Invisible Adjunct

If the benefits are good, why is it a case of "abuse individual scholars by treating them as members of an academic underclass" ?
It is a college that specializes in engineering and sciences. Most students who choose to go there are interested in just that. I doubt they really care if the hummanities professor is an adjunct or not and treat them just the same. Most faculty members wont have much interaction with the humanities faculty anyway since there isnt much research overlap. This isnt disrespect, just simply having nothing in common. Why will there be an underclass at all?

On a side note, 3 questions.
1. What are primary texts?

2. What's the difference between primary texts and other kinds of text?

3.I wonder what is the rational of focusing on primary texts. Writing-intensive and multi-disciplinary classes do teach valuable skills and are a good compliment to a technical education. What benefits are there in using primary texts?

I personally think there is huge value in use of primary documents (by which I assume they mean original source documents, rather than a latter analysis or commentary on those documents). The original document puts you in touch, to the maximum extent possible, with the mind of a person living in another time and place. It's as close to time travel as we are likely to get.

Plus, source documents are generally better written than the later commentaries...

Such "foundational" courses can be supremely important to any college or university student - but only if the courses start with spelling -- not grand stuff about critiques of western culture. Students first need to learn grammar and spelling; then they need to learn something about western culture. Then if there's any time over they can start their critiques of western culture.

But first they need to learn to spell - Poster #1, for instance, feels confident in his/her opinions about what university professors should do, but does not know the difference between complement and compliment.

Implicit in that post is the assurance that if you're a techie there's no reason in the world why you should learn anything about language and its uses, western culture, or anything else that isn't related to a computer chip. If a tech university insists on this "foundational" nonsense, why bother hiring motivated, well-compensated, well-trained people to teach it? It's just an annoyance students need to endure before heading back to the vocational courses that they care about.

I actually have no trouble with the attitude underlying Post #1. Not everyone needs or wants to be culturally literate. I only argue that if your university isn't a university but a technical school it should say so and change its identity accordingly. We need more vocational schools in this country, and the right way to get them is to transform technical schools that have dolled themselves up as universities back into technical schools.

"..[In] order to give our students the education they need & certainly deserve, it will almost certainly become necessary to create faculty positions that: a) do not serve the profession well & b) abuse individual scholars by treating them as members of an academic underclass."

How does this "give our students the education they need & certainly deserve."?

Folks might want to read the whole post over at my blog. A couple of notes: 1) My university is really a university & though we are mostly know as "an engineering school," we have excellent programs in the sciences, social sciences & humanities. Our faculty in these areas are comparable to those in good liberal arts colleges. 2) The course, as now taught & as envisioned, is writing-intensive. That includes, but is not limited to, spelling. 3) The point that I am trying to make in the full post is that in order to get funding for our new curriculum, which we believe will be good for students, we will have to accept the reality that some of the staffing will not be tenure line. Some will, some won't, would be my guess at this stage.

The point of the post was to point up the horns of the dilemma on which my colleagues are currently perching. As an aside, I'd note that we could keep teaching the curriculum we have without additional teaching lines & that, since we have now converted all out non-tenure track jobs to tenure-track & only employ three part0timers to fulfill particular needs, we'd be in the moral catbird seat. Except that we wouldn't be teaching the curriculum we think is best & which the administration has asked us to develop.

The best type of position, obviously, is full-time tenure-track. The worst type of position is part-time contingent. I don't believe students are well-served by the latter (nor is the profession, of course).

The compromise position is probably full-time nontenure, on a renewable contract with decent salary and benefits.

Nontenure needn't mean "academic underclass." It generally does mean academic underclass because the employment system is skewed into two tiers: full-time tenure with decent salary and good benefits or part-time contingent at low wages and no benefits.

Realistically, those concerned with academic employment reform should be focused on something in the middle: ie, how to improve the salaries and benefits attached to nontenurable positions. I think tenure is a lost cause: I strongly suspect that in fifteen to twenty years, it will be found only at very elite institutions.

I suspect IA is right about the future of tenure; I'm just not sure how I feel about it - and may never be sure.

Vivian: Attacking somebody's spelling is the cheapest of cheap thrills, particularly in a blog comment section, where people are not expected to do rigorous proofreading. Are you going to make fun of Joseph Duemer for writing "we are mostly know as..."?

My apologies to Vivian for my bad spelling. That being said :
"I only argue that if your university isn't a university but a technical school it should say so and change its identity accordingly"

Thus only places that teach the humanities can call themselves universities? What about places that teach the pure sciences or social sciences?
You may not be familar with technical education in general, but most engineering programs require more than just vocational skills. They require significant math, science, analytical, reading and writing skills as well. The theory component of these "vocational programs" is just as mathematical as stuff fund in pure math programs.

