I don’t think I’m bragging when I say that I was once an excellent Freshman Composition instructor. I did my best in Comp 2, where I taught my students how to conduct research that did not involve citing Wikipedia. I taught them skills that would serve them throughout their college careers, even into graduate school and beyond. I got great student evaluations, and my supervisors always lauded me for the quality of research essays that my students produced at the end of my rigorous but fun* research portion in Comp 2. On more than one occasion, other faculty members asked to sit in on my classes to see what I was doing, and graduate students asked for my help in improving their research and writing skills.
Unfortunately, I don’t teach anymore. I made the decision to become a full-time secretary primarily because of an environment like the one described in this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, which details the downward spiral of Margaret Mary Vojtko, a long-time adjunct professor. Her poverty eventually led to her death, so I feel lucky that mine merely led to a secretarial job.
Universities increasingly rely on underpaid adjunct faculty to carry the burden of what are dismissed as “entry level” courses. It seems to escape university administrators and many tenured faculty members that those entry level courses matter the most. Those are the classes where freshmen get a firm footing for the courses they will take in the next three years. Underpaying the people who teach first-year college students seems equivalent to systematically paying first grade teachers less than sixth grade teachers. After all, teaching kids to read, that’s just entry level work. Easy.
Yet those same tenured faculty lament how many students arrive in their upper level courses without the most basic research skills. Why? Because the people tasked with teaching them basic skills – the underpaid adjunct faculty – do not have the time, energy, or institutional support to become truly great teachers. Some of them are teaching four courses per regular semester and two courses per summer semester (compared to the average tenured faculty load of two/two/zero for an academic year.) At the typical pay of $3,000-$3,500 per course, an adjunct is lucky to make $30,000 a year, teaching as many as ten courses per year.
A person can survive on $30k, but teaching ten Freshman Comp courses, or ten French 1 courses in a year is grueling, if you can even get that many courses. With the typical enrollment for these types of classes running around 20-25 students, you’re staring down grading 100 essays or exams on a regular basis. And if you can’t survive on that $30k? If you have children? Or you live in an area with a higher cost of living? You’ll do what many adjuncts do: get a second job, or a third. Some adjuncts swing double teaching loads. Four courses at the university, another two picked up at a community college, raising their class time and grading time into the stratosphere. Others settle for different types of jobs. I have known adjuncts who taught three courses at the university, one at a community college, and put in 20 hours a week at the local Sonic. I imagine it’s hard to maintain your professorial dignity when you find yourself serving limeades to your students. All the elbow-patched tweed jackets in the world can’t salvage that.
Even at good universities, like the one where I’m currently a secretary, where adjunct faculty are eligible for health benefits, they are still treated like disposable people. They exist for the convenience of the university and they’re cast aside whenever budgets are tightened or enrollments dip. They are paid what often equals less than minimum wage and no amount of excellence in the classroom will produce a reward. There are no merit salary increases, no real recognition for being a stellar teacher, beyond the kind words of people who recognize how difficult the job is.
The easy answer is to say, “Well, if academia is so terrible, those put-upon adjuncts should go find other jobs, where they’ll at least earn minimum wage.” I wish they all would. I wish they all could. All of them. En masse. It would be a sobering moment for a lot of universities who treat adjuncts with all the dignity of a tampon applicator. Of course, a job is a job, and it’s hard to walk away from one you know, which is why so many adjuncts stay on. I hated to give up teaching. I was good at it and I enjoyed it. But more, I hated being paid so little for doing valuable work and doing it without any kind of safety net.
The thing is, it’s not just wrong and demoralizing to pay adjuncts so little and to provide them with no security or benefits. It’s harmful to the long-term quality of the education a university offers. A tired, demoralized adjunct instructor isn’t going to put in extra hours to develop a new classroom activity that will help students learn how to assess the quality of their research sources. She isn’t going to do elaborate classroom media demonstrations of JSTOR or lead students on guided tours of library holdings. Eventually, she’s going to give up. She’ll lower her standards. When the inevitable Wikipedia citations crop up in research essays, she’ll cringe and move on, instead of protesting. Or she’ll quit teaching altogether and become a secretary. Most universities pay their secretaries better and respect them more.
*I have the evaluations to prove that a wide variety of students thought my classes were fun.
One of my ex-colleagues who works in higher ed keeps telling me that I should pick up at least 1 adjunct course *as* a second job. As a previous secondary school teacher (before NCLB, I created individual lesson plans for *each* student, of which 2/3 were at-risk), I have an understanding of how much prep and time is required (again, for quality teaching). Also, the hours involved in just one class (they would be Adobe software for Design type classes) on top of where I live (an extreme commute) and on top of a full time job means that 3-4k for a class — spread over 4 months? That’s working cheap. I already work cheap.
Bingo. If you don’t really *LOVE* to teach, becoming an adjunct as a part time job is a joke. You’d make more pulling shifts at McD’s.
I love teaching. If I didn’t have to earn money, I’d probably teach at a nonprofit. One of my most loved ‘projects’ for when I’m independently wealthy is adult literacy.
I’m not going to wreck what little life I have (and health, with autoimmune & working FT already) to do it. There’s only so much ‘me’ around.
You are so on the nail with this! I also wish more people would turn down offers of Adjunct positions (as I have done twice) in order to stir things up inside universities. I don’t teach anymore either, apart from my daughter and a few students whom I help in a voluntary capacity. I wrote about my experiences here: http://topofthetent.wordpress.com/2013/06/13/building-yourself-up-for-rejection/
I just read the story about Margaret Mary Vojtko and was shaking with rage by the end of it. Part of the writer’s point was that unionizing adjuncts would have helped Dr. Vojtko live a life of dignity: but I worked at a state-run community college and was an active member of the public employees’ union, and I still had days where I wondered if I would have enough money to buy groceries at the end of the month. It has nothing to do with how good a teacher you are, or whether your students like you, or for that matter, whether your colleagues or department head like you. Academia justifies this sort of treatment of their adjuncts by claiming that most of them are young and just starting out—the gotta-pay-your-dues element—though Dr. Vojtko clearly shows that’s far from the truth. I knew a woman, a brilliant, generous English instructor, who had worked as an adjunct for 17 years before her department finally offered her a full time teaching position. By then she was over 50 and her own kids had already graduated from college. She only managed because her husband was able support their family on his salary.
Universities and colleges also cry that they’re constantly forced to cut departmental budgets and they’re short of resources, though administrators continue to bring home salaries in the six digits. (For what? Attending meetings and conferences?) The people who actually do the hard work of teaching students—the reason why colleges even exist—are paid the least, work the hardest, and not only struggle to pay basic expenses, but have to make exorbitant monthly payments on student loans, which aren’t even dischargeable through bankruptcy.
I’m with you. Adjuncts should stop accepting the horrendous working conditions as part of “building one’s career” as an academic. Tell the administrators to take their freshman comp courses and teach them themselves, and let the tenured faculty whine about how awful the students write. It won’t ever change until we tell them it’s unacceptable.
I think that’s the obstacle, though. Most adjuncts can’t afford to walk away, because it’s hard to get any job these days. So often they keep focusing on the dangling carrot of a full-time salaried position, no matter how unlikely. Many of them don’t even realize how unlikely it is. For example, at my university, there is no longer even any process by which an adjunct could become a salaried employee. And I boggle that universities are so comfortable delegating some of their most important teaching (and as a result some of their most important PR) to people they treat like shit.
Oh man, I’d wondered why you’d stopped teaching; it seemed like it would be more fulfilling than academic support. But the Mary Vojtko story sheds new light on that. I’ve been approached about picking up a class as an adjunct at some of the local law schools and I’ve been seriously tempted. The logistics just haven’t made sense yet, though they might once Tom passes. I’ll be looking at it more skeptically now. Hell of a thing.
I found teaching much more fulfilling than secretarial work, but that nagging need to eat and stay warm and dry finally drove me away. If I were in a situation where I wasn’t solely reliant on my teaching salary, I would be tempted to return to it.
With all the horror stories out there, I wonder why there are even any teachers any more. It’s why I never became a teacher, even though I’ve been told I’d be very good at it and that I have a talent for explaining things in a way that anyone could understand.
Over and over again we keep seeing the pattern of an industry killing itself over nickels. People who won’t sacrifice a few dollars an hour so that their colleagues can have a decent living wage. We live in a time where hard work isn’t enough, often goes unrewarded, and is often even punished.
And honestly, at universities, they are all too often willing to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on the salaries of assistant vice provosts who do no discernible work, when that money would make a real difference to the people doing the true work of a university.
It makes me almost cringe that I once considered a career in academia, if only briefly. Like you, I love to teach, but not at the expense of my health and to a certain extent, my integrity.
In any case, I wish you the best.
I think sadly lots of good people are oping out of academia. It shows.
Thanks for this interesting and revealing article. Why can’t universities and our government make intelligent decisions? It seems the people we depend on in these important areas of leadership take the easy way out far too often.
Often I feel that many of the educational leaders have lost focus. They simply don’t remember that the number one purpose of a school is to teach.
I feel the pain in your writing. It was an adjunct professor, who helped motivate me to graduate on time. Her class was unconventional n controversial; and I loved it.
