I stopped adjuncting one year ago. Though I was teaching a grad class at a prestigious university, my pay was pitiful, and I had little support. I thought I could I better use my time working independently on academic research and freelance articles. That lifestyle would work better with my demands as a parent and wouldn’t involve grading paper or jackass students.
It hasn’t worked out all that well. For the first six months of last year, I wrote a decent, academic paper for a conference. It needs some modification, but it was a good first draft. But having no strong association with a university, it is difficult to get published in an academic journal. Turns out it is difficult to be an academic without an academy.
I’m still working on finishing an article or two for the mainstream press, but I have to figure out how to sell them. After reading some bulletin boards at Media Bistro, I learned that being a successful freelance writer is more difficult than landing a good academic job. The best way to get published in the mainstream press might be to have academic credentials.
So, I’m heading back to teaching next semester. Insane. After a year of griping at the Invisible Adjunct, I’m calling up local colleges to offer my services. I can’t work full time for another year, because my youngest son needs so much help with his speech. So, I’m willingly selling myself into slavery.
It’s all good. Luckily, Steve’s making enough money to maintain our shabby, genteel lifestyle. I’m oddly missing the cloistered ivory tower and looking forward the headrush after giving a proper lecture. And I’m unwilling to miss the clamor and the gaiety of the children disembarking from the creaky school bus. I want it all, but something will have to give. Probably it will be tenure.
Apt. 11d 
Except I think you mean “genteel.”
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Adjuncting sucks you in, doesn’t it? It’s not good money, but it’s pretty damn easy to get. I just commuted 30 minutes to teach a single 50 minute class today.
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thanks, emma. I just read a post on another blog that wondered why she had 500 readers a day, but no comments. Well, my advice is to be a crappy speller with smart readers.
todd – yeah, it does suck you in. it’s so easy to get a position. You know what to do. All that is required is a willingness to be abused.
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I have thought about adjuncting again. I have a good job now, but it’s full time and I occasionally long for the freedom that adjuncting would allow. I could choose my hours (mostly) and choose how many of them I want. The problem is the pay sucks and you usually have too many students. I’ve contemplated doing a strictly online thing in addition to what I do now and see how that goes. I just think there’s no money in it.
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Ah, yes: I am also adjuncting now after years of being on fellowship. I love teaching, but I hate the feeling of being a peon, because that’s just how we’re treated. And the pay? Pheuw. Adjuncts where I teach haven’t gotten a raise in more than five years. It’s pitiful– all this work towards a PhD and I get paid about $8.00 an hour.
But I love teaching. Most of the time.
Good luck.
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“Shabby genteel.” We talked about that designation about a year ago, no?
http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com/2004/02/shabby-genteel.html
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On the other hand, adjuncting can often make you want to be TT and then tenured. And sometimes, if you are willing to sacrifice prestige and time to research (except in summers) it can help lead to a FT job in the world of CCs.
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We’re odd in that we only use adjuncts in our distance ed courses. In most cases, they’re career adjuncts who use these to supplement their spouse’s income and keep their toe in the academic world. None of them live anywhere near to us, so I know they must feel even more distanced than most adjuncts would. But in talks with them, they all seem eager to keep teaching the courses so we let this go on and feel guilty as hell for perpetuating the ghetto. . . .
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It stinks that this is the gig that you have to take right now but hopefully there will be some benefits a couple years from now. Its just SO annopying that colleges fail to see the potential of adjunt personnel unlike the business world recognizing the benefit of job sharing,workign from home, or flex time.Why don’t they try to recruit the best talent other than the belief that the recognition of their program will be the key to future happiness?
The road to getting in to professional academia really does stink, but why is that? Is there some need for trial by fire that needs to be imposed upon academics by their senior peers? I think our system is outdated right now and its in need for some top level labor changes in order for it to become better.
I wish adjunting could be replaced with better pay and more recognition that it deserves. There really should be a role known as topic expert or knowledge specialist, where there is actual pay to sustain a life outside the world of Ramen noodles and Schaefer. Let’s face it: if you were an assistant coach, the difference in pay is substantial for basically the same job. Anyone workign for a university has the capacity to make signifigant amount of money for the school or to gain it recognition for the department, and the better adjuncting/grad/Phd program, the easier it is to attract talent. Unfortunately, even the best universities have crap programs for grad students/Phd candidates because they still don’t realize this fact or rather they do but aren’t going to change because they believe that giving someone the oppourtunity alone is worthwhile enough. They believe that reputation will draw talent. Look at Yale and the issues that they have had with their workforce to see that once people see past the facade of elite and prestgious graduate programs, they see the exploitative work enviornment for what it is.
As I’m going for a masters in finance, the BEST professors that I have had are adjuncts. I think its just a case of they work in the enviornment that they teach in and hold students to a higher standard because they are in the actual business world and are not living in the proverbial collegiate bubble: innudating themselves within the departmental bubble, making sure to keep up with the current politics, and having little or no aspirations to recognize new findings within their discipline. I think this is one of the reasons that I didn’t go to a full time program because the oppourtunity cost was way too high to be taught by someone who hasn’t any experiences within the last 30 years outside of academia. What upsets me even more is that the best and toughest professors that I’ve had that are adjuncts haven’t been asked because people have complained that they are too demanding in class!
