Death of an adjunct professor

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/death-of-an-adjunct-703773/

by denzil_correa • 13 years ago

139 70 13 years ago

shortcj• 13 years ago

My sincere condolences to the family of Margaret Mary Vojtko.

Regarding the subtext of adjunct professor / student tuition abuse and exploitation for the keepers of the 'trademark and databases.'

We are almost facing the event horizon of a black-hole; sub-star level lecturers are facing obsolescence. Mega-corp is trying to establish a stranglehold on what may be the 'database.' The database will determine your personal 'trademark' status in society and its integrity is something worth fighting for.

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

Yup, heard stories like this a thousand times.

mathattack5• 13 years ago

It would seem like there would be some kind of middle ground where adjuncts should be paid a little more and get health care, and students pay less in tuition. $3,500 to teach 50 students? Where does all the tuition go? That's enormous overhead for buildings and administration, especially in a low cost area. Even you turn the $3,500 to $10,000 with a raise and health care baked in, it's only $200 per student. (I'm making assumptions on class size)

tjr2• 13 years ago

I've worked as an adjunct professor at a community college. Class sizes appeared to average around 20 students there, rarely above 30 and sometimes around 5. In that environment, $3500/class seemed pretty reasonable.

bsullivan012• 13 years ago

In that environment, $3500/class seemed pretty reasonable.

OK, but how are the professors expected to live on that ? Independently rich or retired cannot account for any size-able number. CC are subsidized by the state and county, or at least should be.

dalai• 13 years ago

A tenured professor though can get $20k per class or more, assuming that he/she is only teaching and not involved in any research (most start with 3 courses per year). Of course many tenured professors also bring money to the university through grants and whatnot, but that is not always the case. I know of some that get more than $250k a year just to provide prestige to the department and maybe teach a course now and then.

In any case, it doesn't matter if the class size is 10 or 50. You still need to prepare the same material, you still need to be there for the same amount of time. $3500/class sounds like a bargain to me. A TA earns more.

mathattack5• 13 years ago

I buy the argument for community colleges. $3500/20 = $175 per student per class. The courses are cheap, so it's a wash. I disagree with this for private colleges where the cost per course can be $3,000 per student.

leoc2• 13 years ago

IIRC colleges also often milk the fee income from talk-and-chalk courses to support science, engineering and medical courses with expensive lab requirements. As well as collegiate athletics, climbing walls, landmark building projects and so on, of course.

bradleyjg2• 13 years ago

Deanlet and deanlings making six figures to oversee "student life" and "strategic planning". Tenured professors who have 2/1 teaching schedules and haven't published since the 80s, but can't be forced to retire and keep on picking up inflated COLAs. Ever multiplying new unnecessary buildings (usually paid for by donors, but maintenance comes out of the budget). Special signing bonuses, research stipends, forgivable loans, and extraordinary salaries for "star professors" who are considered stars not because of their teaching prowess -- which is never, ever considered by hiring committees -- but because of their fame in a particular field. Lacrosse, volleyball, and crew coaches and facilities (only football and basketball pay their own way).

And so on and so forth. The people that actually do the bulk of the teaching in many schools -- adjuncts and grad students -- get paid very very poorly. Even in schools that claim to have a high ratio of tenured faculty teaching classes, if you dig into it you will often find teaching assistants doing a lot of the direct student interaction and almost all of the feedback.

mathattack5• 13 years ago

I am actually ok with high pay for star professors. If you're a Nobel and bring international esteem to the school, you deserve to get paid. If your lectures are beamed around the world in MOOCs, you deserve to get paid.

I think many tenured professors don't deserve it, and schools have very bloated administrations. They also have mispriced priorities. (Subsidizing luxury dorms, athletic facilities, etc)

pmorici2• 13 years ago

Where does Social Security Medicare and Medicaid fit into this? She was 83 and well below the poverty line shouldn't she have been getting help from a t least one if not all three of those program?

bsullivan012• 13 years ago

Probably not below the poverty line, if she was single. Medicaid etc have a trick where you may lose your house and savings to ask for help.

protomyth• 13 years ago

She should have been drawing SS since she was 70. It would be Medicare not Medicaid and I am not sure how it would have helped since she was already being treated for cancer.