Nobody disagrees that writing skills, analytical skills are important to everyone, engineer or not. Has anyone asked the question if our humanities graduates toady have sufficient math skills? Nooo... numbers arnt important compared to language and culture....

The point I am trying to make in the first post is that tenure-track or not isnt really an issue, so long as they are well compensated. The loss of status shouldnt come up at all. Does anyone really think that music school faculty or students give two hoots if the guy teaching economics has a clark or that the guy doing the computer stuff won a turing? They simply dont care, not out of disrespect, but indifference. The assumption that only tenure-track appointments are important and respected is not always true at all universities.

"I suspect IA is right about the future of tenure; I'm just not sure how I feel about it - and may never be sure."

I'm sure. The end of tenure is probably the only hope for those of us trapped in the adjunct pool.

As long as the tenure carrot is still hanging out there, albeit always just beyond reach, adminstrations will continue to be able to justify the McDonald's level wages they pay us. If tenure goes, they will have to actually respond to the demands of the faculty as a whole.

Death to tenure! Here's to a hasty and final death!

Chris --

I think you're being optimistic about the death of tenure. If there's no worker opposition to what happens now, there's little reason to expect it to come when tenure completely disappears. It's like the Trotskyite argument that the Crash will bring the Revolution. (No. Humans will make the revolution.) I think that if anything, things will get worse. The end of tenure will mean that all uni teachers get convenience store clerk compensation. All that for how many years of training? In the future uni teachers will all be rich, stupid, or insane.

"If tenure goes, they will have to actually respond to the demands of the faculty as a whole."

Why? So long as there are more people chasing after the same number of jobs, tenure or not doesnt matter. The real solution is to produce lesser phds in overcrowded fields.

Tenure protects academic freedom. In many fields this is important. Academics are the people's experts, who while not without biases, are more credible than most. An informed society while important and necessary, simply do not have the ability to understand all complex issues of the day. Imagine if scientists studying environmental pollution are fired because their views do not fit in with the current political climate. Or that an economist who doesnt agree with the tax policies of the day doesnt have their contract renewed. Or the engineering professor who disagrees with the safety accessment of a coporate/governemnt project is left without a job. Without tenure to protect them the risk for speaking out is very high. We all lose when this happens. Today, tenure helps lower the proberbility of such an occurance happening. Tenure has always been meant to protect these individuals, and it does do a very good job of doing so.

Without tenure, it will be almost impossible to do core research, the kind of research that does not produce results even in our generation, but are just as important. The fantastic discoveries of today are build on the building blocks discovered by researchers from yesterday. This is true not only of the traditional pure sciences like physics, but of the applied and social sciences like economics and engineering as well. Without core research, where will future discoveries come from?

The fact that the poster above doesn't know what primary sources are saddens me -- mostly because s/he seems to be making the assumption that, "if I've never heard of them, I probably don't need to know what they are." Actually, the whole idea bothers me a bit. Why commit to a new program if not willing to fund the damned thing. Call me crazy, but I would think that having a stable, full-time (tenured or not, but long term full-time) core faculty who can work together to integrate this liberal arts core would be a necessity. Contingent faculty have a horrible time re-tooling to fit new program goals, and programs, faculty, and students (remember them?) suffer as a result.

For our techie friends who don't think a liberal arts education is worth anything ... a word from the occasionally non-academic worker -- one who has worked in the techie world. You can probably get away with no broad liberal arts background if you want to work only in the States and don't want to rise above supervisor. If you want to work in international companies or actually move up in an organization, you have to be able to talk about more than tech stuff. You have to be able to relate to people from diverse backgrounds, and your international colleagues will almost always have a broad educational base. Many of them will speak several languages. Techies often liaise with sales and marketing -- and have to be able to talk to customers. If you only speak techie, you can't build relationships. If you can't build relationships, you have less value to your employers and to your co-workers.

To Another Damned Medievalist (post #12)
Its called an MBA. Thats what people from tech backgrounds do when they want to move up the ladder.

And no I am not assuming that its unimportant, just that the liberal arts I am familar with is closer to the social sciences.
Sorry if it came out the wrong way.

Techies need to know about history and the rest of the humanities because technologists build a lot more unacknowledged legislation than poets do. Rather a lot of techies know this; the best with a salutary fear of unintended consequences, and the worst with the passionate intensity of WiReD.

