9 thoughts on “NYU’s Expansion Plan”

  1. Does that mean adjuncts comprise 50-70 percent of the faculty teaching the undergraduates who pay $60,000? NYU has big continuing education and certificate programs.

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  4. NYU has become the absolute paragon of the neoliberal university. You could see some things to like about that–lots of star faculty, lots of connections to the world, lots of institutional dynamism. You could see plenty of things not to like about it (many more things than to like, I think): cronyism galore among the administration, a mania for growth, and a very conscious project to afford it all through cheap labor. When Sexton started talking about how NYU needed to valorize teaching and have “teaching faculty”, most of the tenure-track faculty said, “I’ll bet that’s another word for adjunctification”, at which point some critics said, “Oh, it’s just the research aristocrats being snobs about teaching again”. It turned out to be just another word for adjunctification. As long as valuing teaching means paying less for it, that’s what it will always mean.

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  5. BTW, I think it would be great if colleges did have “teaching faculty”–i.e., full professors, earning a decent living, who focused on teaching undergraduates rather than research. There’s too much published in the humanities and social sciences (I don’t know enough about math or natural sciences to say anything), and no one reads most of it.
    There was a post on Crooked Timber once about how fifty years ago, top universities used to have some faculty members known primarily for their quality as teachers, rather than researchers. Sort of like how a pastor can be known as a great preacher, as opposed to a theologian or a church administrator. (Probably not the analogy that would occur to most of the bloggers at Crooked Timber.) But that’s largely a thing of the past.

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  6. Yup, most of those expensive courses are taught by grad students or adjuncts, at least if we follow the numbers. If you make it to the junior and senior year courses, chances are better that you’ll be taught by a full-time faculty member who is paid a real salary for the work.

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  7. I’m the last one to stick up for the administration, but my mid-size department has 2 (total) courses taught by adjuncts, and they’re upper level electives. Our department essentially allows them to be taught because the adjuncts have been doing these 2 courses for a long time and *they* want to continue. They have other FT jobs. Also, NYU is actually quite good about not having graduate students teach. In Arts & Sciences at least, it’s basically prohibited (except for language classes).
    On the other hand, I have plenty of problems with the administration here. I voted No Confidence in John Sexton. They are ruling from the top down without any consideration for faculty input or where the money to finance their decisions is coming from. If the public, or blogs like this one, started following the situation and embarrassing the leadership, maybe it would start to make a difference.

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  8. Yeah, honestly, I’ve only been sporatically been paying attention to the NYU saga, but I might start paying more attention.
    According to the Chronicle (citation later), NYU really has WAY more adjuncts than TT faculty. But there are different types of adjuncts. My plumber is an adjunct at a local technical college. He makes a couple of thousand dollars and talks about pipes. There is no lecture, no essays to grade, no textbook to re-read, so he’s very happy with that pay. He just shows up. If you have to craft a lecture AND prepare a power point display which they all want these days AND grade exams with a written component AND answer e-mails AND have office hours AND re-read a textbook that changes every other year AND deal with 52 students (my personal record), $2,000 rapidly equals about $3 an hour.
    Here’s another article about how adjuncts are using the info on the Chronicle to find a better deal. http://chronicle.com/article/Adjunct_Pay_Conditions/136439/
    Nice. I just did that. Almost all of the local colleges pay about 2K per class, but I found one that pays 3K.

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  9. @y81 I wanted a teaching position, but the only kind most places offer are Continuing Non-Tenure Track, which means contractual (renewed yearly or every 3 or 6 years). You’re only obligated to teach and do some service, usually departmental. The pay for those positions generally suck. I think many people would like to see a return to that. Except it would cost too much.

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