My Life as an Adjunct

“Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, teach.”

The above saying has been on my mind often lately.  My mother used to mutter it when I was a kid, for reasons unknown to me.  I have grown to realize she was echoing a sentiment held by our society and perhaps the root of the predicament that many of my colleagues and I find ourselves in.

I never aspired to be a teacher.  Sure, I eagerly assumed the role of teacher when playing School with other children when I was little.  Throughout primary and most of secondary school I did very well, especially in English-related classes.  My favorite book as a young girl was Jane Eyre, and her time in the schoolroom was always one of the most romantic parts for me.  I was also fascinated by my teachers.  Some inspired me in ways I will never forget (shout-out to Mr. Reed!).  So, without knowing it then, I was classic teacher-material.  But what I really wanted to be was a writer.

In college, I concentrated on English.  My thinking was that, all the great writers before me had a broad understanding of the works that came before them, and I needed that, too.  I took every literature and creative writing class available.  I wrote poetry, was published, and won awards.  All the while, though, my foreign-born father pressed me to major in something more “substantial.”  At the time I thought I was compromising by double-majoring in English and Communication.  In my last two years I studied for classes like Introduction to Literary Theory as well as Media and Mass Communication.  From term to term I got the highest marks, but had very little direction as to a potential profession.  I graduated summa cum laude with absolutely no idea what to do next.

For a year I worked retail and hung out with my friends who still lived in town.  As chance would have it, I met someone from Europe and decided to try and move there.  During my undergraduate years I had read an academic novel by David Lodge entitled Small World.  It’s a brilliant book about English professors traveling the globe, mingling and attending conferences.  It made an indelible impression on me, so I determined that my best plan of action would be to apply to graduate schools and become an English professor myself.  One of the most exciting days of my life was receiving an acceptance from a prestigious school in the Netherlands to study English Literature.  I even won the full tuition waiver to attend school at no cost, like a European citizen.  For a year and a half, I buried my nose in books and wrote papers, while making international friendships and traveling the continent.  I never imagined my life would take such a marvelous path.

I received my M.A. with high marks.  One of my professors was also an editor for an academic publishing company, and offered to include a version of my master’s thesis in his latest collection.  Now I could say I was a legitimate scholar!  I was considering universities for my doctoral studies.  My future seemed promising before me.

For personal reasons, I returned to the United States.  The return was more than my physical location; I kind of reverted back to my old lifestyle.  I started hostessing in a restaurant where many of my friends, and Bruce, worked.  We’d all hang out together after hours, content to live from day to day.  But I yearned for more, and one night attended a poetry reading at the community college where I got my Associate degree.  Afterwards I ran into one of my old professors, who was the chair of the department, and he offered to hire me as a part-time instructor.  In my naïve eyes, I had become a ‘professor,’ and at such a young age!  I had never heard the term adjunct back then.

I was surprised by my first college paycheck.  I made more in tips at the restaurant!  I applied to be an instructor at my other alma mater, where I received my Bachelor’s, and was hired.  For a while I was teaching at two schools, hostessing at two restaurants, tutoring at a writing lab, and tutoring as a Literacy Volunteer.  I also started dating Bruce.  How 24 hours in a day seems to be so much more when we are young!

Bruce and I both moved to Chicago, a dream I had had since childhood.  I knew I could never support myself as a part-time instructor in the city, so I quit teaching and got a well-paying job in the hospitality industry.  For five years, we lived the urban life, in the same neighborhood as some of our best friends.  It was the 9-5 with partying on the weekends.  Then Bruce and I got engaged, married, and desired to start a family.  We moved back to the suburbs.

After so much time away from instructing, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back in the game.  I applied for a nearby for-profit college.  They called me in for an interview and asked me to prepare a lesson to give the dean, the department chair, and some of the faculty.  It was nerve-wracking, but I did well enough for them to offer me a job.  I remember it was summer, and I got back in my warm, stuffy car, whipped out my cell phone and sent a mass text to my loved ones: “I’m a professor again!”  It wasn’t until later that I learned about the controversies surrounding for-profit schools and that an adjunct is not the same as a professor.

I didn’t make as much as I did at the hotel, but I was usually given enough classes to eke out a living and contribute towards our paying debts and household expenses.  Bruce had a new job, too, that was commission-based, and the unpredictable nature of both our jobs meant that some months we struggled.  I got a job teaching at another school for additional income.  Then I got pregnant.

