Invisible Adjunct

Yes, this is what I call "permanent contingency" and it is a sick, immoral practice.

Part-timers at Dartmouth get a dental plan? Lucky. My institution of higher learning pays us part-timers some percentage of our earnings in lieu of a drug/optical/dental plan. That percentage has to stretch a long way...

As I've mentioned before, the structure of higher education is moving towards a structural shift. In idealistic scenarios, I will be up for tenure in about a decade -- but I have no confidence that our institutional system -let alone academic tenure- will even be an option at that time. The times, they are a'changin, and higher education is shifting (or perhaps it already has - the example of UMass-Dartmouth is frighteningly typical) to a strictly economic model. Many universities are simply failing businesses, and the proposed solution in all too many cases is more students and more tuition at a quicker pace.

I've found that if you line up your grocery items on the conveyor belt -- being sure to place a few heavy items first, then the frozen goods, then the spongy/breakable items, then repeat -- you have a better chance at getting a well-packed grocery bag. To stretch Amanda's metaphor further, this is what you now have to do to get a worthwhile education --- you have to do most of the work yourself, independently, because the cashier-professors no longer have the time, money, resources, or motivation to do any of it for you.

Hey, in Israel, as in many other countries -- there is no bagging. The cashiers ring up your groceries and toss 'em over. You have to bag them yourself.

So you see, you haven't hit rock bottom yet. Things can get even worse in grocery stores and in higher ed.

Not to get too sidetracked, but I've bagged a few times when the cashiers were busy, and, man, bagging is complicated. I end up with bags that look like they have angry rodents in them. There's probably so much turnover in baggers that they just don't learn how to do it well.

The adjuncts at UMass-Dartmouth should simply quit and watch with glee as the university is brought to its knees, unable to fulfill its basic mission. My god, what would they be losing? Much less than the university itself.

What would be even better would be for the university to attempt to recruit replacement faculty, but with no improvement in conditions, and find no takers. I can even imagine the ad: "Come teach a few classes for us. Low pay. Limited to nonexistent benefits." What would administrators do then?

I know, I know, I'm dreaming. But wouldn't it be nice?

Siis lõin selle Pirjole rinna kohale ja Timole seljale. Õhtul dushi all avastasin jälle ja naer tuli peale. Kinnitust sai veendumus, et tööl tuleb rohkem lollusi teha, siis on elu lõbusam.

The Estonian makes a good point.

I wish more articles like this would hit the mainstream press--often.

Just a side note, but I've never known any bagger to suggest you should use cereal boxes as a base for glass containers. That's begging for bagging disaster.

I am the proud graduate of grocery-sack packing training, which I went through in the 1970's! I can pack 'em like you wouldn't believe.

I wonder if I should put that on my cv when I go back on the job market? Given Rana's recent experiences, maybe that'll come in handy, come to think of it. I can see it now:

"Academy Girl, Ph.D., Gs.P."

I've been a service manager (over cashiers and baggers) for a major grocery store. There is practical theory to bagging groceries, in that you create "walls" with boxes and other flat things, then use the space inside the walls for breakable goods. Grocery stores want their baggers to pack an average of 8 items per bag so as to reduce overhead costs.

I was a grocery store manager from 1991-1994 because I could find no other job with my MBA. I am now a part-time adjunct to supplement my "real," non-academic day job.

At least my grocery store didn't make their workers pay to park there. As an adjunct, there is no free parking, no insurance, and -- because we don't pay 'student fees' -- no use of the student health club or bus service.

How does the "corporatization of the university" relate to the "number of customers served matters more than the quality of the service"?

Amanda apears to have no clue about how much service and perfectionism matters in the competitive free market today.

I'd say the problem is that the universities aren't corporatized: they are badly-run non-profit/state organizations that 1) have no possibility of bankruptcy; 2) in which no one can get rich if the university's educational performance surges; 3) are run by constituencies that can ignore the interests of its customers. No stick; no carrot; no performance.

