By
Kim Lee
April 21, 2008
Student groups often lobby for international labor causes, but a visiting leader of a faculty advocacy group plans to highlight serious labor issues facing college faculty, both at the UW and at colleges across the country.
Nationwide, the numbers of employed adjunct college professors are steadily on the rise. However, this shift from full-time, tenured professors to adjunct faculty is not merely a national issue — it has also shifted to become an international predicament as well.
“Colleges have turned into sweatshops when it comes to their own faculty,” said Keith Hoeller, chair of the adjunct faculty committee of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
The international surge of adjunct college professors will be the focus of attention in Dr. Cary Nelson’s lecture, “The End of Education: Globalization, Contingency, and Academic Freedom.” Nelson, the recently re-elected president of the AAUP, will be delivering his speech tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. in Smith 211.
Since adjunct professors are paid significantly lower than full-time faculty, Hoeller compared them to immigrant workers. Adjunct professors also do not receive any benefits or health insurance.
Professors who only hold a part-time position have no job securities and are very vulnerable, Nelson said.
“And those who have no job securities have no academic freedom,” Nelson said. “And when there is no academic freedom, there is no shared governance. It’s all tied together.”
The issue is part of a trend in higher education in which colleges have attempted to save money by making cuts to their faculty’s pay rates. Also, the issue of adjunct faculty is not entirely clear-cut; many adjunct faculty are happy to teach part time or are simply not qualified enough to teach as a tenured professor, according to an article in The Washington Post.
Since 1915, the AAUP has actively represented college professors in the United States.
The number of adjunct professors is increasing while the number of those who are tenured is heading in the opposite direction.
“Over the last 30 to 35 years, the percentage of part-time professors has tripled, and the percentage of full-tenured professors has been cut in half,” Nelson said.
Adjunct faculty are also affected by international trends.
International institutions, namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are purportedly disrupting the AAUP’s principles of academic freedom, tenure and shared governance, which Nelson labeled as “the three legs of the stool that hold higher education.”
“When the IMF grants loans to developing countries, it requires colleges and universities to increase the number of part-time professors,” he said. “There’s less academic freedom, and it leads to corporatization or privatization and an increased reliance on businesses to finance education.”
As a result, some fields, such as humanities, have been greatly impacted. In Australia, for example, the government only supports collaborative research that has immediate social effect, Nelson said.
Hoeller said that the ultimate goal is to increase the role of adjunct professors on campus.
“Somehow we have to change this situation so that adjunct professors get equal pay and equal benefits,” he said. “Adjunct professors are a vast underutilized resource.”
[Reach reporter Kim Lee at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]
3 Comments
#1 Anna Spiro
on April 21, 2008 at 7:16 a.m.(Bronx, NY | Unverified Name)
It is clear that adjuncts are in most cases underpaid for their work. What is not discussed is that many tenured faculty are being paid far more than they should be.
Higher wages lead to higher inflation, as should be obvious one and all by now, and theoretically, any savings could be diverted to improving the lot of contingent faculty in terms of wages.
Most Americans have too much, but there are a few who do not have quite enough.
Traditional means of creating more equality, e.g. progressive income taxes, estate taxes, taxes on luxury goods, have all been done away with by those who favor the "Free-Market" or "enslave the rest of the world" economy.
Is anyone out there willing to call for a wage reduction on overpaid college presidents, full professors (who don't do credible research) and the others at the top of the food chain? In all cases these exhorbitant salaries are being subsidized for by taxpayers. Not-for-profits do not pay taxes, and donations to them come off the top of the personal tax bill.
Should I be required to support your charity indirectly when you do not pay your full tax bill? Whatever. Lots of questions here.
#2 Jeanette Jeneault
on April 21, 2008 at 7:40 a.m.(Syracuse, NY | Unverified Name)
I differ with you Anna on who is at the top of the food chain. Faculty full-time salaries are increasing at a rate that falls far short of administrators in academia. Typical wage increases for faculty are 3-5% a year.Also taking into account that on most campuses the part-time faculty make far less per course than full-time faculty, maybe 30% of what the full-time faculty make and often are unlikely to see comparable increases without organizing--we should all ask where is the money going?
Administrative full-time appointments now exceed nationally the number of full-time faculty. Their average salary increases are 300% or more when compared to their faculty counterparts. Who are they administrating each other? I propose a solution, I call it the 10% solution. Discontinue 10% of college administrators and roll the money back into the faculty, add more tenure lines, create equity for part-timers--results will be better education for students. Now that is efficiency.
#3 Russ Wung
on April 21, 2008 at 9:53 a.m.(Redmond, WA | Unverified Name)
Professors must be paid high salaries (especially in the sciences and business) at UW because they can easily go elsewhere and make those high salaries in other jobs. Shafting the professors is shafting the students and the University as a whole.
The key difference between profs and adjunct profs is that profs will go elsewhere if insufficiently paid, whereas adjuncts already are elsewhere in a sense.
Most adjuncts hold jobs in the private sector and teach "on the side". I've taken classes from adjunct profs and lecturers and I think based on my limited experience that many of them are better teachers for their outside experience. However, many already have benefits through their main employer and one even told me he makes "boku bucks" teaching at UW. He spends maybe 8 hours a week tops on campus but it's worth what he gets for it.
Even when it comes to professor pay, people like bashing market forces in their egalitarian ignorance. "Traditional means of creating equality" are nothing more than theft from producers. Most of the developing world would still be primitive hunter-gatherers with a life expectancy of 20 without the so-called "enslavement" of international trade. Instead they have increasing amounts of disposable income and consumer goods. Even if things aren't perfect one has to recognize capitalism has brought great things to the world's poor and to sabotage capitalism (as redistribution does) is to sabotage the well-being of rich and poor alike. Socialism, as Winston Churchill once said, is the gospel of envy. Free markets are free people.
But back to the subject at hand... administrative pay is an interesting question as it seems quite high and my first reaction is to deem it bloated. Perhaps it is because administrators must be profs AND skilled executives at the same time. That's a lot of human capital. So perhaps admins deserve high salaries... BUT I agree with Jeanette why are there SO MANY of them?
Mark Emmert makes a ton of money, sure. But he also does very important high-level work for the University and ultimately probably is responsible for a lot of the money that comes to the UW. We could get a "rent-a-president" for $90K a year, but I doubt if he would be nearly as effective. You get what you pay for.
We have to pay full-time profs what they are worth or they will go elsewhere. Adjuncts aren't always relying on the U for their primary income so perhaps that is why they don't command as much salary.
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