Lesko Blog

I’ve had this idea for a while now. I concluded some time ago that there needed to be more adjunct voices blogging. At InsideHigherEd.com, there is “The Education of Oronte Churm” blog. Oronte blogs somewhat sporadically and indirectly about adjunct faculty. Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education, there are no adjunct bloggers, per se, though the newspaper is publishing essays from about about adjunct faculty with more frequency. It galls me to no end that the Chronicle’s high profile Brainstorm blog employs Marc Bousquet, a tenure-line faculty member, to blog about adjunct issues. So it has been for much too long that full-time tenure-line faculty have taken it upon themselves to serve as the spokespeople of their  non-tenured colleagues.

With the launch of the new blogs on AdjunctNation, each of which is written by a non-tenured faculty member, the site has give voice to several individuals who will write weekly on a variety of topics that will, I believe, appeal to a wide swath of the Adjunct Nation who visit our site. 

So take a few moments, and check out the new blogs:

The New Adjunct, written by Paul Porter, chronicles the launch of the web site “The New Adjunct” for non-tenured faculty throughout Indiana. I thought it might be interesting to see the progress of the group working on this project. Web pages just for non-tenured faculty are few and far between and I welcome the creation of The New Adjunct. 

Kat Kiefer-Newman pitched Juggling 101 when I sent out a call for bloggers to several thousand individuals registered as AdjunctNation.com Family Members. I thought Kat’s idea was spot on. Adjuncts juggle teaching with many other responsibilities, and Kat is going to write about her busy days, afternoons and evenings. Adjuncting for two different departments, teaching five courses, is just the beginning of her day.

Check out all of the new blogs here. 

You can now follow whichever blogger(s) you like via Twitter. When there is a new blog posting on AdjunctNation.com, it will be tweeted to the followers of the blog(s). The AdjunctNation.com Family email alert will let Family members when new blog postings go up, as well. That email alert contains other information, so if you simply want to be alerted when your favorite blog is updated, follow the blogger on Twitter.

In the meantime, we are going to design and launch the Adjunct Diary Page. Unlike our regular bloggers, on the Diary Page, anyone will be able to sign up and post their own blog content. Diary readers will be able to comment on posted Diary content, and the Diary content with the most views and most comments will be be highlighted on the Adjunct Diary front page. I am very excited about this opportunity for more and more non-tenured faculty to have opportunities to tell their stories.

It’s easy to spread rumors. It’s easy to take myths and, by constant repetition, give them the patina of reality. George W. Bush was a master at this artistic skill. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Send in the Marines.

The same thing is happening in higher education. There are these myths about part-time faculty. 

Part-time faculty don’t conduct research. 

Part-time faculty don’t mentor their students.

Part-time faculty flit from one job to the next.

Part-time faculty don’t publish.

Part-time faculty are __________________ (you fill in the blank).

Send in the Marines (hire more tenure-line and tenured faculty).

All part-time faculty are “drive-by” professors. Did you know that all Asians are excellent at math, all Jews manage money well, and most Muslims are terrorists? 

Myths are offensive generalizations. People who indulge in perpetuating myths are a puzzle to me, particularly when they are educated people who should know better and who, one presumes, have the research skills necessary to find the truth. Marc Bousquet is a tenure-line faculty member who has put himself center stage to speak on behalf of part-time faculty in the United States. In his latest blog entry at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bousquet perpetuates several particularly irritating myths about part-time faculty. That The Chronicle published Bousquet’s error-filled generalizations on their web site is nothing short of editorial negligence.

Under the headline “Stabilize the faculty now!” Bousquet writes:

“There are several hundred thousand educators working part time or contingently filling permanent staffing needs who would prefer to work full time and securely. Most of them are employed at a discount, and many of them do not have the terminal degrees in their fields. There is high turnover among these educators, because the pay is generally poor, status is low, and there is no rational path for recognition or promotion, no reward for better work, etc….Enormous resources are wasted in constantly hiring, re-hiring, training, evaluating, and supervising this quickly churning labor pool.” Getting rid of part-time faculty would create “a better-prepared, more up-to-date, stable, available, and motivated faculty.”

Where do I begin? First of all, he uses no verifiable statistics to support his claims. Bousquet relies on many, most and generally. The assumption is that we’re with him on this, so he doesn’t have to be precise. Well, I’m not with him on anything, and I expect precision when writing for publication. I conclude from his incessant generalizing that he hasn’t done much research regarding the employment of those part-time faculty who want full-time employment within higher education. David Leslie, of the University of Florida, puts the percentage of faculty who want full-time teaching work somewhere around 40 percent of the total.

