The front page of the New York Times declares that "The Decline of Tenure Track Jobs Raises Concerns."

"Raises concerns" is such a mild phrase. Lots of things raise my concerns. Britney Spears’ driving habits, my over use of hair product, the fact that we’re down to only two Coronas in the fridge. All those things cause me to scratch my head for a moment, mumble "something should be done," and then I go about my day. The decline of tenure track jobs or, more specifically, the abuse of adjunct faculty makes my blood boil.

The article provides a few useful statistics.

Three decades ago, adjuncts — both part-timers and full-timers not on a
tenure track — represented only 43 percent of professors, according to
the professors association, which has studied data reported to the
federal Education Department. Currently, the association says, they
account for nearly 70 percent of professors at colleges and
universities, both public and private.

Tenure, the grant of permanent employment for faculty, may be on its way out, and I don’t really bemoan that development. I’m not sure how many professors would lose their jobs for making unpopular statements. We’re a pretty conservative lot (in behavior, not politics).

The gap in pay between tenured and non-tenured positions is the more serious problem.

Keith Hoeller, who has been teaching philosophy for 17 years as a
part-timer in Seattle, described it this way: “It’s a caste system, and
we are the untouchables of academia.”

Aletia Droba taught for
10 years as a part-time philosophy professor in the Detroit area. She
said she was paid as little as $1,400 a course at community colleges
and as much as $2,400 a class at universities.

One class can consume about 20 hours per week devoted to lecturing, lecture prep, grading, and student conferences. Over the course of a semester, adjuncts, many of whom have spent a decade in graduate school, make less than a worker at McDonald’s. Tuition for one student in the class exceeds their pay.

Adjuncts live in the shadows of universities teaching Intro to History and writing classes and survive on ramen noodles and coffee. Universities, which have been tauted as bastions of liberal thought, turn a blind eye to this injustice in their midst, because nobody really wants to teach Intro to History or those writing classes. How many of those adjuncts are women with children who don’t have the freedom to relocate to tenure track opportunities across the country?

The article mentions some feeble attempts by unions to raise their pay, but the results are laughably poor. State legislatures are slashing the budgets of public universities. Tenure faculty feel that they aren’t paid terribly well either. Change is going to have to come from students who grow tired of exhausted and disgruntled adjuncts. They will have to grow tired of plugging in frowning faces into Rate My Professor and march into some Dean’s Offices with demands.

I’m not going to hold my breath.