The whole question of who the "buyer" is of the university's "product" is a can of worms. Possibilities include the students, the taxpayers, various government agencies, the parents of the students, the universities' endowment funds, various non-profit educational foundations and their donors (dead people in many cases), the universities' donors, sponsoring religious groups in some cases, and finally, the students' ultimate employers (though if the student is the "product", it doesn't seem that he can also be the "customer").

Attempts to put education on a free-market basis have to work out a few things first.

I don't see what's complicated about who the buyer is. It's the students and their parents, making a joint decision.

But I won't deny that education is an unusual business since college's can't accommodate unlimited demand and can't sell their services at a market-clearing price (for reputational reasons).

"Attempts to put education on a free-market basis have to work out a few things first."

An obviously ideologically motivated remark. The free market system has developed business models that are just as tricky and unusual as the higher education market. For all the talk about the lack of concern about undergrads by universities/colleges, I'd say that's typical of nonprofit/gov't entities: a lack of concern over their customer.

Neither students nor parents usually pay anywhere near the full cost of education. Doesn't that complicate the actual picture a little? Furthermore, undergraduate education often is used a pretext to subsidize research. Doesn't that complicate things a bit more? Students have one interest, their parents another. Same for the students' and the parents' understandings of their interests. What do donors want from the schools and the teachers? What do the government and the taxpayers expect to get for their money? And where does the idea come from, often expressed by freemarketers, that students as potential employees are the "product"?

JT, talk about "ideologically motivated remarks"! Freemarketers always repeat their freemarket slogans as if they answer every question and solve every problem, but they don't. And when, as here, it is pointed out that the slogans don't work very well, the response is often to repeat the slogan!

I wish I were young again.

Zizka: I'm not that young but will try and respond to your questions:

"Neither students nor parents usually pay anywhere near the full cost of education. Doesn't that complicate the actual picture a little?"

Why exactly is education subsidized by endowments and the gov't? I'm not sure. You're correct that tuition covers only a part of the costs of education, but why should that be? Just because it's always been that way? Hardly a good reason.

Subsidies of research costs: You just said that tuition only covers part of the cost of a college education. Now it covers research, too? Self-contradictory.

"What do the government and the taxpayers expect to get for their money?" Apparently, the fact that education benefits society is justification for gov't subsidies. The reasoning is entirely bogus: all industries benefit not just the individual consumer but the nation as a whole. Consider the food industry: how could you exist if all your neighbors and fellow citizens were starving? Higher education produces ample returns for the individual -- or it should -- and doesn't need subsidies to make it an attractive proposition.

Ideology: both of us are approaching the issue from our very incompatible ideological positions. I've spent a lot of time in both the private and non-profit (education) sectors. Higher education was uniquely depressing because it was a situation in which nearly everyone was miserable in one way or another. The system isn't working; it needs to be reformed. This website provides ample testimony to the deficiencies of the system. So what is the traditionalist approach going to do about it? Nothing. The existing system is out of answers except to say that the situation is complex, a de facto admission of defeat.

I have another criticism of your thinking: it represents "top-down" thinking. You present all sorts of admittedly complicated issues facing higher education in the US, all of which impede significant systemic reform because no top-down reform program has been, or could be, presented. The free market is not based on such top-down thinking; it's based on small-scale solutions and innovations, many of which are too small to be addressed by reform attempts on the broad government level.

I know you're a thoughtful person so I'd like to recommend Virginia Postrel's "The Future and Its Enemies", which insistently hammers away at the gulf in thinking between technocratic top-down thinking that is afraid of experimentation and an opposing viewpoint which admits that no central plan will predict every solution but allows experimentation and free-form future development. The former attitude is afraid of freedom and afraid of what the future may bring; the latter is optimistic and, by relinquishing control, embraces freedom. Postrel has explained it much better than I can. It's a viewpoint that needs to be exposed more widely and I think you'd benefit greatly by considering it.

