A Review of Ghosts in the Classroom

by Diane Calabrese Ghosts in the Classroom: Stories of Adjunct Faculty and the Price We All Pay, Edited by Michael Dubson, Camel's Back Books, 2001, Boston, MA IS THE ANTECEDENT of the "we" in the title the population at large (probably) or the ghosts in the classroom (possibly)? Assume the former, and the title misleads. Society incurs no direct cost when temporary workers are used. The sum colleges and universities would have to add to their operating budgets to replace the 560,000 adjuncts now teaching would be enormous. At the same time, institutions of higher education are not really acting in bad faith. In addition, the economy gets a boost from adjunct faculty, just as it does from the use of any abundant, low-wage labor pool that is very productive. Alas, few professionals can match the productivity of adjunct faculty members. Consider the figures cited in the first essay, "I am an Adjunct" (1), by M. Theodore Swift, and the point is made. Swift estimates full-time faculty members at his institution earn on average $40,000 annually for teaching eight or ten courses. He gets around $16,000 for doing the same. Add 20 percent for benefits to the full-time faculty member's pay, and Swift does the same work at one third the price. Sad to say, the tales wrought by the essayists in Ghosts bear an eerie similarity to the accounts given by women who have been spurned by married suitors. As such, they confirm a great deal of selective hearing on the part of adjuncts. Compare, for example, "He said he would leave his wife as soon as his daughter graduated from high school," with "The department chair said there would be a full-time position opening when 'X' retired." Or, try, "He implied he would marry me," and "She indicated I would get the position." Anyone who has read a few biographies, or the daily newspaper, can complete the exercise in parallels without assistance. There is no need to continue in order to illustrate that when a person wants something very much, delusion often prevails. Worse, the whole expectation-fueled interlude usually ends badly. In matters of the heart, self-deception is a tired theme for women across centuries, and no doubt millennia. Unfortunately, it seems to have been adopted by adjuncts, possibly because they excel at using their brains but are still ruled by their hearts. In fact, editor Dubson is concerned about the psychological toll paid by adjuncts. And he intends the "we" in the title to be broadly inclusive, as in everyone pays a price for the scheme. No one can read this book and conclude adjuncts are a sanguine lot, blithely unaware of their plight. In any case, it's difficult to imagine academic environments where the imbalance in social structure looms so large a picnic luncheon can be given for full-time faculty and staff only. Yet Barbara Wilson Hahn describes just such a happening in "Adjunct Apartheid" (61). Brigitte Dulac recalls in great detail, using extensive capitalization to hammer her points, the way in which she was passed over for a full-time position in favor of a younger woman. She notes where the rival's "red Mazda" is parked and speculates about whether the other woman is meeting a key administrator and why. Dulac titles her essay "Circles" (107) and by the time the reader reaches the contribution, the similarities of the recounted anecdotes, the continuity of the shape, are numbing. The essayists provide ample evidence of abundant horrors to be encountered in higher education. Andrew Guy, for example, awards an "A" to a plagiarized paper because he does not have the energy to fight the battle to prove it did not originate with the student who submitted it. He titles his essay "Professional" (123). But the stories are just so much reinforcement of what each adjunct should have known from the beginning. Go into that Gothic manse and there will be horrors aplenty to confront. (In the spirit of full disclosure, the reviewer reread Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance last night.) Higher education considers adjunct faculty dispensable because they are part of a large repository of cheap labor. (An adjunct is a willing mistress that can be replaced by a younger, eager mistress at any time.) Given there is so much intrigue to be recounted, identities must be protected, and so the names of places, institutions, and people are fabricated. Some authors use pseudonyms. Thus, the essays stand as record, but of what? If there is hyperbole, there is no way to sift through it. If an author's pain has tilted veracity just a bit, it is not possible to know. When Julian Barnes wrote Talking It Over, he allowed each of the three principals in a love triangle to describe what had transpired. By putting the multiple facets together, the reader can make an independent assessment. Editor Dubson could have used a similar mechanism, matching each essayist with one or more of the people who had inflicted wounds on him or her. Poetic or poignant, the penultimate essay in the collection is titled "A Lover's Complaint" (143). Author Gary P. Henrickson personifies Academia and asks, "Why won't you love me?" Academia never promised to love the adjunct. It offered a trying, temporary fling--one that tantalizes with possibilities and generates false hope. And Academia delivers.