I’m glad you got motivation from an adjunct. Being a positive influence on a student is really the only thing that balances against poor wages and disrespect.
I’m glad I helped in that regard, I tried not to be a pain in her classroom. My whole class was saddened by the fact that she wasn’t fulltime.
I was an adjunct at three campus facilities. Your evaluation is spot on. I was let go because I gave a C to a student who deserved an F. I was told to give the C by the dean or the student could not be talked back into the school and therefore would not hurt retention. Then when the student sought an attorney to get back for a class he attended only a few times and the C became an issue, I was fired to appease the system. I too had great reviews and the students held me in good regard. But when there is a law suit possible you get rid of the weak link and I was it.
Ouch, Barry. I hate it when students are allowed to leverage grades into staff terminations. The worst part, I’m sure, is that you had clear documentation of the student’s poor performance, but it didn’t matter. I had a similar incident when I taught at a certain university on Florida’s central gulf coast, where I gave a failing grade to a valued student athlete. When I declined to change the grade, they didn’t fire me. They just went behind my back and changed the grade. My carefully considered evaluation was overruled by the administration.
I also taught in a Florida College, at the time it was called FMU. Which one was yours?
Ah good old FMU. I knew a few folks who taught there. At various times I taught at HCCC, USF, and TU.
I am so very sorry for the horrible outcome of your situation. There’s literally nothing you can take from the experience that’s redeeming, is there? Expediency, raw student insolence and entitlement, administrators lacking the integrity blow off one student who deserved an F but who may not be back to contribute her/his tuition were she given the grade she deserved — they’re all, and much more, at the foundation of the problem.
The worst news is that it’s not going to get any better. Not with Coursera and MOOCs out there.
Not with universities lacking incentive to pay adjuncts a decent wage. They know slave labor when they see it. Quit, and there’s a mile-long queue waiting over your shoulder.
Perhaps one answer is unionization, if universities could ever refrain from pushing back. If everyone left at once — all the adjuncts, I mean — and there were protections for leaving, university administrators (in their really nice suits and good haircuts) would have a big, institution-wide catastrophe on their hands.
Despite the odds, we have to keep protesting to get collective bargaining into the universities to represent workers who are powerless and exploited.
I will leave that to the youth for now I am retired. I put in the time and they paid me a dime.
And so the world loses another good teacher because the school was more interested in running as a business for a profit than actually caring about the well being of the students.
Seeing things like this unfolding at my university was one of the major reasons I never even considered going to graduate school. Too few good teachers. Too many overpaid worthless teachers trying to suck away more and more of my money, so they could spend less time in the classroom and more time throwing parties at their estates. I had better things to do with my time and money. Well I’m sorry that students of the future will miss out on the opportunity to learn under your tutelage, I applaud your decision to walk away and ensure your sanity and bank account remained intact.
I think one of the most demoralizing things is the realization that if one continues on to the PhD, thereby ensuring an opportunity to keep teaching at a decent salary, one’s teaching will be put on a back burner. One employed as a tenure-track faculty member, the focus is often forcibly shifted away from actual teaching and turned toward research and administrative chores.
Once you are tenured you are expected to bring in more dollars for the university – you have to get published, you have work on getting grants, you don’t have time to focus on your classes and the students taking them. It’s a shame. The system is broken.
Hello
Do you think you might change your mind and go back to teaching?
If my circumstances changed, I would in a heartbeat. But I would have to win the lottery, marry a rich man, or sell a ton of books. 😉 Money really does matter, and I can’t go back to teaching without a way to pay the bills.
My husband is a retired dentist who, up until about seven years ago, taught anatomy and physiology as an adjunct professor to pre-nursing students at night school for our local community college. He believed they deserved to be presented with material that would be necessary for their professional lives and that the introductory courses were an important part of that foundation. He loved teaching and knew his subject backwards and forwards. His students loved him for it. (Even now, he still runs into former students who tell him how much they appreciated his classes and how much it helped them as nurses.)
Then, the college underwent an accreditation evaluation and the entity that carried that out was led by a woman who was a staunch Creationist. She instituted ridiculous requirements for all biology department instructors; rules that prevented even someone who had a medical degree to be able to qualify for an adjunct professorship. Needless to say, all or most all of the adjuncts were dismissed—even those who’d taught at the college for twenty years and were now deemed “unqualified” to teach their subjects.
The college administration didn’t give a flying flip about it and continues to put hanging on to their cushy jobs above the well-being of the students. My sympathies go out to you. Without teachers like yourself, I think this country is doomed.
Gads. It’s bad enough to lose one’s job to budget cuts but to ideological cuts to common sense? What a shame.
Same situation in Australia, sadly, where vice-chancellors get paid $1m a year – mainly for their cost-cutting prowess, it seems – while ‘casual’ teaching staff get $40/hr (in Sydney, where a 2-bed house costs $750,000). I taught 2nd year journalism students for a semester. Most couldn’t reliably construct a sentence. But the main point is that I can earn more working as a journalist – in an industry where pay rates haven’t risen in over a decade – than from teaching journalism.
That is a sad state of affairs but not surprising. One would wish that teaching future journalists would be at least as valued as being a journalist but no …
This is so sad.
I understand your situation. I have been an adjunct at a state university for 13 years, I have never received a raise ($2k for lit and comp courses), and now the prospects for the future look grim because the university is planning on cutting back on the numbers of adjuncts (not by increasing course loads for fulltime faculty but by cutting course offerings for students). Each semester, at least three or four times, I tell myself I cannot last much longer as a “wage slave,” but I keep coming back for the next semester. This semester, though, may be my last, and that will bring with it a sad reality: I love teaching (nearly all of the time), I am damned good at what I do (with student evaluations to back that up), and I do not think any other profession can possibly be so “rewarding” (but not financially). However, I do not want to end up like the adjunct at Duquesne.
I hope that there’s a good job out there for you. One where you’ll be respected and valued more. Good luck to you.
Reblogged this on Temporal Distortion and commented:
In case you haven’t checked FP, this is a worthwhile read for what’s bravely shared about the writer’s experience and for the way it challenges assumptions about universities.
I am an underpaid, adjunct professor. I’m also a better paid high school literature teacher. Teaching a college class two nights each week brings a few extra bucks home. I do wish it was more.
God bless.
It’s at least a small comfort that most high schools and grade schools pay better. I have two sisters who are primary school teachers and at least a certain percentage of the public still holds that in some regard. Good on you finding a way to contribute two ways.
I teach the occasional course on top of my full-time public service management job. I do it because I love teaching and it’s a nice bit of supplementary income. But I won’t go back to teaching full time because a) there isn’t a full-time teaching position that pays what I get paid, and b) I don’t have the stamina. Teaching is exhausting.
Your solution is about the only reasonable one. It lets you do what you love and still keep a roof over your head. If my university didn’t have strict rules against people in administrative jobs doing academic work, I’d pick up the occasional class to teach.
Agree completely with this post! 100%!
I was an adjunct uni lecturer once and a highly paid corporate executive in a blue chip company another time and guess which work I enjoyed more? Take another guess- which one did I have to eventually leave because I felt undervalued?
It’s all part of the dumbing down of America. Chase out the good teachers, the hard workers by paying substandard rates and asking them to take on a larger work load than the dinosaurs who have been around, got lazy, and demand large paychecks.
As long as teachers don’t demand accountability from administrators, this will continue. The same is true in elementary and high schools. I’ve never heard an administrator complain about her salary.
As a retired teacher (elem) my take is that the situation you describe is generic – from earliest years right through. (What would student mindfulness and skill level be, for instance, if long before they entered college, even secondary, their discernment and enjoyment of themselves as learners were well developed?) So I was heartened at your inclusion of the perverted thought: “After all, teaching kids to read, that’s just entry level work. Easy.”
What is happening in education – from start to finish – is deep betrayal: of students, of society, of human potential.
Worse, I suspect the paradigms underlying this betrayal are endemic in much that supports human development and thriving individuals in thriving community. I have no idea how professionals involved in direct patient care (in nursing for instance) feel about what their assignments and schedules now demand of them, but would not be surprised at a similar level of chronic distress that “what they meant to share and accomplish” is not allowed. Similarly, I’ve had personal experience with ‘big profit’ dismissive attitude toward quality and ‘heart’ in food production.
It often seems those who’re not yet exhausted hang in as long as they can – finally, there comes a day when self-preservation and some semblance of quality of life takes precedence.
I am so disappointed at humanity’s sense of itself in the 21st Century. I understand the forces, the psychology and politics, that explain our obliviousness – but it’s deeply disappointing none-the-less.
It’s always encouraging when bold truth statements are made – such as your post, such as confirmation from those who’ve commented. It suggests we’ve not yet lost touch with a sense of what might be.
I have to say I was startled and very pleased at the number of people who’ve already chimed in on this. It hit a nerve and the good news is that means the nerve is still live. People are still awake to what’s wrong here. Hopefully that awareness can lead to changes.
At one point in my life, I was a substitute teacher. I know how it feels and how you feel.
