When I went to university I looked up the salaries at my university, because it was public records. The highest payed professor at my university was the head of the physics department, and he only made 77,000. About a third of the students taking his classes were likely to have a starting salary higher than what he made. The football coach was paid 500,000.
I scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream. Because it hurts and it is also true in my university and I know so many people in the staff, the faculty, and the graduate students who are worth so much more, who do so much more work, who hustle and try so hard to push our department forward. But the football coach for a college that doesn't even make it to the fancy football season makes more than all of us combined. I want to tear my hair out.
That sounds very familiar. The sad part is that even within the faculty, salaries depend on the "prestige" of the academic field, rather than on the skill or experience of the professor. I'm a biology professor, and among the STEM fields, we tend to have the lowest salaries. Physics professors can make twice what we do. Among the social sciences, economics professors make the big bucks, often earning twice what psychology or sociology professors make. (There's also a gender link here too. The highest-paid professors are almost always in fields dominated by men, such as physics and economics.) And yes, I'm infuriated by a lot of the non-academic, non-service-related expenses at colleges and universities. In recent years, my small liberal arts alma mater has built a fancy new football field at the same time as it cut nearly half of the academic majors (including really basic ones) because it "couldn't afford to teach them." And no, the football team was not particularly good or well-loved, and were D3. It was hot nonsense.
My community college experience suddenly went from: "wow no one really cared" to "oh, oh that's what was going on. Suddenly everything makes sense and is really depressing."
I recently finished my first semester and had spent weeks puzzling over why my AmGov stopped providing feedback and just gave everyone 100% on all our assignments. Now I know why.
This reminds me so hard of all the "heroes" talk in the early pandemic months, people doing work that was crucial to keeping society afloat and being glorified in the mainstream media, but openly treated like shit by their employers. We talk about valuing education and "the children," but the numbers flat-out say the opposite.
I’m still so angry that my country started ‘clapping for the NHS’, literally just applauding as nurses, doctors and other medical staff died and burned out in droves. Anything to avoid actually funding them, I guess.
As a college student, I often start every semester by looking up the salaries for my professors (since it’s all public). It doesn’t necessarily change how I treat them or approach the class, but it does make me think about where all that tuition money is going.
It goes to administrators. Schools have adopted the corporate structure. An accountable minority at the top get to unilaterally decide how money is spent. And(for some reason no one is ever allowed to talk about) everytime that happens that minority spends the most money on itself at the expense of literally everything else in the institution. Which is all totally a coincidence and not a deliberate tool of class war waged over decades as a response to what the filthy poor's did with education back in the 60's.
Tuition goes to salaries, benefits, and the upkeep of the campus. The rest goes into the endowment. Mr. LOL has a real hard on for capitalism, logic, and common sense. Mr. LOL needs to understand that when capitalism goes away and equity, equality, and trans rights are enforced at the barrel of a gun every sidewalk in America will become a fecal Slip 'n Slide since indoor plumbing will have been deemed "racist."
As a fellow former adjunct, thank you for this. Several colleagues and I built our lives and identities around teaching, and when we had to leave, it tore our hearts out. But the world demands that we have money for rent and groceries. Gerald Graff, in his book Clueless In Academe, points out that during the Cold War, Americans considered it our duty to invest in science, the humanities, and education. These weren't just abstract goods, they were a front in fighting Communism. A well-informed and educated society was, we believed, a free society. But then we won the Cold War, and promptly kicked down the ladder we had just ascended. Educated people proved harder to control, and didn't accept peanuts for their labor. Universities were seen as culpable for that. I forget who pointed out that the transition to adjuncts coincided with the rise of women in higher ed. As recently as the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom held that women lacked the abstract spark that made for good university professors. But once the field opened up to women, and they proved capable of the job, society's esteem for professors dried up. Job fields heavily dominated by women tend to pay poorly, and higher ed definitely followed the same trend.
The cold war angle is interesting and depressing. Interesting in that it highlights the drives behind American hegemony. Depressing in that America only values education in terms of martial superiority
I think you hit upon one of the important considerations in the devaluation of educators: the increasing dominance of women in academia. Careers traditionally viewed as feminine are usually underpaid right up until men enter the field (thing of computer programming, originally a job for women). Likewise, academia, once the domain of wealthy white men, is now being "invaded" by women, non-whites, and the working class. Even now, though, academic fields that are still dominated by men, such as economics and physics, are better paid than comparable fields dominated by women, such as psychology and biology, respectively. In fact, I warn my pre-med undergraduate students that medicine is no longer guaranteed to be a well-paying career choice, now that women dominate med school graduates.
@@Owesomasaurus Absolutely, the trend of college and university education for the average U.S. citizen began with the G.I. bill after WWII, the Reagan administration pushed for more expensive education paid by students instead of communities, and a lot of students - this includes Puerto Rican folks exploited by living in a protectorate, instead of independence or being offered statehood - these days can't afford an education or training past high school unless they enlist in one of our military branches, which will cover some or all of the tuition in exchange for a certain number of years of service. A former neighbor of mine joined the reserves, thinking he'd spend a few weekends a year training and helping communities with sandbagging shorelines in bad weather, etc., but was deployed to Iraq to do some horrible shit and came home with a wrecked shoulder and a lot of trauma. While he temporarily "turned liberal" due to his horrifying military experience, he's become increasingly reactionary since coming home. Last I heard, he was reclusive.
It’s interesting with the women in the industry link, in the U.S.S.R. pay and prestige for jobs like doctors dropped as women came to dominate the profession
@@cstuartdc that's more of an issue modern feminists are tackling. The idea that work and family can't be balanced because it is bad for the workforce to take time with kids. It effects men too, we are just socialized to view them as naturally disconnected from family and not good at nurturing. I had a coworker who had to jump through hoops to get paternity leave when he was having his first child with his fiancée despite it being technically offered by our company.
Thanks for this. I'm on a short-term academic contract at a university which has the highest ratio of these contracts to permanent positions in the country. To be honest, it kind of suits me as I'm not too bothered about staying in academia and my lucky low teaching load has given my space to do other stuff like RUclips. But generally the insecurity, high workloads, and low pay are just ridiculous. For many of my colleagues, especially immigrants, not having the guarantee can be hugely stressful and precarious. It is a clear cut case of exploitation - not that PhDs 'deserve' jobs more than anyone else, but it is a sobering thought to realise that even the highest level of qualification won't get you security in our purported meritocracy. No wonder the whole sector, including me, have been on strike for weeks in the UK. Anyway, stream of consciousness over. Great video as always, Zoe.
Capitalism preys on passion. Any field that's desirable to work in for moral or fulfilling reasons is ripe for exploitation. It's disgusting how under valued teachers are in the country, at all levels
It's true that Communist countries sincerely valued teachers more. I remember a survey from East Germany (just before reunification) about what professions were most admired. Doctor was #1, of course, but teacher was #4. But I really can't think of a single non-capitalist country where I would want to be a professor. Can you? Is there a place where you can be a professor and just follow your passion wherever it may lead? I've spent decades inside academia, and the consistent thing I noticed is that people with these aspirations come to the US to work. My department was able to pick off the smartest professors from Denmark, Britain and Australia because we could simply offer better terms, in salary, in benefits, and in work requirements. Until I met a professor from Scotland, I had no idea how grueling their work schedule is and now little compensation they receive.
@@davidhoracek6758 Funnily enough, most of my fellow PhD candidates in a top-ranked educational psychology program were looking to leave the country, as the job prospects and the pay scales were much better than here in the US. Further, most of the foreign-born graduate students (about 1/3 from China and Taiwan, the rest from various countries in the Middle East) were looking forward to returning to their home countries. So, in psychology and education, the trend is the opposite.
Wrong. What’s truly disgusting is how little self-value professors have. No one in their right mind would work for $1500 for a semester. If you want pay to go up, stop working there.
Thank you for talking about this. My history professor lost her best friend due to this system. Tenure was literally the difference between life and death. Since she was adjunct, she was ineligible for a lot of the healthcare benefits that would be guaranteed to tenured professors. Combine that with living paycheck to paycheck and it was impossible for her to recover. 😢 The business model of education needs to end. So many smart people are being screwed over by it and we’re losing valuable knowledge for the next generation.
When I was in college, I knew like two tweed men and one smart-shoe lady who seemed to be making it decent as teachers. I knew way more stressed undergrad TAs and well-meaning hard-studying teachers who could barely convince the higher-ups to let them fund classes they had so much passion for.
You've described academia pretty well here. Even sadder, the tween men and smart-shoe ladies are almost certainly older. As they age and retire/die, their full-time or tenured positions will likely not be replaced. Instead, colleges and universities are replacing those types with cheaper part-time adjuncts and graduate student workers. When I was a grad student, I was not only teaching about 20-30 hours a week, I was developing curriculum for some of the courses I taught. At the time, I loved that I got that opportunity, but in hindsight it was absolutely exploitative, as I wasn't being paid for the huge amounts of time I was spending working on creating class materials and lesson plans. It's lovely, however, to hear that when you were a student, you were able to notice and appreciate the efforts of the folks who actually keep higher ed functioning: TAs, part-timers, and adjuncts.
The treatment of TAs is insane too. When I was going through grad school to get my Master's in English, I was "lucky" enough to get a job as a TA. I thought that meant I would be assisting a teacher with their class, because y'know, "Teaching Assistnant." Instead I was just given an English class to teach by myself with only a week of training in advance. That's the class the students were paying for, one taught by an overworked and undertrained grad student!
So the market keeps academia tied to a rock with a raven picking at our exposed guts for the crime of prometheus: daring to enlighten humanity. Yeah, nothing new. But somehow well hidden nonetheless
It really sucks that people are dumb enough to try for jobs in fields that are already full because they have a passion for them. The solution isn't to take other people's money using the government and give it to them
As a college 'lecturer' who is thinking about quitting, this really hit hard. The worst part, I teach at the same school I got my BA so I get to constantly hear about how much they appreciate their alumni. I have students that graduated last year that now work in admin making much more than me... Is RUclips looking for more professors?
Thank you for highlighting this train wreck - and from personal experience in Asia, it’s worldwide, not just a US problem. All of this holds true for us, too.
I can't say for certain, but I BELIEVE we have a better system up here in Canada. My dad's a senior professor, and he seems to do well for himself, tweed jackets and all. Wouldn't call his life "comfortable" though, since he's always working on one project or another. His idea of a vacation is grading assignments and taking calls from a beach instead of from an office.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth I've heard some better things about academia in Canada, but it's largely from colleagues who work at major research universities like McGill. I have no idea whether the situation's better at smaller and less-prestigious institutions.
Hello Zoe. I’m a high school CTE teacher at a public school. A lot of people assume that I’d be so much better off as a college professor or a private school teacher. Of course, this makes me laugh. Professors get paid pennies compared to a public school teacher. Private school teachers have it even worse. Of course public school teachers and public education still needs vast improvement, but I’m fortunate to be teaching at a school that values me and pays me decently.
Hell yeah! I was a CTE teacher at a public middle school and made roughly twice as much as I was getting paid at the university. Dealing with the children was a different problem but they were mostly fun...
Private school teachers typically come from "old money," or they have husbands with those "Masters of the Universe" type jobs, so they can afford to teach private school. Money is not the issue here, prestige is the objective. Makes for nice conversation at the tennis club, as well as parties. And since private schools are located in the most exclusive parts of town, her commute to school is very convenient.
@@zephead843 That's who can end up affording to work there maybe, but l disagree that it's not an issue. I worked at a private school I adored - it was my dream school - but the income was so low, and I didn't have a husband to pay the bills like others, so I had to quit my dream job at 24. I was so heartbroken.
Two quick thoughts: 1. As a longtime (9 brutal years) adjunct, I felt this video in my soul. I’m outrageously fortunate to have found my way into a FT faculty role, but I could just as easily still be on that hamster wheel. The job market is nothing but dumb luck and I hate it. 2. John Warner tries to address the “public good” point you’re making in his book Sustainable, Resilient, Free. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s a great read!
Hail and well-met, fellow academic! I've spent a bit over a decade as a (usually)part-time lecturer/adjunct at a variety of institutions. (I _think_ I've gotten a full-time position for the fall, assuming all goes well. I'm so fucking relieved!) And yes, while dumb luck does have a lot to do with getting off that hamster wheel, don't devalue the work and experience you've put in! Luck plays a role, but you're also likely perfectly (over)qualified for your current job too. Also, I'm going to check out the book rec. It sounds like a good one.
@@jospinner1183 Congrats on the (tentative) new role! I hate saying that a job actually changed my life, but getting this job actually changed my life. Fingers crossed that you have the same experience!
Now I understand why so many of my instructors look stressed out and depressed. Thank you for bringing this issue to light. Our entire economic system is designed to scrape money from the poor and middle class and deliver it to the top, so of course education wouldn’t be spared.
This reminds me of my favorite college professor, who also worked at a nearby grocery store to supplement her income. As a professor. At a state university. I remember her saying that she loved teaching so much that she didn't want to find a better-paying job.
I have been on this soap box for over 10 years now and I'll not stop. I was a poor student and not a teacher, but as you say this affects all of us. When the public decides to elect a fraud as a joke or for random change, or storm the Capitol, we know our education system needs a serious second glance because that means we've been failing for a loooong time already, and all over the place not just a few bad areas. This is really friggan important, thanks for making this video.
I know what you mean. America's education politburo has driven the US to its lowest point since Woodrow Wilson gave women the right to vote. I suspect that before long white male babies will be castrated before being handed over to their mothers as more than one female legislator has suggested.
What an elitist jerk you are. We have a fraud for a president right now! When students and PROFESSORS start believing and teaching things like "all whites are privileged" and "men can have babies," THAT'S when you know there's something seriously wrong with education! Oh, and also when only SOME people are given the right to speak, while many others are DENIED THE RIGHT TO SPEAK!! Education is the last thing that happens in colleges and universities today.
3 of my grand parents were teachers, and I will never forget what my paternal grandfather once told me about education (he was a Physics and Chemistry university teacher): "you cant put a fair price on education or treat it like a business, if you make people pay what it is actually worth it, nobody will be able to pay for it, the government should subsidize it because whatever they think they are losing will be recouped with the labor from the people they taught since they will be solving your problems down the road" sorry about the english quality, not a native speaker and not from the US either.
It makes no fucking sense that I have to go into debt to learn how to maintain the society that i live in. I dont claim the shit, because they're doing everything in their power , up to and including genocide, to keep me out of it. But i have to pay you to learn how to shovel your shit, or you will kill me with state sanctioned neglect?
Something that was not mentioned in this video is the shift to online classes in the post-covid era and how that affects adjuncts. I am in my fourth semester teaching at two colleges (one as an adjunct, one as a temporary full-time instructor). The community college I teach at still offers primarily online classes not because they are being cautious due to Covid, but because that's what most of the students want. In person classes barely run sometimes but online ones fill up fast. Since the full-time tenure track faculty get to choose their classes first, there are typically 0 online classes remaining for any adjunct instructors (at least in my department). All classes are paid the same on a per credit hour basis, but online courses take less work once you've set them up the first time. There are full time instructors at my college teaching 8-10 classes all online with basically everything auto-grading itself, some of them now living in completely different states than where the college is located. Many of the adjuncts would love the chance to teach just one or two online classes to lighten their load as they teach at multiple institutions, but typically they have no choice because there is nothing left to choose from.
I teach at a community college too and one of our tenured made sure to get all her classes online. She sold her house and car and moved back in with her family in India.
The community college where I grew up, that I went to, BRAGGED about how almost all of their teachers were Adjuncts using the "they have other jobs in their field!" meaning that they'd be great teachers. And lot of my teachers were great, they cared a LOT. My creative writing professor really helped me grow and ended up helping me after I was harassed. My German professor was a great teacher and really kind. ETC! And now i'm extra mad how exploited they were. I knew things weren't good but I had no idea they were this bad. Fuck profit motive. Fuck corps
It's sad how adjuncts have to hand out personal cell phone numbers to students if they want to remain in contact to give recommendations. It's sad how students who don't think to save copies of the syllabus for every class could go to email the person who taught them a semester or two ago and be met with no response, because their former instructor just disappeared. Even someone who has the number so many adjuncts seem to include may not use it. They might think it's too intrusive to text out of the blue. They might interpret the wall of silence as disinterest, not realizing the adjunct works seasonally or is gone for good.
I’m reading from this that universities can hire much cheaper teachers, and they will teach well. The system works, at least for the universities who actually make hiring decisions.
@@Manx123 it works for the university in that they can exploit people and some people care more about doing a good job than not being exploited at least for a while. The problem is burnout and financial troubles will build up causing the few teachers that applies to to leave. Those favorite teachers i talked about only had safe household incomes because their husbands had better paying jobs. My friend is an elementary school teacher and she also puts in 60+ hours a week for a salary job and usually spends thousands of her own dollars to ensure the kids get a good education. She can only afford to do that because her husband has a big paying tech job. This is exploitation and we as non-teachers need to support them in their fight for ethical pay. For ethical support
I've been an English adjunct professor at a community college for about 9 years, and after recently being screwed over by my school, I've decided it's time for me to move on to something else. That part where you talked about how heartbreaking it is really hit me hard; I teared up for a second because it hurts so much. This is what I wanted to do, this is what I went to school for six years to do. I love teaching and I love helping students, but after working so hard for so long, only to be continually slapped down and punished for my efforts, it's impossible not to feel burnt out and depressed. I can't keep living this way, and it's so unfair. I don't even want a big salary, I just want to be able to teach and live a decent life with some measure of stability and security. And I don't even have a family, I can't imagine how anyone could do this if they have kids. It sucks and it pisses me off. Thank you so much for doing this video, it's not a subject I see many people talk about.
