Invisible Adjunct

I feel for you, and for your student.

It says something, too, about the burdens of adjuncthood that the insecurity of your position makes sharing your blog with people who know you difficult, even though they could probably benefit from it.

It's always fun explaining the facts of academic rankings to students, isn't it?

This is a great point, IMHO. A student at a large research oriented school (say, a land grant state univ.) may have very few strong interactions with tenured faculty these days. I was a TA and RA at one, so I know. This does three things. 1) sets up a very strong incentive for individual research as an undergrad (a good thing, IMHO) 2) A disincentive to work hard in the classroom (not a good thing) because it really doesn't matter much. 3) A huge advantage for people who go to (can afford) small liberal arts schools. As someone who came from a fairly priveleged background, and went to a small college, I know that it affords a student a great opportunity to work closely with tenured faculty. While I am grateful for my own opportunities, I certainly think they should not be limited to people who can afford them, and graduate studies should be a possibility for everyone on the strength of their scholarship, not their parents' income level.
(plug for my school!) As a suggestion, any student thinking about all of this should consider a "regional comprehensive university", where faculty tend to be much more involved in day to day teaching responsibilities, research is an actively growing arena with ample opportunities, and the price is right.

I've been struggling this semester with the temptation to tell my students what my deal is. I teach on-line, which I'm going to quit after this semester because, despite all it offers in flexibility, it sucks up my time. Every time I check e-mail, I have messages from students who want an exception to a course policy, many of which I established in a desperate attempt to preserve some of my time for myself. I keep finding myself THIS CLOSE to saying, "Look, at best, I make less per hour than the woman who cleans my house; at worst, I make less than the guy who puts together my Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, so please stop wasting my time." I have some kind of feeling that it's inappropriate to explain the economic realities of part-time teaching to my students, but at the same time, I think they deserve to know something about how the college they're attending works.

Write the recommendation. And don't worry about explaining to the student that you may be doing her a disservice. You'll be doing this student a bigger disservice by leaving her to the mercy of tenured faculty who don't know her name. Besides, any graduate program that she applies to will probably be drooling over the prospect of having another warm body to put in front of the classroom for slave wages. If she is fully informed about the possibilities of this, then the decision is hers and hers alone.

And...if she winds up being rejected because you wrote the recommendation...then you've probably done her a greater service than she will ever know. :-)

Hi IA,

I've stopped by your blog many times, but this is the first time I've had the urge to respond. I agree with your observation about the tacit understanding that is part of any teaching position and your criticism of Jill Carroll's pollyannaish stance. You have a strong student who wants to attend grad school; you feel an obligation to do right by her. It's part of the tacit understanding that you do so, but you are not paid to do it and you recognize that you will not be as much help as some other people simply because of your status in the profession. I hope you don't adopt Kevin Walzer's attitude as posted.

First of all, you don't say how closely the student's interests parallel yours. Despite your invisibility, you may be perfectly well known to faculty at famous research university where she is applying. Surely you've published something or presented something to some conference. I think you overstate the effects of your marginality on graduate school selection committees. I was on the graduate school committee at a 2nd-3rd tier research university for several years. I don't recall any cases where the main argument about whether to accept or reject focused on the "quality" of the recommenders.

The more worrisome aspect of your student appears to me to be her naivete about the academic system. Perhaps you talked with her a while about why she wants to pursue a Ph.D. That is the kind of counseling that regular faculty ought to supply. But if you want to do right by the student, you can't just say "go talk to senior professor X." You want to take the time to talk with them yourself. In my opinion, clarity about what one hopes to accomplish in graduate school is the most important element in any application. (which includes things like not saying you've always wanted to study topic A, when you haven't taken a course on topic A from famous professor X at your university) Even if you couldn't recommend your own blog, surely you refered her to Tim Burke's piece on going to grad school and the blogs of some of your regular commentators. It's vitally important that she have a realistic view of what she's getting into before she goes. That advice coming from you will be more helpful than even a strong letter of recommendation.

And I was struck by the certainty with which you rejected the idea of telling her about your own blog. I can see why you value your anonymity. Is that your primary motivation for keeping the student in the dark about it? If I had a blog like yours in content and tone, I don't think I would try to keep an interested student away from it. I might perhaps ask her not to spread around who the author is. Maybe I'm missing something, not being a blogger myself.

Anyway, thanks for an interesting post and great blog!

