Adjuncts are "mad as hell and they're not going to take this anymore!"

Just like Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in Network. the highly skilled and educated "working poor" that comprise 70% of all teachers in higher ed. have had enough and they're not going to take it anymore.  They no longer want to be treated worse than "part-time Walmart employees" by so-called institutions of higher learning according to this essay from Inside Higher Ed.  The author, a contingent faculty member in Ohio and president of the Board of Directors of the New Faculty Majority, explains that the poor conditions adjuncts are subjected to has reached a critical mass leading to the formation of advocacy groups like the Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor and the New Faculty Majority which are fighting for basic employments rights on behalf of these dedicated teachers.  As the author tells it:

When I became an adjunct four years ago, it didn’t take me long to realize just how bad it can be, even though I had spent years, as a grad student and working in higher ed associations, largely ignorant of the daily reality of contingent faculty working conditions. The tenured professor who hired me apologized for having to offer such low wages, and my colleagues tried to orient me to the program and the campus in the middle of their own hectic schedules, since the university has no orientation program for adjunct faculty.

. . . .

When I faced the prospect of having to support my family on my adjunct’s salary alone ($20K over a year to teach the same number of courses as most full-time faculty members, and not even that when I don’t get summer work). When a colleague who -- like me -- was denied unemployment insurance over the summer because she supposedly has “reasonable assurance of employment” without a contract, at the same time couldn’t get a loan because she couldn’t show adequate proof of employment without a contract. When I heard about an actual single-parent adjunct who had to sell her plasma to buy groceries. When a friend who has taught “part time” for decades at one institution was turned down for a “full time” position at twice the salary plus benefits — to teach exactly the same courses and do all of the extra work that she had always done voluntarily — at that same institution.

You can read the full column here and learn more about the New Faculty Majority here.

Please support the adjuncts at your institution.

(jbl)