Warning: Ire Ahead

Despite my libertarian leanings, at least according to Quizilla, I have to say that jt's comments about people paying the full cost of tuition are horrifying in their implications. First of all, since tracking where money truly goes in universities is extremely difficult, we wouldn't even know what the actual cost of tuition should be. Second, many very bright people would never have access to university education because the costs would be prohibitive. Maybe jt feels that educating the Rockefellers and Kennedy's is all we need to do. To my way of thinking, those with money aren't the only ones who should have access to education. What about you, jt? Could you have afforded it?

I have an idea! Let's have students pay the actual costs for being taught -- the prof's salaries for the courses they're enrolled in, the space (taxes, utilites, equipment, maintenance), and a fair, direct fee for the library or other special services. If students could remember to take classes from adjuncts, their tuition would be lower!

Next, cut out all public funding for aspects of campus life that do not DIRECTLY contribute to students' education (like the president's salary and lab rats). [Yes, I am fully aware that research contributes to people's education]. Then have outside investors (private industry, you know, like drug companies) fight over who gets to fund the research at the institution and all the *special events*. Even better, make professors pay for their research out of their own pockets -- after all, they get the merit increments, don't they?

Maybe that would solve the problems! Then maybe taxpayers could contribute nothing and get absolutely nothing in return.

*smirk*

Those of you who believe in this kind of model don't understand how universities work within society and how society, as a whole, can benefit from their presence (if they're run well). Does society benefit from McJobs? Yes, but not as much as it benefits from cures for disease (maybe jt was thinking about doing a little medical research in his spare time at home). How about the trucking industry? No trucking, no food supply -- it dwindles in about three to seven days nationally. But, of course, no university thinker was EVER involved in figuring out anything to do with food distribution. Naw, jt . . . shucks, you MUST be right.

"As I've mentioned before, the structure of higher education is moving towards a structural shift. In idealistic scenarios, I will be up for tenure in about a decade -- but I have no confidence that our institutional system -let alone academic tenure- will even be an option at that time. The times, they are a'changin, and higher education is shifting (or perhaps it already has - the example of UMass-Dartmouth is frighteningly typical) to a strictly economic model. Many universities are simply failing businesses, and the proposed solution in all too many cases is more students and more tuition at a quicker pace."

It's not so much that they are failing businesses, as the structural shift. Universities/colleges were traditionally [1] oriented around a professoriate which was tenured, and retained for their entire post-Ph.D. worklife. Some very large chunk of the sector is reorganizing around a more modern business model, where as much of the work force as possible is contingent. In this way, (USA)colleges are catching up with the rest of the (USA) work world. The percentage of the professoriate which will be contingent will vary, of course. Community colleges will probably approach 100%, elite institutions might be at 50-75%.

To most administrations, tenured faculty are unnecessary, expensive, and troublesome.

Barry

[1] For the past century or so. Long enough for the most ancient professor emeritus to not remember anything different.

"How does the 'corporatization of the university' relate to the 'number of customers served matters more than the quality of the service'?

Amanda apears to have no clue about how much service and perfectionism matters in the competitive free market today."

Really, JT. I said I wasn't an economist, didn't I? You may have a point about my cavalier use of the term "corporatization" as shorthand for "what happens when university education is treated as a business in which administrators try to hire the minimum number of inexpensive, contingent employees to handle the maximum number of customers." What I was thinking of was the "Do more with less" mentality mentioned several of the posters in the "Cheaper by the Dozen" thread here (i.e. the trend toward larger and larger classes and fewer and fewer faculty). If you want to qualify that point by arguing that that's a model for a poorly-run business, be my guest. But from my admittedly non-economist's perspective in the grocery checkout lane, it certainly looks like the "do more with less" phenomenon can be seen outside the university as well.

But I'm now properly chastened, and will attempt to avoid wacky analogies and off-the-cuff speculation in future blog posts. (And now I'm being ironic.)