Contracting positions are hell on earth if you don't put money into savings. Even if you work 25 years you need to put money away. We really don't have a national pension system[1].

I would be curious how the whole Microsoft contracting lawsuit would apply in this case. It seems it would have some relevance.

1) and looking at how underfunded the state one are, I don't see any hope in that direction

dragonwriter3• 13 years ago

It would be Medicare not Medicaid

The two are, most assuredly, not mutually exclusive.

x0x03• 13 years ago

I believe SS benefits are indexed to earnings; if she had spent 2.5 decades earning $25k per annum her ss benefits may have been quite low

it's worth noting that $25k pretax (and note $25k seems to have been a high), even at a modest tax rate, could easily fall (post income, fica, etc) to $18k post tax. Or $1500/mo.

medicare should start shortly after the 65th birthday, but people still have to buy Part B and either part C or D. afaik part B requires a typical 20% contribution; this can be quite painful if you're living / attempting to maintain a house on $1500/month

old age is no picnic, particularly in the usa, and that goes double for people who don't have significant savings

x0x03• 13 years ago

btw, the official federal poverty line in the us for a household of 1 is $11,490. pretty fucking shocking. [1]

[1] http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/tools-for-advocates/gui...

sologoub• 13 years ago

When I see numbers like that, I really have to question how they are calculated, as that's less that $1k/month.

While it is possible to live on that, it is also possible to endure many things people in developed countries really should not have to endure...

pmorici2• 13 years ago

I didn't know that but that seems reasonable. I calculated what my bare minimum living expenses would be once and came out to about 12k. Once you get down to that income level there are a lot of expenses that just go away like in my state your property taxes are reduced to effectively zero if you make less than a certain amount.

gngeal2• 13 years ago

Duquesne has claimed that the unionization of adjuncts like Margaret Mary would somehow interfere with its mission to inculcate Catholic values among its students.

I see. So treating old people in this way and leaving them in trouble after you squeeze them out is a part of those "Catholic values"?

winestock• 13 years ago

Read the next sentence: This would be news to Georgetown University -- one of only two Catholic universities to make U.S. News & World Report's list of top 25 universities -- which just recognized its adjunct professors' union, citing the Catholic Church's social justice teachings, which favor labor unions.

gngeal2• 13 years ago

Well, their Catholics are apparently less hypocritical than Duquesne's Catholics. I'm not sure, doesn't this simply reinforce what I was trying to say?

guard-of-terra5• 13 years ago

Also, it doesn't look like God got out and helped the poor lady, as it always doesn't do.

You better stay clear from everything claiming to have relations to God, if she aligned with some secular university she might not die in absolute poverty.

I now have something to stick into religious faces for the rest of my life, bookmarking.

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities.

Unless you think that a fairly large percentage of colleges are religious and have a religious exemption from letting their faculty unionise, this may not be what you're looking for. ^^;

3am• 13 years ago

Disgusting. Disgusting and disgraceful.

davis_m4• 13 years ago

I feel for Ms. Vojtko's family, but I don't feel like complaining about adjunct professor salaries is being fair.

These positions are short term contract (6 months-1 year) and are not meant as long term employment. These positions are meant for people from industry to come in a teach a class on a specific topic they are experienced in. These positions are not research positions, or anything of the sort.

Many of the people in adjunct positions have a completely separate full-time jobs, or perhaps are retired. Offering them health-care seems silly, because a large number of them already receive health care.

