November 5, 2012

Adjuncts Build Strength in Numbers

The new majority generates a shift in academic culture

Sarah Bones for The Chronicle "We do a lot of teaching," says Caroline Meline, an adjunct instructor of philosophy at Saint Joseph's U. "That's just the way it is in our department." She is among adjuncts pressing for higher pay and a voice in governance on a campus where two-thirds of the faculty are off the tenure track. Ten years ago, less than half of the faculty were off the tenure track. By Audrey Williams June Philadelphia Caroline W. Meline stood at the front of her classroom one day last month and began reading from a red paperback, Karl Marx: Selected Writings. A few sentences in, she paused and closed her eyes. "I just have to catch my breath," she told her students. She was 15 minutes into a philosophy class at Saint Joseph's University. "This is my third class of the day. I need to regroup my energy."

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Graphics: On Some Campuses, a Population Boom of Adjuncts

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The breakneck pace that drove Ms. Meline to take the brief respite is, for her, the cost of being an adjunct here, where two-thirds of the faculty is now off the tenure track. In the philosophy department, adjunct faculty are teaching close to half of the 82 class sections offered this semester. "We do a lot of teaching," says Ms. Meline, who earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University in 2004 and has taught at Saint Joseph's for eight and a half years. "That's just the way it is in our department." That's the way it is in many departments at Saint Joseph's, where Ms. Meline is one of more than 400 part-time faculty members. At the private, Jesuit institution, the number of nontenure-track faculty members has more than doubled over the past decade. Ten years ago, less than half of the university's faculty was off the tenure track. Across the nation, colleges have undergone similar shifts in whom they employ to teach students. About 70 percent of the instructional faculty at all colleges is off the tenure track, whether as part-timers or full-timers, a proportion that has crept higher over the past decade. Change has occurred more rapidly on some campuses, particularly at regionally oriented public institutions and mid-tier private universities like Saint Joseph's. Community colleges have traditionally relied heavily on nontenure-track faculty, with 85 percent of their instructors in 2010 not eligible for tenure, according to the most recent federal data available. But the trend has been increasingly evident at four-year institutions, where nearly 64 percent of the instructional faculty isn't eligible for tenure. At places like Eastern Washington University and Oakland University, part-time faculty and professors who worked full time but off the tenure track made up less than half of the instructional faculty a decade ago. Now nontenure-track faculty make up roughly 55 percent at both institutions. The University of San Francisco saw the proportion of its nontenure-track faculty rise to 67 percent from 57 percent. At Kean University, nontenure-track professors now account for 78 percent of the faculty, up from 63 percent.

Not Sustainable
When professors in positions that offer no chance of earning tenure begin to stack the faculty, campus dynamics start to change. Growing numbers of adjuncts make themselves more visible. They push for roles in governance, better pay and working

conditions, and recognition for work well done. And they do so at institutions where tenured faculty, although now in the minority, are still the power brokers. The changing nature of the professoriate affects tenured and tenure-track faculty, too. Having more adjuncts doesn't provide the help they need to run their departments, leaving them with more service work and seats on more committees at the same time that research requirements, for some, have also increased. At many institutions with graduate programs, a shrinking number of tenured and tenuretrack faculty members are left to advise graduate studentsa task that typically does not fall to adjuncts. The shift can also affect students. Studies show that they suffer when they are taught by adjuncts, many of whom are good teachers but aren't supported on the job in the ways that their tenured colleagues are. Many adjuncts don't have office space, which means they have no place on campus to meet privately with students. And some adjuncts themselves say their fears about job security can make them reluctant to push students hard academically. If students retaliate by giving them bad evaluations, their jobs could be in jeopardy. Many adjuncts are also cautious about what they say in the classroom, an attitude that limits the ways they might engage students in critical thinking and rigorous discussion. "I think the tipping point is now," says Ms. Meline. She is among those adjuncts pressing for higher pay and a voice in governance at Saint Joseph's. "What they're doing is not sustainable." Elsewhere, Patricia W. Cummins, a professor of world and international studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, is worried about the sustainability of her university's growing use of adjuncts. When she arrived, in 2000, about three-quarters of the faculty in the foreign languages were tenured or on the tenure track, with one-quarter teaching part time or in nontenuretrack full-time positions. Now the percentages have flipped, much as they have in foreign-language departments nationwide. In French, her discipline, there are four tenured professors and eight who work off the tenure track, all but one of them part time. Ms. Cummins says administrators have big ambitions for Virginia Commonwealth, which is striving to be a top research university. But it will be nearly impossible to achieve that goal, she argues, without reversing the trend of adding adjuncts to the payroll at every turn. "If we want to solve the world's problems, we can't do that with adjunct faculty, who, however competent they may be, are just keeping body and soul together," says Ms. Cummins, who coordinates the French program. "Virtually everything they want to accomplish with our strategic plan requires tenured and tenure-track faculty members. I definitely think the president is on the right track, but we have a long way to go."

