Look at the fall crop of college catalogs and what do you see:
a bearded professor lecturing to a circle of students under
autumn trees. Or a beaming young woman advised by a kindly
sage in his book-lined office. The captions: "Teaching for
Excellence," or, maybe, "Learning for Life."
That should mean high-quality, individualized education from
experienced, full-time teacher-scholars who are experts in
their fields and dedicated to their students' long-term
interests.
What you will get, in many cases, is something completely
different.
On November 22, the Coalition on the Academic Workforce
released the results of a long-awaited survey that paints a
different picture of higher education in the humanities:
Undergraduate courses are a low priority at many colleges.
Except for history and art history, more than half of all
undergraduate introductory courses are taught by transient,
non-tenure-track faculty members or adjuncts.
Adjuncts often teach four or more courses simultaneously at
multiple institutions; they are hired like day laborers, paid
on a par with fast-food workers, and usually receive no
benefits.
Ivy League colleges are no more likely than small liberal-arts
colleges to use full-time, tenure-track faculty members to
teach undergraduate courses.
Most significantly, only 42 percent of colleges responded to
the survey. Is it unreasonable to suspect that the practices
of the other 58 percent of colleges are even worse?
It should surprise no one that unethical practices and
misrepresentations flourish in secrecy. For the last 30 years
an ever-increasing percentage of colleges have chosen to shift
investment away from undergraduate teaching in ways that do
not register in current institutional rankings or the criteria
for accreditation. In a few weeks, however, the Modern
Language Association will publish specific statistics about
individual English and foreign-language departments that will
allow the public to see -- if only in a few disciplines -- the
extent of unethical labor practices that cheat undergraduates
out of the education for which they are paying so dearly.
Using this departmental information, graduate students,
faculty members, and the general public will be able, for the
first time, to look at a specific institution and judge for
themselves whether that college is misrepresenting its
educational services.
Some critics of these surveys have suggested that the presence
of a high percentage of adjuncts does not necessarily reflect
badly on institutional quality. "There are no quantitative
studies, after all," they say. And, taking advantage of the
inability of adjuncts to openly criticize their own
compromised performance without risking their jobs, they ask,
"Aren't part-time teachers as effective and dedicated, if not
more so, than full-time, tenured faculty members?"
Of course, adjuncts are often more dedicated than regular
professors. They have to be to continue working under existing
conditions. But, for at least two decades, it has been
self-evident to unbiased observers that an increasingly
exploitative reliance on adjuncts severely compromises higher
education.
When teachers come last, so do students.
Here are 10 reasons why:
- Faculty Inaccessibility. Because they have to teach four or
five courses a semester (typically 120 to 150 students) in
order to earn about $20,000 a year (with no benefits),
adjuncts cannot give individualized attention to students.
Often, it is nearly impossible to remember their names.
Moreover, adjunct faculty members are not paid for holding
office hours; it is not in their interest to be accessible.
Tenured faculty members, likewise, are increasingly
unavailable as a direct result of their diminished relative
numbers.
- Inadequate Advising. Many adjuncts have only short-term
relationships with institutions (as well as concurrent
employment at multiple institutions); as a result, they are
not likely to be able to advise students competently about
educational resources at specific colleges. Undergraduates,
particularly freshmen, who need the most experienced advisers,
are often forced to make their own way. All too often,
students look for their college teachers to become advisers
only to learn that these teachers are transient adjuncts who
cannot help them outside the course itself. Typically,
adjuncts are not available to write recommendations (which are
among the most important factors in admission to graduate and
professional schools), and, when they do, these
recommendations carry little weight because they demonstrate
only a short-term knowledge of the student.
- Incoherent Curricula. Adjuncts have limited connections with
the institutions at which they teach, and they cannot be
expected to have a deep knowledge of an individual college's
values nor a clear sense of their personal role in the overall
curriculum. Although they teach most of the introductory
courses, adjuncts are not usually involved in departmental
governance. Indeed, they are often not treated with the
respect associated with academic collegiality. As a result,
many programs are nearly incoherent from a lack of curricular
coordination. Sequential courses, for example, often have an
unclear relationship to each other. Students are sometimes
taught the same material over and over again, and major gaps
in their education are left unfilled.