So parading one lady who treated the position as some kind of career path as proof that professors at college's need to get paid more is silly. I understand that my professors are going to be higher paid than most (Software/Computer Engineering) but earning upwards of $200k with a great deal of perks is fairly common.

johndavidback• 13 years ago

I think reading between the lines a little bit should indicate that because 50%+ of professors are adjuncts means that universities are proactively attempting to keep professors with that status. It means they can pay them less both in salary and in benefits. Hence why Duequesne would want to avoid unionization of it's adjuncts.

I don't know the statistics of adjuncts who have full time jobs as well, so take that with a grain of salt.

davis_m4• 13 years ago

That statistic of 50% professors being adjunct is not cited, and from searching online appears to come from the SEIU, which is a group who's goal is to unionize adjunct faculty. The report it self is not available, and it has been quoted in articles as "part-time faculty held 50 percent of teaching jobs at colleges" [1] and "adjuncts held 50 percent of teaching jobs at colleges" [2]

Neither of those statements are the same as "Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities." as stated in the article.

[1]http://www.boston.com/yourcampus/news/bentley/2013/06/as_ben...

[2] http://www.boston.com/yourcampus/news/tufts/2013/07/adjunct_...

sergiosgc2• 13 years ago

Your reasoning is correct, if and only if adjunct professor positions are filled as intended. The article mentions that adjunct professors make up over 50 percent of faculty at various colleges and universities. If it is so -- I am not qualified to evaluate -- then your argument falls at the base.

If adjunct professors are over 50 percent of faculty, then the position is being used by universities to hire cheap. This leads to obvious problems for professors but, ironically, in time kills higher education. Higher education requires individuals who are free from the worry of making ends meet, so they can pursue knowledge. They need not be rich, but they can't be counting pennies. In time, a staff made up of strapped professors hurts the teaching quality, destroys the perception of quality at universities and scares students away.

yummyfajitas2• 13 years ago

Why do professors need to "pursue knowledge"? What is wrong with having a corp of workers who's sole goal is to transmit knowledge? To avoid status quo bias, do primary school teachers also need to "pursue knowledge"? Since most primary school teachers do no research, should we fire them and replace them with researchers?

Thrymr• 13 years ago

Whatever these positions were "meant for", the reality is that an ever larger share of classes are taught by people in these positions. Some of them are retired from other jobs; some are postdocs or working on the side; some are trying to cobble together a full time job. In many fields there is no "industry" from which to draw instructors.

No one is claiming these are research positions, but if universities are going to take teaching seriously, they have to address who is doing the bulk of the teaching.

Tloewald• 13 years ago

Are you implying there are adjunct professors receiving $200k with perks? I imagine it's possible that you can find an example somewhere (probably earning $197,000 p.a. from another job and teaching a course as a hobby).

Whether adjuncts are poorly paid on a short-term basis is surely irrelevant. People should be able to live on their incomes and cope with illnesses without becoming destitute.

davis_m4• 13 years ago

No, I am saying there are professors receiving $200k with perks. An adjunct position isn't supposed to be a full-time long term position, so why should it be paid as such?

badman_ting• 13 years ago

This is the kind if thing that is so dismaying to see on HN. It must be her own stupid fault that she died penniless of cancer, nothing is wrong with the system here.

I guess you guys feel differently, but I see myself as much more likely to end up like this lady than the CompSci professors making bank that you're talking about.

Strang• 13 years ago

What exactly is dismaying about the parent comment? You don't truly believe that the parent commenter believes it is "her own stupid fault that she died penniless of cancer," do you?

Please open your mind a little and please be more charitable in interpreting opposing points of view.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Archetypical comment: probably right, but supremely unhelpful.

Assume that the problem with the comment isn't that the commenter is amoral, but instead that their reasoning has gone wrong somewhere. Then, rebut the reasoning.

lambda3• 13 years ago

These positions are short term contract (6 months-1 year) and are not meant as long term employment.

From the article:

"Margaret Mary Vojtko... had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years... Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities."

And further information, with sources, backing this up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...

