Are Adjuncts Exploited? Some Grounds for Skepticism

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Are Adjuncts Exploited? Some Grounds for Skepticism

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Sociologist
fb79

An advanced AP making $70k teaching 3/3 at the normal 40/40/20% position is earning about $4500 per course taught. Paying a less qualified adjunct more than that is simply not realistic.
An adjunct making $4k/course would earn $32k/year teaching a 4/4, with no research or service expectations, and summer and holiday breaks off. Not bad for a part time position for people who are probably less qualified than the regular TT faculty.
The fix isn't too pay adjuncts more, it's to hire more TT or lecturers and make the current adjuncts more likely to be totally unemployed. Ajuncting should be used for practitioners and retirees with real world experience, not MAs, ABDs, and PhDs who can't land a full time gig.

of course the point is to make universities open up more TT lines or even lecturer positions. I don't see a way of doing that unless we can make adjuncting too expensive.

keep in mind that your advanced AP probably has input on what classes they teach, when they teach them, etc. The AP might also have a TA. The AP also has a regular salary, as opposed to a semester by semester scramble for classes.

I'll never understand the anti-adjunct sentiment on here. More full time jobs is better for all of us, even if you think that the adjuncts in your department are losers.

3 years ago # QUOTE 4 GOOD 4 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
8229

There seems to be some group of like 3-4 posters here who are pushing this "there aren't many adjuncts and they're not exploited" schtick.

3 years ago # QUOTE 5 GOOD 5 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

The use of the term "loser" by sociologists (no less) in relation to a person's life outcome never fails to send a shiver down my spine. Please don't use that term. It carries an awful ideological baggage, suggesting a vision of society in which people's outcomes are entirely a function of some individual essence (that which separates out the winners and losers), rather than a result of the operations of myriad social forces. You are presumably a sociologist. So *think* like a sociologist. Drop the term "loser."

An advanced AP making $70k teaching 3/3 at the normal 40/40/20% position is earning about $4500 per course taught. Paying a less qualified adjunct more than that is simply not realistic.
An adjunct making $4k/course would earn $32k/year teaching a 4/4, with no research or service expectations, and summer and holiday breaks off. Not bad for a part time position for people who are probably less qualified than the regular TT faculty.
The fix isn't too pay adjuncts more, it's to hire more TT or lecturers and make the current adjuncts more likely to be totally unemployed. Ajuncting should be used for practitioners and retirees with real world experience, not MAs, ABDs, and PhDs who can't land a full time gig.
of course the point is to make universities open up more TT lines or even lecturer positions. I don't see a way of doing that unless we can make adjuncting too expensive.
keep in mind that your advanced AP probably has input on what classes they teach, when they teach them, etc. The AP might also have a TA. The AP also has a regular salary, as opposed to a semester by semester scramble for classes.
I'll never understand the anti-adjunct sentiment on here. More full time jobs is better for all of us, even if you think that the adjuncts in your department are losers.

3 years ago # QUOTE 3 GOOD 8 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
a7f5

The use of the term "loser" by sociologists (no less) in relation to a person's life outcome never fails to send a shiver down my spine. Please don't use that term. It carries an awful ideological baggage, suggesting a vision of society in which people's outcomes are entirely a function of some individual essence (that which separates out the winners and losers), rather than a result of the operations of myriad social forces. You are presumably a sociologist. So *think* like a sociologist. Drop the term "loser."
This pansy sounds like a real loser.

3 years ago # QUOTE 12 GOOD 8 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
06a8

In fact the real losers are the future adjuncts telling us to have no sympathy for adjuncts.

3 years ago # QUOTE 5 GOOD 4 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

It's a serious point. The whole grain of sociological theory and research is that individual outcomes are to a very large extent determined by social forces. Yet we consistently ignore this when talking about individual outcomes in our social field. Why ignore the general findings of our discipline when interpreting the more immediate social and institutional world we live within? It's inconsistent. Sounds like you might be in the wrong discipline, friend. Try economics perhaps?

The use of the term "loser" by sociologists (no less) in relation to a person's life outcome never fails to send a shiver down my spine. Please don't use that term. It carries an awful ideological baggage, suggesting a vision of society in which people's outcomes are entirely a function of some individual essence (that which separates out the winners and losers), rather than a result of the operations of myriad social forces. You are presumably a sociologist. So *think* like a sociologist. Drop the term "loser."
This pansy sounds like a real loser.

