The Spread of Adjunctivitis*

she writes, tea.
Sep 1, 2018 · 5 min read

*Belongs to a series of original essays.

Ask yourself: Would you agree to a job if you were paid less than three thousand dollars with few to zero benefits? What if you knew the job market was rough? Would you still disagree if you knew this was the only source of income seen in months?

PBS short film, Why Adjuncts Are Struggling To Make Ends Meet, focus’ in on the lives of people who work under these conditions. These “people” are actually educators with degrees, they’re called part-time adjunct professors.

On October 11, 2017, faculty members of elite universities across the state of Massachusetts staged a walkout in support of the Faculty First movement. United with them stood other university faculty members, students, and allies. The problem they’re protesting? They insist adjuncts are overworked and underpaid, no benefits attached. While prosperous universities like Duke pay adjuncts on average seven thousand dollars per course, other schools, many understaffed and underfunded find quicks means of obtaining new and cheap educators.

As a result, temporary workers who make up half of university faculties are hired part-time and sometimes forced to live at poverty level due to insufficient pay. This phenomenon of part-time employees temporarily being hired by universities, instead of full-time contracted and benefited professors is widely called “Adjunctivitis.”

In the 1970s, about 70 percent of university faculty were on the teacher tenure which works as a permanent job contract. Now, half of university faculty are part-time adjuncts. It was initially introduced in community colleges, but then quickly spread to four-year institutions in both public and the private spectrum. So what is this saying about university values? In a CBS article, “Are Teachers in the U.S. Underpaid? Depends Who You Ask,” author Jonathan Berr exhibits the pay discrimination of educators across the globe. His findings suggest that educators in the United States are paid significantly less than other educators around the world. Although this is no surprise, Berr highlights and compares the benefits and differences of U.S teachers versus those in the rest of the world, with statistics from labor unions and bureaus such as the National Center of Education Statistics and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Although it is true that U.S. educators receive more benefits than their global counterparts, the difference in pay wage exceeds the benefits that are granted. Educators here are overburdened trying to make up for the lack of pay with several jobs. But if overworked teachers are less efficient, why would universities hire more adjuncts instead of full-time employees?

Flexibility plays a big part in the excessive hiring. Colleges are always looking to diversify and expand. The attractiveness of being able to hire a field specialist for a small sum of money is high for schools, which are still businesses at the end of the day. They want a variety of professor abilities and courses for their prospective students, especially if it’s affordable and just enough to keep the cost of tuition stable.

​​Unions like Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have played a integral part in this discourse. They provide awareness in hopes of informing those about their union and what they stand for. A specific movement, branched off from the SEIU called “Faculty Forward” fights for educators rights. Their main causes are to improve wages, receive time off, medical benefits, professional development and providing of access to additional campus resources. This is only little compared to the additional amount of roadblocks adjuncts face. Many have found home to two to three different universities in their area — working three part-time adjunct jobs including the excess of courses taught at each one. According to PBS author Joseph Fruscione, a 15-year adjunct veteran, also a union activist himself. He specifies problems such as: lack of office space, lack of job security and academic freedom, and as mentioned before, having to teach at multiple schools because of these unlivable wages. Many adjuncts believe they are being exploited because as tuition rises each year, the living wages of adjuncts remains stagnant. It is assumed that universities are misusing tuition funds by prioritizing campus reconstruction and unnecessary raises, whereas institutions could be using tuition funds to improve the wages of professors. PBS revealed that from 1970 to 2008 adjunct salary has went down 49 percent whereas college presidents salary has gone up 35 percent. Because of cheap pay, this resulted in an increase of adjunct employees at schools such as Tufts, Georgetown University, American University, etcetera. This unfair prioritization of university expenses and agendas lead to a growing trend of unionizing efforts made by faculty members across the country. They are joining people like Joseph Fruscione’s, along with many other professors, to petition the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.

In one particular instance, efforts for getting a pay raise through protesting lead to the indirect termination of a faculty member at one university. But this one instance isn’t stopping the rest of the country’s educators from fighting their cause. Massachusetts schools such as Bently, BU, Brandeis, Lesley, Northeastern, Tufts, etc., are united with SEIU’s Boston chapter, the SEIU Local 509, as additional resource and help to fight their fair pay cases. Their belief is that tuition should be used to pay employees, not unnecessary school changes hence the “Faculty First” name.

Author George Leef has authored several articles in numerous established publications including Forbes, where he is a regular contributor. In his article, “If Adjuncts Are Treated Unfairly, Is There A Solution?” Leef dissects the “Faculty First” movement and explores the means of resolution to this issue of underpaid adjunct faculty. Through the examination of universities around the country like Duke University, Northeastern, it’s suggested that even the most affluent schools struggle to tackle this issue. Leef even play devil’s advocate and question the consequences of raising pay for adjunct positions. He states that there’s a possibility for something called “job gentrification” where overly-qualified people apply to jobs they would otherwise overlook, but instead take the spot of someone who is fit for the position, leaving adjuncts even more out of loop. If this prediction is correct then what is the right solution? Who has the final say in this discourse?

Written by

original writing + portfolio platform by taylor marie wade. writer + content creator @ the university of massachusetts — dartmouth. resides in cambridge, ma.

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