And of course the primary sources are the places to start, just as one spends intro. physics classes rolling imperfect balls down inclined planes instead of reading summaries or running simulations.

#12/#13

An MBA is not a substitute for a humanities education. It is probably assumed, naively, that people entering an MBA program already have some degree of humanities exposure, but that is too rarely true.

The point about interacting with international executives is a good one. British executives, for instance, sometimes have a Classics education (especially at the Chairman level).

personally, i would be estatic to have a full-time nontenure renewable contract job with decent salary and benefits. my students would love it too because i could tell them what classes i would be teaching from quarter to quarter. plus i wouldn't have to wear these old very stinky shoes any more. i could afford new ones.

in the land where i'm from, non-tenurians (contingents, adjuncts, et al) don't generally get workers' rights support from tenured faculty. if tenure were to kick the bucket once and for all, say tomorrow, we would all need to advocate for academic freedom and salary and benefits and job security together - a float together or sink seperately kind of thing - tomorrow. one big union or something like that.

oh i forgot my point because i'm so cold and i can't afford to turn the heat on. if we were all one big union, curriculum could be restructured in more new, innovative, creative ways without worrying about the effect that an influx of non-tenure track workers would have on quality.

When I was Chair of the Faculty Senate I would get invited to various functions when the Trustees were in town. Most of these guys (& a few gals) have had technical educations, but invariably one or two would tell me, after finding out that I was an "English Prof" that what I taught was the baseline, the most important subject at the university. I remember one CEO in particular who told me, "I'm going to have to retrain them on the technical stuff anyway--what I want is people who can read & write." Now, there are various levels of literacy, of course, but I think he meant both basic literacy & a broader cultural literacy. Which is to say, an ability to see a situation from various points of view. That's what a Liberal Arts core curriculum ought to provide to even the geekiest geek.

As for the MBA, we offer one. As far as I can tell, it's sort of Dress-for-Success with spreadsheets.

Mean regression, I've been where you are. It is the worst of every possible world. The questions I have been asking have to do with an institution that has tried to do right by non-tenure track faculty. Full timers get benefits & we keep part-timers to a minimum. I recently saw a dean get roundly criticized by a roomful of tenured faculty for over-using part-time faculty instead of creating a regular full-time "visiting" line. It's not like we aren't aware of the problem. The problem I have been trying to raise is this: How do we make ethical decisions within a context of limited resources?

"The problem I have been trying to raise is this: How do we make ethical decisions within a context of limited resources?"

This is a genuine dilemma. On the one hand, as I argued in my previous context, this is a systemic problem, much larger than you and your faculty. It would not be fair to suggest that one liberal arts division at one school is uniquely responsible for solving the problem of adjunctification. On the other hand, of course, this line of argument can too easily slip into a complacent defense of unethical policies (everyone does it, we can't change the world, etc.)

In practical terms, it seems to me that the ethical burden lies in reducing the reliance on part-timers insofar as this is in your power. Perhaps, eg, by pushing for at least one nontenure but full-time teaching position instead of two or three adjunct positions.

1. "Tenure protects academic freedom"

Yes, but only for those with tenure. And prior to tenure, what the eventually-to-be-tenured said, in any num,ber of contexts ranging from lectures, committee meetings, and social occasions, was likely subject to a painstaking ideological scrutiny. In other words, the only ones who get to tenure are the ones who toe'd the line all the way there. And, once tenured, theya re going to justify themselves and their position by affirming the process that got them there.

2. "Academics are the people's experts, who while not without biases, are more credible than most. An informed society while important and necessary, simply do not have the ability to understand all complex issues of the day."

I just like quoting this becasue it makes me giggle.

I loved this post:

1. "Tenure protects academic freedom"

Yes, but only for those with tenure. And prior to tenure, what the eventually-to-be-tenured said, in any num,ber of contexts ranging from lectures, committee meetings, and social occasions, was likely subject to a painstaking ideological scrutiny. In other words, the only ones who get to tenure are the ones who toe'd the line all the way there. And, once tenured, theya re going to justify themselves and their position by affirming the process that got them there.

2. "Academics are the people's experts, who while not without biases, are more credible than most. An informed society while important and necessary, simply do not have the ability to understand all complex issues of the day."

I just like quoting this because it makes me giggle.

As far as I can tell, all tenure does is allow people to suddenly take off on their own tangents without any constraints. I'm afraid that I really don't see the value in that.

Also, other than the MBA types (e.g. the DBAs, the math/science PhDs, etc.) I don't meet or hear of any legitimate "people's experts" in academia whose expertise travels well.