[…] Why I Don’t Teach Anymore […]
I completely relate to this post – after completing my PhD I made the decision that I couldn’t face living hand to mouth anymore, and took a job in the ‘real world’. My friends who stuck with academe are mostly depressed and skint. I loved my subject, and loved teaching, but it’s a rich kids’ game really and, unless you have wealthy (and infinitely patient) parents or partner, then you are destined to struggle. I also think (certainly here in the UK) that it’s much much harder in the Humanities – scientists seem to get a better financial deal. It makes me wonder what higher education will be like in ten years, following this drain of passionate people who have been forced to choose basic survival over the subject they love.
The world over, I suspect the humanities are further down the rungs. And I appreciate the reasons those in the sciences earn more, but I don’t appreciate why people teaching identical courses and putting forth the same effort can be offered such disparate salaries.
It’s not only adjunct professors who suffer. I once had the tenured chair of the art history department at the American University in Paris tell me “we don’t teach for the money, but that’s why we have husbands to support us.” I almost threw up.
It’s certainly not only the adjuncts who suffer, but I strongly suspect that when a tenured chair complains about her salary that she is accustomed to a much higher standard of living than your average adjunct. After all, a starting tenure track position at most universities pays triple what an adjunct earns teaching more courses.
Reblogged this on Preston Byrd and commented:
Great thoughts…thanks for sharing!
~Preston Byrd
As a retired teacher, I get it. I then moved into working with adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities…and you ain’t seen nothin’ til ya seen what happens there. Staff do as much or more than teachers at even less pay…not even half. And like teachers, most don’t go home, spend their own money, work unreal hours (I know some who regularly clock 70-80 a week because housing is staffed 24-7-365 and people just are not available…for good reason. And turnover is 70% or more.
Oh god, that is a whole other rotten apple filled with worms. And its source is the same wellhead. Money trickling up to management and shareholders, while the people working on the front lines survive on scraps.
great article!!
I concur! Higher Ed has become much like a beer with too much head and no body. There so much more to get through until you get to the good stuff. An old and distinguished colleague of mine called this the “Tyranny of Template”. He meant that if you’re scholarship of teaching and service, outweighs your scholarship of research you end up filling out admin templates and marking papers. I haven’t taught since 2010 and I do miss teaching…but I’m all too quick to forget the tedious stuff and remember my students 🙂
And that is the cruel calculus of higher education. The underpaid do most of the teaching while those earning respectable salaries are forced to justify those salaries with less than necessary research and publication. And now they also jump such hoops as “post-tenure review,” which is just now being introduced at my university.
It’s saddens me really that teachers get underpaid so much, I met during my time some great teacher that I wished stayed with me through my whole life as a student, but to hear they are underpaid so much pains me, teachers pave the path for others who are less experienced to get to where they want to be, whether they become doctors, engineers, lawyers or other occupations.
Great article nevertheless Ms. Greenwood
This conversation must continue. Teachers in general are unpaid and unappreciated for the most part. Adjuncts do fill a wide need for many state and community colleges. Many come with brilliant strategies that keep students engaged and interested in the basic curriculum offered to freshmen. I know of college professors who were excellent educators but were denied tenure because they simply sis not fit the clicks that can exist in academia. The conversation must continue to ensure that young people are not totally discouraged from entering the teaching field. We want excellence in teaching, adjuncting, professing and education. However, we must figure out how to compensate their work equitably. Some teachers may strike out and should consider another career. But most are good hitters. They connect to their students and change lives forever. They help to structure the future professionals and the leaders of the future. Let me take this opportunity to thank all my teachers including the adjunct professors I had in college. Thanks for posting this article.
I hope the conversation will continue. I don’t want it to die away and be forgotten.
We need to keep writing about it.
My favorite community college teacher just told us that some of his classes are being cut because as an adjunct, the school has to be careful that he and others like him don’t reach a magic number that forces the school to subsidize their healthcare under new rules.
So now, in addition to being under-employed, he works less, makes less, and has to find a way to afford required health insurance on his own. Something is clearly not right.
A big reason for the adjunct system at many universities is the cost of healthcare benefits. In many systems, any employee at half-time or better receives health benefits. Below half-time, no health benefits. The department saves a big chunk of cash by keeping adjuncts below half-time. Hopefully, ObamaCare will relieve some of the budgetary pressure that perniciously feeds the adjunct system. I guess we’ll find out.
I know that has been a topic of discussion higher up at my university–whether to go on making adjuncts benefits eligible. If they take away that, I don’t see how people can go on being adjuncts.
Even though my public education ended at the age of 13 – when I ran away from home – I have always harbored the fantasy of becoming a teacher. Specifically! I wanted to reach out to kids that live in the misery that I did and show them that it’s possible to succeed despite their current life.
That is still a fantasy for me, and may remain so; however it’s a shame that those who have turned that fantasy into reality are eventually driven from it. I see more evidence of good teachers fleeing the classroom for their own survival every day and who can blame them?
As I’m composing this on my iPad, I’m enjoying lunch at a nice restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C. I eat here often and have gotten to know many of the servers and their stories. Out of about a dozen, three are former teachers in the Public Schools around here; two of them were in Special Education.
They are unanimous in averring that they make more money, work better hours and have less stress. They are self-reliant for health insurance and retirement planning, but otherwise see no downside to their current careers.
They also recognize that their training and experience from the classroom has benefitted them to deal with patrons in the dining room. However, their passion and their hearts are still drawn to the classroom.
Until we recognize teachers as valuable national resources that are essential for our economy, security and health, this trend will continue and possibly accelerate.
It’s always so sad but also funny where one discovers former teachers. Often in restaurants as servers, but also in the military, and in myriad accounting and secretarial jobs.
With you 100%. It’s better to make money to support your craft. I also find it appalling that I was teaching a REQUIRED course. It baffles me that a university can’t afford to pay instructors to teach the things they consider core to their education. It’s terrible. I joined some protests, signed some petitions, but my biggest protest was to look elsewhere for money.
Bingo! If the course is so important that every student on campus has to take it to graduate, how do we dare devalue the people who teach it?
OK, I’m not sure whether I’m glad to have read this, or dismayed. Or both. I am just finishing up my masters in writing from Johns Hopkins and have been planning on becoming an adjunct at a local community college. I figured out how much I might make and it came to four bucks an hour. I thought I must have figured wrong — that once I got my feet wet, grading and planning wouldn’t take as long, etc. I’ve been doing informational interviews w/ teachers who, as you say, are teaching ten classes a semester, which sounds impossible.
I may have to change my plans – it seems the universe keeps sending me the same message, even through Freshly Pressed! Congratulations on that, by the way.
Sadly, there don’t seem to be two sides to this story. Everyone says the same. I’m sorry that happened to you, and to all these commenters. Good luck!
Well, I’m sorry that the universe is sending the same unfortunate message, but it’s better to go into anything with your eyes open. So I hope that you will find work that’s important to you and pays you enough to live on.
i thought only in India, teachers are exploited like this and so the really competent people look for greener pastures. Very sad to know that even in US it is the same condition
I think countries where teachers are respected and well paid are the exception.
[…] came across the post “Why I don’t teach anymore” on the important topic of adjuncts teaching composition from blogger Bryn Greenwood. And, […]
I recently re-introduced myself as a potential adjunct here in NY, but made sure the course I would teach is short. I have also suggested some one-day workshops (journalism and book publishing, my expertise) which may pay less but will also require a much smaller commitment of my time.
I adjuncted (adult ed and some undergrad) in the 1990s and enjoyed it. But I would never even consider it full-time. Way too much work for too little income. I saw that quickly.
Sorry you had to leave your classroom. When it works, teaching is a great joy.
I’m so sorry you had to give it up; there are thousands of students in our public school systems that could have used your talents. It’s so true that entry-level teachers often being the most important in a student’s career. I recently graduated and honestly the most inspirational classes in my four years came from either freshman adjunct professors or professors from community college courses. Because of the inventive teaching styles and attitudes of entry-level professors, I was inspired to keep going with my studies and find a path that mattered to me instead of dropping out right there.
I think they affectionately assumed most of us freshmen were half brain-dead on our feet (and oftentimes we were) so they took extra time and care to teach us right and help us whenever we needed helping. The tenured professors in my upper classes couldn’t give a damn about us, being so deep in their own professional research.
Glad you’ve found a place that treats you with respect, at least I hope they do.
And in my experience, Freshman Composition was often the only small class freshmen had. They had massive lecture courses like Algebra and Psychology and History that first year, but the only teacher who knew them by name on sight was their Comp teacher. When they had problems, they often came to me, because I was the main adult in their life who knew them well enough to listen to their problems and provide possible solutions.
I’m sorry you had to go through all that. Seems teaching would be a much more engaging job than secretary work, if only it paid better. All this concern about over-worked adjunct professors and grad assistants teaching most of the basic courses at 4-year universities makes me glad I decided to go to community college my first two years. We still had some adjunct faculty, but not as many. They didn’t teach as many classes along with their other jobs, either – usually just one or two. In some classes, such as engineering or graphic arts, it was helpful to have the perspective of a teacher who was active in the field. Comp II requires a real academic pro on the other hand.
So why don’t you gather your student evaluations, ask your past students to write letters of recommendation and apply for tenure track faculty positions? I understand your frustration and say Amen to every word you wrote, but don’t give up! Use this time to re-group!
Unfortunately that’s not really how academia works. It’s not just that the hiring process is very different but that universities all over America have changed to a new model. As professors retire, universities have systematically been replacing tenure track jobs with adjunct jobs.