3 years ago # QUOTE 4 GOOD 6 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
7fc0

This is a tough issue. On the one hand I believe everyone should have a job they find meaningful. On the other, I don't think people are entitled to a job just because they earned a degree. Clearly most of us aren't pleased with the current situation with adjuncts. I wonder though if the solution is to fight for better adjunct jobs or to encourage people to stop accepting them altogether. Perhaps the answer is to do both. I don't know. It frustrates me though that we are talking about people with lots of skills as if they are some exploited underclass. They could do lots of jobs. They are choosing to stay in academia.

3 years ago # QUOTE 7 GOOD 2 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
6fd2

I Made the loser comment. I am an adjunct myself and def don't think we are losers.

But a lot of ppl who post on sjmr are convinced that adjuncts barely exist, or that we are losers.

My point is that even if that's what you believe its in your interests to oppose adjunctification. More full time tt or even lecturer jobs are better for all of us.

3 years ago # QUOTE 4 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
6fd2

I Made the loser comment. I am an adjunct myself and def don't think we are losers.

But a lot of ppl who post on sjmr are convinced that adjuncts barely exist, or that we are losers.

My point is that even if that's what you believe its in your interests to oppose adjunctification. More full time tt or even lecturer jobs are better for all of us.

3 years ago # QUOTE 0 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

The adjunct situation is created by universities training many more PhDs than there are tt positions down the line. The result is a reserve army of academic labor with a very particular profile. PhDs usually consider academic work to be a vocation-- it's not just a job. Therefore many are willing to put up with very low pay and bad conditions in order to continue to stay somewhat connected to the academic world. This in turn presents universities with a "moral hazard." It is tempting for universities to use the availability of a large population of willing and able academic workers to drive down the cost of teaching (releasing money to spend elsewhere).
So the question is: should universities set adjunct pay and conditions according to market rates (rock bottom, because of the nature of the labor force in question), or should they create a stable non-tenure stream with benefits, decent pay, and a modicum of job security? At the moment some universities are doing the latter, while others are doing the former.

3 years ago # QUOTE 3 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
488b

deploy more unions to this problem!

3 years ago # QUOTE 2 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
5250

Some good amount of soc101 points, you must be an adjunct.

It's a serious point. The whole grain of sociological theory and research is that individual outcomes are to a very large extent determined by social forces. Yet we consistently ignore this when talking about individual outcomes in our social field. Why ignore the general findings of our discipline when interpreting the more immediate social and institutional world we live within? It's inconsistent. Sounds like you might be in the wrong discipline, friend. Try economics perhaps?
The use of the term "loser" by sociologists (no less) in relation to a person's life outcome never fails to send a shiver down my spine. Please don't use that term. It carries an awful ideological baggage, suggesting a vision of society in which people's outcomes are entirely a function of some individual essence (that which separates out the winners and losers), rather than a result of the operations of myriad social forces. You are presumably a sociologist. So *think* like a sociologist. Drop the term "loser."
This pansy sounds like a real loser.

3 years ago # QUOTE 1 GOOD 4 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
6e27

Only by the most ridiculous definition of "exploited". Adjuncts are not poor saps mopping the floor at walmart who are forced to take crap pay because they literally have no other options available to feed their families.

Adjuncts are exploited in the same sense minor league baseball players are: they voluntarily subject themselves to unpleasant working conditions because they are unwilling to read the writing on the wall and face reality. They are narcissists who refuse to accept that academia is not for them and look down on all other forms of employment as beneath their pedigree. A few points.

1.) To the person who said adjuncting is a vocation: well yeah, then that person doesn't care what they are paid. If you believe you are compelled into some career because you love it so much that you are willing to do it over anything else, you can't complain about crappy work conditions. You choose this. NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO THEIR DREAM JOB. You can easily teach high school, go private sector, etc, but just like the failed pro athlete, the adjunct refuses to face reality and let the dream die.

2.) Adjunct positions should not be staffed by PhDs who failed the academic job market. Adjuncts should be positions filled part time by practitioners with real world experience. We do need to open up more TT lines, however, it is highly likely that the people currently filling adjunct positions would not be getting these spots.

3.) Finally, pay is commensurate with the position. There have been countless studies done showing that since adjuncts are only expected to teach, their per course salary is on par with what TT faculty are paid on a per-class basis. Reminder: adjuncts are not paid to do research or perform service. They are paid to teach. Everything else they do beyond teaching is a hobby to them; it does not nor should it be subsidized by the university.

4.) Finally, reduce the number of grad students and close down phd departments at bottom tier schools. This perpetuates the vast oversupply of individuals who will refuse to recognize point 1, and creates a vast supply of willing adjunct slaves, who, like the gambling addict who just lost his house and car, refuses to leave the blackjack table because that big hit is just around the corner (I just know *this* is the year my diss will be published!!)

