Often times, unfair stereotypes about the homeless lead some to believe that they are lazy and their situation could be improved simply by obtaining employment. This perspective doesn’t take into account the many reasons why someone might be homeless in the first place—including those people who work but don’t actually make enough to afford stable housing. In the case of adjunct professors, not only are many of them making poverty wages, some of them are turning to desperate means to make ends meet.
Sex work is one of the more unusual ways that adjuncts have avoided living in poverty, and perhaps even homelessness. A quarter of part-time college academics (many of whom are adjuncts, though it’s not uncommon for adjuncts to work 40 hours a week or more) are said to be enrolled in public assistance programs such as Medicaid.
They resort to food banks and Goodwill, and there is even an adjuncts’ cookbook that shows how to turn items like beef scraps, chicken bones and orange peel into meals. And then there are those who are either on the streets or teetering on the edge of losing stable housing.
The Guardian interviewed several academics who are already or are close to becoming homeless. One of them turned to sex work so that she could make enough money to save her from eviction. These are people who have earned advanced degrees and are teaching courses at institutions but do not have full time, tenure-track positions. Without full-time employment at one institution which comes with benefits and a steady paycheck, they are forced to string together multiple course loads at different schools which doesn’t pay well. In fact, the average salary for adjunct professors is $22,041 annually compared to $47,500 for full-time faculty. Ironically, adjuncts are often teaching more courses in a term than full-time faculty—sometimes teaching as many as six in a semester.
Adjuncting has grown as funding for public universities has fallen by more than a quarter between 1990 and 2009. Private institutions also recognize the allure of part-time professors: generally they are cheaper than full-time staff, don’t receive benefits or support for their personal research, and their hours can be carefully limited so they do not teach enough to qualify for health insurance.
This is why adjuncts have been called “the fast-food workers of the academic world”: among labor experts adjuncting is defined as “precarious employment”, a growing category that includes temping and sharing-economy gigs such as driving for Uber. An American Sociological Association taskforce focusing on precarious academic jobs, meanwhile, has suggested that “faculty employment is no longer a stable middle-class career”.
This is an egregious example of the exploitation of workers in this country. Universities think nothing of paying loads of money for athletic programs and big name coaches. University presidents can earn salaries into the millions. Meanwhile, the folks actually doing the teaching at these schools are living in poverty. Another disturbing trend is that nearly all of the people that came forward for this story and others like it are women. This not to say that it’s an issue that only impacts women—it doesn’t. But there is something important about understanding how women and their families are made vulnerable in a particular way by this low-wage work. This is work that our society needs. Now more than ever with the lack of critical thinking in our country, education is vital to growth, knowledge and fostering equality.
Ellen Tara James-Penney [who teaches English composition and critical thinking at San Jose State University], 54, has struggled with homelessness since 2007, when she began studying for her bachelor’s degree. Jim, 64, used to be a trucker but cannot work owing to a herniated disk. Ellen made $28,000 last year, a chunk of which goes to debt repayments. The remainder is not enough for afford Silicon Valley rent.
[They live out of their car and she grades papers at night using a headlamp].
At night, instead of a toilet they must use cups or plastic bags and baby wipes. To get clean, they find restrooms and “we have what we call the sink-shower”, James-Penney said. The couple keep their belongings in the back of the car and a roof container. All the while they deal with the consequences of aging – James-Penney has osteoporosis – in a space too small to even stand up.
It might be easy for someone to say that these educators should find other viable employment. But that’s not necessarily a solution. If you think about it, what they are making is on average with minimum wage. So this goes to show that people are struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage. It also proves that we don’t truly value education in this country. People who spend years becoming experts in a given subject area and then who are willing to teach young people should be paid well—at least enough to be able to afford to eat regularly, have a place to sleep and not be forced into sex work to make ends meet. We have plenty of money in America to do that. We just have to be willing to pay for it.