Full-time faculty members who are not on the tenure track at Virginia Commonwealth constitute 54 percent of the faculty, which a decade ago was the proportion of tenured and tenure-track professors. Taking part-timers into account, the share of non-tenuretrack faculty at the institution is 70 percent. The dwindling number of professors with tenure or who are on the tenure track has forced Ms. Cummins's colleagues to widen the circle of faculty who take part in certain service work. Faculty off the tenure track are usually paid only for their teaching, but many do service work because they're committed to their jobs. In the foreign-languages department, says Ms. Cummins, they have also stepped up to work on grants with tenured faculty, direct the university's annual Arab Film Festival, and play host to various events for foreign-language students and nearby residents. "They do all kinds of things," Ms. Cummins says. "But these are not the kinds of things you can expect somebody to do if you've asked them to come in and teach a three-hour French class." Most part-time faculty in the humanities at Virginia Commonwealth earn about $2,500 per course, Ms. Cummins says. Even as part-timers play an integral role in their programs and departments, they often feel that their continued employment as instructors requires maintaining a low profile. In fact, several adjunct professors in the School of World Studies who were contacted for this article didn't respond to requests for an interview. Robert L. Andrews, an associate professor in the department of management at Virginia Commonwealth, says he can understand their fear. "They're not in the position to be raising their voices," he says. "I would like to see that change."

Research and Mentoring

Michael Rao, Virginia Commonwealth's president, says he has made clear that he wants to stem the growing use of adjuncts there. Not long after he arrived, in 2009, Mr. Rao increased tuition by 24 percent and used the new revenue, in part, to hire nearly 100 tenured and tenure-track faculty. Thirty more professors have joined the institution since then. He plans to add a total of 560 professors, a figure he came up with, he says, by looking at the proportion of tenured and tenure-track at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech. "What I saw when I came was a research university that had 33,000 students and way too few, in comparison to peers, faculty members on the tenure track," Mr. Rao says. "We need those people to do research and to do a lot of the mentoring of students at all levels." Virginia Commonwealth's full-time, nontenure-track faculty and part-time professors are "incredible resources to the university," the president says. "A lot of them, on their own, are doing a lot of the mentoring of students. You don't want to count on that forever."

What's likely to remain the same at Virginia Commonwealth, and other institutions, is the way adjuncts are used to teach high-demand courses in some disciplines, such as English composition and introductory courses in biology and math. "One of the things that is important to students is the ability to get classes," Mr. Rao says. "That's correlated with the number of faculty you have to teach them. "When you have required courses that everyone has to take, can you front-load those courses with all regular faculty members?" he asks. "No, you can't. But can you make some progress along those lines? Certainly." Some colleges have made progress in improving the work life of adjuncts. At Colorado State University at Fort Collins, nontenure-track English faculty members have gained representation on the literature committee, the composition committee, and the committee that hires faculty who work off the tenure track. "We have representation on pretty much everything that doesn't involve the promotion and tenure and periodic performance view of tenured and tenure-track faculty," says Laura Thomas, who is an instructor in upper-division composition, a salaried position that comes with a course release that allows her to lead workshops for other writing instructors and provide them with additional professional-development opportunities. Colorado State's English department has 47 full-time faculty members who aren't on the tenure track. Nearly all of them teach four courses a semester, and they outnumber the tenured and tenure-track faculty by more than a dozen. Almost 20 years ago, the number of nontenure-track faculty in English was in the low single digits. Adjuncts who work in departments with a long history of using nontenure-track faculty can sometimes see the resulting connections lead to better working conditions and pay more so than when adjuncts try to use their large numbers as leverage, says Adrianna Kezar, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California who studies adjuncts.