Consider Margaret Mead. She is famous because she was taken for a ride and completely duped by the Somoans. For this she is hailed as an expert (and still does rather pleasant interviews on NPR).

What kind of people's expert is that?

Or the experts on gender identity v. sex and the need to build multiple iterations of restrooms (or to have everyone share the same type). Or to do what movie theaters do now: have family restrooms that everyone can use who doesn't fit into the normal categories.

But seriously, how may people appreciated that the non-parody seriousness of the people in the article was pretty impossible to tell from a frat boy write up for the American Spectator or similar rag?

Sorry language hat: It's not low to note a connection between fundamental writing skills and thinking skills. Read Orwell - clarity of speech is intimately connected to clarity of thought, and the rules don't get suspended for bloggers, particularly bloggers who want to defend their ideas about how to educate people.

As for defenses above of the importance of a humanities background for technical people - sorry, don't buy it. Just because a few Brits I might interact with during a business meeting will have read an essay by Samuel Johnson, there's no need for me to have read one. American business is roaring along powered by marginally literate MBAs...

Regarding comment 22 by Visitor: How exactly are math/science PhDs "MBA types"?

As far as I can tell, non-scientific academics are the ones that people hear about, and thus I would say they are the ones whose expertise travels best. People have heard of Margaret Meade and care about her work (even if much of it was an unfortunate result of a hoax), when they've never heard of Juan Maldacena or Alexandre Grothendieck, and will likely never (for a very long time at least) be affected by their research.

The question: How exactly are math/science PhDs "MBA types"?

The answer: They are seen by the general public as having tangible, real skills and conclusions rather than fanciful opinions detatched from reality and founded in fraud.

True, people care about Margaret Meade, and attempt to live out her fantasies by proscribing them for the young in America, but that doesn't say much for the left in America (as The Atlantic Monthly noted "Dan Quayle Was Right [about one thing, guess it had to happen, a broken clock would have been right twice, so there]."

Great article, I recommend it to anyone who embraces Meade.

Margaret Mead (not Meade) has been dead for many years (she died in 1978), so she must be granting interviews to NPR through some new technology I haven't heard about. Backward time-travel telephones. Man, would I like to have one of those.

IA, agree completely with your sentiments in #20 above.

"As far as I can tell, non-scientific academics are the ones that people hear about, and thus I would say they are the ones whose expertise travels best."

Well krugman(economics related stuff in NYtimes) and feynman(space shuttle investication) are the more famous ones. Krugman won the clark and Feynman won a nobel. There are others who are not as well known to the public.

Say there is some issue about the economy or some policy. It will be nice to have the views of some public policy guys or economic guys who can speak out without fearful of losing their jobs because what they say does not toe the standard industry/goverment line. These people are not well known to the general public, but their knowledge is just as valued.

Another thing about the whole tenure-protects-academic-freedom BS. It was always my basic (anecdotal) understanding that at its inception, tenure was created as an attractive sinecure for the scions of the American aristocracy during the early 20th c., and not as a prophylactic cover for academic freedom.

Chris, one of the things a good liberal arts education might teach would to be leary of off-the-cuff anecdotal understandings. You may be right, but how would one know? And regardless of how tenure began, it has protected academic freedom.

In fact, I recently got a bit of buzz in the blogosphere for going after a comment-spammer. He attempted to intimidate me by contacting the president of my university & members of the Trustees. He was wasting his effort. I have tenure. (I wasn't worried about the prez, but the Trustees might have been worried I was bringing disrepute to the school.)

One of the reasons I don't fill-in the email address field here is that I do not want to come out and say where I teach. Why? Because the potential repurcussions could be dramatic, to say the least. So, while your tenure is protecting you, and others like you -- i.e. the Tenured -- it does nothing for me, or us, the contingent and untenured.

Unless the tenured use their protection for some social and political good, I have no support for the institution of tenure. And using tenure-protected free-speech to argue for racial and gender equality is hardly taking a risk at this point, don't you agree? How about some tenured stand up and start screaming bloody murder at a faculty senate meeting about the continued use and abuse of contingent labor? Do this, and maybe I'd have an iota of support.

Of course, this isn't going to happen because most of the tenured class (and it is a class after all) are spineless, self-serving, smug primadonnas more concerned with building the retirement account and being able to afford fine cheese than with the withering death of their own professions.

I think the point needs to be streed that if only 35% in academe today are tenured, and close to 65% are contingent, then 35% have "free speech" and 65% are screwed. And, of the 35% who have free speech, most aren't really using it very effectively -- imho.

