We're Not Your Colleagues - Chronicle.com

My dad asked me a week or so ago what an adjunct was. Because I'm so immersed in the day-to-day of academia, I don't often realize how a) archaic and b) inscrutable our world can be sometimes. Instead of answering his email, I decided I wanted to answer in a blog post because adjuncts and how universities treat them will continue to have an impact on higher education.

An adjunct is a part time faculty member. This web page from CUNY, although mostly unreadable, does a good job of explaining what an adjunct is. Highlight the text and you'll have an easier time. Adjuncts teach a few credits a semester and are not full-time faculty. The university is thus under no obligation to provide benefits, an office, or support for them. They're paid less per credit hour (from my experience being one and from friends who have done it, it's something like $1500 a credit hour per semester. Meaning that to make $30K, you would have to teach 10 3-credit classes a year. That's a lot of work for not very much money.)

Adjuncts have a hard time becoming part of the faculty with which they serve, and do not often receive any support from staff. In the article quoted below from the Chronicle of Higher Education, this particular adjunct had a difficult time getting keys to the adjunct office, finding out the copier code, and getting his textbooks in time for class.

Other factors complicate the life of an adjunct. They often teach at several institutions, meaning things like gas prices affect them more than regular faculty. They don't have much time to spend with students, and yet students don't understand why they're not around and take it out on them. "Where is Dr. Sanders office?" I get asked all the time, needing to then explain that Dr. Sanders is an adjunct, works full time, and therefore has no office. In return I usually get a blank stare. But the callousness of business students to the working man is not a subject for this post. Another time.

Enjoy the article below. Because it's in the careers section of the Chronicle, I think you can read it w/o a subscription.

We're Not Your Colleagues - Chronicle.com: "Adjunct faculty members are not really part of the academic division — not at this university and not, I suspect, at many others. A lot of us certainly want to be, but the tenured and tenure-track faculty members don't see us as colleagues. So far, after a year at the university, I have had only limited contact with my chairman, and I have yet to meet any of the full-time faculty members. I have not been included in any meetings, activities, surveys, discussions, or social events — except those invitations that got the mass-mailing treatment from the president's office.

It is apparent that my job is to teach a class and not cause problems or take up anyone's time.

As adjuncts, we must find our intrinsic value in the classroom, and universities continue to count on that to be enough to keep us coming back semester after semester. And if not, oh well — my own situation proves that adjuncts are replaceable on short notice."