Expanding Adjuncts' Role

"English departments on a lot of campuses are likely to be leaders for broader changes, since they have used nontenure-track faculty for such a long time. There are relationships there," she says. "Sometimes large numbers of adjuncts can create a negative dynamic. The tenured professors could see this as a threat and instead of saying, Why don't you join us in governance?, they might dig in and actively campaign against them having a voice." Ms. Thomas says "there is still plenty of work to do" on the university level when it comes to expanding adjuncts' role in governance. Contingent faculty can serve on an advisory committee of the Faculty Council at Colorado State, but they are not allowed to vote and they can't serve on the council itself.

Sue Doe, an assistant professor of English at Colorado State, is an ally of adjunct faculty like Ms. Thomas. Ms. Doe worked as an adjunct for more than 20 years, mostly as she followed her husband, an Army officer, around the country. After he retired, she earned a Ph.D. at the university in 2001, and became a tenure-track faculty member in 2007. She helped write a report on a universitywide survey of contingent faculty at Colorado State. The findings shed new light on the sometimes-tense dynamics between the different sectors of the faculty, she says. "At the end of the day, we all have to realize that we're working side by side, and in order for our units to work effectively, we have to be respectful of one another," Ms. Doe says. "Instead of having this sort of underlying mistrust of what the other group is up to, I think we're at the place where we need to get past that." Ms. Meline, of Saint Joseph's, doesn't know how far the good will of administrators can take adjuncts like her. Last year, complaining of low pay and a lack of job security and health benefits, contingent faculty at the university formed an adjunct association. The group, whose executive committee includes Ms. Meline, met with the provost, Brice R. Wachterhauser, to talk about their concerns. The association was able to get raises for adjuncts this academic yearhighest for new hires, who will now start at $3,230 per courseplus a total of $6,000 in grant money, in 30 parcels of $200 each, to tap if they need financial assistance to go to a conference to present a paper. "The provost, so far, has been extremely accommodating," but what he did isn't enough, Ms. Meline says. "Now we're looking to go forward from this platform and negotiate something better." Forming a union, members of the group say, is a possibility. "People are realizing just what a majority we are," says Ms. Meline. The group's membership, however, still comprises only about one-third of the adjuncts on the campus. Their lack of job security, Ms. Meline and other adjuncts say, keeps many from being advocates for their own cause. That fear bleeds over into the classroom, they say, to the detriment of students. "If almost 70 percent of the faculty at an expensive private university is watching what they say in the classrooms because they don't want to be controversial in any way, is that university really promoting critical thinking?" says Eva-Maria Swidler, who earned a Ph.D. in history eight years ago and now teaches semester by semester at Saint Joseph's. "Adjuncts are not going to teach controversial courses," she added. "They are looking to fly beneath the radar so they can be renewed next semester."

Ms. Swidler, who along with Ms. Meline is among the most outspoken leaders of the adjunct association, isn't worried herself about repercussions. She expects her career at St. Joseph's will end this semester. The course she teaches, an evening survey course about Western civilization, is being phased out under the university's new general-education requirements. She'll continue to work half-time at Goddard College, a liberal-arts institution in Vermont where students study independently and work with faculty mentors, like Ms. Swidler, who goes there once each semester.

'Appreciate the Work'

Soon an ad hoc committee of Faculty Senate members at Saint Joseph's will discuss the adjunct association's request to participate in faculty governance on a university level. "It's important that the senate address this issue. I'm going to make sure that it happens," says Robert K. Moore, an assistant professor of sociology who is president of the senate. "I think that it's important for us to recognize the value of our adjunct colleagues and acknowledge them and appreciate the work that they do for us." A discussion about how to get adjuncts more involved in governance, says Mr. Moore, "is long overdue." As for Ms. Meline, the class that she began by reading Karl Marx's writing ended with her students watching part of Modern Times, with Charlie Chaplin as a worker who tries to make it in the industrialized world. The course, called "Hume, Darwin, Marx, and Freud," is a new one that Ms. Meline designed herself, an unusual opportunity for an adjunct. Another course she designed, "Philosophy and Evolution," will be offered this spring. She will teach that, too, as she has for the past five years. She's chosen not to think about whether her insistence that adjunct facultythe majorityat Saint Joseph's be treated better could harm her career here. "I had no intentions of organizing anything, but I'm enjoying this thoroughly," says Ms. Meline, who started her academic career when she was in her early 60s. "I will make as much noise as I possibly can," she says, "in whatever time is allotted for me to be here." http://chronicle.com/article/Adjuncts-Build-Strength-in/135520/? cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Showing 12 comments
triumphus 5 hours ago