The department where I work as a secretary for example, not one where I would be qualified to teach, has done so. 30 years ago this dept. had 15 tenured faculty, 15 graduate teaching assistants, and just a few adjunct lecturers. At the end of this semester, they will down to just 8 tenured positions, 17 GTAs, and 14 adjuncts.
The university has accomplished this cost saving measure by refusing to fund new hires to replace retiring professors. Our last new hire was 6 years ago. The jobs simply don’t exist anymore.
It is a shame that teachers work so hard to mold students, but are compensated so poorly. As Americans we find it acceptable to pay a football player or basketball player millions of dollars. I had that conversation with someone once and I was given the whole thing about how little players were paid when the leagues came together. Maybe it’s also a marketing thing… I want to thank all the teachers that have been a part of my learning process.
What a waste of talent to treat university instructors in that way based on arbitrary lifepoints of the freshmen students.
I think everything is coming to a head and universities are going to have to change the way they operate. I’m sorry that you had to leave your job before this happened, but your students are lucky that you taught them.
It’s sad how underpaid teachers are. No matter where or the level they teach it really seems like they don’t reward the job as they should. That’s why education is so low and why students don’t think anymore. I work as a teacher in the most prestigious school in my city- for rich, insanely rich people only. And yet I make so little money.. You can’t imagine!
The problem is not just the teaching profession, but the general greed exhibited in the world. Nobody understands or respects what we do (good, honest, hardworking employees). I am not a teacher, but a designer, shop fitter, tradesman, salesman.
When I had my company, I would watch clients crawling around on their hands and knees to trying to find a 20 year old spot of dried paint, then they had an excuse not to pay us…
In South Africa we have two types of teachers; those who love teaching and are perpetually being intimidated or demoralized by the system. The others who come to work, drunk, have affairs with pupils, leave school early, go on strikes for more pay!
Subsequently poor black folks are trying to send their children to traditionally white suburban schools. This causes huge disparities, our government resorts to playing the race card if a black pupil is turned away because a school is too full.
Finally, I understand your motivation for leaving, however, teaching is a noble profession, teachers worldwide have always been underpaid. Thank God my children are done with school education…
Sadly, I think we have those two types of teachers in the US as well. I think it’s not just greed but the way selfishness has infected our society here. I’m stunned when I hear childless people complain about their property taxes going to pay for schools. I don’t have children, but I certainly don’t want to live in a society full of people who weren’t provided with an adequate education. I’m happy to pay my property taxes to support public education, but I really hate how things have shifted in the educational system.
Hi! I am a uniniversity student, and I was really interested to learn the other side. Wow, it is something I never really considered.
If that would be of any comfort, English is one of my favorite classes. My teachers played a huge role in that.
I am sure your students appreciate the wisdom you have shared with them.
My English teachers don’t know, but I came to love writing so much that I eventully started a blog:)
I am so greateful for the teachers that loved their subject, that is the surest way to pass on passion to young people.
So, I thank you for the years you planted so much potential into new minds!
I’m appalled by the shocking conditions. So many people don’t realise how difficult it is to teach students to write well.
I can only hope that somewhere along the line the right changes will happen.
Wow is this the way it is in the US? I am from Canada and I don’t doubt it is the same. However, currently I am teaching in S. Korea. For the most part I do enjoy it better than the secretarial kind of job. I found I was just a number back home in that kind of office work, rarely thanked. At least from teaching here in Korea I do get thanked from some of my students and other teachers too.
My pay is about the same back home. The only difference being that I have my rent covered. Also I have no papers to mark. Every now and then like once every other month I may correct an essay for grammar.
So honestly for me it is really easy here, a lot easier than a job back home.
I have to say I am glad you got out the way you feel and I am glad you are in something much more fulfilling to you.
I was fascinated and appalled by this piece. I live in the UK, and I’ve never heard of adjunct teaching. Here, if you teach you get paid teacher’s wages. This is possibly a stupid question, but isn’t there a union?
Unionization here is scattershot, and while I believe there is a union that adjuncts could join, their situation is made problematic by the fact that they are all contracted workers, with 9-month contracts. They don’t hold salaried positions, so at any time, the university can simply opt not to offer them a new contract.
Its depressing, isn’t it, when you think that universities are supposed to be such civilised, clear-thinking places.
Hahaha! I so rarely think of universities in that light. They always seem like cults with elaborate rules and labyrinthine power structures.
A sort of Earth equivalent to Dr Who’s home planet? I suppose so, its just that teachers here are very strongly unionised, and mostly pro-left, and they get very arsey indeed if they think someone is being discriminated against. I was really surprised by your piece. I’m going to check out if it’s started to happen here, and I just haven’t noticed. Thanks for the post.
This is tragic, but I do hope you’ll come across more opportunities to share your talent in teaching again.
Some part of me wants to be a teacher. 😦
http://bembunny.wordpress.com/
Before I go off on my soap box about people blaming freshman comp for students’ literacy problems later in their college careers, let me say I agree with you about the over-reliance on adjunct instructors, the exploitation and low pay, and the impact this model of staffing courses has on students. (I also agree that introductory courses should not be left to adjuncts (and teaching assistants), although my experience has been that many adjuncts are more dynamic, well-prepared teachers that those with tenure who are running out the string. From what you say about your teaching, I am sure you were one of the great ones, and colleges and students are so much worse off when talented teachers like you change careers.
So many people in and out of academia would not see the satiric tone of your statement, “After all, teaching kids to read, that’s just entry level work. Easy.” They think it is easy, the work of primary school teachers and remedial workers and freshman comp teacher, when in truth, all teachers should be working on reading, writing, and research in every course, every field, every professional program or graduate school so that students can become experts in reading and writing in that field.
It’s not just the fact that full-time faculty leave freshman composition to adjuncts (or in the case of major universities, teaching assistants) that make so many juniors and seniors unprepared to write and research in their content fields. It’s that writing and research are not “generic” skills. We know this in the commonsense way we think about expertise as content knowledge or procedural training. We would never take our taxes to a student in Accounting I, or allow a dental student in his first year to perform complex dental surgery on our children. But we think that 2 semesters of composition/research writing can teach a student how to write like a physicist or a historian or an economist.
Disciplines and professions involve specialized use of writing and research skills and engage the people in those fields in reading that requires specialized knowledge. Read the top journals in cardiology or nuclear physics or abnormal psychology or neo-natal nursing–any complex field that is not your own. How easy is it to understand the research articles? Would a college graduate or even a Ph.D. in English recognize the best scholarship that these articles cite? Would he be familiar with the arguments in the discipline and the positions taken by those most frequently cited? Would he be able to put the journal down and write an article in response and send it off with a hope of it being published? Of course not. That is why instruction in the literacies of the field/discipline/profession must be embedded in the academic program (and likewise for the skilled trades, whose reading matter more closely resembles engineering than what is found in Composition I.) Think how much of law school is taken up with learning to read and write in that field.
That is not to say that there is no role for introductory courses that provide more general instruction and experience in writing. These courses can focus on general conventions, teach the habit of paying close attention to the text when reading, and many other useful tools that all writers, in and out of academia, find useful.They can inspire students to take their own literacy development seriously. But freshman comp has to be a starting place that is built on over four or five years, in various courses and with greater complexity as students develop content knowledge in a field. And I say that as someone who teaches freshman writing year after year.
Great, thought-provoking blog.
Oh, absolutely, true. After Freshman Comp, students need to go into courses that are going to build on those basic skills to aid them in their specific fields, but sadly, most students only take the two basic composition courses, and if those courses don’t provide the right groundwork, well, things aren’t going to go well for those students.
Your blog post was such an eye-opener. I had no idea adjunct professors are treated so shabbily. I am so sorry you had to leave a job you trained for all those years, and that obviously fed your abilities and your passion, because of a system that doesn’t respect its teachers. Shame on them. The students who were privileged to have sat under your teaching will always remember you, so you have shaped lives in the time you were there.
I admire you for speaking out. I think there’s a huge misconception among the general public about teaching in general. Thank you for a thoughtful post. I wish the funding emphasis for universities wasn’t leaning so heavily towards their sports programs, but that’s another topic altogether, isn’t it?
I’m so sorry to read your story. I’m just a lowly masters student at the moment but in the long term I suppose I’m hoping to get that golden professorship. It’s stories like these that make me question whether putting in all of the hard work to get through it, do a PhD etc. is all worth it?
If you are in an elite program, or are accepted by one for your doctoral work, it’s probably worth it if your field isn’t glutted. If not, the answer is no. It’s an incredible amount of work the higher you go: an investment of as long as a decade. It becomes your whole world, which is fine: until, like most people, you are kicked out. Not because you did anything wrong – but because you just worked your ass off for seven years, and 367 people have just applied for the nine openings in your field.
As Claire says, if you get into a good program and absolutely crush the competition with the quality of your teaching, research, and publications, you can become a professor. If you’re not willing to put all your energy into it, no. The last time we hired for an assistant professor position, we had over 400 applicants, and the person who won out already had over a dozen publications in peer reviewed journals, had attended many conferences and presented at them. She also had her PhD dissertation nearly redrafted into a book, ready to submit to the major academic publishers. Since being hired she has spent the last 5 years preparing to go up for tenure. As far as I can tell, that’s all she does. So if you’re willing to do that, you can become a professor. And good luck to you.