Academia takes advantage of its workforce from the start, whether you TA a class of 40 students with recitations twice a week to being a graduate student and doing the job of the professor so that you can continue to go to school to get your Phd and have your own set of teachign assitants and grad students. Is this really the class structure we want to have in our higher education system, with a broken system of academic sharecropping?
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If what you want is a full time job with a full time salary, being an adjunct (more likely several adjuncts simultaneously) stinks. But if you want a genuinely part time job, then being an adjunct ain’t bad. It’s clean (in a lot of senses). It provides an institutional affiliation. You’re very lightly supervised. Pay and benefits are poor, but will do if there’s some other source of income which covers the basics–food, shelter, clothing, transportation, books and internet access.
So go for it.
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Looks like professionals may need unions after all?
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Mathias — Good point. Have I given the impression that I’m against all unions? Didn’t mean to. Unions are an important check on capitalism and when done right, they can both promote the needs of the professionals and the consumer. There are good unions and bad unions. In Denver and Rochester, the teachers unions protect the teachers without hurting the students. They are for merit pay and don’t shield bad teachers. A terrible union is the one in Philadelphia, which by all accounts has stymied every reform effort in that city.
Thanks Kip for that. See it helps to have business people look at academia to tell us how broken the system is.
I believe that a few university adjuncts have had strikes with mixed results, but it is difficult to organize adjuncts. And most of them are so desperate for cash that they’ll take what they can get.
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I don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, and adjuncts certainly would gain by organizing for better working conditions…
But there’s also a strange academic class-issue that pops up sometimes in these conversations. Perhaps it’s because I taught high school for years, with 150 students and $14,000 starting pay (in 1991, of course). When I was in graduate school in philosophy after that, I was excited to get paid almost that salary to read, write, and TA a section or two. I got paid to study and teach admittedly obscure but fun stuff. I could have gotten paid more to work retail, but it was also a great deal more rewarding than working retail.
I did end up going into business to make more money, and find that there’s just NO comparison in terms of interest, freedom, or ability to sit through daily, seemingly interminable meetings with complete morons.
There’s definite exploitation in many instances, from the institutional point of view, but I’ve always thought of the lower pay as the price for a GREAT deal of freedom and pretty damn interesting work.
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i think it comes down to whether schools rely on adjuncts so much that really, they’re covering several full-time positions. The inequity is not in hiring contract workers per se, but in the fact that an adjunct can often carry a FT load and make less than an admin assistant or waitress, with no benefits and none of the perks that FT faculty have, like offices, time to research (most adjuncts still work summer jobs), and professional development funds. Relatively few adjuncts teach part-time by choice, so that adjuncting really is a place for the growth of an academic underclass.
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For a variety of reasons, I really have to work part time for the next year. And it sucks enormously that my options are all low paying, low status, and demoralizing. I have an advanced degree, and I’ve actually considered working in Restoration Hardware. It would pay the same as adjuncting, but I would get a discount on furniture. Neither job will cover the cost of a babysitter. It might work out a bit better now that one kid is in school most of the day, but it still won’t mean much.
Adjuncting is not only for grad students. It also has become the only place for primary care givers. It is a mommy track. And, for all the reasons that the commenters have mentioned, it is not adequate.
Yes, I do enjoy teaching and that’s why I decided to teach rather than hawk fake mission-style furniture, but I may be making a terrible mistake. I wish I had more options.
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Changes
It seems like the people writing a lot of the blogs I’m reading are renegotiating the terms of their work lives. Laura at 11d is going to be teaching again. At this woman’s work, either Dawn or her husband is
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Furniture for Home and Office
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Any advice on disguising one’s bitterness and rancor?
I’ve been adjuncting for several years now and since I’m good at it every year my student numbers go up and my pay stays the same. One the other hand, the full time professors that no one likes get paid a lot to teach VERY SMALL CLASSES.
I’m just having a really hard time looking these people in the eye and being polite to them as I grovel into their office to ask if I could “please sir, be allowed to use the xerox machine.” I’m a primary care giver who thought this was going to lead to a full time job but fears it never will.
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To comment on the above comment about bitterness and rancor, I too feel that on and off as an adjunct. I actually did a blog post the other day wherein I tired to find some appreciation for adjuncting… or at least for my students, or for how it has helped me grow as an educator… it was a good exercise, to find things about it to appreciate, instead of focusing on pisses me off about it!
I’ve been adjuncting for 3 years at a community college. I have been trying to survive on the pay, and going through a divorce and major medical traumas at the same time, both of which have practically killed me financially & emotionally. I have no health care and through it all I keep adjucnting.
I don’t really see other options right now…
Check out my post about it if you have a sec. I’d love to hear from fellow adjuncters!
http://italiandreams.wordpress.com
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