The Plight of the Adjunct and the Goal of Education

Last updated on: September 9, 2015 at 1:50 pm by David Russell Mosley

The Plight of the Adjunct and the Goal of Education 2015-09-09T13:50:58-04:00 David Russell Mosley

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David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time

9 September 2015

The Edge of Elfland

Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

Today I finally read an article posted on 1 September entitled “The Social Injustice Done to Adjunct Faculty: A Call to Arms.” In the article Randall Smith, who is the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, argues that the adjuncts are being severely mistreated. Smith notes that the origins of the adjunct professor are to be found in honored members of a community coming in to teach one-off classes for which they are particularly qualified to teach: for instance a business executive teaching a class on business management or a long-time clergyman teaching a class on pastoral care. These people were paid an honorarium because the work they’ve done requires some kind of remuneration but because they already work full-time jobs, typically with benefits, elsewhere they don’t need to be paid their normal salary nor be offered benefits like the other members of the faculty. This is no longer the case, at least not exclusively. Now, most adjuncts are people like me, qualified, or nearly so, academics who have attained our terminal degrees but haven’t been able to find full-time academic work.

You should read the whole article and the call to arms at the end, for me it’s quite moving. After all, I have such a little voice in these conversations. I have no one to represent me, to speak for me and others like me to the universities at which we teach. Now, I should say that things aren’t so bad for me as they are for others. For starters, at the university for which I currently teach one class online their tuition rate is much lower and one student spends less per credit hour than I make, unlike the examples in the article. Also, when I teach the class again this Spring, I’ll make a bit more since I have my PhD now (or will have it more firmly after I finish my corrections for next month). That said, even in these slightly better circumstances, my class, which had 11 students made the university $9570 and only cost them $1800 for my pay (I’m sure it cost them more than that for the web developers with whom I worked and fees related to that; they also paid me separately, and rather well, for developing the course, but that’s a one time fee, I won’t be making it again in the Spring since I’m teaching the same course). Even if you add the $3000 they paid me for writing and recording the lectures and otherwise developing the class, they still gained $4770 and can now use this class with other online instructors, paying them either $1800 or $2100 depending on whether or not they have a PhD, for as long the university and the digital recordings exist. I don’t say this to denigrate the people for whom I work. I’m glad for the opportunity and mostly had a good time teaching the class. Nevertheless, there’s a systemic problem here when people like myself, and many of my former colleagues from my PhD program, have to take these little one off jobs that don’t pay us enough to support ourselves let alone the families that so many of us have. (Another person in a similar boat to mine is Artur Rosman who wrote on a similar issue on Labor Day: “The Anxiety of the Freshly Unemployed Man on Labor Day“).

So, things are hard, not just for me, not even primarily for me. I’ve been very fortunate in receiving aid of various kinds from friends and especially family. I don’t want to be a downer, to be that guy who just sits around complaining about how bad things are for me or people like me. It’s not typically in my nature. But I feel like we need to draw our attention to this issue and others like it. We need to start thinking about the changes that need to be made on a societal level. There have to be solutions to these problems. Perhaps a kind of guild system as Smith suggests is one way of avoiding poverty-stricken academics (for those who have read the work of John Milbank, you’ll know that this would appeal to someone like him). Perhaps its time for parents and students to ask more out of their universities, but not more sports centers or hotels, or greater focus on how x degree is going to get me jobs y or z, but instead a better focus on the actual teaching and forming of the students.

To end on a lighter note, I want to share part of another article I read today, “7.5 Tips to Survive and Thrive in (a Jesuit) College.” I’m a big fan of Jesuit schools, at least on the philosophical level, because I agree with their notions concerning holistic education. In nearly every cover letter I send out I write some version of this sentence, “I am dedicated to the notion that education, particularly theological, but all education, is intended to help form human beings, to prepare them for the Beatific Vision and to participate in the transformation of this world.” The end of education isn’t to get a job, but to be formed as a human being. So let me share with you this quotation from Tim O’Brien who definitely seems to agree with me:

Who you are today, and who you become in these four years, matters a great deal to us as Jesuits. Because we believe that who you are and who you become matters for this world of ours. Because we believe that who you are and who you become matters greatly to God.

Yours,

David

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