Chloe Smolarski and allies put together a great video on adjuncts.  Watch it here. Thank you! Thank you!  Hopefully other contingent academics will document their efforts as well.

I applied for unemployment today.  Fortunately, California is rarely a problem in eventually coming through with the pay.  Unfortunately, the system is not easy to work with at times.  That is, they often mail their letters of notification to arrange telephone interviews or request information so that you receive it only one or two days before the call will be made or the information is due.  In short, if you attempt to make any plans while on the dole, it is quite likely they’ll be interrupted by your having to wait by the phone in a three hour window for a two minute phone call.

All that said, I am extremely grateful we at least get to collect unemployment.  Similarly, I am glad that I do not live in a “right to work” state and have the option of belonging to unions.

Given the recent release of the reports from the MLA and AFT about academic labor, it is little surprise that many folks are blogging about them. Here are a few links:

Adjunct Law Prof Blog

Butterflylikenetwork

kd-PhD

In case adjuncting is wearing you down, or if you just need to supplement your academic income, Lifehacker has a list of their five favorite sites to use to search for work online.

Household Opera blog has an interesting reflection on why and how adjuncts “allow” themselves to be exploited. Well worth your time.

Live, unedited, and posted with Bob Samuels’s permission from the Contingent Academics Mailing List:

Here is my plan of action to make higher education more just, equitable, and effective:

1) Form a national association of non-tenure track faculty by integrating graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty into a single activist organization.

2) Hold a national strike and/or day of action to prove the existence and importance of faculty working off of the tenure track.

3) Establish national guidelines regulating the pay, course load, benefits, security, working conditions, and protections for NTTF.

4) Lobby national and state governmental legislatures to pass standards regulating our profession.

5) Educate parents and citizens about our issues and the economics of higher education.

6) Pressure individual schools and departments to change their hiring practices.

7) Utilize organizations like the MLA, CCC, AAUP, AFT, and NEA to shameinstitutions into following our guidelines and standards.

8 Sue institutions that advertise false student-to-faculty ratios and other misleading statistics.

9) Pressure ranking systems and accreditation bureaus to stress the quality of undergraduate education and teaching in their analysis of higher education.

10) Organize non-organized contingent faculty through external organizing blitzes.

Several of my suggestions may seem too idealistic or unattainable; however, I believe that we are already on the road to accomplishing many of these goals, but what we now need to do is to co-ordinate our efforts.

The first step is to use COCAL as an umbrella national organization to co-ordinate activities and publicize events. As Joe Berry has suggested, we can ask groups to donate money to hire a national director. I am sure that others will volunteer to form a committee.

I believe the second step should be a day of national action and recognition in April 2009. This could consist of simply asking all non-contingent faculty to teach their courses outside. The goal of this action is to get national recognition and to give contingent faculty a sense of collective identity.

My experience at the University of California has shown me that any organizing of academic workers will meet major resistances, but a small percentage of active members can create a snowball effect. One thing we have to show our colleagues and the general public is that other professions have organized and have forced institutions and governments to establish regulations concerning working conditions and reward systems. If medical doctors and lawyers can be protected by national standards, why can’t academic professionals be protected equally?

Some may argue that the working situations of part-time and full-time faculty members out of the tenure system are so diverse that it would be impossible to legislate any type of universal standards; however, I would reply that the new contract for non-tenure track faculty negotiated by the UC-AFT in 2003 covers a highly diverse set of workers in several different campuses. In fact, most of our contract uses a pro-rata system that does not distinguish between full-time and part-time workers; instead we base employment levels on time served and the percentage of full-time equivalency. Moreover, our contract establishes a series of protections and levels of promotion for non-tenure track faculty.

There are so many of us now teaching out of the tenure system that we can use our diverse experiences and expertise to educate the general public about our issues and the changing nature of higher education in America. For the sad truth is that many parents, students, and citizens spend enormous amounts of money on higher education, through tuition and tax dollars, and yet they often have no idea about the ways colleges and universities are downsizing and downgrading their educational missions. A national day of action and the formation of a national continent faculty association would help to publicize the quality of education and employment issues that are so important to all Americans.

By educating parents about increasing class sizes, decreasing job security, and the exploitation of graduate student teachers, we can help to protect the state and national funding for higher education. However, this public information campaign must be coupled with an effort to educate our own institutions about the multiple effects of relying on such a high number of non-tenure track faculty. In many ways, it is in the best interest of tenured faculty to have more faculty members who can participate in the shared governance of their institutions. In fact, what has recently happened in the last thirty years is that the increase in faculty off of the tenure track has been coupled with an increase in costly administrators who now perform many of the same functions traditional faculty once controlled. By having more tenured faculty–and by allowing non-tenured faculty to participate in faculty senates–we can start working against administrative bloat and we can take back control of our own institutions.

While many people may reject my proposals because they will cost too much money, we have to realize that many universities have endowments over a billion dollars, and many other institutions have shifted their money into administration, which has grown at a much higher rate than the cost of instruction. Furthermore, many institutions spend a great deal of public money on research, but do not funnel the profits from that research back into their educational missions. One reason why the public does not know about these changes in the economics of higher education is that colleges and universities constantly circulate false and misleading statistics regarding class size, percentage of tenure-track faculty teaching undergraduates, the use of graduate student teachers, and the employment of part-time faculty. To help reverse this trend, we need to let donors and taxpayers know where there money is really going. We also need to sue universities and colleges for false advertising.

An organization like COCAL is positioned to help coordinate the efforts to realize many of these proposals. By working with unions and other professional organizations, when can organize our efforts and work for real change on a national and local level. We can also help to educate our students and their parents about the changing structures of
higher education.

Bob Samuels, UC-AFT

Courtesy of Dr. Davis’ post on Adjuncting, here is a link to a comparison between an adjunct’s and a professor’s pay at a community college. This is from 2005. Be forewarned: it is not very heart-warming.

My Backstage Blog has a great post on just how much work is involved in applying for an academic job — in case you didn’t know.

The most recent issue of Academe, AAUP’s magazine, centers on contingent academic laborers. There is an article here that focuses on composition and adjuncts.