Why the long face? No one forced you out. You left by choice.Teaching has got be the best life a person could ever dream of. You work eight and a half months a year, you get to be a college student your entire life, and you've got the exact same vacation schedule as a six year old. There is nothing more stable and secure in the known universe than a teaching / government job, which is why American universities continue to churn out 250,000 newly minted teachers every year like clockwork.There are 3.5 million people working as teachers, educators, and instructors in the US, so you're not unique in any way. What exactly do you think this world owes you?
Seriously advocate for workers unions. I know that is easier said than done however. I worked as a staff member at a local community college as faculty support. It was very clear to me managing class schedules and helping faculty that almost all of them are Adjunct. I didn't understand for a while what an adjunct was, I eventually became really good friends with one of them and they explained it to me. It was clear that though they had a bachelors, though they were smarter and decades older than me. They were in the same economic state as me, I left that job shortly after.
It's _really_ hard (or impossible) to get a teaching position, even at a community college, with just a bachelor's. Usually they require at least a masters degree. I have a PhD, and have taught classes at community colleges as part of my life as a multi-school adjunct. Academia tends to be one of those careers that has very high educational requirements, but very low relative compensation.
@@jospinner1183 That's terrible and I'm sorry to hear that. It's crazy to me that you need a masters most of the time to teach a community college class. When a lot of those classes are like math 1050 and like Zoe said, are required to be 100% taught by the book.
The problem is in some places we have those unions and they're absolutely garbage that side with uni management. Unionising in universities is easily infiltrated imo. The whole concept of student unions at mine and imo most UK universities is a weakening of everything else, you get all these orgs supposed to provide all this stuff for students and staff and they don't do any of the union aspect. It's also about job stability, universities outsource and contract so many different roles and I don't see how a union could represent all of them, there needs to be more flexibility between unions so eg restaurant workers cleaners it support the student recruitment department contracted professors national and international research students all have good chances of representation. Universities eat away at the ability to unionise because so many different orgs exist supposedly to represent your interests but never oppose management. While I was a PhD student "postgrad collectives" sprang up in my uni and they combined staff and student representation in a you should talk this out sort of way. All kinds of such orgs spring up functioning as strike breaking and unionisation breaking tactics imo, and so just looking at if all saying" just unionise " is kind of spitting on just how hard people have tried to do that and unhelpful when we can literally have" unions" operating to stop better unionisation happening. There's ultimately something about the class position of some academics which makes uni unions particularly vulnerable to turning on workers.
I’m currently working towards a Master’s Degree at Southern New Hampshire University. During it, there was a lecture by a woman who did two different lectures on becoming a professor, which was a hope of mine going into the program. She told me flat out that I would likely be paid 400$ to teach a class for an entire semester, as an adjunct. I was also told by her that colleges likely will not hire you for 3 or more classes given they have to give you benefits if you do. In other words, the only contract I’d be likely to get would be 1-2 classes per semester, if like you said, the contract isn’t left to expire. I’m weighing my alternative career choices because I don’t feel confident I ever will get tenure. Thank you sincerely for bringing light to this.
I'm a biology professor, and 100% agree with everything Zoe covered here. In addition, there's an additional factor facing academics in STEM: research and professional expectations. Tenure-track and full-time faculty (at research universities) are expected to continue their research, publish regularly, participate actively in professional organizations, serve as a peer-reviewer for academic journals, and advise a cadre of graduate students. _None_ of these additional tasks are compensated, simply expected. It used to be that these types of tasks were part of being a tenured professor, as tenured professors usually have a lighter teaching load than the rest of us. However, increasingly, these additional activities are being expected not only at research institutions, but at smaller liberal arts schools. I remember when I was doing yet another job search a few years ago that I saw a posting for a full-time non-tenure position at a smaller college that was looking for someone to not only teach a 7/5(ish) load, but also establish and run a research lab group, publish regularly, manage the school's botanical specimen collection, and mentor undergraduate research. These small liberal arts schools used to simply have major teaching responsibilities, sometimes with the addition of managing undergraduate researchers. Instead, these schools are increasingly adding research and professional responsibilities _on top of_ their already strenuous teaching load. It's ridiculous. When I finished my PhD, I knew I wanted to focus on teaching and mentoring undergrads, rather than research. As such, I've spent more than a decade now wandering through the non-tenure-track academic world. I'm financially okay, but only because I'm single and don't have children. I would never be able to afford a family on my annual income, so it's good I never wanted children. I ended up living in an area with multiple universities and colleges because I usually am teaching at 2-4 of them in any given semester. I've got a lead on a full-time position at a smaller college that I think I might be able to get, and it seems perfect for me, but the competition's going to be fierce. The days of academia being a safe and comfortable career are largely over. Schools simply replace retired tenured professors with adjuncts or graduate students. (And don't get me started on how graduate workers are exploited by the university system!) I just want to teach! I want to work with young people interested in STEM and help them chart their path! Instead, I live on the margins of academia. I don't regret my path, but it's not one I can reasonably recommend to most people unless they have an almost obsessive love for their field.
I and a lot of others I know have held grudges against teachers throughout our education due to them getting in grades late, being unable to help or explain why we were doing these assignments, and overall never showing enough interest in getting to know us. Now I realize that we had no idea what position they were in. They could have kids to cook dinner for, on top of grading and planning each assignment. They could be restricted to one syllabus. They could walk in every day knowing that they might not see us the next semester. I also talked to some of my current teachers and found out that due to the janitor shortage, they have to CLEAN their own rooms, on TOP of everything else they do! So thanks for spreading some awareness on this, Zoe- from a judgy high-schooler.
Do it. Destroy the [college] education system with facts and logic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd watch that on repeat while attempting to navigate the education system.
Some additional notes: 1. We are often asked about our availability months in advance. We are then given a possible schedule. The classes on that schedule may change at any moment before the start of class. Also, those classes can be canceled any time before the start of class due to many reasons. Or those classes may be given to a full time faculty member that had one of their classes canceled and needs to pick up an extra class. So our schedules may change with little notice and we may not know if we have enough work until it is too late. 2. Class size can alter our pay. If you are teaching a class with low enrollment (often times 5 students or less), some schools will lower your pay. One school that I taught at would lower the pay by $500 per student under a specific number. So if you taught a class with 3 students and you need to have 5, you would be deducted $1000 from your contract. That would mean that if you are earning $2,500 per class, it would then be down to $1,500 for a 15 week class. The school states that this is due to the fact that you will have less grading, but they do not give you extra money if you are teaching a class where they put in extra students. The rate for teaching 5 students to 30 students is all the same pay. Obviously, there is a lot more grading with 30 students than with 5 students, but the pay is the same. 3. We are often limited as to how many classes we are allowed to teach at any given school since they do not want us to to be full time and get benefits. Usually, the cap is about 2 classes per semester per school (at least around here). That would mean working at 2 schools is still considered part time (money wise, not time wise). 3 schools would be almost full time (with very little free time). 4. Grading. Full time faculty at bigger schools will often times have grad students that grade their papers. If you are an adjunct, you will not have someone else grading for you. You may have a class where you use a computer program for the students to use for their homework. Those computer programs are great, but not all students will use them and you will have to monitor the grades on the computer programs. Also, some of the students will stop going to class when you have those computer programs since they think that they can learn more from the computer program (which can lower your reputation). 5. Handling all of the emails, computer systems, homework systems, school policies, etc between multiple schools is tedious and stressful. For every school you teach at, your email and computer work drastically increases. Sometimes we will have an orientation (not paid) and sometimes we just receive our contract, email/password, copy card, and syllabus. 6. Parking. If you are going to multiple schools, you will have to deal with all of those parking lots. Sometimes you are going to a school in the middle of the day and you find a full parking lot. You then get to circle the lot looking for a space of have to park in a lot that is very far away. Also, you if each school has a different parking pass, you will need to double check that the correct pass is hanging up. This may not be that big of a deal, but when you are on a time crunch (since you work at multiple schools), any delay is annoying. 7. No raises. When I fist started at the one school, there was mention that after a few years your pay would be increased. When 2020 happened, some schools froze the raises (so our pay is still the same). 8. If we are teaching during the day, it is difficult to find another regular job to supplement our pay. It is often easier to have the regular job first, then teach as an adjunct at night. The availability of night classes varies from school to school.
Or if things had worked out differently, you would have had to work for a living. Count your lucky stars, you got it easier than you'll ever know. Are you not aware that you are a member of the luckiest generation of human beings to ever walk on planet Earth? Life has never been easier for humans than it is right now. That would explain America 's obesity epidemic. Future generations are in for a rude awakening.
@@zephead843 I was just pointing out some of the problems with being an adjunct. This was for the benefit of those that may be considering being an adjunct. I do work for a living, it is just difficult to piece together enough work. I did get out of grad school debt free, so I may be better off than other adjunct instructors. I personally love teaching or else I would not be an adjunct instructor.
@@Praisethesunson basically. Walmart associates and fast food workers can sometimes get paid better than some adjunct instructors. Also, Walmart associates and fast food workers may be able to get health insurance and other benefits that adjunct instructors do not get. I worked at a few retail jobs while in college. I feel exhausted when I get home from teaching just like I did when I worked retail. I still have work to do when I get home from teaching, but when I worked retail my work for the day ended when I left the building.
So I'm not sure if anyone wants my opinion, but my Dad just retired from being a college professor at a community college. He was a full professor, and was replaced by an adjunct for most of his classes. I also spent time as a student at that college, and, given that my father's colleagues were almost all adjuncts, I got taken to work a couple times a year, and my father spends a good amount of time outside of work hanging with work pals, I've interacted with a lot of adjunct professors. Here are my observations: 1) The Unions for College professors suck. They are completely caught up in politics, whether that be office politics or social politics, and neglect the actual material needs of professors, both tenured/tenure track and adjunct professors. This has resulted in a pretty steady decline in real wages for all college professions everywhere. Both my father, my great-uncle, and my godfather all attested to this. If the unions improved, so would working conditions, but the professors most likely to be involved in mass organization tend to be concerned about office and social politics, not wages and benefits. The Unions need to improve. God knows how that's going to happen, though. 2) Colleges in general seem to have a variety of internal cultures, none of which support adjuncts. In community colleges, it's an inferiority complex. I knew all kinds of wonderful professors whose work could have been the "hook" to bring in a wider variety of students beyond the normal mish-mash of people with low high school grades or low personal wealth. Many of my community college classes were as good or better than classes I later took at 4-year state schools, and many of the permanent faculty were actually doing pretty worthwhile research as well, but the community college never mentioned such things in their advertising, nor did they attempt to bring such activities to the fore in any other way. Since the college was almost entirely tuition-funded, this meant that the college was always short of students and funds, and thus brought in more and more adjuncts. The state-schools I went to were different; they were entirely donor-focused. If colleges are run like a business, for many colleges that business is a hedge fund. In order to bring more donors, the focus of the college was more buildings and more sports. Sports buildings were especially important. On year, the basketball coach was the highest-paid in the NCAA; his wages would have been enough to hire 20 $80,000 a year permanent professors. Those 20 potential permanent positions are filled by adjuncts. My exposure to private and research colleges is more limited, but from what I've gotten from by great-uncle and godfather suggests a massive superiority complex. The professors and encouraged to considers themselves too elite to teach many classes; teaching more than the minimum required has been reported to me as being considered weird and distasteful. Thus, adjuncts must be brought in to do the actually teaching.
Yes, there's an incredible amount of elitism and infighting within academia. Every department usually hates every other department, and even funding _within_ departments tends to be stratified along political lines. Also, what you described with your father is happening throughout academia. As full-time and tenured professors retire (or die), they aren't being replaced by new full-time or tenured professors. As institutions are usually obliged to provide benefits to full-time employees, there's a LOT of financial incentive to hire adjuncts and other part-time instructors. I've been varying degrees of part-time faculty for a decade or so. It suuuuuuucks. (It's also bad for students, as Zoe mentioned.)
Twenty years after earning my bachelor's degree, I had a part-time administrative support temp job in the same system but a different public university than my alma mater, and the For-profit Business Model the system is intensely pursuing in recent years is a marked development since I served similar offices as a work study student.
I have some experience in a research based university, and I would add a bit more depth to your account. Mostly adjuncts are simply missing from day to day university life, as they aren't around for department meetings or really have any say over the direction of the department. They tend not to even be thought of as a class of professors, instead just "taking care" of the teaching load that the full time profs can't handle. As for the distaste for teaching more than you need to, I think a big part of that comes not from a sense of being above it (in most cases), but from a really intense pressure to be productive research-wise. These universities attract funding from donors - so they're always constructing a shiny new building - and from research grants, so they need maximum "research impact" from profs. A lot of this comes from an institutional logic developed at the top (e.g. make the most money for administrators) that gets passed down through each level of staff and faculty, each of whom is forced to direct their actions in line with that logic. It's really no place for "academic freedom"
@@Jib-Jab-4-life I did my PhD at an R1 university and can confirm everything you said. I'm in the sciences, and grant-hunting was a major focus of every single full-time professor I worked with there. Sure, researchers need funding to pay for research expenses, but half of the grant money awarded goes straight to the university (for whatever reason), not the researcher or their lab team. So the university has no incentive to encourage professors to focus on teaching. It's all about the money.
@@Jib-Jab-4-life Yeah, I went to an R1 for my PhD program, and our tenured professors were focused on research. Often they'd write grants to buy out a semester of teaching classes, rather than include funding to pay a grad assistant. So we grad students would be teaching classes for a really low stipend, and then be expected to work for free on research projects just to get the exposure. Teaching was definitely seen as a necessary evil for a lot of the professors at the school. Definitely not my experience though at a small liberal arts college for undergrad, where the professors' love for teaching and helping students really shone through. Of course, that was 20 years ago, and all those professors have probably been replaced by underpaid adjuncts by now.
my community college loves to brag about how they have professors from the pretty prestigeous university nearby, but learning about this makes it seem less cool and more depressing lmao
So, my mom recently retired from her tenured position at a public state university, and in some ways it goes even deeper. Like, things are bad enough for tenured professors. She worked 80-100 hour weeks _constantly._ The sheer amount of work is ridiculous even for tenured professors, even when you love the work itself. Then, it's even worse for adjuncts, and the adjuncts not only get paid worse, they also lose out on all the benefits that make the workload-to-pay ratio of tenured faculty sorta potentially worth it, like total job security. But the reason the university is being run in such a slapdash, cost-slashing way was because the state was constantly slashing its funding and making ridiculous demands -- as you alluded to at the end there. The administration is actually _pushing back_ against the state, and has been remarkably effective at doing so compared to administrations elsewhere in the state from what I hear, but the state is creating an enormous amount of unnecessary bloat, and funding is still going down. It's a small-ish school in a very red state in the midwest, so you kinda expect right-wing reactionary sabotage, but the deeper you look, the worse it gets, and it just doesn't stop.
I got my biology PhD from a major research university, and I knew, based on what I saw during my time there, that I absolutely did _not_ want to be a tenured professor at a university like mine. Tenured science professors are expected to maintain a minimal teaching load while _also_ running a research lab, conducting new and innovative research, publishing regularly, volunteering within professional organizations, attending professional conferences all the damn time, publishing multiple papers a year, managing and advising a group of graduate students, mentoring undergraduate researchers, developing new curriculum, and staying up-to-date on the current state of knowledge within their field. Yes, they can be compensated very well for all of this, but teaching absolutely takes a back seat to all the other unpaid tasks. For us part-time and adjunct professors, we take up the slack in the teaching department. However, recently, I've increasingly been noticing that even part-time faculty are expected to participate in many/most of those additional professional responsibilities, without additional compensation. In fact, I left a position a few years ago because they were badgering me to publish more, even though I was being underpaid to just teach part-time.
My mom is a tenured professor currently and she does regularly work 80-100 hour weeks too, and is on the mega hamster wheel trying to jump from associate to full professor before she can "rest" but we all know in our house that she will never rest.
@@gilian2587 Eh, it depends. I'm in biology, so I have a lot of colleagues who aren't in academia but instead chose either NGO/government work or the private sector. The private sector absolutely pays better than anyone else, but you also have to deal with the fact that you're likely to be working for a wildly unethical corporation. I made a choice when I decided to stick with academia; I knew I would never make as much money as folks who worked for Pfizer, Monsanto, or some environmental consulting company. To me, it's worth the loss in salary and security to not be associated with those corporations. I'm also lucky in that I don't have a partner or children that I have to support, so I understand people who decided that their principles weren't more valuable than putting food on the table.
My mom worked in registration at our local community college and one of her friends taught an adjunct class for a semester. He made $900 for the class. It was in 2005 so things were priced differently but that's still a crazy low wage. He was only doing that one evening class and he had a regular day job but he never went back to teaching which is a real shame because from what I heard he was a great teacher. I hate to think about how many great teachers we've lost over the years because they couldn't afford to continue teaching at adjunct wages.
