Comments on: Are you an adjunct instructor or lecturer? Plus memories. . .

By: Profane

Profane — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:31:45 +0000

Here was my path:

Nine months of NADA between finishing and the first job. . .

A one-semester job as a sabbatical replacement, followed by. . .

A three-year non-tenure track Assistant Professor post, followed by. . .

Three years on one-year lecturer contracts at the same University, followed by. . .

My current tenure track job.

I am guessing this experience over the last decade or so was common. Beyond that fact that I DID eventually land a tenure-track job, given that I am in one of the toughest fields to get hired.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:02:49 +0000

I filled out mine on the first go-round a few weeks ago, Historiann. It’s good to try to raise awareness of these issues, although (as you know), my own belief is that tenured and tenure-track folk absolutely need to make common cause with adjuncts, part-timers, and (especially) full-time non-tenure-track staff.

For you tenure-track folks out there–acknowledge and admit that these other workers are being exploited (worked harder, paid less, etc) in order to maintain the privileges of the tenure-based system, and recognize that tenure-track folks can actively fight the two-tiered faculty system, actively choose to exploit the lower tier, or (as they usually do in my experience) pretend to the blissful ignorance of the privileged class and do nothing.

But if you feel lucky to have a tenure-track job, then you can’t really pretend that those on the adjunct track deserve their second-tier fates.

By: Digger

Digger — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:13:24 +0000

Thanks for the link to the Coalition on Academic Workforce survey. I filled it out, and shared it with my non-TT/contingent/adjunct/reg.comp (?) colleagues and friends.

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 17:50:42 +0000

I also did a bit of the “visiting around” kind of gigwork that you describe, Historiann. And there’s a huge amount of difference between being treated like a “visitor,” and being viewed as–to use one of the more goofball academic pieces of “org.speak” I’ve heard– “reg. comp.” (Registration complement: persons hired when the registrar-borg knows how many fannies he’s flying to Florida next Friday, or next semester, and authorizes the DCEO (chair) to assemble the “lines” (the actual faculty permanently on staff) to vote somebody in off of the adjunct list. Where “complement” is manager-speak for “total number of individual persons on the payroll of a given unit”). Why go through all that definitional crapola when you can just say “reg. comp.” and everyone knows you mean temporaries?

One of the creepier diagnostic signs of the creeping corruption of the academic trades is seeing actual scholars reflexively using bureaucratic terminologies born in what a student of mine once called the “wingtip-wing of the academy.” Do we really want to be saying things like “if we do this or that, the provost will hopefully give us another line…” (when everything coming from over there is a “line” anyway?)