As I’ve chronicled in this blog, having a child ultimately meant a loss of pay during maternity leave.  When I returned to work, a there was a drastic reduction in the availability of classes I could teach.  I teach far less now that I can only work nights and weekends.  Yes, I chose to stay home with my child.  But it’s more complicated than that – even if I chose to keep my availability open so that I could teach more, I still wouldn’t get paid enough to afford daycare.  If I arranged some type of family sitter, like my semi-retired father-in-law, my changing schedule from term to term could pose conflicts with his own agenda.  If I want to stay working in my profession, staying at home with Emmie was really the only option.

Being an adjunct means this:  You probably have an advanced degree in your field, a Master’s or a PhD.  You are considered an expert in your subject area who can share that expertise with others.  You did not necessarily get a degree in education.  You were hired as a part-time instructor based on your curriculum vitae, your body of academic and professional achievements.  The department chair or dean offers you a class or two for the following term.  You most likely won’t get offered more than two because schools now have a restriction on the number of classes an adjunct can teach, which one of my schools blamed on the Affordable Care Act in an email memo that was sent out.  You act as a per-contract worker, so you have no idea how many classes you will get from one semester to another, or if you will get any at all.  There’s no guarantee that you will work.  With any luck, if you do get offered a class, it will be weeks in advance so that you have time to prepare a syllabus and lessons plans.  It doesn’t always work out that way, though, and many times I’ve created a syllabus the night before, pouring over an unfamiliar textbook and crossing my fingers that my plan will make sense in time.  I’ve read chapters immediately before assigning them to my students, though obviously I give the impression I’m completely in charge of the coursework.

Sometimes, you get offered a class, count on the income, and then it gets cancelled due to low enrollment days before the start date, after you’ve already prepared everything.  When that happens, at least in the state of Illinois, you can’t even apply for unemployment.  You’re simply out of luck.

An adjunct usually doesn’t have an office on campus.  The work is done predominantly at home.  Even though my “office” is in my basement, I can’t write it off for tax purposes like other self-employed people can, don’t ask me why.  Sometimes, there will be a room at school for the adjuncts to share, with copy machines and maybe a computer and printer.  At one of my places of employment, I’m not sure I’m even allowed to use the printer that’s in the faculty workroom, because it’s not linked to my classroom computer.  However, I pride myself on being moderately technically-savvy and figured out how to add the printer to my computer before each class.  I bet other adjuncts for that university are printing off their work in the library alongside the students or with their home computers.  I refuse to use my personal supplies whenever possible.  Ink and paper are expensive!  I don’t get paid enough to cover those costs as well.

How much do I get paid?  For 16 weeks of work, the average I’ve seen has been around $2300.  Some schools pay more, some pay far less.  The pay is for the time spent in the classroom and does not include the work that happens outside: preparing syllabi, lesson plans, grading papers, answering emails, writing letters of recommendations, professional development.  This is hours and hours a week per class.  As I’ve noted here in this blog, one school had me creating a new online course for six months before I saw a penny.  I don’t qualify for insurance and only retirement benefits at one state school. 

The argument can be made that part-time workers anywhere don’t normally get benefits.  But last year between my two schools I taught more credit hours than a full-time faculty member.  If there weren’t restrictions on the number of courses I can teach at either school, I could easily have taught a full-time coursework at one institution.  Just think: these schools can hire two or three adjuncts to teach the equivalent of a full-time course load without having to pay a full-time salary or benefits.  Last year, I made $20,000 teaching 28 credit hours and taking substitute jobs.  At one of my schools, the full-time course load is 18-24 credit hours and the average full-time faculty member earns $70,000 a year.  Do the math.  Recently, in a faculty meeting, I learned that at one of my schools adjunct instructors comprise 75% of the faculty.  Three-quarters of the faculty is paid at the poverty level while the institution continues to raise tuition, create new jobs for administrators, raise the salaries of administrators, advertise everywhere from online to billboards, and construct new buildings.

There are different types of adjuncts.  There are the ones who have careers outside of academia and are just looking to teach on the side.  Along with those, there are the retired professionals or teachers who aren’t ready to stop working entirely.  Then there are the adjuncts who are supported by spousal income.  I suppose I fall into that category, but it feels more like I’m in the last one, the adjuncts who are called “freeway flyers” due to the fact that they spend their time in the car, driving from one school to another, trying to scrape together an income.  For these types of instructors, the lifestyle is exhausting.  We work on our “days off”.  We work on weekends.  I even check and respond to emails when I am not currently teaching classes.  When an adjunct isn’t in the car or the classroom, they are bent over a desk somewhere, doing all the outside work I mentioned before.  We walk into our classroom, teach, and go home.  Rarely do we connect with our bosses or other faculty.  We are lone wolves.