Honestly this explains so much why the people who actually taught us were not great at their jobs. They weren't given any other way to teach it. It's also so obnoxious because I feel like the contingent faculty are the people who actually cared about my education and the tenured professors were only there for a paycheck. But it's interesting how this career also trends with all other professions where gig work and contract work are taking over actual employees. It's tragic. I would also love more videos on higher ed. I was required to do some research on it a couple years ago in my undergrad and it's so sad. Money is concentrated at the top. Problem of everything.
Even sadder, adjuncts and part-time professors are often _better_ at teaching because they do it much more than tenure-track faculty. The tenure-track folk are usually focused on research and publication, rather than teaching. They usually don't teach many classes, and often view their teaching responsibilities as the worst part of their job, preferring their research. This means that you get brilliant scientists rambling at huge lecture halls of bored students, rather than a passionate educator who has honed their skills.
Before I moved on to 4 year schools I took one class at a community college. I was really upset with how unhelpful and how unresponsive my professor was. She probably acted that way because what other option did she have to make ends meet. Thank you for this video. This was very enlightening
The moment at about 24:50 is one of the absolute saddest things I’ve ever seen. You’re seeing someone who was born to teach reflecting on the fact that she wasn’t allowed to by a money-hungry, broken system. Fucking broke my heart too.
I couldn’t even figure out how to afford graduate school and I’ve pretty much given up on it now for all the reasons she lays out here. I dreamed of being a professor too. I actually did ask one of my professors, a wonderful English professor who reminds me much of Zoe - a brilliant teacher who specialized in Latina authors such as Sandra Cisneros and Judith Ortiz Cofer, if she would write me a letter of recommendation for grad school. “Of course I will. But if you’re still planning on becoming a professor...I really can’t recommend it.” She loves teaching too. She still is teaching. She just didn’t want to suggest a life of poverty to me.
Zoe, if you see this, I’m sending all the love in the world to you for caring so much for students, teachers, knowledge, art. You’re a wonderful teacher and a beautiful human being.
I concur. This shook me to my core. This was actually worse than a children's cancer ward or a basketful of dead yellow lab puppies. I can't unsee this.
The emotion at 25:00 just kills me. As someone who recently started working as a high school teacher, so many of the issues about systems incentivizing poor education range painfully true. It's heart wrenching that the thing I love most in the world, teaching, is so broken and depersonalized by the institution of school
i crawled out of abject poverty (mostly luck) and spent ten years struggling to stabilize enough to work through an undergrad Education program (also luck) to become a highschool teacher...only to be openly mocked by my professors for trying to bring up John Dewey, Alfie Kohn, or Paolo Freire, or for begging them to let me work on a version of their behaviorist classroom management assignments by researching and discussing democratic classroom structures. i was marked down and called into directors offices when a supervisor watched me asking a roomful of teenagers what they were getting out of the class we were in. i was told to my face that no progressive educator would be certified to teach in this city. there would be no placement where i could pass. i think about this every day.
I think it's important to increase solidarity among educators of all stripes, from pre-school to university and beyond. We're (usually) united by a deep desire to make the world a better place through our vocation. I'm a biology professor and I've always known that teaching was my calling. At all levels, educators care about their students, wanting to delight, fascinate, and inspire young people to explore the world around them. We all know that teachers are underpaid. No one becomes a teacher for the money; we go into teaching because we _love_ it and want to make a difference in the world. However, the fact that we love our career is used as an excuse to underpay us even more, as though job compensation should be tied to how absolutely fucking miserable the work is. I wish you lots of luck at your new job! There's a _lot_ of burnout among K12 teachers, particularly at public schools here in the US. I had several college friends who became teachers, and all of them have left the field in the 20 years since. The only public school teacher I know now is a former attorney who's only been teaching HS for a couple years. So far, he loves it, but the burnout often doesn't set in for a while.
You are a member of the most feared and most powerful government union the world has ever known. Get your fellow educators, your politicians, and your union representatives involved and fix the system. That's what you pay those dues for.
@@zephead843 This is a good point, if somewhat exaggerated. Teachers unions are so, so important. You know you're on the right side of an issue when conservatives are desperately trying to take you down and spread nonsense conspiracy theories about you. I'm glad we're currently seeing a bit of a renaissance of union and labor activity recently, though. It's a positive sign.
In The Adjunct Underclass, the best "joke" I remember involved an Adjunct Professor who was so well-regarded by her department, her department chair actually took the unprecedented step of inviting an Adjunct to serve on a hiring "committee" to search for a full-time tenure-track professor as soon as there was an opening in the department.....
Well education *is* business, while not physically tangent, it is unfortunatly privy to supply and demand as training teachers, building schools, and all those do have real costs, as well as feeding children and babysitting them basically, it's not cheap and just saying that it "shouldn't" be a business won't solve anything long term, same applies to healthcare and housing, there isn't an infinite supply of stuff to spread out, and without a profit motove, it would be very hard to be as outreaching as the current education system in the USA, is it problematic? For sure, but removing the economy factor doesn't solve anything, you would still have limited labor and supplies to spread to 300+ million people who go through schools, no system could reasonably be well funded everywhere, or even most places, blaming the economy isn't worthwhile, it's a supply problem, there are simply too many people and not enough resources, changing how money works won't change that
@@zhitchcresttail3387 it's complicated, I agree with the video, but I'm tired of seeing people giving bland responses, I understand the economy is frustrating, but boiling it down to something so "simple" as "bad thing happens, therefore economy bad", is not well thought out, we need discussions, not insulting each other, I feel you, but your insults are not needed, add to what I say, otherwise I won't care what you say
@@kittenwizard4703 This is mistaken on almost every level. Yes, it requires resources. We have those resources. We just give them to a few very rich people who can't even use everything they already have. This is not, actually, a supply problem. It's a distribution problem. The drive toward profits is, as is neatly explained in the video, directly causing the underfunding of schools. The profit motive is the source of the problem, not the solution. You say no system could be well funded everywhere, but that too is a trivial problem if what we care about is education rather than profits. The amount being sucked up by admin costs, bean counting, and state-mandated paperwork is insane, and big chunks of the rest are getting spent on sportsball stadiums. We could just reallocate those resources. We could also allocate more resources to our schools and less to rich idiots like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. Also, education is a public good, full stop. Having good educations all around makes society work better. Studies have shown that _even within capitalism,_ treating education as an investment instead of a business has spectacular returns. What you're saying is ideology, pure and simple. It's an ideology that we have been immersed in our entire lives, and have been indoctrinated into, so I'm not exactly going to blame you for falling for these falsehoods. Heck, I did myself, not even all that long ago. They're still false, though.
I met an adjunct professor who had taught at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. She was cutting my hair at great clips. It was the best haircut I've ever had!
I had a friend that had dreamed of working as a professor, ever since she was in high school. She was hardworking, intelligent, and communicative, graduating from her PhD early. Unfortunately she had to take on two adjunct professorships to make ends meet out of her first year, and between the lack of support, unmanageable class sizes, and forced overwork, she burned out pretty hard. She's working at a better job now, but she would have been a great instructor. Thanks for the video, was nice understanding what exactly the incentives are for colleges that perpetuate this problem.
The bit about schools encouraging teachers to put in as little effort as possible felt apt, cause I remember that's exactly how I felt as a student back in high-school. Spent years basically being trained to get the best results for the least amount of effort, and now I'm spending even longer trying to break the cycle and get out of that mindset.
Guess what? Employers don't want professors who do as little as possible, which means they get fired. Employees quit if they get exploited, which means they get paid fair if they work hard. Isn't capitalism wonderful when we don't misunderstand it?
Man, our whole collegiate system sure is a Birch, huh? If only our higher education system's fundamental structure was as non-toxic as those mattresses! In all seriousness, an incredible video as always, Zoe. Only you could make a half hour fly by so quickly while talking about the injustices in our higher education system
I too am a former adjunct professor (ESL was my speciality) who left higher education for all the reasons you’ve outlined. Every minute of this video resonated with me. I too was broken-hearted to find myself forced out of the profession I spent years training to enter, a profession I loved and found fulfillment in. Thank you for making this video. Adjunct solidarity! ✊
Having a couple friends that are struggling to get into teaching college and able to afford things, yeah, this is closer to what I figured. Teaching really has no right to be such a crapshoot, whether college or otherwise.
3.2 million public schoolteachers: "HOLD MY STARBUCKS!" That doesn't include the 250,000 newly minted teachers American universities churn out every year like clockwork.There isn't an empty parking space anywhere on the faculty parking lots at the schools where I live. Didn't you learn anything in school?
@zep head yeah, I learned plenty watching my mom work tons of hours that weren't paid for on grading and supplies and setting her room up, put in emotional labor over a new class's worth of students every year, and more. And thats to say nothing of underfunded schools with 30 year old text books they can't afford to replace. It CAN be a wonderful thing that you get a lot out of. But if you do, that's in spite of being underpaid and overworked, with an occasional government chucklehead trying to steal your benefits, as would have happened had Kentucky elected the Republican candidate in the last gubernatorial election. What I'm saying is - there's a reason there's a shortage of good teachers out there. Teaching is a sometimes very rewarding-for-the-soul crap shoot.
@@pyrosianheir If teaching were the "crapshoot" you claim it is, why are 3.2 million schoolteachers on America's payroll? Why do American universities continue to churn out 250,000 newly minted teachers every year like clockwork. Not to mention the millions that are comfortably retired. A crapshoot? No. How many times do I have to tell you people that there is no teachers shortage? Many newly minted teachers have no choice but to take a "contract" (or substitute) teaching job until a full time position opens up. A teacher can't be hired on full time until one retires. Many teachers stay in their jobs forty years or more. The disgruntled teacher who's "had it" and quits is rarer than a lunar eclipse. Teachers don't quit. They retire. Every summer news outlets across the country start up with their "with another school year approaching, we have a severe teacher shortage" tales of woe. It's just orchestrated propaganda paid for by George Soros and his goon squad, the teachers unions, the AFT, the NFT, the education lobby in Washington, and the radical left wing of the Democrat Party in an effort to juice teacher salaries. What do you think they do with those union dues, put 'em in a cookie jar? No, they use that money to buy influence in Washington. Naturally, stupid uninformed Americans are preoccupied with watching NASCAR, drinking Miller Lite, and waving their flags to see that they're being bribed with their own money. If teaching is such a raw deal, the profession would have gone the way of the buggy whip and your local blacksmith a long time ago...Follow the money.
Thank you for making this - I needed a reminder that my employment situation is not unique and its not my fault that I have to take on a bunch of different gigs. I feel sad for the world but relieved for myself in a way. You have brought me peace of mind today - thank you
Last year was my girlfriend's first year as an adjunct professor, and I have had the hardest time understanding the schools' compensation structures. This helped me understand it more holistically, so thank you, again, for making these absurdly valuable videos.
I thought this was a really great video. As a student, though, whenever I hear information like this, I sometimes don't know what to do with it. I totally understand that many of my teachers are getting underpaid and/or overworked, yet I often can't help myself from asking them for help outside of class; from reaching out with questions or comments; or, to an extent, from trying to connect with them. Equally often, I find myself feel really bad about doing such. I know that times are tough, and I by no means want to heft on to their existing baggage, but I struggle to just stand idly by. As a neurodivergent student, the structure of the classroom frequently poses major challenges to me. Simultaneously, however, the prospect of asking for assistance arises within me a strong sense of guilt. I want, desperately, to connect with many of my teachers -- even the "bad" ones -- and as it currently stands, what I've been telling myself is that I want to become a teacher down the line. When I hold this information, though, when my gaze starts wandering and I find myself looking it in the eyes, it gives me the sense that my impulses are going inevitably become harmful -- to myself or others. And that's not something I would ever want. I understand that it's a systemic issue, but it's never the systems you have to come face-to-face with, it's the struggling individuals. I don't know, maybe, what I'm trying to say here. I wish things were better, for everyone. A good teacher is such a valuable role to have in a student's life. I wish more teachers got the chance to be as good as they could be. I just don't want to be put (or by my own hands placed) in the position to make those odds worse. I'm a student who needs help, who wishes they could help, but who feels that, to the extent which I can, it might be harmful to do so. And maybe that's selfish or misguided of me, but it's where I'm at: feeling lonely in a system designed to do so.
In my experience professors enjoy being able to work with students who are genuinely interested in understanding the subject and getting to know the professors. Sure, don't become a major burden, but they're there working already, you being interested in them and there subject will just make their work better, as long as you're also making an effort. Also, you're paying through the roof for college. As much the financial situation isn't great for professors, it's even worse for students. You need to get the most out of the education you're paying so much for.
I was hoping you would mention here the situation at Hamline, where an unaccountable administrator was able to get an adjunct fired on false, literally counter-factual, pretenses with the full support of the rest of the administration whereas the adjunct was assumed to be in the wrong from the outset simply because they were an adjunct.
That happened while I was editing and I wasn't able to fit it into the video itself, but it definitely made me feel like this video was important to get out ASAP!
I was contingent faculty for a while. I loved my first term, but burned out super fast. I have felt so guilty about it all this time, like I should have been stronger and better, and found a way to continue teaching and loving teaching. Thank you for opening my eyes to how unfairly the college treated me, and the extent to which my passion and hard-earned knowledge were being exploited. Clearly this does need to be talked about more openly. It's heartbreaking, and it's frightening for our society's future.
These educational workers can organize to fight against their blatant exploitation (which is happening as a very deliberate attack by the ruling class against the education that can pose a very direct threat to their rule). Or they can all be pushed in the meat grinder alone. While the capitalist class continues it's project to make education an private tool of class privilege.
@@zephead843 Aww, you're adorable. Thanks so much for your concern! As to your question, well, based on your reading and listening comprehension skills from watching the video and reading my comment, what do YOU think I might be frightened for?
@@rhiawolf ATTENTION HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS! I've found a group of people who've suffered more than you ever did. Sorry Holocaust survivors, but you didn't expect to stay #1 in the grievance department forever now did you? And you'll never guess who you lost your crown to. ADJUNCT PROFESSORS! I know, right? I'm as shocked as you are, but facts are facts! (Sorry)
I'm currently working for minimum wage as a remote teaching assistant in a role that required post-graduate education and advanced social and technical skills to qualify. This is the same I made working in hospitality jobs requiring no education or experience. Based on salaries for TA's I'd seen online I thought they were grossly undervaluing us... even in the understanding that teachers are underpaid. But I guess we're to be punished for not going into business or politics for the rest of our lives. Edited to add: I once was denied food stamps because I was a student. They said if you can afford to go to college, you can afford food. No matter that you're taking out loans, grants and scholarships to go to school. So you finish school in debt and poverty and... get to carry on with the same.
A close friend of mine is an adjunct professor who has to work a second job at Starbucks to make rent and have healthcare--this was already infuriating, but it hits differently now that I'm going to grad school myself. In my first year, I'll pay in tuition about what my yearly salary at my old job was. That times all the students in my program, which is one of the smaller programs at the university. They could afford to pay the professors. They're CHOOSING not to.
Zoe, I truly feel your pain! I've worked for 11+ years now to complete a PhD in Sociology because I've increasingly been plagued by medical problems, but still wanted to find a way of making best use of what I saw as my best talent: my ability to communicate. I once wanted to teach at the university level, but I soon came to realize the truth of what you're saying about the commodification of education. As a Graduate Assistant, I came to the conclusion that after 20 years in the US Air Force, another 45 months working as the Emergency Services Director of a large chapter of the American Red Cross in Central Texas, and a few years working as a GA, I had never had an experience as soul crushing as grading undergrad papers. That's when I really started to wonder if academe was the right place for me. But I'd like to offer you a little ray of hope in the darkness. I took a Master of Science degree in Studies of the Future at University of Houston - Clear Lake, graduating in 2005. Shortly after that, the program moved to University of Houston's Main Campus, where it now resides in the College of Technology, led by Dr. Andy Hines. Andy has been working with post-Capitalist futures for some time, and he can undoubtedly talk about futures of work once we get beyond capitalism. Moreover, he can likely suggest some things people can do now to create futures in which highly educated people like you can share their passion for helping people learn AND be able to live comfortably -- without having to work 72 hours per day and sleep for 20 minutes on weekends. If you'd like to learn more about the futures of work -- in this case, focusing on the futures of the profession of teaching --and how those futures may be different once we move beyond capitalism, look Andy up. If you'd like an introduction, I'll be glad to send him a link to this video and ask him to get in touch with you. But here's a note I'd like everyone to consider. Right now, we're creating futures that other people will live in. There's a classic rock album I listen to Friday nights: To Our Children's Children's Children. It's those children who'll live out the futures we're creating. It's those people we need to think about now. How would you like them to remember you by the futures you left them? That's where the conversation starts. Let's talk!
Thank you for this. I had taken a logic class from a very talented adjunct professor. He had to leave teaching because it was not supporting him financially. We need to invest in education. Equitable pay for all faculty is an investment in our society.
A system of capital, which predisposes itself to as much market individualization as possible, is antithetical to the concept of a cross-disciplinary education, and allows the justification of underpaying professors for the fact that they only teach a single subject !! Big problem!!
It's not a problem if you are a corporate master trying to ensure that you filthy poor's never use your college education to threaten the prevailing status quo.
Or you could move to Cuba! They need teachers too. Of course, they'll only pay you $100/mo., but you won't need much money. Just sleep in the park and bathe in the ocean!