3 years ago # QUOTE 10 GOOD 5 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
ef34

that question is perhaps interesting question for ethics and philosophy journals but beyond that I don't think it's all that interesting. A lot of it will depending upon your definition of "exploitation" of if you construct a strawman like the article.

1. The article is in an ethics journal.

2. You haven't established that they constructed a "strawman" of exploitation.

So again: are adjuncts exploited?

They certainly claim to be.

3 years ago # QUOTE 0 GOOD 2 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

It's the fact that it's a 101 point (basic, fundamental to the discipline) that makes it so galling that it gets ignored in how we talk about the academic world.

Some good amount of soc101 points, you must be an adjunct.
It's a serious point. The whole grain of sociological theory and research is that individual outcomes are to a very large extent determined by social forces. Yet we consistently ignore this when talking about individual outcomes in our social field. Why ignore the general findings of our discipline when interpreting the more immediate social and institutional world we live within? It's inconsistent. Sounds like you might be in the wrong discipline, friend. Try economics perhaps?
The use of the term "loser" by sociologists (no less) in relation to a person's life outcome never fails to send a shiver down my spine. Please don't use that term. It carries an awful ideological baggage, suggesting a vision of society in which people's outcomes are entirely a function of some individual essence (that which separates out the winners and losers), rather than a result of the operations of myriad social forces. You are presumably a sociologist. So *think* like a sociologist. Drop the term "loser."
This pansy sounds like a real loser.

3 years ago # QUOTE 1 GOOD 2 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

Can you give a link to those studies? The median pay per course for adjuncts is $2700. For a 2/2 load, that's $10,800/year. Most tenure stream contracts stipulate that the salary is 1/3 research, 1/3 teaching, and 1/3 service. So, if adjuncts are getting paid at the same rate for teaching as tt profs, then the median tenure stream salary would be $32,400 (if we assume a 3/3 load for the tenure stream prof, then the formula will be different, as research will be a lower % of salary than with a 2/2 load). But $32,400 is clearly a fraction of the median salary for tenure stream academics.

Only by the most ridiculous definition of "exploited". Adjuncts are not poor saps mopping the floor at walmart who are forced to take crap pay because they literally have no other options available to feed their families.
Adjuncts are exploited in the same sense minor league baseball players are: they voluntarily subject themselves to unpleasant working conditions because they are unwilling to read the writing on the wall and face reality. They are narcissists who refuse to accept that academia is not for them and look down on all other forms of employment as beneath their pedigree. A few points.
1.) To the person who said adjuncting is a vocation: well yeah, then that person doesn't care what they are paid. If you believe you are compelled into some career because you love it so much that you are willing to do it over anything else, you can't complain about crappy work conditions. You choose this. NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO THEIR DREAM JOB. You can easily teach high school, go private sector, etc, but just like the failed pro athlete, the adjunct refuses to face reality and let the dream die.
2.) Adjunct positions should not be staffed by PhDs who failed the academic job market. Adjuncts should be positions filled part time by practitioners with real world experience. We do need to open up more TT lines, however, it is highly likely that the people currently filling adjunct positions would not be getting these spots.
3.) Finally, pay is commensurate with the position. There have been countless studies done showing that since adjuncts are only expected to teach, their per course salary is on par with what TT faculty are paid on a per-class basis. Reminder: adjuncts are not paid to do research or perform service. They are paid to teach. Everything else they do beyond teaching is a hobby to them; it does not nor should it be subsidized by the university.
4.) Finally, reduce the number of grad students and close down phd departments at bottom tier schools. This perpetuates the vast oversupply of individuals who will refuse to recognize point 1, and creates a vast supply of willing adjunct slaves, who, like the gambling addict who just lost his house and car, refuses to leave the blackjack table because that big hit is just around the corner (I just know *this* is the year my diss will be published!!)

3 years ago # QUOTE 1 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
3aca

Just been told that the typical ratio is 40/40/20 for teaching, research, and service. So if teaching is 40% of the salary, then, if tenure stream people were paid at median rates for adjuncting, the median salary for a 2/2 tt job would be $26,000 (10,400 teaching, 10,400 research, and 5200 for service). Pretty clear that adjuncts are paid much less for their teaching than tenure stream people.

One issue that hasn't been raised here is whether having large numbers of adjuncts teaching classes is good for students. Does it further the pedagogical aims of universities to have teaching farmed out to a casualized labor force? I don't know the answer, or of any research that speaks this issue, but it's an important consideration. Intuitively, I would think that employing permanent lecturers, with job security and decent pay, would make for better teaching than using stressed out adjuncts, teaching huge loads, without benefits, and ever scrambling to make the rent.