What a sad truth to America’s educational system. You are so right when you say that the beginning courses are the most important ones in paving the way students will eventually take. If it weren’t for my first great psychology professor, I wouldn’t have majored in that subject and become enriched by all of the courses that were to follow.
Great work on outlining what is needed in this country – I hope one day the right pay will become a standard, not a dream.
Interesting post, thank you for sharing. It’s good for others to get insight of what it is like on the other side of the chalkboard, for those of us that are not formal teachers. Good luck to you.
I am leaving social work for similar reasons. For the liability, low pay and horrendous amount of forms (paperwork) required, it was not worth it. I could not survive on the income and was not doing what I went to school to do– work with people. I was filling out paperwork for insurance companies, the State, Medicare and it consumed half my day. Ridiculous. Now I volunteer, take care of my kids (vs paying a facility for after school care) and write (a passion).
I reference my Master’s degree as a lovely piece of art … for my desk drawer.
In my forthcoming novel Lie Lay Lain, I have a character who is let down by the state’s child welfare department, and I honestly worry that people will read that as an indictment of social workers, when I feel the opposite. Social workers are so massively overworked and underpaid that they can’t help but make mistakes. Sadly, some of them utterly egregious mistakes that harm children, but not ones that are made with malice.
Ah I would not worry…as even social workers know the system is broken. Many of my friends working that area become frustrated because their hands are tied by “policy”. Write your heart’s content. We writers are not authentic if some subculture is not annoyed. And the voice of the child or adolescent of the broken system needs heard.
Truly.
The only positive about this story is that there are clearly so many people out there in the world who put themselves through this because they care about other people. As a teacher, I could add nurses, aged care workers, social workers etc to the list of underpaid, underappreciated people who actually make a difference in the world. Imagine what it would be like if all these caring people stopped caring? I’ve stopped teaching at the moment because it was so emotionally and physically exhausting to do it well, but I have another’s income to allow me to do so. My heart goes out to those who can’t afford to stop. Next job I have is one where I go to work, do the work and then leave it there when I walk out the door at night.
Yes, that was a big selling point about secretarial work. When I go home at night, I don’t take anything with me. I go home, take care of my pets, do my housework, and write.
And I think very often the balance is tipped by the presence or absence of a support network. If I’d had a spouse to help with the bills, I might have stayed in teaching. Or conversely, if I’d had a spouse to help with bills, I might have thrown myself whole-heartedly into writing full time.
How can someone know how to guide himself for examination malpractice?
Very well said. Thank you for this post.
Well said. I think this issue has been getting more attention lately – I just read two articles about this, one in Z Magazine, and the other in a statewide newspaper. Hopefully heightened awareness will begin to bring about some positive change.
If people want a better world, we are going to have to accept that education is not a commodity and university should not be a business. Our capitalist socity is suffering for many things, but the worst, I feel, is the drain on education. It’s sucking the authenticity of questioning and aquiring knowledge, and turning it into mcLearning. Professors become minimum slave labor in the process, the students become fat, and the product is junk.
One of the professors in my dept. has been teaching at the university for 30+ years. He says, “They’ve turned the finest school in this state into Wal-Mart U. A junk education produced by poverty labor to maximize profit.”
You have just articulated my exact story. I taught as adjunct for 7 years total. Upon completing my Master’s and returning to my hometown, I started my own business and have been applying to administrative positions at local universities. I need the healthcare, financial stability and sanity of mind. Like you, the Margaret Mary Vojtko saddened me a lot, yet reminded me why I made the decision I made to discontinue my PhD and adjunct teaching (two dead ends for most people) and take the safer route. Thanks for writing.
I hope that you find that good position and that a margin of safety allows you to pursue things that you enjoy.
I teach secondary English even though I think I would be more suited to teach at the university level (and have been told so by colleagues). But after finding out that one of my favorite college profs (who was full time!) only made $50,000/year, I decided I could not afford to go for my PhD on such a mediocre salary. I now make over $60,000 (in Southern CA, where cost of living is high, mind you), as a secondary teacher, and while I would love to teach a class at a university one day, I know it wouldn’t be for the money because I’d make infinitely more teaching at the secondary level (which isn’t saying much).
This post really threw me for a loop: I find it surreal that nothing has changed in academia, at least in the liberal arts, for the past fifteen years. The issues are identical, as is the discussion, the language and general conclusions. I left at the end of 1999, a year after being admitted to doctoral candidacy,and I find it mind-boggling that all the conferences, proposals, emergency summit meetings, and political lobbying didn’t somehow find their way down to you.
I guess what really blows my mind is why you ever thought in terms of a regular faculty job without a PhD – at either a two or four year school.Unless you live somewhere that’s a huge exception to the rule, this has never been a possibility for you. True, community colleges list the master’s as a minimum requirement, but aside from certain fields, their actual hires are PhDs. I’m sure you’re an excellent instructor, so on one level you have every right to feel exploited and disrespected. You were. But surely you have always been aware that no one was dangling THAT carrot in front of you. I say this because unless there is a system I don’t know about, betrayal is at least one burden you can put down.
I think you would like teaching abroad, where your qualifications will be well-respected. They will adore you in China. Japan will pay you quite well, and provide housing. Eastern European countries such as Hungary want you, and it’s a great feeling to be wanted and appreciated. I don’t know which agencies are the best, but I’m sure your discerning eye will spot them with a bit of online research.
,You will be amazed at how little thought the rest of the world gives to academia. It’s really quite refreshing. Working on campus is just not a good idea. If you’re going to be a secretary,though, you might as well be one in the corporate sector – it will take note of your background from day one and be evaluating you for promotion. It’s tearing its hair out looking for people who can write.
Anyway, please forgive me if I’ve been bossy. I’m old – and I’m infuriated when young people who have succeeded and are making valuable contributions are made to feel that they have failed.
You have not failed, and life has other opportunities waiting for you. You can bet the ranch on that.
I hope nothing in my post suggests that I feel like I’ve failed. If anything, I feel like I’ve succeeded. I taught for as long as I could manage and did good things with it, knowing that a faculty job was never an option. (I’m neither stupid nor delusional. When I chose not to finish my PhD, I knew I would never be faculty. I also knew that getting a tenure job was incredibly unlikely even with a PhD, which was why I didn’t finish. Why spend another 6-7 years on a degree only to earn exactly the same salary I did with a Masters?) When teaching as an adjunct was no longer sustainable, I moved on to things that could sustain me.
And I’m hardly young. (Do not be fooled by the picture. I just don’t ever go in the sun.) I have already done the teaching abroad thing and come home to that which is suitable to what I want my life to be like. I like being a secretary well enough, and I come from a distinguished line of secretaries. 😉 But I’ve worked corporate jobs, too, and have no desire to go back to that.
Right now, I’m pretty happy. I just wish I didn’t have to read about the tragedies of people like Margaret Mary Vojtko. Things should be better for those who teach. Frankly, things should be better for everyone who works hard and honestly.
I agree with you. Your story reflects the situation of teachers in the Philippines. We are bombarded with lesson plans, instructional materials, and a meager income notwithstanding.
It seems to be the great commonality in teaching. It requires an enormous amount of effort and emotional investment, but the salary is not commensurate.
Reblogged this on Crissemari and commented:
My thoughts, exactly.
When LBJ created the Great Society, he offered tons of government grants to solve social problems. Universities jumped in with greedy hands, and promised to teach Johnny to read, to reduce prison populations, end child abuse, etc. etc. Years passed, and society began to note prisons were overflowing with Johns who couldn’t read, sexual deviates who had been abused, etc. etc. The universities took the money and didn’t solve the problems. But the universities had by now abandoned their traditional role of training a small cadre of good thinkers for society to draw upon. Universities had promised to fix the world, and failed. So legislatures began to cut funding, and cut, and cut. Hence, the adjunct system became more and more used because it is an effective way to deal with shrinking budgets. Prior to the Great Society, legislatures were much more willing to fund higher education adequately. Now, taxpayers demand bang for the buck, and by having supplanted their mission of “seeking after truth”, universities are feeling the pain.
Thank you for writing this. I’m sharing with everyone I can!
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
For all my adjunct friends…
Our job is not considered and I think it’s everywhere.
Such a pity to think students are loosing out on good educators due to the math.
sadly a similar situation exists in other businesses today. it’s not just in education. offshoring work leads to overworked undervalued underpaid staff in States. there are valid reasons for unionizing. adjunct professors, you are not alone.
Unions are important, and I wish that workers would take more power into their hands.
My honey is currently in a Rhetoric and Writing grad program. I graduated from nearly the same one at the same school. I ended up doing writing center work (maybe because I have seen the adjunct situation you’re talking about) and actually studied pedagogy and theory behind it for pretty much my college career. I know all too many adjuncts. I know too many of them that have staggering student loans mad no job that pays enough to even make a dent in the amount. Not that you quitting was a good thing for all of the students’ lives you touched, but I don’t blame you one bit. I wonder if my boyfriend will be blogging about the same thing one day…
Thanks for the great and über honest post.