This was a really strong video to open 2023 on, and an extremely important one too. When I graduated from college I eventually found work doing media production adjacent work at several startups and felt fortunate enough to make what I considered a fine wage (that has since deflated greatly thanks to the strength of the doctor and a lack of getting raises). My partner and I both wanted to transition into education in the future, with my intention being to seek out work teaching media production skills at a high school or college level but... Yeah... financially I just can't look at that as a sound decision. Which is a shame too because I think the work has the potential to be extremely fulfilling for me and provide me with a sense of purpose I simply don't get now but... Bills don't care about how much you like your job... Edit: I also really related to the part where you talked about adjuncts taking the, and let's not mince words, labor abuse from colleges that they take so that they could hopefully "earn" a regular position. That basically described several jobs I had as a freelancer or "contractor" where I did everything that employees did (including going on work trips, attending meetings, and having standard days at an offfice) for an hourly rate without benefits.
I work as staff at a university. It absolutely astounds me that there is such a disparity between tuition costs and what universities actually pay their faculty and staff. Thousands of students paying thousands of dollars per semester and none of it seems to go into the pockets of staff or adjunct professors- but our chancellor did get a 100k raise at the beginning of covid, of couse.
As a current adjunct, this video PISSED ME OFF. Because it's SO TRUE!!!! LOL. Anyway, I think a crucial part of changing this situation would have to be higher Ed workers uniting through labor struggles, such as unionizing, labor actions, strikes, and fuck it, SEIZING THOSE MEANS OF INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION. Anyone who hasn't heard of it should look up the recent University of California graduate strike. They won some improvements in compensation.
After attending college for years I've noticed that tenured professors, in my experience, are usually the worst professors. I've had professors openly tell the class they don't care anymore because it's not like they can be fired. last semester one of em didn't start grading anything till the week before finals. And only then because the final consisted of reworking a paper based on feedback. Non tenured professors are still actually trying to do a good job. It's almost like giving people lifetime appointments it's nearly impossible to dislodge them from makes people care less and be more likely to be openly terrible. I also had amazing teachers in CC but every semester in university I get at least one professor so bad everyone in the class starts e-mailing dept heads.....
As someone who was always mesmerized by academia and was fully planning on getting a Ph.D, learning more and more about the job market as far as the amount of available tenure track positions and high probability of being an adjunct for several years after grad school made me switch to going for a master's for now and maybe down the road I would consider getting a Ph.D. but only if the current system is fixed. All this to say, I'm glad more people are bringing up these issues since they are almost never talked about in discussions of grad school with the universities, at least in the US.
We have a similar situation in the UK. It was so noticeable at my university how stressed and underappreciate the postdocs were. Talk about discouraging. It is beyond stupid to treat educators like this if we want to keep human society perpetuating itself.
As a former academic (did the PhD and the postdoc) I strongly encourage you to do more videos talking about the rot that is at the core of academia. It's driven by money and exploitation of labor at every level.
@@soonahero If you're talking about degrees like a MD or JD, look at the differences in earning potential. Also, PhD students have to actually work to earn that stipend and tuition waiver, not just take classes. Lastly, I'm sure the majority of viewers of this channel would accept the argument that all education is too damn expensive and wouldn't have a problem with changing the system so that the best predictor of whether a child earns a MD isn't household income.
@@soonahero It's not fair that a bricklayer should be forced to help pay for a Jane Goodall devotee. If one chooses to observe gorillas in the mist and the job requires a phd, that person needs to visit their parents in Greenwich, Connecticut and beg them for more money.
@@zephead843 Who tf is saying a brick layer should be paying for someone's research trip to Africa? The video and conversation is about teachers. Universities have LOTS of money---they're just not using it to pay their actual teachers.} Maybe you brought up research trips because Empty was talking about graduate students and you think that's what graduate students do. No. Graduate students stay at home and teach. And in most cases get paid, but poorly.
Watching this made me realize my history professor that I had for a semester at my local community college was probably an adjunct. I was a pretty bad student (the final essay I did probably wouldn't have flown in a high school setting it was so bad) but I liked the guy. He was interesting to talk to and seemed to really care about history and teaching. I think he ended up leaving that semester since I never saw him in a classroom again. Only here and there on campus.
As someone who fits the "lawyer teaching law classes" bill, I wanted to chime in. I was an adjunct at a local undergraduate university teaching Legal Research for about 4 years. I enjoyed the teaching, but it felt like charity work, not a job. I'm fortunate that the extra income for the classes was nice, but not something that I relied upon to make ends meet. It became untenable as the number of students in the class rose and prep/grading time increased. It was forcing me to choose between doing a good job for my students and doing a good job for my clients, since I was taking time out of my legal practice to teach. I had to choose between the two, and one of them pays poverty wages. It's a no-brainer. I know lots of attorneys who get into adjunct teaching for a little supplemental income (student loans!), but most bail after a year or two because the return on your time is just orders of magnitude higher when spent on your legal practice. Law schools and undergraduate pre-law or paralegal programs are constantly scrounging for professors because they are asking otherwise very well-paid and overworked professionals to devote a bunch of time working for less than you get working at Five Guys.
That's great insight. I had a local college approach me through an acquaintance about teaching classes. The colleges always frame these roles like you'll be a sage scholar shaping young minds. Your comment seems much closer to reality. Thank you.
This breaks my heart. I loved teaching and was thankfully at least at an institution where I was given a lot of freedom to teach how I wanted so I put a lot of passion into my classes and students. Lasted 4.5 years before I had to leave teaching due to burnout from a similar situation and wanting to have time to actually work in my field again (where I would also be paid much better). My former students still reach out and are always so sad to hear that I left, but I just couldn't keep the pace anymore and wasn't willing to become one like some of the other instructors who just did the bare minimum because they had learned that's what they had to do to stay sane (not that I can blame them). And the worst part is like you said - in the end it's the students who lose out.
I put all my eggs in the academia basket through undergrad but I realized all of this halfway through my MS before I applied for my PhD. I studied environmental science but ended up learning to code and becoming a software engineer. No regrets whatsoever. The only way this will get better is if educators start demanding better of themselves... by leaving.
You can relax. No one's leaving the teaching profession. In fact, depending on the school district, many newly minted teachers have to wait up to a year before they can even get contract teachers jobs.
THANK YOU. capitalism ensures that people are treated fairly because they can leave for somewhere else if exploited. The only way this doesn't hold true is if they're too many people in the industry in which case it's a good thing that we're not paying too many people.
@@allisthemoist2244 capitalism doesn't ensure that people are treated fairly at all lol. people being able to leave has nothing to do with capitalism. in fact, zoe has videos on capitalism. Remember that the role of for-profit organizations is to make profit and they will pay as little as possible as long as they can.
@@joshuah345 ok, so first off, I don't care about this label, but given that essentially every economist believes in the free market creating fair wages, believing in other things makes you anti science Regardless, there is a process called opponent processing where two forces working opposite each other balance out. For example, a balloon will hover at a certain height because its lift gets counteracted by the downward force of gravity that gets stronger on it as it gets higher. In the same way, there is pressure from corporations to earn profit (duh), but there is also pressure from employees to get paid fairly. Employees won't work for nothing, and corporations can't pay everything. In addition, companies with better employees will outcompete ones with less competent ones. Any company that pays more will have their choice of more candidates in that field. This also contributes to the balance, as big corporations will steal competent employees from other big corporations if they aren't paying as well as they could. This (and other factors) creates a balance where companies pay employees most of their profit because the free market made it so. (And no, one random science denying youtube channel saying so does not mean that capitalism doesn't automatically ensure fair treatment)
Complaining about how our economic system creates undesired outcomes is not the same as denying science. Why is economic theory presented as an unassailable topic when even fundamental physics is open to change, and our current understanding is merely our best current explanation for what we observe? Also, economics places monetary values on things as a proxy for their value to our society. Societal value is a complex concept and I'm skeptical that assigned economic value can truly capture every aspect of a thing's value to our society. I think that alone deserves critical consideration. Finally, I find it troubling that our economic system would place so little value on educators. I feel it's safe to assert that a designed economic system assigns value according to the wishes of those who control that system. A lack of value placed on education would, coincidentally (?) reduce the risk of the levers of that system changing hands.
Thanks for this video. I'm a former adjunct and I have many friends who live the adjunct lifestyle in NYC. Many of the points you made are doubly true in a city with a high cost of living like New York. I'd like to paint a picture of the average 'full time' adjunct here: - Lives with 2-3 roommates (at least). - Has a substantial student debt burden of their own. - Works more than 40 hours a week. May have a side hustle. - May or may not have health insurance. Sometimes the cost just feels too high and it's easier not to think about it. - Teaches at 3 or even 4 institutions at the same time. This makes it even harder to get to know your students/coworkers or form a community. - Starts out excited, but will likely burn out after 3 or 4 years. Luckily for the schools, there is always a new crop of fresh-faced grad students to fill the vacancy. I'm not trying to write a sob story. Obviously this situation is common for many people who live in cities and work in the service industry or gig economy, and it is bad in every case. We survive. However, what makes it feel particularly insane in the case of adjunct professors is that students are paying such comically absurd amounts of money to these institutions. In return, they get to learn from people who are burnt-out, stretched thin, and don't have the resources to put passion into their teaching. Community colleges may be the worst, but this also happens at well-known and expensive institutions like NYU, Pratt, SVA, and the New School. When you look at the big picture it starts to feel unsustainable.
Excellent video on higher education, and very eye opening. I was going to apply for a PHD program next year, but I'm turned off by the treatment of teachers and professors. Plus, there'd be no guarantee I'd get a full time position. Unfortunately, I have to give up my dream of being a university professor for now because it isn't conducive to a sustainable career or life. We're better off teaching K-12.
Just teach high school. You'll earn respectable money, your benefits package will be second to none, and you'll have the same work, holiday, and vacation schedule as a six year old. You won't need a PHD, but if you wanted one the taxpayer will pick up the tab for ya.
My father was a tenure track, assistant professor at multiple universities in two different countries (Mexico and Canada) for quite literally almost as long as i've been alive. 20 years. 5 years ago, he was nominated to be awarded his professorship in Mechanical Engineering at my university, and lost it against the Dean of Engineering's wife. He had his research cut and left academia. Even in tenure track, even with the decent salary, even with his decades of being a professor of Mechanical Engineering, he got screwed over. All because we were middle eastern. It infuriates me to this day. My last physics professor inherited his old office. I wept when I visited. I have a degree in Computer Science, and I couldn't have finished it without my dad being such a huge help. It is so unfair. Not even tenure protected him. He loved being a professor, despite the hellscape.
This was a great video. I also wanted to add that it gets even more complicated when you add research to the mix. Because at least in my country, all these adjunct positions are for teaching AND research, so the university expects you to still be putting out papers, while neither paying you properly nor giving you the time to, y'know, actually do any science. And then you go to apply for permanent positions, and they actually just don't care about how good of a teacher you are, all they look at is your research output. So if you want to get into academia, these positions can really become dead ends, ensuring that you are neither a good teacher to your students nor a productive researcher
Hi Zoe, I want to thank you so much for you're video! I was an adjunct professor for three years before I moved on to currently working on a PhD in sociology. Let me tell you, like you and many others, having to work more than one school was tough! Especially trying to schedule things around so you have enough time to drive to each school. I worked in a private university and I was shocked that all adjuncts get $2100 per course and only allowed 2 courses per semester! I stood there for 3 years because many of my students were Latino like myself and we're amazed to actually see someone of our community actually teaching a college course. I was the only Latino in the social science department and one of only very few people of color who was teaching there. The two community colleges I work that or actually a much better experience and paid me fairly because we had a union. But as you described in the video it was hard making poverty-level wages and still trying to survive let alone take care of yourself. Even as I work on my PhD at a state school I'm so shocked and surprised that my professors who are full-time and tenure are making six figures or have now started to make six figures. Higher ed needs major reforms and we really need to start investing in public education.
The "reforms" were made decades ago. Specifically to protect the power of the ruling class from plebs like you that might try to teach budding minds how to effectively challenge the systems which rule them. Read the Powell memo from 1971. You are losing a class war because the rich haven't bothered to tell you they already opened fire on you years ago.
We have a very similar system here in Brazil. Online education is part of this equation too, because it's easier to make precarious. I know many people with PhDs that are unemployed. Thank you so much for talking about this topic with your sensible heart, Zoe.
What hit me particularly hard was hearing you mention students who ask what you're teaching next year so they can take another class with you. I HATE having to tell my students "I don't know if my contract will be renewed, but keep your fingers crossed and look for me on the course catalog." I've done as much as I can in my classes this semester to try and open up the black box of how teaching in higher ed works, so hopefully my reasoning/decisions are less of a mystery to my students. We collaboratively designed our course during the first week, and I'm really transparent about what I'm required to include, the limitations we need to work within, and the few spots where we have some wiggle room to decide on our own. It's too early to see if that shared understanding will make a difference this semester, but it's worth a shot.
I can absolutely attest to this. I calculated my wages per hour the last time I taught in 2021, and I would have made more at the local McDonalds. I enjoy teaching, but I couldn't justify the time away from my family to do it.
I think videos like this are really valuable. The exploitation of adjuncts is a huge problem, not only for the reasons mentioned in the video but also. The video focused, rightly so, on the educational problems this gig University economy creates, but there is ofc also a huge epistemic cost to it as well. Not only do students run the risk of learning less, which means that the next Generation is less well equipped to do literally anything more advanced or complex, but also many academics and scientists in their best years, when they combine knowledge with, lets call it "youthful creativity", when they are most likely to come up with some of their best ideas or challenge old ideas, are destroyed in favour of capital. Not only can you not be a good educator under such conditions, you cannot be a good scientist, philosopher, mathematician or artist either. And the world, our knowledge, our societies are worse for it.
When I was in public school in the 90's we took computer classes and I thought those skills were going to be common knowledge going forward, but now I hear that the generations behind me don't know how to use technology any better than our grandparents did because everything's designed for maximum accessibility with minimum understanding. Which may be good in some respects but also contributes to the whole culture of automation where the acquisition of new skills just seems to be something capitalist society no longer incentivizes or values.
I learned about this the hard way when the instructor for my emphasis stopped working for the University I attended several years ago. She was a Ceramics instructor, did a phenomenal job, went the extra mile and got our students to a state show for the art medium, actually had an article in the school paper praising her work at the University -- and was denied promotions and raises. Constantly. Did I mention she was also the *ONLY* ceramics instructor at the University? Should I also mention that... when they finally decided to hire someone for a permanent position, that the University decided to... choose a complete outsider instead...? When the adjunct had connections within the University already, was a *CORNERSTONE* of that section of the department, *and* was highly knowledgeable with what was going on in the industry and kept up with updates while being extremely motivational and helpful to the students...? The new full-time instructor was hired to "help improve the facilities" -- which the adjunct had already been trying to push for, but couldn't get any assistance with because she was an adjunct. Did you know that one of the things the adjunct was forced to work with to keep the ceramics studio was in fact a *HEALTH HAZARD* and probably a safety violation?! There was apparently a lack of ventilation for the glaze/chemical room that the new instructor had to fix -- which I am pretty sure the adjunct wanted to be dealt with, but they never did anything with that. I should probably mention that the adjunct *NEVER* spent class hours working on her own projects. The new full-time? Pfft. She ignored students and worked on her own stuff during class hours. How's that for a change? On top of that, poor resource management with making sure equipment was available to students by the new instructor with... letting students "claim" wheels, and allowed them to leave them uncleaned and unusable for others - when we didn't have enough wheels for everyone. Also demotivating as an instructor by shooting down projects immediately instead of looking how to get them to work. I *REALLY* want to drop names. I really do. The program director for the department at the time stepped down within a few semesters after I got pissed about the new instructor enough to send an email detailing several complaints about the new instructor, which I stated more or less that 'this is what the University deserves for not recognizing exactly what the adjunct did for it' and that it was what it was going to have to live with, since for all we knew... they could end up with worse next time they hired, and the current issues were "fixable." Sorta. Maybe. But they clearly weren't getting the old instructor back, who I felt was much better as an instructor Obviously the adjuct was burnt out, which is why the last few semesters she taught there... I heard from the students that had her course that she didn't teach very well -- which, of course not. Not when you've already decided to leave the University and all of the lower division students were going to become protégé of the new instructor. So obviously the adjunct focused attention on all of her existing students that were going to graduate. Unfortunately, I took several semesters off for myself so I had to deal with the new instructor when I went back
I know a liberal arts grad who spoke up in her undergrad business class to defend a living wage for fast food workers. The professor, a local businessman born with a silver spoon in his mouth, came over, lay a hand on her shoulder without her permission, and whispered in her ear, "I'm one percent, and I disagree with you." I'm absolutely livid every time I think about it, and how she was too scared to report him for invading her space, touching, and clearly threatening her like that.
You and acollierastro have really opened my eyes to this and changed my perspective of assuming every professor is a hoity-toity type, it's crazy the sheer percentage that are not thought of as permanent faculty!