3 years ago # QUOTE 1 GOOD 2 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
8b5c

Pretty clear that adjuncts are paid much less for their teaching than tenure stream people.

On average, yes.

But on average they (adjuncts) are also less qualified than TT people. A lot of adjuncts are ABDs, who are inherently less qualified than full PhD holders. Considering TT hires likely have, on average, better records of research and expertise, as evidenced by their selection for competitive TT jobs, they probably should be making more than adjuncts anyway.

3 years ago # QUOTE 2 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
9441

This is a tough issue. On the one hand I believe everyone should have a job they find meaningful. On the other, I don't think people are entitled to a job just because they earned a degree. Clearly most of us aren't pleased with the current situation with adjuncts. I wonder though if the solution is to fight for better adjunct jobs or to encourage people to stop accepting them altogether. Perhaps the answer is to do both. I don't know. It frustrates me though that we are talking about people with lots of skills as if they are some exploited underclass. They could do lots of jobs. They are choosing to stay in academia.

There's two problems here: (1) hiring practices of universities and (2) the exploitation of grad students within departments. The first is simple, tenure track faculty need to fight admin for TT lines and do all they can to support efforts at adjunct unionization.

The second issue is harder to address. Grad students are the waste products of the university. PhD programs accept students they know are going to fail to graduate or fail to get a good job. But grad students are hard to resist. They work cheaply at grading and teaching, they fill grad seminars, and stroke egos. Some lower tier PhD programs probably should fold. Mid and high tiers should be more selective.

When I was a PhD student a soc program in one of the SUNY university centers, I was the grad rep to the faculty committee. I got to sit in on the meeting where they decided who to admit. A particularly obnoxious faculty member was chastising them for accepting people but not being able to offer everyone a TA ship. The chair of the dept told her they need a certain number of students to run the faculty program. He asked her if she wanted to stop teaching grad seminars. She said nothing and they moved on. I found this to be a telling moment. This particular faculty member was an ass, a dithering postmodern fool. She tortured her PhD students and seemed to take joy in keeping them from passing comps or defending their diss. It wasn't that her standards were high. It was that they were unclear and seemed to shift with her moods.

Academics overdevelop their intellectual capacities at the expense of their social skills. As a people, we suck. We don't treat each other well. A large part of the adjunct crisis is a reflection of our own selfish failure of a community.

3 years ago # QUOTE 1 GOOD 3 NO GOOD !
Sociologist
9441

This is a tough issue. On the one hand I believe everyone should have a job they find meaningful. On the other, I don't think people are entitled to a job just because they earned a degree. Clearly most of us aren't pleased with the current situation with adjuncts. I wonder though if the solution is to fight for better adjunct jobs or to encourage people to stop accepting them altogether. Perhaps the answer is to do both. I don't know. It frustrates me though that we are talking about people with lots of skills as if they are some exploited underclass. They could do lots of jobs. They are choosing to stay in academia.

There's two problems here: (1) hiring practices of universities and (2) the exploitation of grad students within departments. The first is simple, tenure track faculty need to fight admin for TT lines and do all they can to support efforts at adjunct unionization.

The second issue is harder to address. Grad students are the waste products of the university. PhD programs accept students they know are going to fail to graduate or fail to get a good job. But grad students are hard to resist. They work cheaply at grading and teaching, they fill grad seminars, and stroke egos. Some lower tier PhD programs probably should fold. Mid and high tiers should be more selective.

When I was a PhD student a soc program in one of the SUNY university centers, I was the grad rep to the faculty committee. I got to sit in on the meeting where they decided who to admit. A particularly obnoxious faculty member was chastising them for accepting people but not being able to offer everyone a TA ship. The chair of the dept told her they need a certain number of students to run the faculty program. He asked her if she wanted to stop teaching grad seminars. She said nothing and they moved on. I found this to be a telling moment. This particular faculty member was an ass, a dithering postmodern fool. She tortured her PhD students and seemed to take joy in keeping them from passing comps or defending their diss. It wasn't that her standards were high. It was that they were unclear and seemed to shift with her moods.

Academics overdevelop their intellectual capacities at the expense of their social skills. As a people, we suck. We don't treat each other well. A large part of the adjunct crisis is a reflection of our own selfish failure of a community.

3 years ago # QUOTE 0 GOOD 1 NO GOOD !

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Are Adjuncts Exploited? Some Grounds for Skepticism

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