If teaching is what you really love, then, DO it, and, just K-N-O-W that things will always break even, because things have a tendency to work themselves out at the very end, rather than getting STUCK in a menial, unchallenging job that you WILL end up hating, do what you feel is satisfying, and just have FAITH, that you WILL be fine, and that, is all.
No offense, as this is a lovely sentiment and I’m sure you mean well, but this is what’s called magical thinking. Oprah sells it big, but it is demonstrably false. If things truly magically worked out for people who do what they love with the faith that problems will just “work themselves out at the very end,” you wouldn’t have tragic endings for people who pursue what they love. Artists and musicians would never end up on the streets, but they do. I personally knew two talented musicians who ended up dead from living on the streets. I know artists who have ended up in prostitution because art wouldn’t pay for food. And perhaps more to the point, Margaret Mary Vojko wouldn’t have died in the sad, abject situation she was in. After all, 25 years of doing what she loved, but in the very end, things worked out that she died poor, homeless, and medically untreated.
Doing what you love is not a ticket to survival. After all, teaching isn’t my first love. Writing is, and I know hundreds of writers who despite their best efforts cannot make a living at writing. If everyone who loved to write tried making a go of it as their primary source of income, they would come to tragedy. I have put 20 hours per week (and often more) into my writing for the last 16 years. It’s what I love, but it hasn’t even begun to pay the bills. If I quit my day job to write, I would be destitute.
Also, I do not consider my secretarial job menial. I consider it noble work and valuable in its own right. The world needs secretaries who love to write, just as it needs garbage men who love to create scrap metal art. (but of course, my point behind this blog post was that the world also needs teachers who secretly write, but education is losing out to other professions because of how hard it is to make a living in certain teaching fields.)
Your story is a never ending saga I have heard all my life. When will this change I ask myself. What does livable wage actually mean? In America we pay certain people high salaries and think nothing of it. This whether they deserve it or do not deserve it. And those working under the higher up, trying to do a good job and live on what they make have to suffer through it. Or do as you did and leave that position for another to make more money. My wife has left nursing and home care which she dearly loves to become a financial admin. officer in a corporation he hates. It pays the bills.
To me, that’s the real horror–it’s not as though nursing and home care is glamor work. It is hard and important and necessary. So why should it pay so little?
Wow! interesting to see a perspective of a professor regarding our education system. Thank you for sharing!
I think the most disgusting aspect to all of this is that tuition has sky-rocketed (I know some of this is due to diminishing state funding.), all the while the people who are educating the students are making a pittance. Oh, and that multi-million dollar football stadium means more budget cuts for the adjuncts.
Wow. As someone who is just getting into academics this is very heartbreaking. I love teaching and I am just developing a love for research and what you describe is precisely why I am nervous about continuing my studies beyond a Master’s degree. I would love to go on to a PhD some day but it seems like the politics and uncertainty in academia make it difficult to build a career unless you are well connected, not reliant on a decent salary/benefits/job security, and are willing to relocate your family on a moment’s notice when budgets and programs are slashed. Yikes!
Your blog highlights the the systemic problems in the teaching “industry” today. I say industry because teaching institutions are being run as businesses, not places of real learning. From kindergarten through to university graduation there seems to be a concerted effort to “dumb-down” the population. A large percentage of young people have difficulty reading properly, have deplorable writing skills and can’t perform basic arithmetic. The world’s elite class does not really want a well educated population because their positions of wealth and power are threatened by it.
I believe it’s symptomatic of the world in general. On one hand, the appearance is given that a good education is important and everything should be done to promote it (well promoted propaganda). On the other, schools and universities are starved of funds and families are expected to pay and pay, then incur huge debts that graduates pay back for the rest of their lives. Oftentimes these people are employed in low-paying jobs (if they can get them) that have nothing to do with what they originally studied for.
Welcome to the world of Dickens! A more modern example would be Nineteen Eighty-Four – oh dear!
Very well said and certainly understood. I am a certified teacher and realized early on in my career that the field would be challenging both professionally and financially. I chose to detour to the business sector but applaud those who continue the journey. It takes courage for what you did and an equal amount to make those hard decisions that are made everyday.
Bryn, I enjoyed reading this….even as I cringed at the terrible truths about our grossly undervalued educational professionals in every line. I especially enjoyed the line about how “it’s hard to maintain your professorial dignity when you find yourself serving limeades to your students.”
To lend some perspective, way back at the beginning of the Enlightment, when science was just getting a toehold in academia, Francis Bacon had a big complaint recorded in his journals…his work was always underfunded and he had to spend lots and lots of time searching for funding (‘patrons’ in his day). Centuries have passed, but not a lot has changed in academic circles when it comes to adequate funds.
In line with that perspective, I marvel that we now have aseptic surgery and antibiotics, but we’re still trapped in a system of patronage, albeit one that’s largely powered by pharmaceutical and military industries. 😉
Thanks for your story, as a Graduate Student in Nursing I can appreciate your perspective it must be hard the work you do. I also have great empathy for you and your colleagues as I love my Adjunct Professors and respect them greatly. I am constantly thanking my Professors for being there for me and my classmates; without them we can’t affect future generations or in my case my patients without an Advanced Training skill set. I truly do hope you one day can pursue your passion and still eat at the same time.
Take Care
mc
And people pursuing nursing degrees need the best education they can get. You all are the ones who are going to keep us healthy in years to come.
[…] but for reasons people aren’t necessarily aware of. A no-doubt-gifted teacher’s half-farewell/half-confession should serve as a real eye-opener for multiple types of people – parents, students, […]
Reblogged this on Vida y Conciencia.
The important thing, is even though you’re NOT doing the things you enjoy or love anymore, because of whatever reasons there may be (economics, etc., etc., etc.) you can still enjoy yourself working, and i’m NOT saying that settling is bad, nor am i saying that you’re settling for less than you deserve, we ALL got to make ends meet here.
Plus I’m actually getting to do more of one thing I enjoy: writing. If I had continued teaching, I wouldn’t have nearly as much time to write.
I’ve also made the decision to take my PhD out academia’s door. I’ve spent the last month applying for all sorts of nonacademic entry level jobs. Most of them pay more than I made as an adjunct, especially when the “rate” adjunct contracts offer applies only to the hours spent in the classroom. For my last adjunct course, I was paid something in the neighborhood of $22/hour…for the three hours I spent in the classroom each week. (That’s the root of the coming fight over adjunct benefits–the IRS released a memo suggesting that universities will have to account for time spent outside the classroom in figuring out whether adjunct staff reach the 30-hour per week benefits threshold.) I have two kids. There was no way I could subject them to the vagaries of adjunct pay, adjunct commutes, or to bouncing around the country chasing full-time contingent contracts.
It’s something I’ve blogged about. Quitting is rough when you’ve spent the last decade or so preparing for a job you find out doesn’t exist. I have a hell of a lot of respect for the people who stay in the game, but it’s no coincidence that they’re young, childless renters.
Good luck to you. I hope you find a job you enjoy that pays a living wage for someone with a family to support.
I agree that the basics are very important. Teaching higher-levels subjects would be very difficult if the students were not able to grasp the basics by which that subject is built upon. It’s a shame that educators face this reality.
I spent my first 9 years after college working for the biggest Telecommunications company in my country (a third-world nation). The company decided to cut costs and I was laid-off. I thought after that I can be a teacher, so I took all courses and exams that led me to teach. My students loved me and so did the school. But with all the necessary things you need to prepare to be an effective teacher, plus the responsibility of being the Faculty President, not to mention being a single mother, it felt as if the world was on my shoulders with my meager salary. Just after one month, I left the school and decided to find a more financially satisfying job. I always considered teaching as a “passion” and a “service-to-others” type of job, but I will be a hypocrite if I say that I don’t need money.
Everyone has to live and to live in modern society, we need money. It’s a sad thing that people who provide such an important service to all of our society are often left scrambling to pay basic bills. I hope you’ve found something you enjoy but that helps keep you and your family safe and healthy.
I think teachers are one of the least appreciated occupation in society in terms of pay and respect. But those that you have taught, I am sure they love, and is very thankful for all your efforts.
I once aspired to be a teacher, but I stopped. Not because of the salary, but because I started giving private lessons and realized how much education has become a kind of unhealthy competition.
In Asia, you see a kindergaten having private lessons almost everyday. They’re stressed and they have no childhood. I didn’t want to be a part of a culture where children have to stress and worry.
I just recently read an article in, I think, The Atlantic, about how much homework is being piled on grade school aged children. Even though there is no proof of a correlation between homework and academic achievement. I taught in Japan for two years and was horrified at the extremes of tutoring and memorization for even very young children. It’s odd, because I cannot remember doing any homework in grade school, but I was academically successful in high school and college.
Its true. Society is demanding and its now all about getting into those elite schools and classes. I was in Singapore giving private lessons and the parents there were crazy about getting their child into the best schools, starting from pre-school. The ones suffering are the children. There are some that easily do well with flying colors, but then there are those that are demotivated and stressed every step of the way.
To those thinking of changing careers, keep in mind:
Albert Einstein worked in a patent office while developing the theories that absolutely changed science, and the 20th Century
Herman Melville was a government worker while he wrote “Moby Dick”
Charles Ives was an insurance executive while he wrote his compositions that re-directed American classical music.