The real irony, though, is that even if one doesn't like to think of students and their parents as customers of the university, one might still have to resort to that model in order to make a case for reform in higher education: "Parents, do you realize that the tuition you pay for Johnny and Susie's education is going to support a system where overworked, underpaid, 'non-essential' faculty teach the bulk of the most important classes?" If the students I've encountered who complain that their parents don't pay $X a semester for them to be (fill in the blank: bored, getting C's, whatever) are any indication, "you're not getting your money's worth" is the kind of argument that carries weight.

Amanda: I was picking at one word you used so that may very well have been unfair. But my point was that -- unlike the continual refrain from certain IA forumites -- "corporatization" (let's leave the term relatively undefined for now) doesn't necessarily mean inferior service to the current non-profit/gov't system we have in place now. In my experience, the treatment of pretty much everybody involved in the higher education system is lousy, from the undergrads to the grad students to the unionized staff to the junior faculty (and I'm sure the tenured faculty have many gripes, too). What is so magnificent and unalterable about this system? Why shouldn't it be reformed from the ground up? In my experience, many for-profit corporations deliver excellent service to satisfied customers. It's the mindset and the assumption that "for profit= bad non-profit=good" that I find irrational.

I am at a loss how to respond to Academy Girl. I’ll ask a question back: did you actually read what I wrote or does any advocacy of free markets and freedom propel you into a blind rage?

Did I at any point suggest that only the very richest need to be educated? You honestly think that it’s just to have students pay increasingly bonecrushing tuition so that they can be taught by adjuncts? Do you honestly think the current system is fair? I’ll ask again: What is so magnificent and unalterable about the current higher education system?

PS I know no radical reform of higher education is in the offing. But it should be.

"What is so magnificent and unalterable about the current higher education system? PS I know no radical reform of higher education is in the offing. But it should be."

Hey, you're barking up the wrong tree, JT. I'm ALL for radical change.

However, you said this to Zizka:

"Why exactly is education subsidized by endowments and the gov't? I'm not sure. You're correct that tuition covers only a part of the costs of education, but why should that be? Just because it's always been that way? Hardly a good reason."

Your words imply that students could bear the full cost of their education. If you meant something else, then clarify yourself.

Barry: My opinion is that your cavalier attitude towards the reality of contingent hirings is damaging and precisely what helps the juggernaut of corporatization stamp out both the independence and the academic freedom of universities. You may think this is an inevitable reality, and you will be correct, if contingent people don't stand up for their rights. However, it is a reality that I do not support. Also, to make your argument, you're buying heavily into the myth of tenure as a "job for life," but I've explained that elsewhere.

What I said, JT, and explained, is that the actual system we have now is pretty hard to analyze in freemarket terms. I was responding (the second time) to your "I don't see what's complicated about who the buyer is. It's the students and their parents, making a joint decision."

That still strikes me as an inane statement, and what you said further doesn't make it less so. Your statement might be true for some other system that doesn't exist.

You are correct that if student-parent tuition payments never cover the whole cost of education, then I can't say that tuition subsidizes research. However, if you look at teacher pay, some part of it (from whatever source) is meant to subsidize research, whether or not students benefit from having a prof doing research. My overall point was that neither the funders nor the receivers of the benefits of "education" are clearly known; "society", whoever that is, seems to be one of them.

I guess your point is that if education were reorganized on freemarket terms it would be better. Our "ideological difference" is that to you a market solution, details unspecified, would obviously be an improvement.

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But my point was that -- unlike the continual refrain from certain IA forumites --"corporatization" (let's leave the term relatively undefined for now) doesn't necessarily mean inferior service to the current non-profit/gov't system we have in place now.
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This may well be the case for the time being, but how long can this current system endure before the "service" provided to the customer/client does indeed begin to decline in quality? In other words, is it entirely impossible to imagine a point in time when there will be a shortage of even remotely qualified contingent/adjunct labor?

I recognize the 'there will always be young, fresh face newbie grad. students' argument. But is it true? Or is it true 'for now'?