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by P.D. Lesko
I recently read this great opinion piece by Julien Berman published in the Harvard Crimson. Titled “Adjuncts: The Faculty Underclass,” I expected it to be the same old tired arguments in favor of breathing, clean water and, yes, the need to treat adjunct faculty better. Much to my surprise, I got to the end of the piece and muttered, “What a great idea!” Berman, a college sophomore, writes, “Here are some immediate and practical solutions that universities across the country can implement to improve adjunct well-being and thus the quality of education received by undergraduates. First, institutions should index the adjunct pay per course to local living conditions.”
Yes, yes, yes. What a simple and elegant solution. Kind of. (I’ll get to that in a moment.) Adjunct faculty at NYU have, for years, used the high cost of living in New York as a reason to push for much higher per course pay. The NYU adjuncts’ latest contract, while not perfect, was a huge improvement where per course pay is concerned.
For non-tenured faculty who teach in cities such as Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Chicago, the cost-of-living solution to piddling pay should be a must have for every part-time faculty union bargaining team. Never a fan of the push for $10,000 per course (it’s still three-course per year pay that is around the poverty line for an individual poverty), adjunct faculty in those cities need to be paid $25,000 per course, plus benefits.
So what happens when adjuncts at college’s in cities where the cost of living is low have their pay tied to local cost of living? Julien Berman either didn’t think of that. Perhaps, on the other hand, he’s a budding capitalist. In his piece he wrote: “From an economic standpoint, this move makes sense: Tenured professors are expensive investments under long-term contracts, whereas adjuncts are cheap hires that can be laid off more easily.” Either way, tying per course pay to the cost of living in a small city or town, would be a disaster for those non-tenured faculty. In those cases, adjunct pay would, instead, be better improved by being tied to what full-time faculty are paid.
Another of Berman’s suggestions is something I have been criticizing loudly for decades. He writes: “Second, adjunct pay raises should match full-time faculty pay raises, at least on a percentage basis.” No. No. And no. In fact, until adjuncts at a college or university reach pay parity (read more about that here), unions that represent adjuncts need to push for big pay raises, like 60, 70, 80, 100 percent. What Julien suggests is called the “equal percentage raise.” Slippery union leaders push this to make it appear as though they are treating all members equally and fairly.
Equal percentage raises for adjunct faculty union members are back of the bus union representation at its worst. Why? If a union negotiates a five percent raise for all faculty, who benefits the most, materially? The people who earn the largest salaries, of course, the full-time faculty.
The preceptors (non-tenured faculty) at Harvard launched their official campaign to form a union in Feb. 2023. In a press release, “Harvard Academic Workers-United Automobile Workers stated that it seeks to bargain a contract for the University’s non-tenure-track faculty, which includes lecturers, preceptors, postdoctoral fellows, instructors, researchers, teaching assistants, and adjunct faculty. Non-tenure-track faculty may only hold teaching appointments up to eight years,” according to reporting in the Harvard Crimson.
Union organizers have said they don’t expect Harvard administrators to voluntarily recognize the union. Any way you slice it, though, Cambridge/Boston is one of the most expensive areas in which to live. The average non-tenured faculty member at the university earns around $50,000. Average monthly rents in the area top $2,700. Full-time faculty at Harvard earn, on average, $182,992 per year.
Berman writes: “The adjunct problem has grown as universities have started to increasingly hire part-time labor. From an economic standpoint, this move makes sense: Tenured professors are expensive investments under long-term contracts, whereas adjuncts are cheap hires that can be laid off more easily. However, when university professors are paid so little that they are forced to sleep in their cars and apply for food stamps, it might be time for a change.”
Ya think?
by Glenn Sacks
On her first day in office, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order banning “indoctrination and critical race theory” in schools.
She’s far from alone: a recent Education Week analysis found that over the past two years, bills, executive orders, or other means that would ban “divisive concepts,” particularly critical race theory, have appeared in 42 states.
With an eye to enforcing such measures, Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls for cameras in classrooms and a “civilian review board in every town” to root out teacher bias. Since I began teaching high school social studies in 1990, I’ve never seen such scrutiny of what we teach.
I believe that educators, particularly social studies teachers, should teach controversial subjects. How? My high school social studies teacher showed me.
He didn’t pontificate upon the controversies of the day—he stuck to the curriculum and the textbook. In other words, he taught me exactly what not to do. As teachers, it isn’t enough to present the material; we need to make the subject engaging.
Yes, it was my fault that I gained little from his class. My friend, a self-described “robotically efficient” student, was able to learn a lot from this teacher. I squandered the opportunity. But many of my classmates also found his class boring. Occasionally, someone would ask the teacher his opinion about a current issue, and I’d perk up from my daydreams. He’d only say, “Now’s not the time for that,” and, disappointed, I would start to fade out again.
Largely because of social media, more than in any other recent generation, our students’ lives are steeped in politics. Students want to know what their teachers think of the videos and posts they see about current controversies.
When we social studies teachers pretend that we don’t have an opinion, our students feel that we’re holding out on them, and that they’re being shortchanged. How could a teacher not have an opinion about the types of issues they’ve spent their lives studying?
Sometimes I think, “the material I’m teaching is interesting—how did my teacher make it so boring?” Often, it was because it was drained of any sense of controversy, of battle, of drama, of people fighting for a cause.
Critics confuse being opinionated with being partisan. Having a viewpoint doesn’t mean you can’t credit the other side when they’re correct. I oppose Donald Trump, but I do explain to my students that the Left sometimes criticizes him for silly reasons and puts him in double binds.
For example, when Trump was friendly to North Korea, he was accused of cozying up to dictators. When he was adversarial, he was labeled a warmonger.
Having a viewpoint doesn’t mean that you can’t explain the other side’s view. When speaking of an environmental law, for example, I might add, “conservative opponents contend it would drive up businesses’ costs and deter further investment—and sometimes that happens.”
When a student challenges me, I say, “I’ll tell you why you’re right, then explain the problems with your argument.” If a student fervently disagrees on an issue, I might toss him my marker, sit in back, and say, “OK, educate us.” And yes, this will be on the test—I hold the other students responsible for anything this student teaches, just as if I had taught it.
When a controversy is being debated, the teacher should modulate the political angle to encourage further discussion. A few months ago, I invited a conservative former student to give a presentation supporting the Republican Party in the November 2022 elections.
He did a creditable job, but a few students aggressively challenged him. I then explained some of the flaws in the arguments leveled against the conservative student, using them to demonstrate curriculum concepts.
For example, when one student linked a moderate California Republican congressman to the events of January 6, 2021, I explained that this was a “guilt by association” tactic and provided some other cases in which it was used by both Democrats and Republicans.
Some conservative critics are unconsciously lumping two distinct issues together. Yes, the (rare) instances when a teacher personally attacks or disparages students for their political beliefs are a problem. But the vastly more common scenario is when students or parents are unhappy because political views that they agree with are being criticized.
Critics have the right to demand we treat those who disagree with us respectfully. They don’t have the right to demand that we always agree with them.
I can’t promise that no student ever walks out of my class annoyed, and no teacher could contend that their students are never bored. But the further a class gets from what is happening in the real world, the less engaged students will be. If a teacher is opinionated but fair, the various sides of an argument will emerge in a productive, compelling way.
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