The split between making a living and doing what we are passionate about can be overcome.
And of course, my favorite example: Anthony Trollope wrote nearly 40 novels while employed by the postal service.
Thank you for posting this, Karl. I was trying and failing to explain this concept recently.
I believe that teachers definitely need security, which comes in conjunction with better pay, but I don’t agree with tenures considering that a good teacher can become bad, and yet they cant be fired. There is no incentive to stay at the top of your game and push the students if you cant be fired (for any reason other than conduct). There has to be a balance between Long time dedicated teachers being fired or cut just because they are easily replaceable, while not over securing the teachers job so that teachers keep quality up maybe through competitive pay— For example having students measurable performance play a role in how much they get paid. In general teacher should get paid ALOT more in my opinion. (highschool-college)
Wow! I had no idea. Is this the salary only for entry level classes or does the salary rise for higher-level courses? This is really ridiculous since tuition is so expensive. What does the remainder if the money fund? I have my ideas.
So, something GOOD did come out of you, stop teaching, now, you’ll have MORE time to do what you really love, WRITE!!!
There’s been a lot of talk about this in the press in Finland, the working conditions of teachers and how they’re underpaid… Considering the amount of education required for what they do, not to mention the work load. In one of the articles a poll was quoted, 25% of the teachers would quit teaching immediately, if they could. I don’t find it as shocking as I would have, had I not been given the context beforehand… It is demoralizing. In high school we had an amazing history teacher, I loved his classes, but I also remember him telling me that don’t become a teacher. A few others in the same school said the same thing.
This is discouraging as there are many articles in the US press praising the terrific level of student achievement in the Finnish educational system, and some propose that US schools adopt Finnish techniques.
Excellent article! What is interesting is that I have put three of my children through college and the “rising” costs are passed on o the students and parents…which obviously is not translating to non-tenured salaries. I saw this issue when I attend UConn – great professor earns 30k while a basketball coach earns $500K.
When I taught high school English, people would sometimes ask if I would ever “move up to the college level.” And I would like to teach at the college level, but not because it’s UP–it’s most certainly not UP for most people. Adjuncts make very little money for what they do. I’m glad you’re happier where you are now!
[…] Why I don’t teach anymore […]
I was shocked to hear that college kids are using Wikipedia! I see that with my 7th graders but it didn’t occur to me that it’s rampant at the university level too. The good news is, I think the new Common Core State Standards (I know it’s controversial and I’m not trying to “go there”) are going to require more research, emphasizing evaluation of sources. The new standards won’t go into effect officially until 2014, but in California (where I teach) districts are scurrying to get teachers up to speed on using academic vocabulary and writing in the non-fiction genres across all subject areas. Perhaps within the next few years the Wikipedia as the main source will diminish and kids will have more opportunities to hone scholarly skills (instead of copy, paste and change a few words).
I have a different perspective on this. It seems to me that both sides – the colleges and the adjunct professors themselves – are misusing the system.
Ideally, adjunct professorships supplement the work of tenure-track faculty by bringing in a working professional to teach a class here and there in a given field. The students benefit by being exposed to someone who is decidedly not an academic scholar, but is currently working in the “real world” and can bring that sensibility to the classroom, sharing their up-to-date, boots-on-the-ground industry experience.
Adjunct professorships pay poorly and don’t offer benefits because the people filling those positions should already be getting a salary and benefits in their full-time job.
The law school I attended used adjunct professors in this capacity. One of our classes on trial technique was taught by a local prosecutor. A local immigration attorney taught a summer seminar on immigration law. In other words, being an adjunct professor was by no means a full-time gig, and no one expected it to turn into one.
Similarly, at the undergraduate level, some of the adjunct professors teaching English or journalism were professional writers and editors who taught only to supplement their income – and because they enjoyed it. Their work schedules rarely allowed them to teach more than one course per semester.
This may be unpopular to say, but a lot of these complaints about shabby treatment are coming from people who are trying to turn “adjunct professor” into a career by agreeing to teach multiple classes, sometimes at multiple universities, for years on end. That is not how these adjunct positions are supposed to be used – neither by the universities nor by the instructors filling these roles.
I do not mean to suggest that the universities are blameless. Relying on adjuncts to teach as much as 50% of course offerings is not a sound way to run a university if you ask me. But as it stands now, the law of supply and demand allows them to get away with it. Until more people are willing to walk away, or limit the number of courses they’re willing to teach, I don’t see it changing.
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Reblog..
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Reblog..
I thought about teaching at an university but decided against it to become an Instructional Designer along the lines of organizational development. It’s mainly just teaching but with topics related to the corporate world such as leadership, teamwork, and other concepts. From my research and hearing stories such as yours, the thought of becoming a professor turned me off and pushed me in this route which I’m very happy with now. I do hope you find somewhere for you to put your passion for teaching into action though!
I fully agree that adjunct professors who are not paid a living wage should leave the field en masse. Higher education is not exempt from the primacy of the marketplace. Why should universities pay more when they can get away with paying less? I say they either need to start paying a living wage or else close down for lack of instructional staff. I have a couple of degrees and would love to teach. But I don’t. for financial reasons. Some say that I have become an economic prostitute. Yes, my services are available to the highest bidder. Universities lose! It is a sad state of affairs for our young people who are seeking to gain an education, but we all need to take care of ourselves first. Kudos to you on becoming a better-paid secretary! You are right on.
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please read, after all Saturday is World Teacher’s Day
[…] Why I don’t teach anymore. […]
I see what you are saying about why you decided not to continue teaching. I would have assumed as an educator that you would have wanted to stay and help to teach those students the right way to do things. However, if it was a monetary and quality of life issue, I do not fault you at all.
Unionize?
I think that losing you is a real blow to the academic world. I was aware of this “system” in the Universities, but it is actually worse. I would say, corrupt. People selling out the minds of the future leaders of america for tenure and a small pension enhancement. Best wishes in your new career.
The best teacher I ever had was an adjunct at The Evergreen State College. They punked him, for certain. They worked him like they owned him.
Even more dispiriting, his wife had been picked up right away as a full time (if that’s the word) teacher. They kept him an adjunct-for years. He was the sort of teacher that, to this day, I wish I could sit down with him and say “let’s go over …..again’ because what he’d taught has stuck with me, the questions he asked have stuck in my brain and made me THINK. In fact, I can honestly say that he’s the first teacher that taught people to THINK. I came to him in my late 40s and graduated at 52. I already knew how to think, but so many of my 20 something classmates had no idea that one must be taught to think deeply.
So please…I do understand your disappointment with the academic ivory tower, and I believe you will be happier in your current position. But realize that, no matter if your superiors don’t give a damn about you or what you accomplished…someone out there, someone you taught..will never forget you.
this is so true. i have heard the same thing many times from college adjuncts. they are all being underpaid. i want to become a full time professor at a local university but i sometimes wonder will that ever happen or will i get drowned in the large crowd of college adjuncts???? great post!
My experience is a little different, but also the same. I graduated college at 41 with an elementary teaching degree. I subbed for a while; mostly long-term assignments, so I was often in the role of a full-time educator. I also tutored in our community’s after-school program, mostly ELL students.
To cut to the chase, I loved my students, but the pay was awful. Teaching is basically the equivalent of 2.5 jobs. Personal time is almost non-existent, which is damaging to anyone, but especially those with families at home. However, the worst part is the politics and unappreciative attitude of administration. The teachers in my district are some of the unhappiest people I’ve ever encountered. You can imagine the cumulative negative energy that blasted me as I walked into each school I filled in at. Two and a half years and a degree later, I’m working part-time from home and subbing here and there to fill in gaps, but I doubt I’ll ever strive for a classroom of my own.
As someone who just graduated, this always really ticked me off. I was at my university to get an education. My professors worked their assess off to give me one. My tuition should have gone straight into their pockets, and not into the various campus building and rebranding projects.
I was an adjunct teacher a while back and left because I could teach in the corporate world for more pay. Now years later I am a postdoc, but make more money developing software for my university (a second job). I would love to teach and focus on research, but academia does not make it easy. Maybe it is time for an “academic spring”?
This is really sad. I was fortunate to have some great core class instructors…I had no idea that they are so undervalued in a university or collegiate setting. This was an eye-opening blog. Thanks for sharing.
“I’m not going to wreck what little life I have (and health, with autoimmune & working FT already) to do it. There’s only so much ‘me’ around.”
Exactly. I was on anti-depressants for two of the three years I taught middle and high school. I loved my students, but have never been so miserable in my life, and would never, ever do it again, despite having a masters in education. It’s not worth the mental and physical toll that it takes.
Sad, but true.
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Thoughtful commentary on just one facet of our dysfunctional education system. While in graduate school I loved teaching, but was discouraged from teaching without a research program because of little pay and job security.
I so know the kind of sentiment you weaved into this post for adjunct instructors like me. That’s why I also decided to go abroad and be a full-time secretary instead.
I wish the highest ranking official of every university or college who is guilty of underrating the adjunct instructors or professors should read this post. I will will now post this on my fb wall hoping “he” will take a look at it.
😉
I wish the same–the university administrators would read a post like this and take it to heart. Alas, I suspect most universities do what mine is doing–paying enormous sums of money to hire outside consultants, who do not know much about how universities operate.