Lots of colleges are hiring adjunct professors to teach undergraduate courses, rather than full tenure track professors. As they reduce their tenure track hiring and increase their hiring of adjunct professors, it stops being a short-term contract for a visiting professor, and becomes the only viable career path for many people in academia.

The problem is, when many people think of professors they think of the same tenure track professors that you're thinking of; fairly well paid, good benefits, great job security (once tenure has been achieved, that is; before that, the job security is pretty dicey), lots of academic freedom. What they don't realize is that more than half of actual professors are actually low-paid adjuncts with poor job security (and a good chunk of the rest are tenure track but don't yet have tenure).

On top of that, you have post-docs and grad students doing most of the actual research (and some of the teaching as well), and you realize that academia looks pretty grim. Low paid people with low to no job security perform most of the actual work, while people think of them as high-paid folks with strong job security.

SoftwareMaven• 13 years ago

This is made worse by the explosion in administrative staff at colleges and universities[1]. Universities in the US are more about running universities than they are about teaching students or doing research. Given administrators are sucking down huge gobs of money, the budget shortfall needs to be picked up somewhere, and that is where the rise of the adjunct professor comes in.

1. http://dailycaller.com/2013/03/28/study-school-administrativ...

davis_m4• 13 years ago

I am unable to actually find an sort of source for the statistic that "Adjuncts now make up well over 50 percent of the faculty at colleges and universities."

It seems to go back to the SEIU, a group that is attempting to unionize adjunct positions. I have seen it quoted in a number of ways, including "50% of part time faculty at universities are adjunct." and "50% of teaching positions at universities are adjunct."

I would like to see some sort of actual report that shows the source of that. My (very limited, anecdotal) experience seems to indicate much fewer than 50% of professors are adjunct. It all depends on how you count these things.

tedunangst• 13 years ago

"Percentage of teaching hours" or "percentage of teaching budget" seem like more useful statistics than "percentage of names on payroll".

dragonwriter3• 13 years ago

These positions are short term contract (6 months-1 year) and are not meant as long term employment.

They are short term contract, but lots of colleges and universities are using them for a large portion of their faculty, so that they have the option year-to-year of renewing employment without dealing with tenure, and to never have to deal with "firing" faculty. Also, not having to deal with benefits.

Many of the people in adjunct positions have a completely separate full-time jobs, or perhaps are retired.

The vast majority do not.

Offering them health-care seems silly, because a large number of them already receive health care.

The whole employment-based model of health care that is dominant in the United States is silly, but given the way that many colleges and universities in fact use adjunct positions, having them be covered by employer-provided group insurance isn't silly within that employment-based model of health care.

x0x03• 13 years ago

where on earth do professors get paid $200k+ with a variety of perks? I call complete bullshit. Unless you're discussing eg harvard, stanford, or yale; or law schools, in which case you should say so.

btw, salaries at UW Madison (top 15 cs) used to be on the web. They are nowhere near $200k

most of the adjunct employees don't, actually, have health care and many of them don't have other jobs, unless you count eg starbucks.

hell, is there any part of your statements that are informed by data rather than being pulled out of your ass?

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

Anyone told the Pope yet?

danso• 13 years ago

Ugh, I was hoping that the "death" was just a metaphor, and that this was just an essay about the end of adjunct teaching as a viable job...which, I guess it is. I'm starting as an adjunct instructor next week, and I'll be getting $1,000 for about 13 hours of actual teaching time and who knows how many hours between classes doing grading/planning. But I have a regular job, this is just a night class. I can't imagine someone actually depending on adjunct work for the pay

acuozzo• 13 years ago

Everyone here should demand an explanation from Rev. Walsh. You can e-mail him at: walshd@duq.edu

cafard• 13 years ago

Distressing, but it leaves me wondering what Ms. Vojtko did until she was 58. Had she retired from some other job, gone back into the workforce after the death of a spouse?

Death of an adjunct professor

Related Stories