Thank you so much for this video. I’m a lecturer at a public university, and I’ve always worked in academia - even my very first job as a tutor and supplemental instructor came about when I was an undergraduate student in our public university system here in CA. All of my lecturer colleagues are Black women - like me - or women and people of color; on the other hand, there are no Black tenure track faculty in our department and only one woman of color. Many of us are also younger than the tenured faculty (I am 32). My colleagues and I regularly talk about how much time (often unpaid) that we put into developing our skills, revising our curriculum and updating our assignments, and how difficult this is to maintain because we have to teach so many classes to stay afloat financially. We all want our students to have the best versions of us, but holding ourselves to that standard while also facing such financial stress is so difficult. All of this is doubly challenging when we face systemic bias in our institutions on a regular basis. Honestly, without my family and the benefit of us having roots here in California, I wouldn’t be able to survive - not just financially, but emotionally, too. I love teaching with all my heart and come from a long line of teachers. At this rate, going into my sixth year as an adjunct, I don’t think that I can stay in the profession much longer. I hope that people outside of academia watch this video and understand that having a system like this stamps out voices that would enrich the educational system of this country in so many ways. If more of us are honest about what we face in academia, I think it will help, even just a little, to inspire an energy of change… I don’t know, maybe I am being desperately hopeful at this point. I don’t know.
24:52 This Hit me hard I'm not a teacher but I'm also a skilled professional, I'm a automotive technician. I loved working on machines growing up, and I like working with my hands, I like solving problems and figuring out how things go together and finding solutions, when I was in school getting certified I was excited to go out into the field and get to work on a bunch of different vehicles and get first-hand experience with a lot of the technology and tools of the trade... Instead I got 10 hour days, 6 day weeks, pressure to upsell, credit card debt from buy overpriced tools, ambivalent coworkers, uncaring management, and low pay that was eventually cut so that they can hire more people whose job it was for me to train. The industry has nearly ruined my love of cars, and killed any ambition I had to master my craft.
When I was in undergrad I had a professor who used their last lecture to criticize the adjunct system. 10 years later, still remember that. I was an adjunct at my uni last semester and.....nothings changed :o (I didn't do it again, because the pay wasn't worth the work, and I got my own academic stuff to do)
The best professors i’ve had have all been non tenured. In fact the absolut best learning experience i’ve had has been with a fairly young adjunct that also had further edjucation in teaching. I have never learned more in a class or felt more motivated. The weekly tasks were varied, he asked for feedback especially on the texts he’d give is to read, if anything he gave us took to long to read etc. It was amazing. What saddens me is that he probably didn’t make that much money teaching us despite me not studying in the states but in europe.
As someone who only has tenure-track professors, this explains a lot as to why many people report a university experience so much worse than mine. I was lucky in my country to have the chance to go to such a university without needing to be rich.
My parents were both profs, coming up in the older generation where it was a permanent dream job. And they are both livid at how new professors and students are getting screwed by this system. Also at ballooning admin costs, for a group of people who have no understanding or appreciation of the role of a university. As one example, a new clinical research lab that they'd been trying to get set up for years got turned into a VP's office wing. He already had an office wing, but he didn't like the vibe. So he got to take over the lab space instead (he liked that vibe), because admin comes first, always. No, they didn't get to set up the lab elsewhere, it was just gone. I also have close friends who are now looking for new careers, after the school was able to demote them to Per Course Instructor, thereby paying them about 1/3 the rate for the same work. The whole thing is a huge mess, and is likely to crash and burn soon, which would be *checks notes* bad.
Comment affirming that I would like to see you tear apart the college system with facts and logic. I'm finishing my 2-year degree at a community college, and have very mixed feelings about it. I'm grateful for the opportunity, and the individual faculty and staff seemed to be well-meaning people, but... It has the same contingent faculty problem. Some of my courses were "taught" wholly online through essentially copy/pasted web tutorials -- something I would not have otherwise paid hundreds of dollars per course for, but I need the gosh darn degree unless I want to make sandwiches for soccer parents the rest of my life. I have a 4.0 and I do not feel as though I really earned it. I am older and not unusually intelligent. These classes in particular felt phoned in. The ones from full-time faculty were more challenging, and for those at least, I felt like I earned my grade. I am completely certain this discrepancy is not a problem with the teachers but with the structure they're teaching in (capitalist hellscape). I was also fortunate to work as a student assistant to help offset my tuition costs (whole different ball of wax there, possible topic for the series), and in that work I was able to peek a little deeper inside the system than most students would be able to, but still be removed enough from it as to have a critical eye. I agree that this extends from, and extends to, broader trends in the modern socio-economy. As an English teacher, you're uniquely positioned to write excellent videos on this topic, and I think if you can, you should.
This is a lot of why I decided to not stay in academia. My adjuncts were overworked, underpaid, and stressed. Conditions aren't the best in my current industry (I'm actually making a video about that right now), but it's a little better. It's still mostly freelance work, though, and I was nodding along with most of your points about adjuncts.
When I was an undergrad I was seriously considering an academic career. My history lecturer warned me it was a scary, precarious existence and I should deeply consider my choice. I didn't end up in academia but seeing people I know fight tooth and nail for their careers and watching this makes me feel I really dodged a bullet.
Thank you so much for this Zoe Bee! I worked as an Adjunct instructor for nursing and health care courses at a local technical college and you described my situation perfectly. I worked there six years before I had to step away for health reasons. Many schools also have noncompete clauses in your contract, I couldn't work for more than one school at a time.
Current adjunct here! There is an end to this cycle, but it's a grim one: higher education is on its way to collapse. I've been more open about the adjunct situation with my students the last year or so, and aside from their shock at how low my pay is, a consistent response has been "wait, where is my tuition money going if its not to support the people teaching me and my education?" Students are seeing more and more that the cost of an undergraduate degree isn't matching its value, and they aren't enrolling. At (one of) my universities, we're projecting a ~15% drop in student enrollment over the last few years (starting before the pandemic). It hasn't reached a fevered pitch quite yet, but they're in the beginning of a budget crisis. So far, their grand plan to address the problem has been to start pushing for even higher teaching loads and cutting / consolidating class sections to cut costs (i.e. paying teachers even less). Of course, that just means students get stuffed into classes that have way too many seats, where the already exhausted intructors are stretched even more thin, or they can't get classes they need and have to stay on for even more semesters to reach graduation. This leads to more and more adjuncts jumping ship, destabilizing the already broken system and making the student experience exponentially worse, while tuition keeps going up. It's a death spiral. Like you talked about, if the focus was on the broader good of public education we could fix the problem by doubling down on student learning and reducing their financial burden (cutting out the absurdly bloated administration costs), but universites are now strictly a business. The stake holders will cut and slash all the vital parts until there's nothing left and then jump ship to the next venture they can suck dry. The bigger universities will be able to ride things out on the back of their reputation and alumni networks, but expect to start seeing the small and medium universites dying away over the next decade.
Thank you for this video. In many architecture schools the adjunct faculty are individuals who also either work in or have their own high-profile private offices. They hand-pick their favorite students to do (poorly or completely unpaid) internships for them, during which the students are forced to work 10+ hour days. One of my classmates went to work for one of these guys after graduating. He was offered zero benefits (health insurance, retirement, ...) and paid too little to cover the expense of living in that city.This practice seems to be part of the business model of many offices, who could not stay in business without extracting hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime from their underpaid employees (which might just include the adjuncts who recruited the students). Meanwhile, the full-time faculty at one of the schools I attended were mainly interested in forcing their own agendas on students and made it extremely difficult for us to pursue our own research interests for our *graduate* theses. Going through that made me realize that higher education, at least in the realm of design, is most likely corrupt and entirely about flooding the labor market with students who have been groomed into accepting exploitative working conditions in their university studios. I hate it here.
As someone who grew up in a household supported primarily by my mother's pitiful salary as a Finance Lecturer in an Australian university, this hurt me to my core.
Thank you, Zoe, for calling attention to the plight of educators, in particular here, contingent faculty. Not only is this happening in post-secondary education, it’s also happening in primary and secondary education, and has been for quite some time. I remember seeing this in secondary education with my dad during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. He taught cooking and baking for seniors (and occasionally for juniors) in public school. Dad and Mom were raising a young, growing family during a time of double-digit inflation combined with the energy crisis and, later, the first eight years of what is now forty-two years of trickle-down Reaganomics, while going fifteen rounds with the board of education on proper funding for improvements to his teaching kitchen. He taught five days per week and had to work three nights per week on a second job plus catering jobs on weekends in order to support himself and us. He absolutely loved teaching, but looking back, I don’t know how he did it under the circumstances. It was, of course, his dedication to helping his students, not only with regard to their class work, but also in life. Without question, however, the stress of dealing with the obstacles while pursuing his life’s work at least contributed to his three heart attacks. Yes, it definitely took a physical toll on him. And, in retrospect, although we didn’t dare discuss such things at the time, I’m certain it also took a mental toll on him. How could it not lead to a degree of anxiety and even depression? For instance, his doctor wanted him to retire after his first heart attack. Dad, of course, being part of the “silent” generation (born in 1943), wouldn’t hear of it, although he agreed to a compromise and took the semester off and returned the following fall. After his second heart attack, five years to the day later, his doctor gave him the ultimatum: Either retire or I can’t be your doctor anymore. They had been friends since Dad arrived in town a quarter-century earlier, and he didn’t want to find another doctor. So, this time he agreed, although he continued to be involved in education, albeit in an advisory capacity, and he found ways of returning to his teaching kitchen from time to time to work on personal projects. That was just his way. Retirement, even for medical reasons, was not his way of life. He needed to be active and doing things. And, making sure we received as good an education as possible was a major concern of his. But, he personally needed to be teaching again. I’m convinced the fact that he had to give that up was a contributing factor to his third heart attack, which claimed him, at only fifty. In fact, as I type this, today is the twenty-ninth anniversary of that evening. Admittedly, my dad’s experience is only one case. But, I’ve seen similar scenarios play out, to greater or lesser extents, in other educators I’ve known over the years. These, like my dad, went into teaching for the right reason: To help students. Yet, they’re regarded, not as essential, but as expendable, a mere human resource to be tapped and then discarded. As the son of a teacher, that pains me to no end! (I want to put that another way, but since this is a public forum, I’m trying to keep my language in check.) I apologize for being long-winded here. But, this video brought my lives experience watching my dad to mind. Thanks again, Zoe, for using your voice to draw attention to these matters.
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm from a teaching family too. My grandfather was driven to drink. So was my uncle. They both died young. My parents got chewed up and spit out. I'm not a teacher, I'm university it support so I have it a bit better
@@BillyBasd I neglected to mention what I consider to be the crowning indignity Dad went through as he left the teaching profession. I had alluded to his back-and-forth with the board of education on the funding for necessary updates and improvements to his teaching kitchen. Well, as he was retiring, the board of education finally gave its approval for the refurbishments, and the project was completed by September 1989, eight months after he had to step aside. Dad spent years doing what he could with what he had, and, now, as a “thank you” for that, they get their act together and do what they needed to do years earlier. I remember during those years sitting with Dad and listening to the meetings and the topic would never be on the agenda. We always knew that the money was in the district’s coffers. But, until he was forced to retire, it always went to other things, not to the teachers or the classrooms, where it was actually needed. To this day, when I hear or read similar reports or hear people denigrating public education and openly expressing their desire to turn that funding entirely over to private, for-profit “schools”, I admit that I take it very personally because of my dad’s experience as an instructor. To me, it’s as though they’re saying that he himself was the problem when he wasn’t at all. Those reports and comments tell me in no uncertain terms that we have our priorities completely wrong in this country when it comes to education. And, now, on the college and university level, we’re discussing branding, endorsements and outright pay for certain students (I think we know which students), which they should not have to worry about in the first place. And why are we having this discussion? Because while tuition has risen exponentially, financial aid and scholarships have concurrently declined. This, in spite of- or, rather, due to- the fact that colleges and universities have put boatloads of money into new buildings and raises for administration far outpacing inflation in an effort to attract the “best and brightest”. Quite frankly, that fosters a spirit of elitism. That, in turn, leads to a less democratic (with a small “d”) campus. Of course, as with so many problems, this can be directly attributed to Reagan and his shenanigans as governor of California in the ‘60’s. What he did there served as the template for what he began nationwide while in the Oval Office in the ‘80’s and continues on apace today.
Become a high school teacher. You'll make a lot more money. Your benefits package will be second to none, and you'll have the same work, holiday, and vacation schedule as a six year. Cool beans.
My biggest problem with any of these discussions is that still, no one DOES anything about it. These are good and important subject matter, but the problem is that we all nod our heads and agree, then go back to doing things the same way, without any kind of critical thought into the fact that these kind of problems takes us to change. Activism takes action, not just agreeing with palatable takes.
I don't want to contribute to this system which is why I'd rather do other work, totally unrelated to my degree, than adjunct. This is also why I decided not to go on the tenure track job market. Not only are there no jobs, but I also don't want to be part of a system this broken and unethical (this last part related to the continued production of PhDs, especially in the humanities). Anyway, I wish more students and more parents knew the true state of higher ed right now.
When I went to university I looked up the salaries at my university, because it was public records. The highest payed professor at my university was the head of the physics department, and he only made 77,000. About a third of the students taking his classes were likely to have a starting salary higher than what he made. The football coach was paid 500,000.
I scream and scream and scream and scream and scream and scream. Because it hurts and it is also true in my university and I know so many people in the staff, the faculty, and the graduate students who are worth so much more, who do so much more work, who hustle and try so hard to push our department forward. But the football coach for a college that doesn't even make it to the fancy football season makes more than all of us combined. I want to tear my hair out.
That sounds very familiar. The sad part is that even within the faculty, salaries depend on the "prestige" of the academic field, rather than on the skill or experience of the professor. I'm a biology professor, and among the STEM fields, we tend to have the lowest salaries. Physics professors can make twice what we do. Among the social sciences, economics professors make the big bucks, often earning twice what psychology or sociology professors make. (There's also a gender link here too. The highest-paid professors are almost always in fields dominated by men, such as physics and economics.)
And yes, I'm infuriated by a lot of the non-academic, non-service-related expenses at colleges and universities. In recent years, my small liberal arts alma mater has built a fancy new football field at the same time as it cut nearly half of the academic majors (including really basic ones) because it "couldn't afford to teach them." And no, the football team was not particularly good or well-loved, and were D3. It was hot nonsense.
The glorious market at work. Sports 5x more valuable than all other kinds of education /s
Wouldn't it be great if academic programs were fully funded and sports programs had to hold bake sales to pay the coaches' salaries?
@@jospinner1183, Hi, Jo! How are the hummingbiyurds?
My community college experience suddenly went from: "wow no one really cared"
to
"oh, oh that's what was going on. Suddenly everything makes sense and is really depressing."
I recently finished my first semester and had spent weeks puzzling over why my AmGov stopped providing feedback and just gave everyone 100% on all our assignments. Now I know why.
This reminds me so hard of all the "heroes" talk in the early pandemic months, people doing work that was crucial to keeping society afloat and being glorified in the mainstream media, but openly treated like shit by their employers. We talk about valuing education and "the children," but the numbers flat-out say the opposite.
Paying in empty praise is the new 'paying in exposure' it seems
I’m still so angry that my country started ‘clapping for the NHS’, literally just applauding as nurses, doctors and other medical staff died and burned out in droves.
Anything to avoid actually funding them, I guess.
@@MasterHyperionMC I think I remember hearing about signage that says “I can’t eat applause” near the underground
'essential workers'
I hope desperately that I will never be considered a hero by the American public.
As a college student, I often start every semester by looking up the salaries for my professors (since it’s all public). It doesn’t necessarily change how I treat them or approach the class, but it does make me think about where all that tuition money is going.
It goes to administrators. Schools have adopted the corporate structure. An accountable minority at the top get to unilaterally decide how money is spent. And(for some reason no one is ever allowed to talk about) everytime that happens that minority spends the most money on itself at the expense of literally everything else in the institution.
Which is all totally a coincidence and not a deliberate tool of class war waged over decades as a response to what the filthy poor's did with education back in the 60's.
@@kayakMike1000 Everywhere that capital wants unaccountable control over an institution.
Tuition goes to salaries, benefits, and the upkeep of the campus. The rest goes into the endowment. Mr. LOL has a real hard on for capitalism, logic, and common sense. Mr. LOL needs to understand that when capitalism goes away and equity, equality, and trans rights are enforced at the barrel of a gun every sidewalk in America will become a fecal Slip 'n Slide since indoor plumbing will have been deemed "racist."
@@zephead843 You watch too much TV and base your very incorrect assumptions on how power works off that. Log off and read a book.
@@Praisethesunson I'll log off and read a book. You change your bong water.
As a fellow former adjunct, thank you for this. Several colleagues and I built our lives and identities around teaching, and when we had to leave, it tore our hearts out. But the world demands that we have money for rent and groceries.
Gerald Graff, in his book Clueless In Academe, points out that during the Cold War, Americans considered it our duty to invest in science, the humanities, and education. These weren't just abstract goods, they were a front in fighting Communism. A well-informed and educated society was, we believed, a free society.
But then we won the Cold War, and promptly kicked down the ladder we had just ascended. Educated people proved harder to control, and didn't accept peanuts for their labor. Universities were seen as culpable for that.
I forget who pointed out that the transition to adjuncts coincided with the rise of women in higher ed. As recently as the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom held that women lacked the abstract spark that made for good university professors. But once the field opened up to women, and they proved capable of the job, society's esteem for professors dried up. Job fields heavily dominated by women tend to pay poorly, and higher ed definitely followed the same trend.