I know many of these adjuncts and they are mostly unappreciated except at the level where all of the money is counted. Welcome to the higher education factory.
10 people liked this. Jean Goodwin 3 hours ago

The shift from tenure track to adjunct faculty has an additional downside: it means that the TT faculty remaining have an increasing chunk of their job devoted to managing-managing adjuncts. Many TT faculty are now "directors" of something or other that in fact is taught by adjuncts. But managing isn't something that the average faculty member is good at (remember, they self-selected graduate school), or even wants to do. So everyone's unhappy.

2 people liked this. pannapacker 3 hours ago

It was the English Department at Saint Joseph's University that inspired me to go to graduate school with the goal of becoming a professor at a similar school. Now I learn that they--like most of academe--have transformed their tenure-track faculty into exploited adjuncts. I feel great loyalty to some individual faculty members, a few of whom are still there. They ARE Saint Joseph's University as far as I am concerned. When I last visited, I saw some fancy new buildings, but I really returned to see my old mentors. How will that work for the next generation when most of your faculty members are transient adjuncts?
7 people liked this. reineke 2 hours ago

Excellent article. The Des Moines Register published its annual list of all state employee salaries recently. In this Sunday's Register, the "bottom five positions by pay with at least 20 employees" are listed. Two of the five lowest paid state employee categories are adjunct faculty. The other three lowest positions are laborer, parking attendant, and food worker. The adjunct faculty make more than the laborers and the parking attendants but less than the food workers. Students at our state universities will

encounter food workers in the dining halls who make more money annually than do the faculty teaching in the classrooms. What is going into their tummies is, in the current job market, worthy of more compensation than what is going into their heads. Of note, the adjunct faculty are described on this list as "professor." In Iowa higher education, that designation means that they hold a Ph.D. or other terminal degree.
12 people liked this. pchoffer 2 hours ago

Folks: I agree, excellent piece, and sadly one that seems to appear every year in CHE. Only the statistics change--they get worse. A number of universities have assayed a half-way covenant: so-called teaching professionals. These individuals, almost all of whom have the credentials that would have gained them tenure track status in former years, get a salary equivalent to tenure track hires, but teach twice as much (eight to then courses a year), have a reasonable expectation of continued employment (renewable or term contracts), and may participate in departmental self-governance. Although they labor alongside tenure track, they are not expected to do and publish research, making them a kind of second-class citizen in a research university department. It is not a good solution, but it remedies some of the worst features of multiple part time appointments. Best, Peter
4 people liked this. dvacchi 2 hours ago

Good theme with this article - in the era of declining budgets, but increasing student populations something has to give. This academic elitism on many campuses that want to drive adjuncts out of academia needs to stop, it is the only way to balance the need to teach more with a need to sustain scholarly productivity by tenure track faculty.
curmudgeonintraining 1 hour ago

It is getting harder and harder to to feel sorry for adjuncts who refuse to move on to other careers, where they would make similar salaries doing working fewer hours. Adjuncts who continue to work these horrible jobs are complicit in a corrupt, unjust system.
olympicctc 1 hour ago

Reading this article that hopefully asserts that "Adjuncts Build Strength in Numbers," I was reminded of this statement: Over the past twenty-five years, U.S. colleges and universities have substantially increased their reliance on part-time and adjunct faculty

