Oh. My. God.
I thought I’d heard all the stories already. Wrong. In the discussion of the Faculty on Food Stamps video over in the non-tenure track forum at the Chronicle of Higher Education, plenty of others chimed in that they’d been forced to take their families on public assistance. One guy even slept in a tent while flying the freeways.
In winter.
In Canada:
[I]commuted thousands of kms each week, slept in a tent (in the winter. In Canada) and lived on boiled rice and baked beans for the “privilege” of making 25 cents per student per hour (less the travel costs, of course).
I know now that I’m TT I’m too scared of losing the position to stick my neck out for the adjuncts… and I feel ashamed. I think change is something that needs to be demanded by the students before university admins will listen.
I just posted Part 1 of my interview with Monica Jacobe, Predatory Employment in Higher Ed: “I’m almost thirty years old and I’ve never earned thirty thousand dollars–always less than that. I think the highest I ever made was twenty-seven five.”
And there’s the story of GrrlScientist who gets by on dog-walking, medicaid, the food bank, and donations from her blog readers. After viewing “Faculty on Food Stamps,” she posted:
I thought my employment situation was solely due to some mysterious and horrible flaw that is obvious to everyone except me, but here is a man who has the same complaints and problems, almost word-for-word as I have… So, like many PhDs, I have been trapped into either working as an adjunct or being homeless, yet being told by academe that I am not “worthy” of tenure because I worked as an adjunct professor.
Unfortunately, due to my credit being destroyed by numerous lawsuits for unpaid medical bills, I am no longer able to get a “real job” because I have to pass a credit check to be considered “employable”, nevermind that I am not applying for jobs where I would work with other people’s precious money. So how do I get by? Since I have no family to rely on, I survive by pet sitting and dog walking when I can find the work, getting food from food banks and homeless shelters (Since it takes at least one year of persistent battling to get them, I still don’t have food stamps), writing my blog in exchange for a few hundred dollars per month, donations from my blog readers, medicaid (thank the spaghetti monster that I FINALLY qualified for medicaid, after one year of rejections, of paperwork, of threats and lawsuits upon lawsuits), tutoring when I can find the work (which is rare since I am not affiliated with any institutions now), and (while I was in undergrad and graduate school), breeding and hand-rearing parrots for zoos, private parrot breeders and pet owners.
Recently:
- Happy Fourth?
- Poverty In Higher Ed
- What I’m Reading Now
- Meet the Trustees, Part 1: Trustees Behind Bars
- They’ll Be Watching You
- Maybe He Can’t
- Academic Labor Bookshelf
- Job Listing #666
- Psst! Forward this Link to Grad Students
- Don’t Miss COCAL VIII
Comments
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under academic labor system, corporate university, faculty couples, faculty on food stamps, real institutional sleaze, this blogging life, youth is a category through which class is lived. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I take issue with the implication of your Canadian correspondent. We simply can not push this off onto students, and expect them to make administrators (and politicians, and the public) take notice.
It takes the spine of current faculty (both tenure-track, tenured, and adjunct) to simply say, unequivocally, “this is unacceptable.” Yes, it means sticking our necks out, and risking the loss of the tenuous security (bought through abuse of those far more worthy than such treatment) of our jobs. That’s the cost of standing up for principles.
For those of us who are willing and able, it means walk off the job before someone can take it away. I’m lucky, I understand, I was able to quit, after spending three years post-PhD looking for a faculty post. Finally being deigned with the boon of a “part-time” university teaching position (part-time with 80 students!). For most of us, there are better jobs (or equivalent ones) out there that we would do well to take, even if they somehow seem beneath us with our advanced degrees and experience.
I ran the figures: I made as much money, with the same benefits (none!) and the same job security (none!) for equivalent time on the job, when I was a waiter (with a GED, and two years of college) nearly 20 years ago, as I did as an adjunct faculty member with a PhD!
The situation won’t change as long as we’re willing to cue up and take the abuse. It’s that simple!
How the University Works - the Disposable Academics
Marc Bousquet has written a great book and produced amazing (and depressing) videos on the rise of contingent labor in academia. If you think that all academics are tenured faculty, making six figures and enjoying cushy jobs, think again. In any events…
We can’t just push it off onto the students, but I notice that administrators listen to them more then they do to faculty!
I’m tenured faculty and I don’t make anywhere near 6 figures and my job isn’t cushy. It isn’t the only job I’ve had but most jobs I’ve had, including this one, expect *everyone* to pay for xeroxing, supplies, etc., etc., sometimes even postage and local calls on the office phone.
The more they hire and mistreat adjuncts, the more that mistreatment and exploitation becomes the norm.
My point: the horrendous problems of adjuncts are more horrendous than mine, but they are symptomatic of the problems that inhere in the whole system.