As a suggestion, any student thinking about all of this should consider a "regional comprehensive university", where faculty tend to be much more involved in day to day teaching responsibilities, research is an actively growing arena with ample opportunities, and the price is right.

You mean like Eastern Oklahoma State, or Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania?

The problems with a place like that, beyond the zero prestige, are that it's quite unlikely that the few faculty members in your chosen discipline at your local university will be doing any research you'd be interested in, and that they're usually located in towns that have nothing else of interest besides the local university - i.e. cultural institutions, medical centers, chances for internships. At least that's my first reaction as an undergraduate.

Wow. I knew I was a starry-eyed innocent, but everyone I know who wants to be a professor/pursue a PhD at least knows how tenure works, and that graduate school will take years off your time in Purgatory, if it doesn't kill you first.

Su (#3): "I have some kind of feeling that it's inappropriate to explain the economic realities of part-time teaching to my students, but at the same time, I think they deserve to know something about how the college they're attending works."

Exactly. I'm not going to use the classroom as a soapbox to air my grievances against the academy (I save that for my blog). So I'm fairly circumspect (or shall we say complicit?), which is also, of course, a matter of self-protection. Still, it bothers me that students don't know what the deal is. And when a student asks for a letter of recommendation, it makes me feel fraudulent.

Jct (#6):
Thanks very much for your helpful comment.

"First of all, you don't say how closely the student's interests parallel yours. Despite your invisibility, you may be perfectly well known to faculty at famous research university where she is applying."
I am known to people in my own specialty. But in any case, this student is in another discipline altogether: she's applying to graduate programs in economics. The course she took with me was a sort of intellectual history of western Europe and America, from the Enlightenment to the day before yesterday. It was a discussion format, with a fairly demanding reading list and lots of writing. She wants a recommendation from me in order to cover the humanities/writing side of things.

JCT (#6): "I was on the graduate school committee at a 2nd-3rd tier research university for several years. I don't recall any cases where the main argument about whether to accept or reject focused on the "quality" of the recommenders."

Well, it may not have been a main argument, but I'm sure it came into play at times. I'm starting my PhD this fall at a major tier-1 research university (yes, I am fully informed), and I am pretty certain that my acceptance into several of the programs that I applied to was in part due to having a letter of recommendation from one of the leading profs in the field (who I was lucky enough to study with as an undergrad). How can I tell? Well, when talking to profs at other schools, they all asked if I could stay at my undergrad university and study with him. (The answer was yes, and I have ended up doing so).

Obviously, they were impressed by the letter from him: an equally good letter from someone else less influential might not have had the same response, and I might not have been accepted into as many programs.

good lord. if the invisible adjunct
won't talk about the conditions we work in
with her own students, who the @#$%!! will?
-- this approach horrifies me:
to the extent that you rate some idea
about appropriate professional behavior
ahead of simple straightforward honesty
you are very much *part of the problem*.
it's the moral equivalent of the sense
to come in out of the rain: tell the truth
and shame the devil.

To JCT (#6), my point is that IA's student is better off getting a good recommendation from her--someone who knows her work--than in getting a generic recommendation from someone who can't easily remember her name.

To Xhenxhefil (#7), your breezy dismissal of places because they have "zero prestige" turns my stomach. Can you even imagine of someone getting a good education at a small institution--a good education that is attributable in large part to the attention of good faculty that actually takes a real personal interest in a student's development?

IA writes this student is in another discipline altogether: she's applying to graduate programs in economics.

Ah ha. Then this is a different matter altogether.

First, unless your student hasn't been in the U.S. very long, or her English ability isn't very good, economics departments don't tend to be as concerned with writing ability as they are with a sound background in mathematics. Solid performance in courses such as Statistics, Econometrics, Calculus, Real Analysis, plus a letter from an economics faculty assessing the student's potential for research, will matter much more to a committee than testament to their writing ability.

Second, there's a lot less reason to discourage someone from going to graduate school in economics, at least from a job market perspective. While I can't fully project what the market will be like 6-7 years from now, currently the job market for candidates from good schools is actually quite good, and even candidates from lesser school get employed. Competition from business, consulting, and government jobs keeps salaries for Ph.D. economists much higher than salaries for Ph.D.s overall.

I too, was horrified, when students asked for recommendations from me, a lowly graduate student. But that's the nature of the game when TAs/RAs do 80% of actual student teaching.

Here's what I did -- I wrote the rec, and got a full professor to sign it. This was standard procedure at my undergrad institution as well, where tenure track faculty would often sign recommendations written by grad students they trusted.