It's not low to note a connection between fundamental writing skills and thinking skills.

No, but it's low to point at misspellings/typos in blog comments. Nice try, though.

"How about some tenured stand up and start screaming bloody murder at a faculty senate meeting about the continued use and abuse of contingent labor? Do this, and maybe I'd have an iota of support." [Chris, #31 above]

I recently saw a dean get roundly criticized by a roomful of tenured faculty for over-using part-time faculty instead of creating a regular full-time "visiting" line. [Me, #19 above]

Chris, your one-dimensional portrait of the tenured class is as fraudulent as some tenured faculty's assumption that part-timers are simply academic losers who couldn't get a "real job."

"if only 35% in academe today are tenured, and close to 65% are contingent" Chris [post #31]

Where do you get your stats from? Is it an educated guess or just some wild number for dramatic effect?

Its seems to me that you view tenured academics ONLY role is to make life better for other junior academics. What about research or teaching ? Are faculty who fight for better benefits more important that the quality of research they produce or the knds of students they churn out?

If only Chris were throwing out wild numbers for dramatic effect! From the AAUP's statement on Contingent Appointments and the Academic Profession:

Ten years ago, the Association reported that non-tenure-track appointments accounted for about 58 percent of all faculty positions in American higher education. As of 1998, such appointments still accounted for nearly three out of five faculty positions, in all types of institutions. In community colleges, more than three out of five positions are part-time non-tenure-track positions, and 35 percent of all full-time positions are off the tenure track. Non-tenure-track appointments make up an even larger proportion of new appointments. Through the 1990s, in all types of institutions, three out of four new faculty members were appointed to non-tenure-track positions.

The number of full-time non-tenure-track appointments is growing even faster than the number of part-time non-tenure-track appointments. Full-time appointments off the tenure track were almost unknown a generation ago; in 1969, they amounted to 3.3 percent of all full-time faculty positions. But between 1992 and 1998, the number of full-time non-tenure-track faculty increased by 22.7 percent, from 128,371 to 157,470. During that same period, the number of part-time non-tenure-track faculty increased by only 9.4 percent, from 360,087 to 393,971, and the number of full-time tenure-line faculty increased by less than 1 percent. By 1998, full-time non-tenure-track faculty comprised 28.1 percent of all full-time faculty and 16 percent of all faculty. Part-time non-tenure-track faculty comprised 95 percent of all part-time faculty, and 40 percent of all faculty.

These figures are well-documented (please see original statement for footnotes). They indicate that the bulk of college teaching is now done by what the authors of this statement call "an untenured majority."

Obviously yelling and blaming won't get us anywhere. But I have to say that I completely understand Chris' frustration. As reader J.V.C. put it a while ago, "the field does not know itself." The casualization of academic labor is happening before our very eyes, yet it is still difficult to convince some tenured faculty either that it is actually happening (it's temporary, the job market has to pick up), or that it actually matters.

"Where do you get your stats from? Is it an educated guess or just some wild number dramatic effect?"

See above. I was just about to quote IA's post but I see she beat me to it.

"Its seems to me that you view tenured academics ONLY role is to make life better for other junior academics."

No, but then I can't see that their role is to make it worsed either, and that tends to be the effect of their self-absorbed non-action.

"What about research or teaching ? Are faculty who fight for better benefits more important that the quality of research they produce or the kinds of students they churn out?"

I really don't think you want to be pinning your hopes to the "kinds of students they churn out," but perhaps that issue belongs on a different thread.

So, to the meat of your remark, I have this to say: fully knowing I will be widely flamed for this, or more likely just roundly ignored, there are times when I feel that the research done in the humanities is somewhat akin to playing Mozart at Auschwitz.

Needless to say, few if any are really listening ...

"Chris, your one-dimensional portrait of the tenured class is as fraudulent as some tenured faculty's assumption that part-timers are simply academic losers who couldn't get a "real job.""

If and when I encounter some tenured faculty who pay more than mere lip service to the issue --'yes, it's just terrible', usually accompanied by a faux pained expression, the kind that one adopts when they hear that so-and-so who they never really knew just died -- then I will happily abandon my "one-dimensional portrait."

"Without tenure, it will be almost impossible to do core research, the kind of research that does not produce results even in our generation, but are just as important."

It's already impossible. NIH expects to see progress every 3 years, or your grant is history.

#34: Connect to the following link:

http://chronicle.com/jobs/2000/12/2000120104c.htm