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Tonight I want to sound off about two issues that I think are f$%cking problems. The first is the increasing use adjunct labor in higher education, and the second is
Gov. Mike Pence's decision to sign the so-called "religious freedom restoration act" on Thursday.
Please follow me below the colonial cheeze doodle.
Those of you who have sons and daughters in college know just how expensive college has become. The Washington Post reported that NYU will cost $71,000 US dollars next year, when tuition, room and board, transportation, and other expenses are included. And NYU is not even the most expensive college in the country. While NYU is an expensive private university located in a pricey urban area, state colleges and universities are also raising their rates. The in-state tuition for our state university, Rutgers, is almost $14,000 for 2014-15, and that does not include room, board, books, and transportation.
Despite the high price of a college education, an increasing number of college course are taught by adjunct and contingent faculty members.
Overall, non-tenure- track faculty, often known as adjunct or contingent faculty, now account for three-quarters of the instructional faculty at non-profit colleges and universities across the country.
~source
Who are these part-time and contract workers?
Adjuncts are generally hired on semester-to-semester contracts, given no health insurance or retirement benefits, no office, no professional development, and few university resources. Compensation per course—including not just classroom hours but grading, reading, responding to student e-mails, and office hours—varies, but the median pay, according to a recent report, is twenty-seven hundred dollars. Many adjuncts teach at multiple universities, commuting between two or three schools in order to make ends meet, and are often unable to pursue their own academic or artistic work because of their schedules. In the past four decades, tenured and tenure-track positions have plummeted and adjunct instructor jobs have soared, second only in growth to administrators.
~source
Unlike the adjuncts, I am one of the lucky professors. I have a full-time tenured position. Yes, I receive a good salary, and benefits like health care and a 403b plan. I also receive a lot of very basic services that make me a better teacher and researcher. For starters, I have an office. This gives me a place to meet students and to store all my teaching materials. Since I work in the science side of archaeology, I also have a lab and a work-room. This means that I can do my own research, and I can also teach hand-on lab courses and provide resources and space for students and colleagues who want to work in my lab. I don't have to spend my day commuting from one job to another, and I have a small research fund that allows me to attend professional meetings and conferences. In short, I am treated like a professional. It breaks my heart to see college teaching turned into another McJob. Most adjuncts are very hard working, but they simply do not have the time, the space, and the resources to do their jobs properly. Higher education ought to be about education. Maybe colleges should spend a bit less on college coaches and holiday homes for high-level administrators and invest a bit more into what actually goes on in the lab and the classroom. At $70k a year, students deserve full-time faculty.
My other FP is the stupid right to discriminate law that was passed and signed in Indiana this week. I am old enough to remember the 50s and segregated lunch counters. Those of us who support equality and fairness should refuse to spend our money in Indiana. I think that the Final Four basketball games should be played somewhere else. Back in the 19th century, lots of folks used the Bible to justify slavery. We live in the 21st century, and there is no excuse for discrimination.
Oh, and get off my lawn.