I think you, IA, can do the same, if there's a tenured faculty member in your department who a) respects your judgment, b) also taught this student.

Seem reasonable?

Kevin (#12),

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I took it as a snarky "it doesn't matter what you do; the system is so screwed up anyway." Obviously, we agree on substance: if IA is pleased to write on behalf of the student, she should do so without fear that her status will have a negative impact on her candidacy. Write the best honest letter you can and trust the student to put together her strongest possible file.

I also agree that one should not denigrate non-elite schools. Yet another consequence of the ultra-competitive job market in academe is that quite promising scholars get stuck in the most unlikely of places. Some of them "write their way out," others stay, either because they decide they like where they ended up or because they so detested the job search process that they are unwilling to subject themselves to it again. (Funny you should mention Shippensburg. One of my good friends from grad school teaches at one of the branch campuses of Penn State. He certainly has the paper qualifications of someone at a research university, but I don't have any sense that he is likely to move to one.)

I agree with Olivia (#10) that the letter from the professor in her field was probably extremely helpful. It was strong evidence that she understood why she wanted to go to grad school. I was just arguing that the converse is not true. A strong letter from a relative non-entity is not poison for an application, as long as there is other evidence that the applicant knows what she is doing.

And the fact that the student is interested in economics does change the equation a lot, as Matilde (#13) says. If she has the grades in the right courses, she should do fine.

Thanks all for your followup.

"Here's what I did -- I wrote the rec, and got a full professor to sign it. This was standard procedure at my undergrad institution as well, where tenure track faculty would often sign recommendations written by grad students they trusted.

I think you, IA, can do the same, if there's a tenured faculty member in your department who a) respects your judgment, b) also taught this student.

Seem reasonable?"

I guess I don't quite understand this practice.

A. Are you saying that you would write a letter that said something along the lines of, 'Student X was in my Intro to Z class during the fall semester...Her paper on the A of B displayed the qualities of...' [and thus I am vouching for Student X's abilities and capacities on the basis of having taught and evaluated her work for this course during this semester], and that a tenured faculty member would then sign the letter as his or her own letter? -- ie, as though said tenured professor had actually taught said student in said class even though the tenured faculty member had not done so?

B. Or is it that the tenured faculty member would sign on as a sort of co-signor: grad student vouches for Student X, tenured faculty member then vouches for the grad student who vouches for Student X. This would surely undermine the force of the letter.

I would not feel comfortable with either of the above. But perhaps I am misunderstanding? And perhaps A refers to courses in which the graduate student functioned as a TA, so that both professor and grad student could be said to have taught the student (even if much of the teaching/grading was done by the grad student)? -- which would not apply in this case.

Yes, case a refers to case where it was, technically, the same course. So your situation is more complicated, and probably I wasn't thinking clearly about how mych more so. You could function as intercessor for student with tenured faculty member, but maybe it doesn't work after all. Here's something possible, I suppose:

Urge the student to seek out a rec from another faculty member who a) has taught the sutdent, b) the student (by grade, at least) did good work for, c) you know and have a good relationship with. You then collaborate/prod this faculty member, who has long since forgotten the student, by providing your opinion of her general qualities while she (the other prof) cribs specfics from an old paper.

Hey, right on. I loved your line about "pre-tenure." The plight of the adjunct is one of my favorite things to rant about, and your site ranks right up there with the best of them for real academic criticism.

Academy Girl

Sigh. I've been on both sides of this. I don't know what to say.

Back when the TA union was trying to get us a real tuition waiver, I *did* go ahead and tell my students what we were fighting for -- I wrote my monthly take-home pay on the board. They were shocked. A couple-three even got involved. Honest, that's what happened.

But a year and a half later, when my students asked me what sections I'd be teaching next semester and I had to tell them I was leaving -- I couldn't find it in me to explain why. I did tell them it was nothing to do with them, of course. But dragging them into my personal psychodrama, even given the larger issues -- I couldn't do it.

I don't know. I don't know the answer.

Damn. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Idea: instead of pointing her at your blog, why not mention Dorothea's or Academy Girl's? You can say, "Look, you're a good student, but I want you to understand what you're getting into, and the weight carried by a recommendation from someone with the title I hold." Granted, that she's interested in an Economics Ph.D. makes her situation and prospects different from someone who wants one in the humanities, but it does not harm and could very well help her to reinforce that:

1. Graduate school is tough—and not only intellectually so;
2. Talent and hard work do not guarantee success in academia.