The cold war angle is interesting and depressing. Interesting in that it highlights the drives behind American hegemony. Depressing in that America only values education in terms of martial superiority
I think you hit upon one of the important considerations in the devaluation of educators: the increasing dominance of women in academia. Careers traditionally viewed as feminine are usually underpaid right up until men enter the field (thing of computer programming, originally a job for women). Likewise, academia, once the domain of wealthy white men, is now being "invaded" by women, non-whites, and the working class. Even now, though, academic fields that are still dominated by men, such as economics and physics, are better paid than comparable fields dominated by women, such as psychology and biology, respectively. In fact, I warn my pre-med undergraduate students that medicine is no longer guaranteed to be a well-paying career choice, now that women dominate med school graduates.
@@Owesomasaurus
Absolutely, the trend of college and university education for the average U.S. citizen began with the G.I. bill after WWII, the Reagan administration pushed for more expensive education paid by students instead of communities, and a lot of students - this includes Puerto Rican folks exploited by living in a protectorate, instead of independence or being offered statehood -
these days can't afford an education or training past high school unless they enlist in one of our military branches, which will cover some or all of the tuition in exchange for a certain number of years of service.
A former neighbor of mine joined the reserves, thinking he'd spend a few weekends a year training and helping communities with sandbagging shorelines in bad weather, etc., but was deployed to Iraq to do some horrible shit and came home with a wrecked shoulder and a lot of trauma. While he temporarily "turned liberal" due to his horrifying military experience, he's become increasingly reactionary since coming home. Last I heard, he was reclusive.
It’s interesting with the women in the industry link, in the U.S.S.R. pay and prestige for jobs like doctors dropped as women came to dominate the profession
@@cstuartdc that's more of an issue modern feminists are tackling. The idea that work and family can't be balanced because it is bad for the workforce to take time with kids. It effects men too, we are just socialized to view them as naturally disconnected from family and not good at nurturing. I had a coworker who had to jump through hoops to get paternity leave when he was having his first child with his fiancée despite it being technically offered by our company.
Thanks for this. I'm on a short-term academic contract at a university which has the highest ratio of these contracts to permanent positions in the country. To be honest, it kind of suits me as I'm not too bothered about staying in academia and my lucky low teaching load has given my space to do other stuff like RUclips. But generally the insecurity, high workloads, and low pay are just ridiculous. For many of my colleagues, especially immigrants, not having the guarantee can be hugely stressful and precarious. It is a clear cut case of exploitation - not that PhDs 'deserve' jobs more than anyone else, but it is a sobering thought to realise that even the highest level of qualification won't get you security in our purported meritocracy. No wonder the whole sector, including me, have been on strike for weeks in the UK.
Anyway, stream of consciousness over. Great video as always, Zoe.
Capitalism preys on passion. Any field that's desirable to work in for moral or fulfilling reasons is ripe for exploitation. It's disgusting how under valued teachers are in the country, at all levels
It's true that Communist countries sincerely valued teachers more. I remember a survey from East Germany (just before reunification) about what professions were most admired. Doctor was #1, of course, but teacher was #4. But I really can't think of a single non-capitalist country where I would want to be a professor. Can you? Is there a place where you can be a professor and just follow your passion wherever it may lead? I've spent decades inside academia, and the consistent thing I noticed is that people with these aspirations come to the US to work. My department was able to pick off the smartest professors from Denmark, Britain and Australia because we could simply offer better terms, in salary, in benefits, and in work requirements. Until I met a professor from Scotland, I had no idea how grueling their work schedule is and now little compensation they receive.
@@davidhoracek6758 Funnily enough, most of my fellow PhD candidates in a top-ranked educational psychology program were looking to leave the country, as the job prospects and the pay scales were much better than here in the US. Further, most of the foreign-born graduate students (about 1/3 from China and Taiwan, the rest from various countries in the Middle East) were looking forward to returning to their home countries. So, in psychology and education, the trend is the opposite.
You just summarized a lot of industries. Damn.
Yes😮😮😮😮
Wrong. What’s truly disgusting is how little self-value professors have. No one in their right mind would work for $1500 for a semester. If you want pay to go up, stop working there.
Thank you for talking about this. My history professor lost her best friend due to this system. Tenure was literally the difference between life and death. Since she was adjunct, she was ineligible for a lot of the healthcare benefits that would be guaranteed to tenured professors. Combine that with living paycheck to paycheck and it was impossible for her to recover. 😢 The business model of education needs to end. So many smart people are being screwed over by it and we’re losing valuable knowledge for the next generation.
Unionize or die. Those are the options your masters have offered.
When I was in college, I knew like two tweed men and one smart-shoe lady who seemed to be making it decent as teachers. I knew way more stressed undergrad TAs and well-meaning hard-studying teachers who could barely convince the higher-ups to let them fund classes they had so much passion for.
You've described academia pretty well here. Even sadder, the tween men and smart-shoe ladies are almost certainly older. As they age and retire/die, their full-time or tenured positions will likely not be replaced. Instead, colleges and universities are replacing those types with cheaper part-time adjuncts and graduate student workers. When I was a grad student, I was not only teaching about 20-30 hours a week, I was developing curriculum for some of the courses I taught. At the time, I loved that I got that opportunity, but in hindsight it was absolutely exploitative, as I wasn't being paid for the huge amounts of time I was spending working on creating class materials and lesson plans.
It's lovely, however, to hear that when you were a student, you were able to notice and appreciate the efforts of the folks who actually keep higher ed functioning: TAs, part-timers, and adjuncts.
The treatment of TAs is insane too. When I was going through grad school to get my Master's in English, I was "lucky" enough to get a job as a TA. I thought that meant I would be assisting a teacher with their class, because y'know, "Teaching Assistnant." Instead I was just given an English class to teach by myself with only a week of training in advance. That's the class the students were paying for, one taught by an overworked and undertrained grad student!
So the market keeps academia tied to a rock with a raven picking at our exposed guts for the crime of prometheus: daring to enlighten humanity.
Yeah, nothing new. But somehow well hidden nonetheless
Everything in moderation. Including passion.
It really sucks that people are dumb enough to try for jobs in fields that are already full because they have a passion for them. The solution isn't to take other people's money using the government and give it to them
As a college 'lecturer' who is thinking about quitting, this really hit hard. The worst part, I teach at the same school I got my BA so I get to constantly hear about how much they appreciate their alumni. I have students that graduated last year that now work in admin making much more than me... Is RUclips looking for more professors?
Why don’t you switch to admin?
Ja.. like the comment above. Switch to admin or consult in industry… if it’s the money factor.. 🥲
That’s not applicable to most of us. One can’t just switch most of the time. Different skill sets and not usually doing the thing that you love doing.
Thank you for highlighting this train wreck - and from personal experience in Asia, it’s worldwide, not just a US problem. All of this holds true for us, too.
As a Taiwanese, we have this issue too 🥹
I can't say for certain, but I BELIEVE we have a better system up here in Canada. My dad's a senior professor, and he seems to do well for himself, tweed jackets and all.
Wouldn't call his life "comfortable" though, since he's always working on one project or another. His idea of a vacation is grading assignments and taking calls from a beach instead of from an office.
God, it's sad to hear that academia in Asia is also screwed up in the same way.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth I've heard some better things about academia in Canada, but it's largely from colleagues who work at major research universities like McGill. I have no idea whether the situation's better at smaller and less-prestigious institutions.
Eastern Europe with you, guys
Hello Zoe. I’m a high school CTE teacher at a public school. A lot of people assume that I’d be so much better off as a college professor or a private school teacher. Of course, this makes me laugh. Professors get paid pennies compared to a public school teacher. Private school teachers have it even worse. Of course public school teachers and public education still needs vast improvement, but I’m fortunate to be teaching at a school that values me and pays me decently.
Hell yeah! I was a CTE teacher at a public middle school and made roughly twice as much as I was getting paid at the university. Dealing with the children was a different problem but they were mostly fun...
Private school teachers typically come from "old money," or they have husbands with those "Masters of the Universe" type jobs, so they can afford to teach private school. Money is not the issue here, prestige is the objective. Makes for nice conversation at the tennis club, as well as parties. And since private schools are located in the most exclusive parts of town, her commute to school is very convenient.
@@zephead843 That's who can end up affording to work there maybe, but l disagree that it's not an issue. I worked at a private school I adored - it was my dream school - but the income was so low, and I didn't have a husband to pay the bills like others, so I had to quit my dream job at 24. I was so heartbroken.
I moved from hs physics teaching to TT assistant professor of physics at CC. Sorry but TT CC professor beats HS ANY DAY
Two quick thoughts:
1. As a longtime (9 brutal years) adjunct, I felt this video in my soul. I’m outrageously fortunate to have found my way into a FT faculty role, but I could just as easily still be on that hamster wheel. The job market is nothing but dumb luck and I hate it.
2. John Warner tries to address the “public good” point you’re making in his book Sustainable, Resilient, Free. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s a great read!
Hail and well-met, fellow academic! I've spent a bit over a decade as a (usually)part-time lecturer/adjunct at a variety of institutions. (I _think_ I've gotten a full-time position for the fall, assuming all goes well. I'm so fucking relieved!) And yes, while dumb luck does have a lot to do with getting off that hamster wheel, don't devalue the work and experience you've put in! Luck plays a role, but you're also likely perfectly (over)qualified for your current job too.
Also, I'm going to check out the book rec. It sounds like a good one.
@@jospinner1183 Congrats on the (tentative) new role! I hate saying that a job actually changed my life, but getting this job actually changed my life. Fingers crossed that you have the same experience!
Why haven't you unionized?
@@Praisethesunson Maryland community colleges only won the right to form a union a few months ago. There are efforts in the works, but it takes time.
@@kwmathias Yep. The process that screwed over these teachers took decades to implement. But our master class has the luxury of patience.
Now I understand why so many of my instructors look stressed out and depressed. Thank you for bringing this issue to light. Our entire economic system is designed to scrape money from the poor and middle class and deliver it to the top, so of course education wouldn’t be spared.
This reminds me of my favorite college professor, who also worked at a nearby grocery store to supplement her income. As a professor. At a state university. I remember her saying that she loved teaching so much that she didn't want to find a better-paying job.
I have been on this soap box for over 10 years now and I'll not stop. I was a poor student and not a teacher, but as you say this affects all of us. When the public decides to elect a fraud as a joke or for random change, or storm the Capitol, we know our education system needs a serious second glance because that means we've been failing for a loooong time already, and all over the place not just a few bad areas.
This is really friggan important, thanks for making this video.
I know what you mean. America's education politburo has driven the US to its lowest point since Woodrow Wilson gave women the right to vote.
I suspect that before long white male babies will be castrated before being handed over to their mothers as more than one female legislator has suggested.
What an elitist jerk you are. We have a fraud for a president right now! When students and PROFESSORS start believing and teaching things like "all whites are privileged" and "men can have babies," THAT'S when you know there's something seriously wrong with education!
Oh, and also when only SOME people are given the right to speak, while many others are DENIED THE RIGHT TO SPEAK!!
Education is the last thing that happens in colleges and universities today.
3 of my grand parents were teachers, and I will never forget what my paternal grandfather once told me about education (he was a Physics and Chemistry university teacher): "you cant put a fair price on education or treat it like a business, if you make people pay what it is actually worth it, nobody will be able to pay for it, the government should subsidize it because whatever they think they are losing will be recouped with the labor from the people they taught since they will be solving your problems down the road" sorry about the english quality, not a native speaker and not from the US either.
It makes no fucking sense that I have to go into debt to learn how to maintain the society that i live in.
I dont claim the shit, because they're doing everything in their power , up to and including genocide, to keep me out of it. But i have to pay you to learn how to shovel your shit, or you will kill me with state sanctioned neglect?
Something that was not mentioned in this video is the shift to online classes in the post-covid era and how that affects adjuncts. I am in my fourth semester teaching at two colleges (one as an adjunct, one as a temporary full-time instructor). The community college I teach at still offers primarily online classes not because they are being cautious due to Covid, but because that's what most of the students want. In person classes barely run sometimes but online ones fill up fast.
Since the full-time tenure track faculty get to choose their classes first, there are typically 0 online classes remaining for any adjunct instructors (at least in my department). All classes are paid the same on a per credit hour basis, but online courses take less work once you've set them up the first time. There are full time instructors at my college teaching 8-10 classes all online with basically everything auto-grading itself, some of them now living in completely different states than where the college is located. Many of the adjuncts would love the chance to teach just one or two online classes to lighten their load as they teach at multiple institutions, but typically they have no choice because there is nothing left to choose from.
I teach at a community college too and one of our tenured made sure to get all her classes online. She sold her house and car and moved back in with her family in India.
SMH
The community college where I grew up, that I went to, BRAGGED about how almost all of their teachers were Adjuncts using the "they have other jobs in their field!" meaning that they'd be great teachers. And lot of my teachers were great, they cared a LOT. My creative writing professor really helped me grow and ended up helping me after I was harassed. My German professor was a great teacher and really kind. ETC! And now i'm extra mad how exploited they were. I knew things weren't good but I had no idea they were this bad. Fuck profit motive. Fuck corps
It's sad how adjuncts have to hand out personal cell phone numbers to students if they want to remain in contact to give recommendations. It's sad how students who don't think to save copies of the syllabus for every class could go to email the person who taught them a semester or two ago and be met with no response, because their former instructor just disappeared. Even someone who has the number so many adjuncts seem to include may not use it. They might think it's too intrusive to text out of the blue. They might interpret the wall of silence as disinterest, not realizing the adjunct works seasonally or is gone for good.
I’m reading from this that universities can hire much cheaper teachers, and they will teach well. The system works, at least for the universities who actually make hiring decisions.
@@Manx123 it works for the university in that they can exploit people and some people care more about doing a good job than not being exploited at least for a while. The problem is burnout and financial troubles will build up causing the few teachers that applies to to leave.
Those favorite teachers i talked about only had safe household incomes because their husbands had better paying jobs. My friend is an elementary school teacher and she also puts in 60+ hours a week for a salary job and usually spends thousands of her own dollars to ensure the kids get a good education. She can only afford to do that because her husband has a big paying tech job.
This is exploitation and we as non-teachers need to support them in their fight for ethical pay. For ethical support
@@orifox1629 And? There’s always an endless supply of adjuncts to replace them.
@@Manx123 and we want change? Maybe you're okay with exploitation but not me
I've been an English adjunct professor at a community college for about 9 years, and after recently being screwed over by my school, I've decided it's time for me to move on to something else. That part where you talked about how heartbreaking it is really hit me hard; I teared up for a second because it hurts so much. This is what I wanted to do, this is what I went to school for six years to do. I love teaching and I love helping students, but after working so hard for so long, only to be continually slapped down and punished for my efforts, it's impossible not to feel burnt out and depressed. I can't keep living this way, and it's so unfair. I don't even want a big salary, I just want to be able to teach and live a decent life with some measure of stability and security. And I don't even have a family, I can't imagine how anyone could do this if they have kids. It sucks and it pisses me off. Thank you so much for doing this video, it's not a subject I see many people talk about.
Just teach middle or high school? They all have tenure
Why the long face? No one forced you out. You left by choice.Teaching has got be the best life a person could ever dream of. You work eight and a half months a year, you get to be a college student your entire life, and you've got the exact same vacation schedule as a six year old. There is nothing more stable and secure in the known universe than a teaching / government job, which is why American universities continue to churn out 250,000 newly minted teachers every year like clockwork.There are 3.5 million people working as teachers, educators, and instructors in the US, so you're not unique in any way. What exactly do you think this world owes you?
@@zephead843 You think teachers have it easy because we get summers off? Lol you have no idea what you're talking about, go off.
Why not unionize?
@@Praisethesunson Because Texas.
Seriously advocate for workers unions. I know that is easier said than done however.
I worked as a staff member at a local community college as faculty support. It was very clear to me managing class schedules and helping faculty that almost all of them are Adjunct.
I didn't understand for a while what an adjunct was, I eventually became really good friends with one of them and they explained it to me. It was clear that though they had a bachelors, though they were smarter and decades older than me. They were in the same economic state as me, I left that job shortly after.
It's _really_ hard (or impossible) to get a teaching position, even at a community college, with just a bachelor's. Usually they require at least a masters degree. I have a PhD, and have taught classes at community colleges as part of my life as a multi-school adjunct. Academia tends to be one of those careers that has very high educational requirements, but very low relative compensation.
@@jospinner1183 That's terrible and I'm sorry to hear that. It's crazy to me that you need a masters most of the time to teach a community college class. When a lot of those classes are like math 1050 and like Zoe said, are required to be 100% taught by the book.
@@jospinner1183 Oh, I now better understand why many countries have full-time professors only.
The problem is in some places we have those unions and they're absolutely garbage that side with uni management. Unionising in universities is easily infiltrated imo. The whole concept of student unions at mine and imo most UK universities is a weakening of everything else, you get all these orgs supposed to provide all this stuff for students and staff and they don't do any of the union aspect.
It's also about job stability, universities outsource and contract so many different roles and I don't see how a union could represent all of them, there needs to be more flexibility between unions so eg restaurant workers cleaners it support the student recruitment department contracted professors national and international research students all have good chances of representation. Universities eat away at the ability to unionise because so many different orgs exist supposedly to represent your interests but never oppose management. While I was a PhD student "postgrad collectives" sprang up in my uni and they combined staff and student representation in a you should talk this out sort of way. All kinds of such orgs spring up functioning as strike breaking and unionisation breaking tactics imo, and so just looking at if all saying" just unionise " is kind of spitting on just how hard people have tried to do that and unhelpful when we can literally have" unions" operating to stop better unionisation happening.
There's ultimately something about the class position of some academics which makes uni unions particularly vulnerable to turning on workers.