Very sad. I left the formal education system here in England for similar reasons. Education is simply a business. . .
Upon returning from Southeast Asia in 1970, I elected to enroll at Kennesaw Junior College in Georgia to begin my “higher” education. The Governor, at that time, was Jimmy Carter. These “Junior” colleges were set up all over the state with the stated purpose of putting at least a 2 year college education within driving distance of most of the students in the state. Further, the Presidents of these entities were given wide latitude in deciding exactly what they chose to focus on educationally to best serve the communities where they were located. Kennesaw was to be a very challenging learning environment focused on learning at a very high level. Attending this small Junior College was not to be for everyone. This gets me to where I want to be to comment. Enrolling in English Literature 101, I found that the class was to be taught by Dr. V. Hinton. Yes, in my characterization, a full Doctor in an entry level freshman class. On the first day, we were handed those little blue booklets and told to write 500 words on anything that we had an interest in. Upon completion of this task, we turned the booklet in. The following day, the very NEXT day, the booklets were returned, graded, and handed out to each student. All except mine. I raised my hand, and Dr. Hinton simply said, “Mr. Wright, kindly see me after class.” During the period, I learned that every error was pointed out in RED, and a reference made to the literary concept we had violated. We were then told that we were to rewrite the paper, correct all RED violations, and then WRITE the correct rule that applied next to the error we had corrected. At the end of the class, I awaited what I was sure was something very bad indeed. I was not disappointed. She handed me my booklet, and said that if that was an example of my best writing effort, she strongly suggested that I drop her class immediately, because the challenge going forward was going to be very intense indeed. I opened the booklet, and all I saw was RED. Everywhere. Right there, I decided that a gauntlet had been laid, a challenge made, and one which I decided to accept. No, I’ll not drop your class, and by the end of the semester, I’ll have shown you why. She was not kidding about the challenge to come, but by the end of the semester, I felt that the grade of A was perhaps the most important achievement I’d yet made in my life. I worked relentlessly to improve, and I got from Dr. Hinton, all the guidance one would expect. To this day, I praise the day I was fortunate enough to encounter this wonderful Lady who was committed to the teaching profession and to seeing her students achieve success. This is not to say that the same level of teaching would not be available to any other student not fortunate enough to be taught by a full Professor, but I liked very much the way this class played out. She was then, and is now, one of my heroes of the education system, and I feel extremely fortunate to have found her and benefited from the experience.
Great post, I really like your writing style, keep it up.
[…] https://bryngreenwood.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/why-i-dont-teach-anymore/ […]
You said it all perfectly (including in your responses to comments). I, too, quit teaching because I worked really hard, I kept up on the latest research to be able to introduce each new class to what was on the horizon, and I was always there for my students whenever they needed, sometimes answering emails late at night or early in the mornings. I put in a lot of unpaid hours- or hours paid in pennies per hour. In addition, many of my students came to me for letters of recommendation and guidance on their next steps after college. As an adjunct, I felt like I really wanted to mentor my students in this way but the university at which I taught did not want adjuncts advising students. It’s hard to explain this to students and at the same time keep some semblance of authority with them (i.e. you are intelligent and educated enough to teach them but not to advise or recommend them). THe other problem I faced before I left teaching, and what drove me to it, was that students in my Intro to Sociology courses practically begged me to teach a course on Sex and Gender, my area of expertise. When I told them to take their request to the dean, the dean did indeed add the course to the next semester’s offerings, but gave the course to a full-time faculty member whose area of expertise was sociology of class differences. Needless to say, it is difficult to teach a group of students, and form relationships with them, knowing you will never get to work with them again, because they will only take Intro once in their college careers. I miss it every day. We need a revolution.
THE ILLUSION OF LEARNING
“I don’t think I’m bragging when I say that I was once an excellent Freshman Composition instructor. I did my best in Comp 2, where I taught my students how to conduct research that did not involve citing Wikipedia.”
* What you have written reflects the stark, shocking reality of the lowering of standards in high schools. There are so many comments about/contributors to your important blog.”
The basics of researching and writing a research paper are high school requirements, but students will not pay attention or take responsibility for their learning, a responsibility dropped from the requirements of the classroom thanks to educators and administrators who have subordinated the students’ responsibility to learn, to methodologies relative to focusing on engagement of student over what must be the focus, the education itself. This is partly because they have to justify their jobs and come up with something to contribute regardless of merit, and partly because they believe that their plans will be the panacea to cure all educational ills. As a result of years of not focusing on the highest standards of learning, the discipline of learning, and the dedication to learning, but rather focusing on students feeling good about being ENGAGED in the PROCESS of learning, the remedial writing course for college freshmen was born, and the redirected-in-focus, not as well-educated students entering the job market are documented: can’t write well; can’t spell well; can’t stay focused on a long-term project; can’t work alone; can’t/won’t do proper research; can’t rise to or maintain the standard required. Glaringly, it presents as an embarrassing reflection of the absence of the broad base of knowledge and expectations that used to be required and is crucial for critical thinking and communicating with others who have that foundation; remains as an ever-present and consistent lowering of standards, thus, creating the need for remediation at the college level in the first place, a development to which colleges and universities should demand a halt. Perhaps we should ask the top universities if the problem/proliferation of the remedial writing course presented by the blogger exists for them. There is definitely a place for remediation, for help for those who need it, but college was never supposed to be a place of remediation. (Those with IEP’s are not included in that group. Most have plans in order to provide different approaches to what used to be impediments to learning, or documentation of special needs because learning is difficult.) College is a place of higher learning and the norm was to have satisfied the requirements of high school prior to entering college. America’s parents should be demanding higher standards and requirements for their children, holding them to a strict and high standard of LEARNING, and technologically-sound instruction and learning, not fun, entertainment, or engagement. (Separate and distinct from this topic is that which discusses special needs or different modes of learning to bring out the best in each student.)The ending of your blog is a sad and sobering truth: Teachers & professors are so worn out by the many extra hours required to point out the massive number of (high school level) mistakes in each paper and what students should have learned in class and should have applied correctly, that standards are lowered, and mistakes remain because of the exhausting amount of time needed to correct that which never should have needed correction. “Upper level thinking and expression,” except for probably the top 5-10% of most high school and college classes, is the name of a ghost town at this point. No one knows about it; no one lives there.The teachers and professors know what is required because they were required to take responsibility for learning that which satisfies the requirements and expectations of top-notch thinking, research, documentation, and writing. Administrators and others try to come up with new plans regardless of merit. They rely on statistics about the floundering high school student and college freshman, which are based on the results of the methodology used for many years and is responsible for creating the illusion of learning and the faulty foundation upon which . They wring their hands and demand the teaching of critical thinking and writing without taking responsibility for requiring students to take responsibility for learning that which is crucial for the critical thinking process and for writing basic research papers. The foundation of education and learning for young adults has crumbled with no viable plan for improvement in place and no statistics to support the illusion of learning that administrators and educational specialists who provide a lexicon to describe esoteric ideas to implement ideas so that administrators can say to teachers and professors, “Do something!” as they throw up their hands seemingly in an effort to perform some magical incantation to make it happen. The approach to education has been drastically altered, and rather than requiring students to satisfy the rigorous process of learning that should be the very least of what should be offered and expected, it assuages the parents whom administrators have allowed to pressure the process, allowing parents to insist on a change of grade, as if grades are to be negotiated rather than earned, grades that become lies on students’ records instead of the truth of one’s accomplishments. Parents should be outraged at what has been substituted for a quality education. Top students will always do well, regardless of teacher or academic institution. The student’s responsibility to learn, decorum in the classroom, and respect for fellow students and teachers have been obliterated from the requirements, requirements that parents themselves would expect to be in place if they were in school. They should expect nothing less for their children. Parents, even beyond teachers, should be the ones demanding that these crucial requirements be put back in place. (It doesn’t matter if a student likes a teacher (unless there is some kind of physical or emotional threat going on) or the subject matter or has fun, although all of that is a plus. Students are at school, at college primarily to learn, not for other purposes. Yet, even I used to ask my child about her school experience at all levels:” Did you like ___(teacher’/professor’s name) or ___ (course name)?” Each time, though, I would say, “But did you LEARN in ___’s class?”
[…] https://bryngreenwood.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/why-i-dont-teach-anymore/ […]
This is a sad reality – educators getting less than what they deserve. Thanks for sharing your story!
When I was adjunct faculty, I spent so many hours grading freshman comp. essays. It was grueling. A husband of one of my colleagues (who also spent hours grading and prepping) spent a semester tracking how many hours she worked. At the end of the semester, he calculated that she earned .12 cents per hour! I never tracked my hours like that, but I’m sure it was right around the same amount. Not surprising that the turnover for adjunct faculty at our local college is incredibly high.
I wonder…..
I worked as an adjunct at a university where by my count, about 3/4 of the faculty had another source of income. Most were retired, some were recent college grads, some were significant others and one couple was independently wealthy. It is difficult to organize any kind of work strike in these circumstances. There really needs to be a US law that outlaws this, otherwise it will continue unless the students do something. For what they are paying they truly deserve better, but they like the ability to negotiate for grades. Good evaluation for good grades.