- Declining Faculty Expertise. Adjuncts are often asked to teach
courses on short notice on subjects in which they have little
prior experience. Compounding the problem, adjuncts often do
not have time to properly prepare lectures, and they are so
overworked that they cannot remain current in their fields of
expertise. Undergraduates often face faculty members who can
offer only the most general guidance on topics that might
otherwise result in valuable, in-depth research and learning.
- Impaired Academic Freedom. Because they have
semester-to-semester contracts, adjuncts can be fired (or,
rather, "not renewed") for making the slightest waves.
Adjuncts cannot safely lobby for curricular reform, or support
unpopular causes, nor can they risk challenging their students
very much. The increasing presence of adjuncts also has a
chilling effect on the tenured faculty, whose relative power
to shape their institutions is diminished by the rising number
of adjuncts.
- Lowered Academic Standards. Because they are so overworked,
adjuncts are less likely to give grading-intensive assignments
such as research essays or even short-answer exams. The
assignments from which students learn the most are weeded out
of the curriculum by necessity -- and self-defense. Adjuncts'
lack of departmental backing sometimes leads them to use more
"objective" methods of grading (e.g., Scantron forms), which
are less likely to be challenged by students than "subjective"
evaluations of written assignments. Teachers have a duty to
maintain standards, but they cannot hold the line when they
lack the support of their departments.
- Grade Inflation. When qualitative grading is necessary (such
as in composition courses), there is a tendency to reduce the
workload by inflating the grades. Because students never
challenge high grades, such grades require less written
justification and follow-up advising. In many cases, "A"
papers have only been skimmed by instructors who are too busy
to make fine distinctions. Very few students fail courses
anymore because an "F" requires more paperwork and trouble
than a "C." Adjuncts soon discover that strict grading results
in student complaints, reduced enrollments, and "nonrenewals"
of their teaching assignments.
- Lowered Value of Degree. Because of all of the above factors,
which have resulted from the increased use of adjuncts, many
once-credible institutions are becoming little better than
diploma mills. Ask the employers of recent graduates. They
will tell you that a college degree from many institutions --
even when it is accompanied by a high G.P.A. -- is a guarantee
of little more than basic literacy. If the use of adjuncts has
contained tuition costs (an arguable position), colleges have
substantially reduced the value of the degree.
- Cynicism. Students are quick to internalize the institutional
contempt for teaching and, by extension, the disregard for the
students. Every course taught by an undersupported adjunct in
an abusive department carries an unintended message: "The
college regards this course as a waste of time, but you still
have to pay for it." How can students respect education when
it is widely known that many Ph.D.'s can barely earn a living
wage as full-time teachers? What kind of moral authority does
a college have when it exploits its workers and "customers" as
ruthlessly as any unregulated corporation?
- Cost to Students and their Families. At a time when advanced
skills are essential for individuals and the larger economy,
the withdrawal of funding from undergraduate teaching has
produced a crisis in higher education that is not limited to
the difficulties faced by adjunct teachers. It's the students,
not the adjuncts, who suffer the most. Not only are they and
their families taking on crippling financial burdens, they are
being denied the education for which they are paying, and they
will, in all likelihood, be denied the opportunities that
would have been theirs if they had received a genuine
education rather than the semblance of one.
Many of these observations are anecdotal. They have to be, for
there have not yet been any statistical studies on the harm
caused by the excessive use of adjuncts. But these points are
based on 14 years of experience in higher education at six
colleges, countless conversations with students, adjuncts, and
tenured faculty members, and the 1,000-plus letters sent to me
on this topic as a columnist on the Career Network over the
last two years.
But don't take my word for it. If you're wondering about a
particular college, go and talk with its students, attend a
few introductory classes, and meet with the teachers,
including the adjuncts. You will, in all probability, discover
a culture that is very different from the one presented in the
promotional literature.
Meanwhile, institutions that have made sacrifices in order to
avoid exploitative labor practices should use the new data to
advertise themselves. What will it mean when a small,
liberal-arts college can demonstrate with hard evidence that
it is serving its undergraduates better than, say, Harvard or
Yale, and for significantly less money?
William Pannapacker is an assistant professor of English at
Hope College and a member of the M.L.A. Delegate Assembly. He
was among those who called for a study of academic employment
in 1998. Mr. Pannapacker, who earned his Ph.D. in 1999 from
Harvard University, welcomes e-mail on this and related topics
and can be contacted at Pannapacker@Hope.edu.