Mayday Manifesto Signers Call For Minimum $5K Per Course Pay For Adjuncts. How Can So Many People Be So Wrong?

by P.D. Lesko I scanned the list of signers, and recognized many of the names. Good, hardworking people. Well-intentioned people. I've met many of them at conferences over the years. Interviewed several of them for Adjunct Advocate magazine and AdjunctNation.com. These people had signed in support of a national call to " ensure educational quality, fairness and equity by improving the wages and working conditions of [read more]

I Rarely Do This

by Emily Van Duyne Last week, as I flipped through applications for summer student tutors with my unofficial boss in the Writing Center at Stockton, my student popped in to get his graded essay. He's a really nice kid-- tall, handsome, ebullient, smart. A capable, if not gifted, writer. He mentioned to my "boss" that I had asked my students from this particular course to pen [read more]

Why Michael Bérubé Needs Adjuncts To Believe They're the Victims of Whim & Bad Luck

by P.D. Lesko I have just read the 2011-2012 AAUP salary survey. While the authors of the survey, Saranna Thorton and John Curtis certainly put thought and effort into their report, it represents yet another damning indictment of the AAUP's failure to push pay parity for its part-time faculty members, some 4,300 faculty, 14 percent of the total faculty membership. The AAUP isn't alone in this; [read more]

Post-Modern Superhero: The Freeway Flyer

By Jenny Ortiz As the Freeway Flyer, I’m realizing just how post-modern my life is—constantly  deconstructing, reconstructing, dissecting, and redeveloping the collage of life experiences to state to my Department Chairs that “I can do that,” and then repeating the same process in order to figure out if I can actually teach the course that I’ve just said I’m qualified to teach.  Then, I follow this [read more]

The Year in Plagiarism: Really, Should We Care About Cheating?

by P.D. Lesko In a few weeks, the 2012-2013 academic year will ease, grind, screech and/or jolt to a stop, depending on one's perspective. Final exams and essays will be graded by faculty members on whose shoulders the responsibility for policing academic honesty falls. This is a particularly difficult part of the job for non-tenured faculty, whose terms of employment are often tenuous, at best. In [read more]

The College Budget: There Isn’t Enough Money to go Around. Why Don't Adjuncts Get It?

By Sandra Keifer It’s good business, isn’t it? We’ve heard it a thousand——no, a million times, and we’re sick of it: the Wal-Mart model. The company that uses this model runs on the backs of hundreds or thousands of low-paid workers, lavishly rewarding executives and higher ed. administrators at the sharp point of the pyramid. Alongside the English ivy, diversionary wailing about the budget crunch creeps up [read more]

No Money, No (Real) Life, No Kidding

by Jodi A. Campbell I am 35 years old and I live with my parents. Yes, I am an adjunct. A few weeks ago, someone here wrote about the sacrifices she was making to cope with her classes being cut. For me, reading the post felt like a smack in the face. This may not have been the author's intention, but it felt like she downplayed the serious [read more]

Adjuncts Rely on Homeopathy To Keep Them Healthy Enough (and Awake) to Teach At 12+ Schools Per Term

by Jack Snap At last! One small online college has figured out how to obtain even more service from its adjuncts. A high-ranking official at the entirely online Viral College has intercepted communications between its adjunct faculty on how they stay well during the grueling winter months since not making contact with their online classes at least eight times per day results in docked pay. It turns [read more]

Hoo Sez We Don't Need Diktionaries?

by Kelly O'Connor-Salomon OK--I have to admit it hurt to write the title that way, but I bet it got your attention! Recently, a former student of mine, who is now a teacher, posted on my husband's Facebook page that she's been told by teachers and students in her school that dictionaries are passé because it doesn't matter if we know how to spell. She had been [read more]