This is clearly not the best environment for students to be in.  Students need instructors who are adequately prepared in every case, who collaborate with peers.  An instructor who is travelling from school to school and working from home and out of a briefcase cannot possibly be as primed as he or she would be if everything was in one place.  Despite this, most of us are doing the best we can to stay on top of our work, to put the students’ educations first.  Lately, adjuncts have come under scrutiny for not educating students to the same standards as full-time faculty.  Since Bruce has gone back to school, I’ve actually witnessed the opposite.  His full-time professors take days to answer emails.  Many have been disorganized with a lackadaisical nature towards the students.  If they have tenure, meaning they can’t get fired, what would compel them to work harder?

Since our position with an institution is so precarious, some adjuncts have folded under the pressure and given students passing grades in order to boost their student evaluations scores.  These scores are often the only interaction we have with administrators and keep us in good standing.  I was in a similar, yet fundamentally different situation.  Though I couldn’t say for sure, I got the impression at the for-profit school where I formerly taught that failing a student was discouraged.  I sensed that they wanted students to keep moving along so that the tuition would keep rolling in.  I instructed and graded the students fairly and at college-level, but started to get passed over in favor of other, ‘easier’ instructors for classes by the administrators, despite my consistently high-ranking evaluations.

A career as an adjunct means there is little or no time left to augment our professional credentials.  When do we have time to do our own research or writing?  How can I find time to publish when I have to work a retail job just to make ends meet?  Full-time faculty and tenured professors are expected to attend conferences, do research, and publish.  Their salaries include this expectation, usually with the result that they teach less in order to do so.  That’s why adjuncts are necessary, just like part-time workers in a fast food joint support the managers.

The increasing corporatization of academia is finally getting recognized by the media.  In the past few months, the New York Times and the Atlantic have done pieces on this phenomenon, as well as Yahoo! News.  Some might contend that this is the way the country is going, that the way of the world is that there will always be people at the top and many more people at the bottom.  I see this point.  However, you have to understand, when instructors like me are responsible for educating all the people who become educated – English composition classes are required at every institution of higher learning for a reason – shouldn’t these instructors at least make a living wage?  Shouldn’t they have some sense of job security?  No one ever says, “My college dean really prepared me for my career,” or, “My university president really helped me to realize my potential and nurture my skills.”  Most of the time, students never meet their dean or the president.

Often, students don’t even interact with full-time professors until they are far along in their degree program.  Since adjuncts are mainly responsible for instructing the introductory-level classes, we are usually the first interactions the students have with faculty.  We make the first impression.  We can be the reason a student succeeds and moves forward and keeps paying that precious tuition.  We are the lifeblood of the institution.

This is not how I feel on a daily basis, however.  Being a lone wolf is lonely.  Most adjuncts don’t have the time to get involved, don’t get paid to be involved, and/or are not invited to be involved with campus life.  We are excluded by our peers.  I once had a fellow English instructor (who was tenured) refer to the other tenured English professors as his “colleagues” to me.  Apparently he did not consider me a colleague, even though I have attained the same level of education as him and teach the many of the same classes.  I’ve been in meetings where I’m the only adjunct and have felt entirely out of place.  In one a professor mentioned breezily how before she was full-time she’d have to dig for change in her couch to pay for things.  I turned bright red.  Because we are paid considerably less, we feel lesser.  As another adjunct put it, I am “merely an adjunct.”  As my father-in-law observed to me once, some character in a movie was “a real professor.”

Why do adjuncts put up with this way of life?  Many of us would reply, “Because I love what I do.”  I love English.  I love reading and writing and critical thinking and showing others the beauty and necessity of all of it.  But just because we love what we do, does that mean we should be treated as less than others?  What I do matters.  We’re living in a culture that ignores the significance of manual labor, that funnels high-school graduates towards college and requires entry-level job applicants to have Bachelor’s degrees.  Despite this overemphasis on higher education, we pay the majority of our educators less than what their pupils will someday earn.  I have had so many students come back and thank me for helping them get scholarships or for preparing them so that they earned high marks on papers in other classes.  They’ve shared with me how my instruction has aided them in getting recognized in their own careers.  They have no idea that I barely make enough money to afford the clothes I wear to work.

Maybe that old adage about “Those who can’t” isn’t misguided.  Maybe I should have listened to my father and gotten a practical job in business or marketing or something.  Heavens knows I’d make more money.  I regularly consider abandoning this profession like I did once before.  But if three-quarters of university faculty chose another career, who would be left to educate everybody?  Without higher learning, what would become of our society?  Benjamin Franklin noted that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”  In order for that interest to ultimately pay out, we also need to invest in those who do the educating.