17 thoughts on “My Latest on Adjuncts”

  1. My only comment is one I have made here, that the numerical description fails to distinguish between adjuncts and other contingent faculty (VAPs, what at Yale were called lecturers, etc.) I would liked to see a more granular quantitative analysis.

    One of my law school recommendations was written by someone who had been a VAP the semester before. He had left New Haven, but he wasn’t that hard to track down.

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  2. Good article. I hadn’t thought about issues like general college advisement. That was an important factor for me in getting the most out of college, probably more so because I was planning on graduate school. But also it was a huge help for being sure I graduated on time with the minors I wanted and all.

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  3. I saw it in my FB feed, recommended by someone completely different! Your work is definitely making the rounds.

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  4. I haven’t seen the term – VAP – used at any other school. Yale is not a typical college.

    There are roughly two kinds of adjuncts. Those who do it as a side job and need very little prep time/grading time. My electrician is an adjunct at a local tech college and has no complaints. The other kind do it as their main source of income and teach time-intensive classes. Adjuncts, traditionally, were those outside professionals. But there has been a shift towards replacing the tenured faculty for all subjects with adjuncts. AAUP says that the majority of adjuncts are now the second kind of adjunct. In the interest of keeping it short, those distinctions were cut out of the article.

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    1. I was a VAP for one year. It’s how I ended up in Maine. Ugh. *suppressestraumaticmemories*

      I am currently reviewing 77 (for now–listing is still open) applications for 2 positions we have open. It’s so depressing. 😦 I just want to hire them all.

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  5. VAP is a commonly used acronym for Visiting Assistant Professors, short-term (1-2 year contract), full-time faculty members often hired to replace someone on sabbatical. VAPs, unlike Instructors or contingent faculty, will usually have service obligations (and health benefits).

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    1. Then VAPs fit into the 26% temporary contract category from AAUP — 50% adjunct, 26% temporary contract, 24% tenure or tenure track.

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      1. That’s the kind of information I wanted. Now, of the adjuncts, (i) how many are the “traditional” kind, i.e., outside professionals who want to teach, (ii) how many are the temporary type, like my wife who got free law school tuition in return for teaching journalism to the undergraduates, or one of my first-year Spanish professors, who was also a law student (not sure of his exact financial deal), (iii) how many are people with master’s degrees but not doctorates (not sure of their exact life plans, but they surely can’t be planning on tenured positions)?

        Also, I assume that “temporary contract” includes the lecturer type, i.e., people who generally serve long times at a particular university, often as low-level language or math instructors, but without tenure. Is that correct?

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  6. Yeah, VAP is pretty common these days — it’s a much better gig than adjuncting. I was amused at how so many of the commenters on the Atlantic page were blaming adjuncts for their poor decisions. Since your article’s focus was on the students and the effects of poor resources for instructors, it doesn’t really make sense to blame the individual adjuncts for that.

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  7. I think my question is if and how this trend will stall or reverse. I do not personally believe change will come from the market demanding full time jobs for college teachers. I think unions can and will play a role in some places (maybe, state schools in liberal states). I think supply drying up will play a role in some fields (is enrollment in grad school declining among Americans?). I think some schools may successfully market the benefits of full time employees to parents paying for college (but, only if the cost isn’t too exorbitant).

    But I see the growth of contingent faculty as a part of the general trend in the labor market towards short term employer/employee relationships, freelance labor, just-in-time employment, leveraging of “free” desireable work (i.e. photography, writing, . . . ). Add the trend towards online classes/video lectures and I see the trend towards temporary employment at colleges/universities as a shift in the education marketplace.

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  8. JulieG, commenters are blaming individual adjuncts? That’s silly. I just did a quick skim of the comments yesterday to make sure I didn’t make any huge errors, but haven’t looked since. I might be tempted to reply and they don’t pay me enough for that.

    Yes, there are many similarities to freelance writing and adjuncting.

    This article was my last ditch effort to get people to care about adjuncts. There’s been a ton written in the past couple of years on this topic, but I didn’t see the topic moving out of the higher ed/chattering class circles. I told Steve that if this article fell flat, I would walk away. Never talk about it again. Wipe my hands of people who go to college simply for the credential. But this article has done well. It’s still #2. It was #1 most of yesterday. So, maybe people do care.

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  9. y81 – There aren’t great numbers on the different kinds of adjuncts — the FT professionals who teach a class in their specialty v. those who teach bread/butter class with high levels of prep time and no outside source of income. The AAUP says that the second kind is the most common now, but they didn’t have the exact numbers that you’re looking for. Looking at the number of classes taught by adjuncts, it would seem that that their impression are correct. At some colleges, 80% of all classes are taught by adjuncts. That’s gotta bleed into the liberal arts/math/sciences.

    I think the solution isn’t to turn all adjunct positions into tenure track lines. That just isn’t going to happen. I think the fairest and most politically feasible solution is turn more adjunct positions into the termpoary contract lines. Those guys get a regular salary and benefits. It’s not a high income, but it’s livable. It’s comparable to a public school teacher. I did that for three years, and it was fine with me. I didn’t have to do the administrative work, so I felt the lower salary was fair.

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  10. Nice piece, Laura. The Ivy League has not taken this turn quite so much. Then again, many of the teaching awards go to adjuncts and lecturers, raising interesting questions about whether they are actually better teachers. They spend more time at it, at least at my place where the course load is very low even for adjuncts.

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  11. Thanks, RC! Yes, some qualifications were lost in the editing process. My interviewees assured me that adjuncts were good teachers in the classroom, but that structural problems meant that they couldn’t go beyond that to help students after class. But others said that it was simply impossible to do a fantastic job in the classroom, because their poverty and transience had an impact on instruction, too.

    Also, Ivy colleges and highly competitive schools are very different from colleges further down the pecking order.

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