I’m currently working towards a Master’s Degree at Southern New Hampshire University. During it, there was a lecture by a woman who did two different lectures on becoming a professor, which was a hope of mine going into the program. She told me flat out that I would likely be paid 400$ to teach a class for an entire semester, as an adjunct. I was also told by her that colleges likely will not hire you for 3 or more classes given they have to give you benefits if you do. In other words, the only contract I’d be likely to get would be 1-2 classes per semester, if like you said, the contract isn’t left to expire. I’m weighing my alternative career choices because I don’t feel confident I ever will get tenure. Thank you sincerely for bringing light to this.
I'm a biology professor, and 100% agree with everything Zoe covered here. In addition, there's an additional factor facing academics in STEM: research and professional expectations. Tenure-track and full-time faculty (at research universities) are expected to continue their research, publish regularly, participate actively in professional organizations, serve as a peer-reviewer for academic journals, and advise a cadre of graduate students. _None_ of these additional tasks are compensated, simply expected. It used to be that these types of tasks were part of being a tenured professor, as tenured professors usually have a lighter teaching load than the rest of us. However, increasingly, these additional activities are being expected not only at research institutions, but at smaller liberal arts schools. I remember when I was doing yet another job search a few years ago that I saw a posting for a full-time non-tenure position at a smaller college that was looking for someone to not only teach a 7/5(ish) load, but also establish and run a research lab group, publish regularly, manage the school's botanical specimen collection, and mentor undergraduate research. These small liberal arts schools used to simply have major teaching responsibilities, sometimes with the addition of managing undergraduate researchers. Instead, these schools are increasingly adding research and professional responsibilities _on top of_ their already strenuous teaching load. It's ridiculous.
When I finished my PhD, I knew I wanted to focus on teaching and mentoring undergrads, rather than research. As such, I've spent more than a decade now wandering through the non-tenure-track academic world. I'm financially okay, but only because I'm single and don't have children. I would never be able to afford a family on my annual income, so it's good I never wanted children. I ended up living in an area with multiple universities and colleges because I usually am teaching at 2-4 of them in any given semester. I've got a lead on a full-time position at a smaller college that I think I might be able to get, and it seems perfect for me, but the competition's going to be fierce.
The days of academia being a safe and comfortable career are largely over. Schools simply replace retired tenured professors with adjuncts or graduate students. (And don't get me started on how graduate workers are exploited by the university system!) I just want to teach! I want to work with young people interested in STEM and help them chart their path! Instead, I live on the margins of academia. I don't regret my path, but it's not one I can reasonably recommend to most people unless they have an almost obsessive love for their field.
I and a lot of others I know have held grudges against teachers throughout our education due to them getting in grades late, being unable to help or explain why we were doing these assignments, and overall never showing enough interest in getting to know us.
Now I realize that we had no idea what position they were in. They could have kids to cook dinner for, on top of grading and planning each assignment. They could be restricted to one syllabus. They could walk in every day knowing that they might not see us the next semester.
I also talked to some of my current teachers and found out that due to the janitor shortage, they have to CLEAN their own rooms, on TOP of everything else they do! So thanks for spreading some awareness on this, Zoe- from a judgy high-schooler.
P.S I know she's talking about college. A lot of the teachers at my school are in temporary positions too, bc of the teacher shortage 😔
Do it. Destroy the [college] education system with facts and logic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd watch that on repeat while attempting to navigate the education system.
Some additional notes:
1. We are often asked about our availability months in advance. We are then given a possible schedule. The classes on that schedule may change at any moment before the start of class. Also, those classes can be canceled any time before the start of class due to many reasons. Or those classes may be given to a full time faculty member that had one of their classes canceled and needs to pick up an extra class. So our schedules may change with little notice and we may not know if we have enough work until it is too late.
2. Class size can alter our pay. If you are teaching a class with low enrollment (often times 5 students or less), some schools will lower your pay. One school that I taught at would lower the pay by $500 per student under a specific number. So if you taught a class with 3 students and you need to have 5, you would be deducted $1000 from your contract. That would mean that if you are earning $2,500 per class, it would then be down to $1,500 for a 15 week class. The school states that this is due to the fact that you will have less grading, but they do not give you extra money if you are teaching a class where they put in extra students. The rate for teaching 5 students to 30 students is all the same pay. Obviously, there is a lot more grading with 30 students than with 5 students, but the pay is the same.
3. We are often limited as to how many classes we are allowed to teach at any given school since they do not want us to to be full time and get benefits. Usually, the cap is about 2 classes per semester per school (at least around here). That would mean working at 2 schools is still considered part time (money wise, not time wise). 3 schools would be almost full time (with very little free time).
4. Grading. Full time faculty at bigger schools will often times have grad students that grade their papers. If you are an adjunct, you will not have someone else grading for you. You may have a class where you use a computer program for the students to use for their homework. Those computer programs are great, but not all students will use them and you will have to monitor the grades on the computer programs. Also, some of the students will stop going to class when you have those computer programs since they think that they can learn more from the computer program (which can lower your reputation).
5. Handling all of the emails, computer systems, homework systems, school policies, etc between multiple schools is tedious and stressful. For every school you teach at, your email and computer work drastically increases. Sometimes we will have an orientation (not paid) and sometimes we just receive our contract, email/password, copy card, and syllabus.
6. Parking. If you are going to multiple schools, you will have to deal with all of those parking lots. Sometimes you are going to a school in the middle of the day and you find a full parking lot. You then get to circle the lot looking for a space of have to park in a lot that is very far away. Also, you if each school has a different parking pass, you will need to double check that the correct pass is hanging up. This may not be that big of a deal, but when you are on a time crunch (since you work at multiple schools), any delay is annoying.
7. No raises. When I fist started at the one school, there was mention that after a few years your pay would be increased. When 2020 happened, some schools froze the raises (so our pay is still the same).
8. If we are teaching during the day, it is difficult to find another regular job to supplement our pay. It is often easier to have the regular job first, then teach as an adjunct at night. The availability of night classes varies from school to school.
Or if things had worked out differently, you would have had to work for a living. Count your lucky stars, you got it easier than you'll ever know. Are you not aware that you are a member of the luckiest generation of human beings to ever walk on planet Earth? Life has never been easier for humans than it is right now. That would explain America 's obesity epidemic. Future generations are in for a rude awakening.
So you have the working schedule of a waiter without the pretense that you would at least get tipped.
@@zephead843 compared to who? Peasants in 1500 had better working schedules than this guy.
@@zephead843 I was just pointing out some of the problems with being an adjunct. This was for the benefit of those that may be considering being an adjunct. I do work for a living, it is just difficult to piece together enough work. I did get out of grad school debt free, so I may be better off than other adjunct instructors. I personally love teaching or else I would not be an adjunct instructor.
@@Praisethesunson basically. Walmart associates and fast food workers can sometimes get paid better than some adjunct instructors. Also, Walmart associates and fast food workers may be able to get health insurance and other benefits that adjunct instructors do not get. I worked at a few retail jobs while in college. I feel exhausted when I get home from teaching just like I did when I worked retail. I still have work to do when I get home from teaching, but when I worked retail my work for the day ended when I left the building.
So I'm not sure if anyone wants my opinion, but my Dad just retired from being a college professor at a community college. He was a full professor, and was replaced by an adjunct for most of his classes. I also spent time as a student at that college, and, given that my father's colleagues were almost all adjuncts, I got taken to work a couple times a year, and my father spends a good amount of time outside of work hanging with work pals, I've interacted with a lot of adjunct professors.
Here are my observations:
1) The Unions for College professors suck. They are completely caught up in politics, whether that be office politics or social politics, and neglect the actual material needs of professors, both tenured/tenure track and adjunct professors. This has resulted in a pretty steady decline in real wages for all college professions everywhere. Both my father, my great-uncle, and my godfather all attested to this. If the unions improved, so would working conditions, but the professors most likely to be involved in mass organization tend to be concerned about office and social politics, not wages and benefits. The Unions need to improve. God knows how that's going to happen, though.
2) Colleges in general seem to have a variety of internal cultures, none of which support adjuncts. In community colleges, it's an inferiority complex. I knew all kinds of wonderful professors whose work could have been the "hook" to bring in a wider variety of students beyond the normal mish-mash of people with low high school grades or low personal wealth. Many of my community college classes were as good or better than classes I later took at 4-year state schools, and many of the permanent faculty were actually doing pretty worthwhile research as well, but the community college never mentioned such things in their advertising, nor did they attempt to bring such activities to the fore in any other way. Since the college was almost entirely tuition-funded, this meant that the college was always short of students and funds, and thus brought in more and more adjuncts.
The state-schools I went to were different; they were entirely donor-focused. If colleges are run like a business, for many colleges that business is a hedge fund. In order to bring more donors, the focus of the college was more buildings and more sports. Sports buildings were especially important. On year, the basketball coach was the highest-paid in the NCAA; his wages would have been enough to hire 20 $80,000 a year permanent professors. Those 20 potential permanent positions are filled by adjuncts.
My exposure to private and research colleges is more limited, but from what I've gotten from by great-uncle and godfather suggests a massive superiority complex. The professors and encouraged to considers themselves too elite to teach many classes; teaching more than the minimum required has been reported to me as being considered weird and distasteful. Thus, adjuncts must be brought in to do the actually teaching.
Yes, there's an incredible amount of elitism and infighting within academia. Every department usually hates every other department, and even funding _within_ departments tends to be stratified along political lines.
Also, what you described with your father is happening throughout academia. As full-time and tenured professors retire (or die), they aren't being replaced by new full-time or tenured professors. As institutions are usually obliged to provide benefits to full-time employees, there's a LOT of financial incentive to hire adjuncts and other part-time instructors. I've been varying degrees of part-time faculty for a decade or so. It suuuuuuucks. (It's also bad for students, as Zoe mentioned.)
Twenty years after earning my bachelor's degree, I had a part-time administrative support temp job in the same system but a different public university than my alma mater, and the For-profit Business Model the system is intensely pursuing in recent years is a marked development since I served similar offices as a work study student.
I have some experience in a research based university, and I would add a bit more depth to your account. Mostly adjuncts are simply missing from day to day university life, as they aren't around for department meetings or really have any say over the direction of the department. They tend not to even be thought of as a class of professors, instead just "taking care" of the teaching load that the full time profs can't handle.
As for the distaste for teaching more than you need to, I think a big part of that comes not from a sense of being above it (in most cases), but from a really intense pressure to be productive research-wise. These universities attract funding from donors - so they're always constructing a shiny new building - and from research grants, so they need maximum "research impact" from profs.
A lot of this comes from an institutional logic developed at the top (e.g. make the most money for administrators) that gets passed down through each level of staff and faculty, each of whom is forced to direct their actions in line with that logic. It's really no place for "academic freedom"
@@Jib-Jab-4-life I did my PhD at an R1 university and can confirm everything you said. I'm in the sciences, and grant-hunting was a major focus of every single full-time professor I worked with there. Sure, researchers need funding to pay for research expenses, but half of the grant money awarded goes straight to the university (for whatever reason), not the researcher or their lab team. So the university has no incentive to encourage professors to focus on teaching. It's all about the money.
@@Jib-Jab-4-life Yeah, I went to an R1 for my PhD program, and our tenured professors were focused on research. Often they'd write grants to buy out a semester of teaching classes, rather than include funding to pay a grad assistant. So we grad students would be teaching classes for a really low stipend, and then be expected to work for free on research projects just to get the exposure. Teaching was definitely seen as a necessary evil for a lot of the professors at the school. Definitely not my experience though at a small liberal arts college for undergrad, where the professors' love for teaching and helping students really shone through. Of course, that was 20 years ago, and all those professors have probably been replaced by underpaid adjuncts by now.
my community college loves to brag about how they have professors from the pretty prestigeous university nearby, but learning about this makes it seem less cool and more depressing lmao
Hey have those because said University doesn't pay enough.
So, my mom recently retired from her tenured position at a public state university, and in some ways it goes even deeper. Like, things are bad enough for tenured professors. She worked 80-100 hour weeks _constantly._ The sheer amount of work is ridiculous even for tenured professors, even when you love the work itself. Then, it's even worse for adjuncts, and the adjuncts not only get paid worse, they also lose out on all the benefits that make the workload-to-pay ratio of tenured faculty sorta potentially worth it, like total job security. But the reason the university is being run in such a slapdash, cost-slashing way was because the state was constantly slashing its funding and making ridiculous demands -- as you alluded to at the end there. The administration is actually _pushing back_ against the state, and has been remarkably effective at doing so compared to administrations elsewhere in the state from what I hear, but the state is creating an enormous amount of unnecessary bloat, and funding is still going down.
It's a small-ish school in a very red state in the midwest, so you kinda expect right-wing reactionary sabotage, but the deeper you look, the worse it gets, and it just doesn't stop.
I got my biology PhD from a major research university, and I knew, based on what I saw during my time there, that I absolutely did _not_ want to be a tenured professor at a university like mine. Tenured science professors are expected to maintain a minimal teaching load while _also_ running a research lab, conducting new and innovative research, publishing regularly, volunteering within professional organizations, attending professional conferences all the damn time, publishing multiple papers a year, managing and advising a group of graduate students, mentoring undergraduate researchers, developing new curriculum, and staying up-to-date on the current state of knowledge within their field. Yes, they can be compensated very well for all of this, but teaching absolutely takes a back seat to all the other unpaid tasks.
For us part-time and adjunct professors, we take up the slack in the teaching department. However, recently, I've increasingly been noticing that even part-time faculty are expected to participate in many/most of those additional professional responsibilities, without additional compensation. In fact, I left a position a few years ago because they were badgering me to publish more, even though I was being underpaid to just teach part-time.
The grass is greener in industry.
My mom is a tenured professor currently and she does regularly work 80-100 hour weeks too, and is on the mega hamster wheel trying to jump from associate to full professor before she can "rest" but we all know in our house that she will never rest.
@@gilian2587 Eh, it depends. I'm in biology, so I have a lot of colleagues who aren't in academia but instead chose either NGO/government work or the private sector. The private sector absolutely pays better than anyone else, but you also have to deal with the fact that you're likely to be working for a wildly unethical corporation. I made a choice when I decided to stick with academia; I knew I would never make as much money as folks who worked for Pfizer, Monsanto, or some environmental consulting company.
To me, it's worth the loss in salary and security to not be associated with those corporations. I'm also lucky in that I don't have a partner or children that I have to support, so I understand people who decided that their principles weren't more valuable than putting food on the table.
@@jospinner1183 Fair enough. So that would make you a geneticist, then?
My mom worked in registration at our local community college and one of her friends taught an adjunct class for a semester. He made $900 for the class. It was in 2005 so things were priced differently but that's still a crazy low wage. He was only doing that one evening class and he had a regular day job but he never went back to teaching which is a real shame because from what I heard he was a great teacher. I hate to think about how many great teachers we've lost over the years because they couldn't afford to continue teaching at adjunct wages.
One must adjunct before one full times. It's called payin' yo dues. If one can not hang wit da big dogs, one must get off da porch.
source - unknown
Honestly this explains so much why the people who actually taught us were not great at their jobs. They weren't given any other way to teach it. It's also so obnoxious because I feel like the contingent faculty are the people who actually cared about my education and the tenured professors were only there for a paycheck. But it's interesting how this career also trends with all other professions where gig work and contract work are taking over actual employees. It's tragic.
I would also love more videos on higher ed. I was required to do some research on it a couple years ago in my undergrad and it's so sad. Money is concentrated at the top. Problem of everything.
Even sadder, adjuncts and part-time professors are often _better_ at teaching because they do it much more than tenure-track faculty. The tenure-track folk are usually focused on research and publication, rather than teaching. They usually don't teach many classes, and often view their teaching responsibilities as the worst part of their job, preferring their research. This means that you get brilliant scientists rambling at huge lecture halls of bored students, rather than a passionate educator who has honed their skills.
This an argument against more secure teaching positions btw.
This an argument against more secure teaching positions btw.
Before I moved on to 4 year schools I took one class at a community college. I was really upset with how unhelpful and how unresponsive my professor was. She probably acted that way because what other option did she have to make ends meet. Thank you for this video. This was very enlightening
The moment at about 24:50 is one of the absolute saddest things I’ve ever seen. You’re seeing someone who was born to teach reflecting on the fact that she wasn’t allowed to by a money-hungry, broken system. Fucking broke my heart too.
I couldn’t even figure out how to afford graduate school and I’ve pretty much given up on it now for all the reasons she lays out here. I dreamed of being a professor too. I actually did ask one of my professors, a wonderful English professor who reminds me much of Zoe - a brilliant teacher who specialized in Latina authors such as Sandra Cisneros and Judith Ortiz Cofer, if she would write me a letter of recommendation for grad school. “Of course I will. But if you’re still planning on becoming a professor...I really can’t recommend it.” She loves teaching too. She still is teaching. She just didn’t want to suggest a life of poverty to me.
Zoe, if you see this, I’m sending all the love in the world to you for caring so much for students, teachers, knowledge, art. You’re a wonderful teacher and a beautiful human being.
Thank you so much. Genuinely. 💜
I concur. This shook me to my core. This was actually worse than a children's cancer ward or a basketful of dead yellow lab puppies. I can't unsee this.