Bousquet writes that part-time faculty “churn” through job after job. Hardly. The National Education Association conducted a study in the 90s that found the majority of part-time faculty work at their institutions seven years, on average. The same study concluded that about 20 percent of part-time faculty teach for 20 years or longer at their institutions. It is a myth that there is a “high turnover rate” among part-time faculty. It is a myth of convenience, I believe, because if part-time faculty can be pegged as flighty and unreliable, it makes little sense to invest in their hiring, evaluation or professional development. Doing so also leads credence to the argument that only tenure-line and tenured faculty bring much-lauded continuity to the programs at their institutions.

Full-time faculty do bring continuity to their departments and programs. However, according to the Association for the Advancement of Higher Education, almost 20 percent of tenure-line faculty do not receive tenure and leave their institutions after six years. There is, then, just about as much turnover among tenure-line faculty as there is among part-time faculty. However, the average part-time faculty members remains at her/his institution a year longer than does the tenure-line faculty whose bid for tenure is refused.

Bousquet, in fact, relies on many of the current buzzwords tossed around by his colleagues. Part-time faculty aren’t motivated. Part-time faculty aren’t available. Part-time faculty aren’t stable. “Most” part-time faculty don’t have terminal degrees. Well, at least he finally got that right. In his book, How the University Works, the preface claims (Lord help us all) that part-time faculty are under-employed Ph.D.s. Yes, the majority of part-time faculty hold Master’s degrees. Is that a problem? For Bousquet it is. He writes, “One reason we have community colleges with single-digit graduation rates and major metropolitan universities who can’t graduate 30 percent of their first-year students six years later is because we have been trying to teach them with a drive-by faculty.”

Research by the American College Testing group into the percentage of students who move from freshman year into sophomore year  is really where Bousquet loses any remaining credibility. According to the ACT study, the percentage of freshmen who move onto sophomore year has fallen from 74.5 percent to 74 percent. According to a recent study by the American Federation of Teachers, part-time faculty typically staff first and second-year courses, about half of the courses offered nationally, in fact.

The ACT study attributes the fall in student retention between those surveyed freshmen and sophomore students to open enrollment policies at two-year colleges, and declining student preparedness. In short, the ACT researchers conclude that when colleges chose to increase overall enrollment levels by relaxing standards for incoming students, it should have been understood that there would be an increase in first-year student attrition. That the attrition rate has risen only .5 percent in 14 years is, I think, a testament to the excellent work of the nation’s non-tenured faculty, to their reliability, devotion to their students, and their skill in the classroom even under the duress of poor institutional support.

Bousquet argues that we need more full-time faculty with Ph.D.s. We need, in short, more college faculty just like him. Marc Bousquet writes about part-time faculty like we all need to cross the street so as not to get robbed when a part-timer comes walking our way. Because, you know, all part-time faculty are “drive-by” professors. Did you know that most African-American men are criminals? Well, except the one currently serving as President of the United States.

Listen to my blog entry here.

I remember when Dr. Cary Nelson first spoke out nationally in support of part-time faculty. It was electrifying, and he gave a voice to many who were simply unable to voice their opinions without risking their jobs. Cary Nelson continues to speak for part-time faculty. For years, it was difficult to get adjuncts to write for Adjunct Advocate magazine because they were so frightened of retaliation.

After interviewing Marc Bousquet, reading his book How the University Works, and several of his postings at Inside Higher Ed, it is obvious that he, too, wants to be a voice, like Dr. Nelson, for part-time faculty. However, there is a huge difference between speaking out on behalf of part-time faculty, and telling them what they should do.

Marc Bousquet (though not only Marc Bousquet) has referred to long-time adjunct activist Keith Hoeller, as anti-union. I can imagine Cary Nelson giving just about anyone a piece of his mind. (I had the pleasure during a recent interview for our Podcast Interview Series.) However, I simply can’t imagine Nelson referring to any part-time faculty activist as anti-union. What does “anti-union” mean, anyway? Maybe we should ask the House Committee on Part-Time Faculty Anti-Union Activities. AFT officials have called me anti-union, as well, and officials recently refused a request for a written interview out of fear that their views wouldn’t be presented fairly in the magazine.

Marc Bousquet urges in his most recent piece for Inside Higher Ed, in essence, that a part-time faculty activist, and his many colleagues, who have a much, much greater personal stake in the situation, and who have a much longer institutional memory of the struggles part-time faculty have endured, need to be more temperate and reflective. I’ve published pieces about the legislation those same activists have gotten passed to the benefit of their colleagues. I’ve published pieces about the class action lawsuits instigated by the same activists on behalf of their colleagues.