instruction The working conditions of part-time faculty members vary widely, but in comparison to their full-time colleagues, the majority of part-time faculty members teach under emphatically substandard conditions." That statement was written 15 years ago in 1997 (Statement from the Conference on the Growing Use of Part-Time and Adjunct Faculty http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/issue..., yet it would seem as applicable now as then. As others have noted, articles like Audrey's appear every so often, with the statistics getting worse each time. At this rate, we will keep on having similar stories in 2022 and 2032. Symptomatic of the dismal situation is the discussion about pay per class. The compensation of dentists is not in terms of piecemeal efforts, like per filling or bridge, but annual salary. Yet we talk about pay per class, not annual income. It is wonderful when the role of adjuncts is recognized on a campus and when selected adjuncts are motivated enough to try to organize. In the absence of real progress, perhaps that's all there is to celebrate, as we U.S. adjuncts have very little progress to show in the 40 years contingency has been identified as a problem. The best hope for U.S. community colleges that I see is to emulate the Vancouver Model where equality for all faculty exists. See http://vccfa.ca/newsite/wp-con... as a plan to do so. Jack Longmate Adjunct English Instructor Olympic College, Bremerton, WA
3 people liked this. chriskox 1 hour ago

The accrediting bodies used to care about full time faculty ratios. No longer. Now its the arcana of "learning" output measures and an industry of "learning" assessment. Sadly, as adjuncts push to dignify their labor through participation in governance, this nonsense will burden their task without increasing their compensation. Many will throw themselves headlong into it -- having drank from the font of delusion and so convinced they are performing a genuine public good. May the gods have mercy on their souls, and may accreditation be someday returned to an honest reckoning of institutional resources. When that occurs, there may again be an increase in full time faculty, if not those on track to tenure.
2 people liked this. academicspring 53 minutes ago

Great article. Also, many institutions have no ability to transition their nontenured professors into tenured positions, even if those nontenured work there for years. The

institutions create their own boxes and then act as though they simply must work within the constraints of their boxes, even when it is such a disservice to the professors as well as to students who work with them. And $2500 a course at Virginia Commonwealth, and so many other places (or sometimes less)... All who are responsible for setting and agreeing to those kinds of wages for OTHER people while they make FAR more should be ashamed. If they had any decency, these rates would be against the rules of their institutions. They say they 'have' to in order to balance their budgets, as if this should even be an option. Of course, those decision-makers will never decide that in the interest of the budget, they will go ahead and work full-time for $20,000 a year or even $30,000, but this is often what adjuncts make (or less) working full-time, or MORE than full-time. Even when they make more, they can't count on it continuing. It's a terrible way to treat teachers and a disservice to students as well. Administrators simply do it because they can, and if they could pay $1000 a course, they would do that, too. Once again, we see that counting on administrators to 'do the right thing' does not work. Organizing is the only way these things will change,
3 people liked this. wilkenslibrary 5 minutes ago

It is surprising to me that an article about contingent faculty working conditions could omit the excellent work of New Faculty Majority (http://www.newfacultymajority..... It is also surprising to me that while salaries at a few specific institutions were given, no mention was made about the lack of benefits that contingent faculty struggle to do without--no health insurance, no retirement. Had I not had to pay $950/month to Blue Cross Blue Shield before I became old enough for Medicare, my salary would have gone a lot farther providing for other necessities. We cannot wait for health coverage until we turn 65. We also cannot afford to retire when we turn 65 if our employers have not contributed a penny to our pensions. Except for the ever-growing administrative corps, every segment of academe--whether students, TT, or NTT faculty--suffers from an overuse of contingency. While one group or another may work independently to redress this situations, it is when teachers and students come together to advance their congruent interests that they stand the greatest likelihood of bringing about change. We need to be mindful of the reality that faculty working conditions=student learning conditions, so if we truly want to offer the best possible education to our students, we need to offer the best possible working conditions to all of our faculty. Betsy Smith/Adjunct Professor of ESL/Cape Cod Community College
camgray 0 minutes ago

The plight of adjucnt faculty is grave, but pointing the finger at administration as if they can simply print more money is a mistake. Point the finger back at legislators who have made it clear that they will continue to reduce funding higher education while also requiring more oversight and regulation and cheaper degrees for more students. You also won't find many students and parents lining up to pay increased tuition rates (if schools can even get them approved). The math just doesn't work out. You can't have more students get more degrees with improved outcomes at a reduced cost without exploiting someone along the way. . Until society finally accepts that a solid education is a worthy expense and that students will suffer as a result of the adjunct problem, there will be no money provided to fund more full-time positions. We will all watch as excellent teaching continues to be devalued and defunded.