When I was attending community college, I quickly learned to avoid any class taught by “TBA”
The emotion at 25:00 just kills me. As someone who recently started working as a high school teacher, so many of the issues about systems incentivizing poor education range painfully true. It's heart wrenching that the thing I love most in the world, teaching, is so broken and depersonalized by the institution of school
She can really craft a beautiful argument. It's one of my favourite attributes of her content!
i crawled out of abject poverty (mostly luck) and spent ten years struggling to stabilize enough to work through an undergrad Education program (also luck) to become a highschool teacher...only to be openly mocked by my professors for trying to bring up John Dewey, Alfie Kohn, or Paolo Freire, or for begging them to let me work on a version of their behaviorist classroom management assignments by researching and discussing democratic classroom structures. i was marked down and called into directors offices when a supervisor watched me asking a roomful of teenagers what they were getting out of the class we were in. i was told to my face that no progressive educator would be certified to teach in this city. there would be no placement where i could pass.
i think about this every day.
I think it's important to increase solidarity among educators of all stripes, from pre-school to university and beyond. We're (usually) united by a deep desire to make the world a better place through our vocation. I'm a biology professor and I've always known that teaching was my calling. At all levels, educators care about their students, wanting to delight, fascinate, and inspire young people to explore the world around them.
We all know that teachers are underpaid. No one becomes a teacher for the money; we go into teaching because we _love_ it and want to make a difference in the world. However, the fact that we love our career is used as an excuse to underpay us even more, as though job compensation should be tied to how absolutely fucking miserable the work is.
I wish you lots of luck at your new job! There's a _lot_ of burnout among K12 teachers, particularly at public schools here in the US. I had several college friends who became teachers, and all of them have left the field in the 20 years since. The only public school teacher I know now is a former attorney who's only been teaching HS for a couple years. So far, he loves it, but the burnout often doesn't set in for a while.
You are a member of the most feared and most powerful government union the world has ever known. Get your fellow educators, your politicians, and your union representatives involved and fix the system. That's what you pay those dues for.
@@zephead843 This is a good point, if somewhat exaggerated. Teachers unions are so, so important. You know you're on the right side of an issue when conservatives are desperately trying to take you down and spread nonsense conspiracy theories about you.
I'm glad we're currently seeing a bit of a renaissance of union and labor activity recently, though. It's a positive sign.
In The Adjunct Underclass, the best "joke" I remember involved an Adjunct Professor who was so well-regarded by her department, her department chair actually took the unprecedented step of inviting an Adjunct to serve on a hiring "committee" to search for a full-time tenure-track professor as soon as there was an opening in the department.....
Capitalism. The problem is capitalism. As long as education functions as a business, it will only continue to get worse.
Well education *is* business, while not physically tangent, it is unfortunatly privy to supply and demand as training teachers, building schools, and all those do have real costs, as well as feeding children and babysitting them basically, it's not cheap and just saying that it "shouldn't" be a business won't solve anything long term, same applies to healthcare and housing, there isn't an infinite supply of stuff to spread out, and without a profit motove, it would be very hard to be as outreaching as the current education system in the USA, is it problematic? For sure, but removing the economy factor doesn't solve anything, you would still have limited labor and supplies to spread to 300+ million people who go through schools, no system could reasonably be well funded everywhere, or even most places, blaming the economy isn't worthwhile, it's a supply problem, there are simply too many people and not enough resources, changing how money works won't change that
@@kittenwizard4703 that's a lot of words for "I fundamentally don't understand the real issue"
@@zhitchcresttail3387 it's complicated, I agree with the video, but I'm tired of seeing people giving bland responses, I understand the economy is frustrating, but boiling it down to something so "simple" as "bad thing happens, therefore economy bad", is not well thought out, we need discussions, not insulting each other, I feel you, but your insults are not needed, add to what I say, otherwise I won't care what you say
@@kittenwizard4703 This is mistaken on almost every level. Yes, it requires resources. We have those resources. We just give them to a few very rich people who can't even use everything they already have. This is not, actually, a supply problem. It's a distribution problem. The drive toward profits is, as is neatly explained in the video, directly causing the underfunding of schools. The profit motive is the source of the problem, not the solution. You say no system could be well funded everywhere, but that too is a trivial problem if what we care about is education rather than profits. The amount being sucked up by admin costs, bean counting, and state-mandated paperwork is insane, and big chunks of the rest are getting spent on sportsball stadiums. We could just reallocate those resources. We could also allocate more resources to our schools and less to rich idiots like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk.
Also, education is a public good, full stop. Having good educations all around makes society work better. Studies have shown that _even within capitalism,_ treating education as an investment instead of a business has spectacular returns. What you're saying is ideology, pure and simple. It's an ideology that we have been immersed in our entire lives, and have been indoctrinated into, so I'm not exactly going to blame you for falling for these falsehoods. Heck, I did myself, not even all that long ago. They're still false, though.
@@jemolk8945 said better than I ever could have, thank you!
I met an adjunct professor who had taught at Harvard and other Ivy League schools. She was cutting my hair at great clips. It was the best haircut I've ever had!
I had a friend that had dreamed of working as a professor, ever since she was in high school. She was hardworking, intelligent, and communicative, graduating from her PhD early. Unfortunately she had to take on two adjunct professorships to make ends meet out of her first year, and between the lack of support, unmanageable class sizes, and forced overwork, she burned out pretty hard.
She's working at a better job now, but she would have been a great instructor. Thanks for the video, was nice understanding what exactly the incentives are for colleges that perpetuate this problem.
The bit about schools encouraging teachers to put in as little effort as possible felt apt, cause I remember that's exactly how I felt as a student back in high-school. Spent years basically being trained to get the best results for the least amount of effort, and now I'm spending even longer trying to break the cycle and get out of that mindset.
So true sadly
Guess what? Employers don't want professors who do as little as possible, which means they get fired. Employees quit if they get exploited, which means they get paid fair if they work hard.
Isn't capitalism wonderful when we don't misunderstand it?
Man, our whole collegiate system sure is a Birch, huh? If only our higher education system's fundamental structure was as non-toxic as those mattresses!
In all seriousness, an incredible video as always, Zoe. Only you could make a half hour fly by so quickly while talking about the injustices in our higher education system
I too am a former adjunct professor (ESL was my speciality) who left higher education for all the reasons you’ve outlined. Every minute of this video resonated with me. I too was broken-hearted to find myself forced out of the profession I spent years training to enter, a profession I loved and found fulfillment in. Thank you for making this video. Adjunct solidarity! ✊
Having a couple friends that are struggling to get into teaching college and able to afford things, yeah, this is closer to what I figured. Teaching really has no right to be such a crapshoot, whether college or otherwise.
3.2 million public schoolteachers:
"HOLD MY STARBUCKS!"
That doesn't include the 250,000 newly minted teachers American universities churn out every year like clockwork.There isn't an empty parking space anywhere on the faculty parking lots at the schools where I live. Didn't you learn anything in school?
@zep head yeah, I learned plenty watching my mom work tons of hours that weren't paid for on grading and supplies and setting her room up, put in emotional labor over a new class's worth of students every year, and more. And thats to say nothing of underfunded schools with 30 year old text books they can't afford to replace.
It CAN be a wonderful thing that you get a lot out of. But if you do, that's in spite of being underpaid and overworked, with an occasional government chucklehead trying to steal your benefits, as would have happened had Kentucky elected the Republican candidate in the last gubernatorial election.
What I'm saying is - there's a reason there's a shortage of good teachers out there. Teaching is a sometimes very rewarding-for-the-soul crap shoot.
@@pyrosianheir If teaching were the "crapshoot" you claim it is, why are 3.2 million schoolteachers on America's payroll? Why do American universities continue to churn out 250,000 newly minted teachers every year like clockwork. Not to mention the millions that are comfortably retired. A crapshoot? No.
How many times do I have to tell you people that there is no teachers shortage? Many newly minted teachers have no choice but to take a "contract" (or substitute) teaching job until a full time position opens up. A teacher can't be hired on full time until one retires. Many teachers stay in their jobs forty years or more. The disgruntled teacher who's "had it" and quits is rarer than a lunar eclipse. Teachers don't quit. They retire.
Every summer news outlets across the country start up with their "with another school year approaching, we have a severe teacher shortage" tales of woe. It's just orchestrated propaganda paid for by George Soros and his goon squad, the teachers unions, the AFT, the NFT, the education lobby in Washington, and the radical left wing of the Democrat Party in an effort to juice teacher salaries. What do you think they do with those union dues, put 'em in a cookie jar? No, they use that money to buy influence in Washington. Naturally, stupid uninformed Americans are preoccupied with watching NASCAR, drinking Miller Lite, and waving their flags to see that they're being bribed with their own money. If teaching is such a raw deal, the profession would have gone the way of the buggy whip and your local blacksmith a long time ago...Follow the money.
Thank you for making this - I needed a reminder that my employment situation is not unique and its not my fault that I have to take on a bunch of different gigs. I feel sad for the world but relieved for myself in a way. You have brought me peace of mind today - thank you
Last year was my girlfriend's first year as an adjunct professor, and I have had the hardest time understanding the schools' compensation structures. This helped me understand it more holistically, so thank you, again, for making these absurdly valuable videos.
I thought this was a really great video. As a student, though, whenever I hear information like this, I sometimes don't know what to do with it. I totally understand that many of my teachers are getting underpaid and/or overworked, yet I often can't help myself from asking them for help outside of class; from reaching out with questions or comments; or, to an extent, from trying to connect with them. Equally often, I find myself feel really bad about doing such.
I know that times are tough, and I by no means want to heft on to their existing baggage, but I struggle to just stand idly by. As a neurodivergent student, the structure of the classroom frequently poses major challenges to me. Simultaneously, however, the prospect of asking for assistance arises within me a strong sense of guilt.
I want, desperately, to connect with many of my teachers -- even the "bad" ones -- and as it currently stands, what I've been telling myself is that I want to become a teacher down the line. When I hold this information, though, when my gaze starts wandering and I find myself looking it in the eyes, it gives me the sense that my impulses are going inevitably become harmful -- to myself or others. And that's not something I would ever want. I understand that it's a systemic issue, but it's never the systems you have to come face-to-face with, it's the struggling individuals.
I don't know, maybe, what I'm trying to say here. I wish things were better, for everyone. A good teacher is such a valuable role to have in a student's life. I wish more teachers got the chance to be as good as they could be. I just don't want to be put (or by my own hands placed) in the position to make those odds worse. I'm a student who needs help, who wishes they could help, but who feels that, to the extent which I can, it might be harmful to do so. And maybe that's selfish or misguided of me, but it's where I'm at: feeling lonely in a system designed to do so.
In my experience professors enjoy being able to work with students who are genuinely interested in understanding the subject and getting to know the professors. Sure, don't become a major burden, but they're there working already, you being interested in them and there subject will just make their work better, as long as you're also making an effort. Also, you're paying through the roof for college. As much the financial situation isn't great for professors, it's even worse for students. You need to get the most out of the education you're paying so much for.
I was hoping you would mention here the situation at Hamline, where an unaccountable administrator was able to get an adjunct fired on false, literally counter-factual, pretenses with the full support of the rest of the administration whereas the adjunct was assumed to be in the wrong from the outset simply because they were an adjunct.
That happened while I was editing and I wasn't able to fit it into the video itself, but it definitely made me feel like this video was important to get out ASAP!
I was contingent faculty for a while. I loved my first term, but burned out super fast. I have felt so guilty about it all this time, like I should have been stronger and better, and found a way to continue teaching and loving teaching. Thank you for opening my eyes to how unfairly the college treated me, and the extent to which my passion and hard-earned knowledge were being exploited. Clearly this does need to be talked about more openly. It's heartbreaking, and it's frightening for our society's future.
These educational workers can organize to fight against their blatant exploitation (which is happening as a very deliberate attack by the ruling class against the education that can pose a very direct threat to their rule).
Or they can all be pushed in the meat grinder alone. While the capitalist class continues it's project to make education an private tool of class privilege.
Thank goodness you're still alive to tell the world of the hellscape you endured on a college campus. Why are you frightened about the future?
@@zephead843 You are melting snowflake.
@@zephead843 Aww, you're adorable. Thanks so much for your concern! As to your question, well, based on your reading and listening comprehension skills from watching the video and reading my comment, what do YOU think I might be frightened for?
@@rhiawolf
ATTENTION HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS!
I've found a group of people who've suffered more than you ever did. Sorry Holocaust survivors, but you didn't expect to stay #1 in the grievance department forever now did you? And you'll never guess who you lost your crown to.
ADJUNCT PROFESSORS!
I know, right? I'm as shocked as you are, but facts are facts! (Sorry)
I'm currently working for minimum wage as a remote teaching assistant in a role that required post-graduate education and advanced social and technical skills to qualify. This is the same I made working in hospitality jobs requiring no education or experience. Based on salaries for TA's I'd seen online I thought they were grossly undervaluing us... even in the understanding that teachers are underpaid. But I guess we're to be punished for not going into business or politics for the rest of our lives.
Edited to add: I once was denied food stamps because I was a student. They said if you can afford to go to college, you can afford food. No matter that you're taking out loans, grants and scholarships to go to school. So you finish school in debt and poverty and... get to carry on with the same.
That's the American Dream for ya. :\
Unionize or be exploited. Those are your options
A close friend of mine is an adjunct professor who has to work a second job at Starbucks to make rent and have healthcare--this was already infuriating, but it hits differently now that I'm going to grad school myself. In my first year, I'll pay in tuition about what my yearly salary at my old job was. That times all the students in my program, which is one of the smaller programs at the university. They could afford to pay the professors. They're CHOOSING not to.
That's how class war works champ.
Zoe, I truly feel your pain! I've worked for 11+ years now to complete a PhD in Sociology because I've increasingly been plagued by medical problems, but still wanted to find a way of making best use of what I saw as my best talent: my ability to communicate. I once wanted to teach at the university level, but I soon came to realize the truth of what you're saying about the commodification of education. As a Graduate Assistant, I came to the conclusion that after 20 years in the US Air Force, another 45 months working as the Emergency Services Director of a large chapter of the American Red Cross in Central Texas, and a few years working as a GA, I had never had an experience as soul crushing as grading undergrad papers. That's when I really started to wonder if academe was the right place for me.
But I'd like to offer you a little ray of hope in the darkness. I took a Master of Science degree in Studies of the Future at University of Houston - Clear Lake, graduating in 2005. Shortly after that, the program moved to University of Houston's Main Campus, where it now resides in the College of Technology, led by Dr. Andy Hines. Andy has been working with post-Capitalist futures for some time, and he can undoubtedly talk about futures of work once we get beyond capitalism. Moreover, he can likely suggest some things people can do now to create futures in which highly educated people like you can share their passion for helping people learn AND be able to live comfortably -- without having to work 72 hours per day and sleep for 20 minutes on weekends.
If you'd like to learn more about the futures of work -- in this case, focusing on the futures of the profession of teaching --and how those futures may be different once we move beyond capitalism, look Andy up. If you'd like an introduction, I'll be glad to send him a link to this video and ask him to get in touch with you.
But here's a note I'd like everyone to consider. Right now, we're creating futures that other people will live in. There's a classic rock album I listen to Friday nights: To Our Children's Children's Children. It's those children who'll live out the futures we're creating. It's those people we need to think about now. How would you like them to remember you by the futures you left them?
That's where the conversation starts. Let's talk!
Thank you for this. I had taken a logic class from a very talented adjunct professor. He had to leave teaching because it was not supporting him financially. We need to invest in education. Equitable pay for all faculty is an investment in our society.
Well, we have this thing called after-school academies in Asia. Very lucrative business.
A system of capital, which predisposes itself to as much market individualization as possible, is antithetical to the concept of a cross-disciplinary education, and allows the justification of underpaying professors for the fact that they only teach a single subject !! Big problem!!
It's not a problem if you are a corporate master trying to ensure that you filthy poor's never use your college education to threaten the prevailing status quo.
Or you could move to Cuba! They need teachers too. Of course, they'll only pay you $100/mo., but you won't need much money. Just sleep in the park and bathe in the ocean!
@@zephead843 Cubans have better healthcare than you do. Better education too based on your behavior
As some one who was an adjunct professor for 3.5 years, I can attest. It tore my heart right out.
This was a really strong video to open 2023 on, and an extremely important one too. When I graduated from college I eventually found work doing media production adjacent work at several startups and felt fortunate enough to make what I considered a fine wage (that has since deflated greatly thanks to the strength of the doctor and a lack of getting raises). My partner and I both wanted to transition into education in the future, with my intention being to seek out work teaching media production skills at a high school or college level but... Yeah... financially I just can't look at that as a sound decision. Which is a shame too because I think the work has the potential to be extremely fulfilling for me and provide me with a sense of purpose I simply don't get now but... Bills don't care about how much you like your job...
Edit: I also really related to the part where you talked about adjuncts taking the, and let's not mince words, labor abuse from colleges that they take so that they could hopefully "earn" a regular position. That basically described several jobs I had as a freelancer or "contractor" where I did everything that employees did (including going on work trips, attending meetings, and having standard days at an offfice) for an hourly rate without benefits.
I work as staff at a university. It absolutely astounds me that there is such a disparity between tuition costs and what universities actually pay their faculty and staff. Thousands of students paying thousands of dollars per semester and none of it seems to go into the pockets of staff or adjunct professors- but our chancellor did get a 100k raise at the beginning of covid, of couse.
As a current adjunct, this video PISSED ME OFF. Because it's SO TRUE!!!! LOL. