Posted recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education was a quote by the Provost of Boise State University, as he spoke to a local newspaper. The Provost said "The goal is not to hire adjuncts who are doing this for their living. The goal is to get the practical experience in the classroom from someone who is out working in their field".
Having recently been with some fellow adjunct faculty members at a local university, the nature of such a statement lit a serious discussion with one of my colleagues. In fact, I had stated pretty much the same idea as the Provost to him. I had obviously hit on a very sensitive part of his personal life. He, like many of us, was teaching as a part time faculty member while trying to maintain a decent salary to meet his family financial situation. His true love, also like many of us, was to teach; hopefully full time some day.
Admittedly, he and I are in very different stages of our academic careers and because of that, our goals related to teaching were clearly not the same. That conversation gave me pause and when I saw the quote from the Provost at Boise, I was immediately taken back to my interaction with my colleague.
What that situation exemplifies is that we adjuncts come to our contingent lives with our own stories, and while others would like to see us all the same way, we adjuncts like our full time counterparts, teach for very different reasons.
As part of a team of authors writing about the needs, the demographics and personal goals of adjunct faculty, I saw that in a group of 1600 contingent faculty in Maryland, few were teaching to make a living. Very few were teaching at more than one school and relatively few were aiming at becoming full time faculty members via the adjunct route.
That study was a follow up of one done five years before and though the first survey was based on only 800 respondents, the results were pretty consistent over the entire 10 years. That does not negate the personal plight of my colleague and it certainly does not put all adjuncts in the same boat with the same oars. We do indeed bring that practical experience to the classroom and perhaps that is akin to our greatest strength. However, we are a diverse group and colleges have diverse needs which we are available to meet. So, some of us do our teaching to "make a living", even though the Provost would rather hire faculty for their experience in the work force.
So why do you continue to teach as an adjunct faculty member while being paid wages that are not even close to full time faculty? Visit this site for adjuncts' stories.
