Sorry for the click-bate-y title, but this is kind of really important. While tuition is going up, the people actually doing the teaching are being severally underpaid. What follows are some particularly upsetting excepts:
Over three quarters of college professors are adjunct. Legally, adjunct positions are part-time, at-will employment. Universities pay adjunct professors by the course, anywhere between $1,000 to $5,000. So if a professor teaches three courses in both the fall and spring semesters at a rate of $3000 per course, they’ll make $18,000 dollars. The average full-time barista makes the same yearly wage. However, a full-time adjunct works more than 40 hours a week. They’re not paid for most of those hours.
Some professors in his situation became homeless. Oliver was “fortunate” enough to only require food stamps, a fact of life for many adjuncts.
“It’s completely insane,” he said. “And this isn’t happening just to me. More and more people are doing it.”
“We have food stamps,” said the anonymous adjunct from Indiana. “We wouldn’t be able to survive without them.”
“Many professors are on food stamps and they go to food donation centers. They donate plasma. And that’s a pretty regular occurrence,” Merklein told Salon.
“As soon as they hear about you organizing, they go on the defensive,” Merklein said. “For instance, at my community college, I am being intimidated constantly and threatened in various ways, hypothetically usually. They don’t like to say something that’s an outright direct threat. … They get really freaked out when they see pamphlets around the adjunct faculty office and everyone’s wearing buttons regardless of what professional organization or union it is. They will then go on the offensive. They will usually contact their attorney who is there to protect the school as a business and to act in an anti-labor capacity.”
The most telling phrase in Merklein’s words are “the school as a business.” Colleges across the country have transitioned from bastions of intellectual enlightenment to resort hotels prizing amenities above academics. Case in point: The ludicrously extravagant gyms in America’s larger universities are home to rock climbing walls, corkscrew tracks, rooftop gardens, and a lazy river. Schools have billions to invest in housing and other on-campus projects. Schools have millions (or in some cases “mere” hundreds of thousands) to pay administrators. Yet schools can’t find the money to hire more full-time professors. If one follows the money, it’s clear that colleges view education as tertiary. The rigor of a university’s courses doesn’t attract the awe of doe-eyed high school seniors. Lavish dorms and other luxuries do.
Anyone going to college now, consider organizing for your faculty. They are at risk of being fired for it, you are not. The university might be more willing to listen to students demanding the education they are paying for. Make noise for the people making your degree possible.
If you are touring colleges, ask what percentage of the faculty are adjucts. Ask what they are paid.
If you are not in a position to do these things, there are two petitions in the linked article to sign.
and honestly if you can read about shit like this and still be against unions I don’t know what to tell you.
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
gamechangershow
