the understanding that they do "good" that for-profits might not. Yet, we blame the worker.
The other thing people ignore is that this is systemic. The entire industry of higher education is moving toward adjunct reliance to provide the bulk of instruction. It's easy to say, "Why don't you quit or move?" but when 90% of an industry engages in similar employment practices, its not so easy. In the 1980s, the national average at 4 year colleges/universities was about 70% faculty were tenured/tenure stream. Now, the national average has flipped. 70% of faculty are contingent contract workers, full or part-time, but still adjuncts, usually paid a fraction of tenured faculty and without benefits. The only place where adjunct faculty are not the new majority is in the more elite public and private schools, which are also the most expensive schools. The only place where adjunct faculty are paid reasonably well is where there are strong faculty unions.
Finally, the adjunct prof in the article that started this thread was referred to as someone who taught both literature and "critical thinking".
"Critical thinking" is higher ed speak (which the journalist doesn't understand fully) for a teacher who teaches the basic liberal arts requirement courses everyone has to take, the ones tasked with teaching students to think, read, and write critically /analytically. These are higher order thinking/analytical skills that employers demand and we, as a society, need from them. It's these very basic, important courses that are largely taught by adjuncts. The idea that all these poorly paid adjuncts are teaching classes with no student demand or practical value/purpose is false. The overwhelming majority teach the basics.
Maybe I ought to ask my department to let me teach, "How To Live In a Van?"
