“Your students are afraid of you.” “Really?” “Yes. You are intimidating. Try to smile more in class so they are more comfortable with you.” What began as the strangest, most Twilight Zone-like experience that I have ever had in my 13 years of teaching ended up being one of the most humiliating and frustrating conversations … Continue reading
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A Letter to Full-Time Faculty Members
We live in a time of “adjunct plight” essays. This isn’t one of them. True, I am an adjunct, and I have much plight, but rather than be blamed for whining by you full-timers, let me scare you instead. I am an adjunct, and I’m making it much harder for full-timers to get a job, … Continue reading
CSU Using More Part-Time Faculty Than Full-Time Professors
Like private-sector employers who turned to temporary workers during the recession, California State University relied on more part-time faculty than full-time professors last academic year as the 23-campus system looked to cut costs. Students say the shift means they have fewer chances to meet with professors outside of class or get letters of recommendation. Part-time … Continue reading
State of Adjunct, Contingent Faculty May Be Higher Ed Bellwether
We all know about the “proletariat,” but what about the “precariat?” It’s a pun of sorts, designating the class of people who labor in academia in a permanently precarious state of employment—the adjuncts and contingent faculty who increasingly make up the majority of faculty at many institutions. The travails of the precariat were at the … Continue reading
Summer Survival Strategies for Adjuncts
I’ve lived through enough adjunct summers to know that things get pretty difficult financially around late July. What little money you managed to scrape together during the school year is long gone, and you’re at least two rent cycles away from the next paycheck. For adjuncts who aren’t lucky enough to score classes, the end … Continue reading
Union Efforts on Behalf of Adjuncts Meet Resistance Within Faculties’ Ranks
As part-time instructors at colleges seek to improve their working conditions through unionization, they often find that the people standing in the way of their efforts are not administrators but fellow faculty members, several union organizers and labor experts observed at a conference held here this week. Tenure-track professors can be resistant to contract provisions … Continue reading
The Adjunct Is In. But Is She Getting Paid?
Earlier this semester, Betsy Smith asked students in her intermediate ESL course at Cape Cod Community College to read Bridge to Terabithia, the children’s-lit classic. The request came with an assignment: Everyone in the class was to hold a presentation exploring one cultural aspect of the book. One student, a guitar player from Brazil, wanted … Continue reading
To Improve Adjuncts’ Plight, ‘Step 1 Is to Acknowledge the Problem’
Maria C. Maisto, president of New Faculty Majority, answered via email select questions submitted by viewers of The Chronicle‘s online chat about adjunct issues. The questions and her responses have been edited for brevity and clarity. Q. Some adjuncts have access to health-care benefits already and don’t need to be covered by the Affordable Care … Continue reading
IRS Suggests ‘Reasonable’ Ways of Calculating Adjuncts’ Hours
The Internal Revenue Service has issued final rules on how colleges should calculate adjuncts’ workloads to determine whether such faculty members are eligible for health benefits under the new law designed to expand health insurance to more Americans. The agency said last year that colleges must “use a reasonable method” for crediting adjuncts’ hours of … Continue reading
99 Problems But Tenure Ain’t One
Where will tenure be in 10 years? No adjunct professor should care. Here’s why: Most non-tenure-track professors couldn’t even say where they’ll be in 10 weeks, let alone 10 years. Asking an adjunct to support tenure is like asking a homeless person to support a tax deduction for homeowners. Sure, tenure’s a good idea. I … Continue reading
Professor Van Ry 