Does It Matter That Your Professor Is Part Time?
Corrected on 11/13/08: A previous version of this article incorrectly described Western Governors University. WGU is a 10-year-old private, nonprofit online university offering undergraduate and graduate degrees.
Harper, who is a full-time adjunct, says that because she has no chance at tenure, she stopped teaching a course that included Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice after a student objected on religious grounds. (The main character, a middle-aged writer, struggles with an unexpected passion for a young boy as he also confronts his mortality and his moral duty to warn the youngster to flee a coming plague.) "I am disposable," Harper says. "If they can save face by firing me, they will fire me, so I try to pick topics that are not controversial."
Multiple choice. Another adjunct, who teaches speech and communications part time at private Midwestern colleges and asked not to be named, says that only by teaching six to nine courses a semester (at about $2,000 a course) can he make the $25,000 to $30,000 a year he needs to cover his basic living costs. So he spends 12 to 13 hours a day driving to part-time jobs at different colleges, teaching, and grading. "I give multiple-choice tests because I don't have time to grade essays," he says. And when one private college, eager to increase enrollment, recently asked him to pass a flunk-ing student who would otherwise have dropped out, he says he had little choice but to agree, since he wants to be invited back to teach again next semester.
Sometimes, he thinks of how each of the 20 or 30 students in his classes is paying about $2,000 in tuition and fees for each course. The classes generate at least $40,000, which means the colleges pass on to him only about 5 percent of the students' tuition. Although the adjunct, who has a master's degree, gets top ratings from his students, he doesn't get raises. The colleges "always say, 'We know that you are worth more than this, but we don't have the money.' "
Meanwhile, to get to his classrooms, he drives past cranes erecting "million-dollar dorms and athletic facilities," he notes. He is often tempted to find steadier, more lucrative work. But "I love teaching, being exposed to the students, their ideas and energy." If he did quit, he knows there are dozens of professionals eager to take his place. "If the university can get something cheaper," he says, "it will."
Reader Comments
Adjunct Faculty
I come with an alternate twist to the notion of part time instructional choices. As a part-time adjunct member of a local college faculty and with a doctorate in education, I cannot afford to teach at the University full-time at this point in my career. After one has invested so many hours in public education, it is not feasible to make the jump to the college level full-time until retirement (a $20,000/year pay cut for me). I have the best of both worlds, daily, hands-on experience with Middle School aged students which transfers over to my instructional methodology for preparing pre-service teachers at the post-secondary level.
My questions exactly!!
I am a doctorate student writing a disortation on the theori that many of the professionals that are teaching as adjuncts bring much needed cutting edge knowledge into the classroom along with their personal experience on the paticular subject they are teaching. This is great. However, they are lacking in pedagogical skilss needed to teach students of all agesa and I pose the question that they need to be given basic pedagogical knowledge and skills to round out the complete package.
The conditions fulltime "part-timers" face can cause burn out. I'm talking about the traveling time and the net pay, which is so far below the cost of living in Washington State that it should be criminal. But, despite all that, I'm back at a new community college after four years. I'm loving it, but I don't have the same illusions that I did when I started. I'm rested and having a good time.
The point is that teachers who are burned out will not teach as well as when they are rewarded, and not burned out. Sure, we can find the motivation to make the sacrifices to our own lives in order to better others, but sooner or later the wheels will fall off and the car just wont drive like it used to. This is true both metaphorically and literally. I have never bought a new car and I've put plenty of miles on those old junkers. The sad part is that nobody really cares. There's plenty of drivers that will take your place when you burn out. So, my advice to adjuncts is to enjoy the ride and don't rely just on teaching.
The one thing no one has talked about is the state budget. We are employees of the state, not just the colleges and universities. Ultimately the policy makers are setting themselves up for a major lawsuit. My prediction is that the unions will wake up when they realize that fulltimers are the expendable ones. Think about it. Why should the state, during a time of economic crisis, keep tenure track workers when colleges and universities can be run with full-time part-timers. It will be interesting to see what struggling states like California will do. Hopefully this magazine will continue to cover the issue!!!
Strangely the same rules of funding do not apply to k-12 education, even though educating parents and future parents is a better way to improve k-12 education than small class sizes and standardized testing. Parents tend to hold their kids to the same standards they hold themselves to. I believe in standards, but all the rhetoric in the k-12 system about raising standards does not give credence to the fact that standards need to be consistently upheld by a mentor and the k-12 system is set up where students cycle through teachers all the time. There is nobody like a parent to uphold the standards and there is no way better for them to uphold the standards than to get a quality education.
In conclusion, all higher ed. teachers should get paid as well as they would in the k-12 system.
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