The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (or TIAA Institute) is an organization that studies financial issues for educators. A 2013 TIAA Institute report stated that over the past 30 years, U.S. colleges and universities have changed the types of jobs they offer.
The report said 70 percent of all faculty positions are now part-time, adjunct, temporary, or full-time. But these jobs are not tenure-track.
Johns Hopkins University published a book in 2006 about higher education called "The American Faculty." That book stated that in 1969, 80 percent of faculty positions across the country were tenured or tenure-track.
There is also this:
Chatfield says being a part-time professor at more than one school is not only difficult financially. It also divides his attention and prevents him from having a relationship with his students.
"I’m just a body that the administration puts in front of a class because they need to fill the class… and that’s about it. So I don’t feel like they value me, because I don’t have an office ... I don’t get paid for any extra stuff that I do for my students outside of class."
Chatfield adds that his schools limit the amount he can teach so they can legally avoid giving him benefits. He also said other part-time faculty he has met through working with the AFT are tired.
"You’ll get exhausted from commuting between several schools and teaching more than what is normally expected of a college professor."
I have many colleagues in this situation. I've always taught at one place because I've always viewed it as a part time hitch. My glory days were 2011-2012. I was getting two or three classes a semester and nailed three summer classes. It as hard work. It was a lot of fun.
In 2013 I walked into a classroom after a full time prof had finished. He said the 5 classes he was teaching was quiet a burden.
Well excuse me.
Last year at RVCC we had an adjunct walkout day and rally. Being an adjunct, and being a former campus agitator, I was all for it. I told my classes there would be no class that day. At the last minute I found out that we weren't actually cancelling classes.
'I don't get it,' I said. 'Isn't this like, you know, a walkout? I mean that's what it says.'
There's a certain level of incompetence in any humanities department. I say without hesitation that the current department chair is a putz. Yeah, so what if he's reading this. Fuck him. Honestly if you teach medieval folklore, and I know people who do how competent can you be at anything? Your specialty is medieval folklore. The above quoted woman has a PHD in 16th and 17th century Spanish lit. WTF?
Ok, Mr. Big Time pontificater, you say, 'what's your specialty?'
American Revolutionary Studies and before that Military History. I turned at least 75% of the term papers I wrote into magazine articles. That's how I'm here. You want competence, I give you my career arc.
You have a PHD in Ancient Folkways of Ireland and you say you're having trouble getting work? You don't say.
My sympathy for my colleagues is limited. They feel they have a right to specialize in obsucre subjects. Which is fine. But they think the have a right to a living doing it. Which is not fine.
Hey, the coffee shop I go to in the morning is hiring. Its always hiring. Ten bucks an hour. Figure 8 hours a day, you can work 7 days if you want. Well the math is obvious, isn't it? and it don't come to Two Four Zero Zero.
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