Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
It really horns me off how low of a priority it is to teach students how to become critical thinkers. And yet, precisely the same politicians and university administrators won't hesitate to beat the old Sputnik drum, claiming how "America is facing an imminent shortage of STEM professionals." Kids, you can't have it both ways: if I train a class of undergraduates how to program in c++, some of them can't help but start thinking about how they can USE this knowledge.
Answering Kathy's question: yes, I think the people interviewed for this article are (probably deliberately chosen) extreme examples. I'd like to think I would have stopped adjuncting before I got anywhere near as desperate as they are (though I'm contingent, I'm on the very privileged end of that spectrum, with a full-time salary that allows for a modestly comfortable lifestyle in my area, plus health and retirement benefits).
But who knows? It probably helps that, although I think I'm competent at it and derive quiet satisfaction from doing it to the best of my ability, I don't absolutely love teaching. I might have different priorities if I felt that teaching was my one true calling.
There's also the frog-in-the-pot analogy: as the stories in the article (and others posted here, both from other publications and from reader/participants in the community) show, one doesn't get into such situations all at once, but gradually, usually thanks to some combination of the American belief that education always pays off in the long run (a belief which institutions of higher education have a huge stake in perpetuating), too-easy access to credit (especially educational loans that one can't discharge even in bankruptcy) and lack of access to affordable health care for oneself or one's family. Throw in the tradeoff between local density of higher ed institutions and local cost of living (especially housing costs), and you've got a very slippery slope leading to the poorhouse (or living in a car/tent/decaying r.v., or turning occasional tricks to keep a more conventional roof over your head).
I'm not sure that these stories are really all that different from those coming out of coal country, or the rust belt, except that housing tends to be cheaper, and thus less of a problem, there (but finding jobs, and the transportation to get to them, and to other sources of help like medical care and food aid, may be harder). In each case, people make plans expecting things to work out the way they did for their parents, neighbors, or teachers a generation before (who offer advice based on their experience), and it turns out that the situation has changed.
The bottom line as I see it is that we as a society are too willing to make individuals pay too much for some things that should be basic, not to mention likely to make us all better off if they were free or much more affordable (education, health care), and we lack a safety net for those who struggle to get some other basics (shelter, food, perhaps transportation). Put it all together, and all too many people of varying backgrounds, many of whom provide very basic, necessary services to their fellow-citizens (not just education but all sorts of health/personal/day care, protective services, etc.), are teetering on the edge.
And I don't see how we can change the situation in higher ed. I used to think that Ph.D.s (and M.A.s and A.B.D.s) just saying no to work that doesn't carry reasonable compensation might solve the problem, but I'm increasingly convinced that administrators will turn labor shortages to their advantage, insisting on more "efficient" ways of teaching the same classes (more technology, whether it works or not; larger classes, whether that undermines learning or not; more TAs or even undergrad learning assistants, whether those approaches work well or not). Since we can't really afford to have higher education go to hell in a handbasket, I assume that in 50 or 100 years we'll have worked out a new, more stable system, but I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime, or at least not during my active career).
I did something way more demeaning than prostitution to get out of adjunct debt.
I worked in manufacturing at a place where a product manager once told his crew to put empty shells on shelves with fake QA reports because they hadn't started an order for 300 of something that cost $10k each for our biggest customer, and they suspected as much and wanted to cancel the order. They conducted an audit to see how far into the order we were so their lawyers could get them out of the deal. Their stupid auditors never touched a shell - they saw the clear plastic report folders dangling from strings tied around the control box handles and left satisfied we'd done our part and sad they couldn't get out of the deal. If one of them picked up ~2 kg of empty steal instead of 14 kg of delicate optical equipment, the jig would have been up.
That's not the worst thing I saw - that's just the worst thing I'm not afraid to admit.
The original article (without the Alternet comments) was published
ReplyDeleteat the Guardian.
It really horns me off how low of a priority it is to teach students how to become critical thinkers. And yet, precisely the same politicians and university administrators won't hesitate to beat the old Sputnik drum, claiming how "America is facing an imminent shortage of STEM professionals." Kids, you can't have it both ways: if I train a class of undergraduates how to program in c++, some of them can't help but start thinking about how they can USE this knowledge.
ReplyDeleteAnswering Kathy's question: yes, I think the people interviewed for this article are (probably deliberately chosen) extreme examples. I'd like to think I would have stopped adjuncting before I got anywhere near as desperate as they are (though I'm contingent, I'm on the very privileged end of that spectrum, with a full-time salary that allows for a modestly comfortable lifestyle in my area, plus health and retirement benefits).
ReplyDeleteBut who knows? It probably helps that, although I think I'm competent at it and derive quiet satisfaction from doing it to the best of my ability, I don't absolutely love teaching. I might have different priorities if I felt that teaching was my one true calling.
There's also the frog-in-the-pot analogy: as the stories in the article (and others posted here, both from other publications and from reader/participants in the community) show, one doesn't get into such situations all at once, but gradually, usually thanks to some combination of the American belief that education always pays off in the long run (a belief which institutions of higher education have a huge stake in perpetuating), too-easy access to credit (especially educational loans that one can't discharge even in bankruptcy) and lack of access to affordable health care for oneself or one's family. Throw in the tradeoff between local density of higher ed institutions and local cost of living (especially housing costs), and you've got a very slippery slope leading to the poorhouse (or living in a car/tent/decaying r.v., or turning occasional tricks to keep a more conventional roof over your head).
I'm not sure that these stories are really all that different from those coming out of coal country, or the rust belt, except that housing tends to be cheaper, and thus less of a problem, there (but finding jobs, and the transportation to get to them, and to other sources of help like medical care and food aid, may be harder). In each case, people make plans expecting things to work out the way they did for their parents, neighbors, or teachers a generation before (who offer advice based on their experience), and it turns out that the situation has changed.
The bottom line as I see it is that we as a society are too willing to make individuals pay too much for some things that should be basic, not to mention likely to make us all better off if they were free or much more affordable (education, health care), and we lack a safety net for those who struggle to get some other basics (shelter, food, perhaps transportation). Put it all together, and all too many people of varying backgrounds, many of whom provide very basic, necessary services to their fellow-citizens (not just education but all sorts of health/personal/day care, protective services, etc.), are teetering on the edge.
And I don't see how we can change the situation in higher ed. I used to think that Ph.D.s (and M.A.s and A.B.D.s) just saying no to work that doesn't carry reasonable compensation might solve the problem, but I'm increasingly convinced that administrators will turn labor shortages to their advantage, insisting on more "efficient" ways of teaching the same classes (more technology, whether it works or not; larger classes, whether that undermines learning or not; more TAs or even undergrad learning assistants, whether those approaches work well or not). Since we can't really afford to have higher education go to hell in a handbasket, I assume that in 50 or 100 years we'll have worked out a new, more stable system, but I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime, or at least not during my active career).
DeleteI did something way more demeaning than prostitution to get out of adjunct debt.
ReplyDeleteI worked in manufacturing at a place where a product manager once told his crew to put empty shells on shelves with fake QA reports because they hadn't started an order for 300 of something that cost $10k each for our biggest customer, and they suspected as much and wanted to cancel the order. They conducted an audit to see how far into the order we were so their lawyers could get them out of the deal. Their stupid auditors never touched a shell - they saw the clear plastic report folders dangling from strings tied around the control box handles and left satisfied we'd done our part and sad they couldn't get out of the deal. If one of them picked up ~2 kg of empty steal instead of 14 kg of delicate optical equipment, the jig would have been up.
That's not the worst thing I saw - that's just the worst thing I'm not afraid to admit.