Are these gains the results of lack of reflection and intemperance? It’s best to let the Washington State part-timers with the $800,000 settlement comment. Interestingly, Washington’s thousands of part-timers, represented by Dr. Schroeder, could have had multi-year contracts today, but WFT officials refused to endorse the proposed legislation because, according to a WFT official, WFT didn’t propose it; Keith Hoeller and his colleagues convinced a legislator, without giving the politician a single penny in campaign donations, to introduce the bill.

I have reported on union indifference to part-time faculty concerns, and the bargaining of incredibly lop-sided contracts, for longer than I care to say. As far as I can determine, FACE has not won concrete gains for AFT’s part-time faculty members.

As far as I can determine, WFT doesn’t have friends in the legislatures where FACE legislation is being introduced; the group has politicians to whom hundreds of thousands of dollars have been donated directly and indirectly. This is money, for instance, from the dues of the thousands of WFT members whom WFT President Dr. Sandra Schroeder represents (including Keith Hoeller, but not Marc Bousquet), but who’ve not gained a single job or a single dollar in pay increases from the expense of the push for FACE, or the $500,000 “pilot program” funded by the Washington State Senate.

If full-time faculty want to support their part-time colleagues, that’s going to mean respecting and following the lead of the part-time faculty who are (and have been) leading over the past decade. I think we’re watching as part-time faculty come into their own in terms of defining how they will lead their own movement.

I’m probably being way too trenchant (the acerbic side of the list of synonyms), but street cred is street cred, and from what I have seen and reported over the past 18 years, Keith Hoeller and his Washington State part-time colleagues who belong to WFT, and pay their dues, have got it hands down. The best thing is that the Washington State part-time activists represent just the tip of the part-time leadership iceberg out there. I think Cary Nelson helped calf the iceberg of part-time faculty activism and leadership. Meanwhile, Marc Bousquet and Dr. Sandra Schroeder (AFT), et. al. are left steaming full speed ahead, sure the safest way to cross the ocean that separates full-time and part-time faculty, is an old-school, paternalistic brand of “support,” organizing and unionism, Academe’s Titan.

Unless something changes drastically within the leadership of the nation’s higher education unions, I think the Titan and the iceberg of new part-time faculty leadership are set for a collision, unfortunately.

Listen to my blog entry here.

I just finished meeting with Ryan Sexton, our web page programmer. He and I are working out the best way to display our new Podcast Interview Series. Ryan suggested that we offer a podcast player to visitors who may not have one. It’s just saves a step in the process of listening to the Podcast Interviews. I saw the one he designed today, and it’s easy to use. Magazine subscribers will have exclusive access to the Podcast Interviews for seven days, then the interviews will be available to everyone who’s an AdjunctNation.com Family member.

Yesterday I interviewed author Marc Bousquet. We talked about his book How the University Works for almost an hour. I’ll trim down the interview, and it will be posted later in the Spring. Something happened in the course of that interview that has happened to me only a handful of times in the almost 20 years I have been interviewing people for Adjunct Advocate. I asked a question about something Bousquet had written, and he replied that he never wrote it. When I read him the lines I’d highlighted in his book, he was clearly taken aback.

The text came from page 47: “That is, in re-creating jobs out of piece-work done by the contingent workforce, we address with one stroke the problems experienced by everyone else: tenure-stream faculty benefit because eliminating cheap teaching raises the price of experienced teaching and reinstalls the value of research in pedagogy; undergraduates benefit by receiving experienced, secure faculty (who “do knowledge” rather than “provide information”) in the first two years, when they are most vulnerable.” I asked him to comment on the notion that “secure faculty” i.e. full-time faculty “do knowledge,” while nontenure-track faculty “provide information.”

The note I made in my copy of the book was that the author was “struggling to find a difference between full-time and part-time faculty.” I believe there are plenty of non-secure faculty who “do knowledge,” and plenty of secure faculty for whom teaching is little more than providing information. I was curious to know what he thought. Unfortunately, claiming never to have written or said something is rarely the right answer, even if it’s the truth. I have had the unpleasant experience of having been misquoted by journalists enough times to realize that when the misquotes come up later (journalists invariable use each other’s work), I simply focus on the substance of the question, and not whether I said it or not. The strategy usually works pretty well.

There were plenty of places in Bousquet’s book where I found myself muttering aloud as I read, and jotting in the margins. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion! He writes that students are likely to be taught by someone who started a “degree but never finished it…and who does not plan to be “working at your institution three years from now.” Further, he writes that a “substantial majority” of contingent faculty are women, and that the majority of administrators are male. The facts are these (some come from the 2006 Education Digest put out by the Department of Education):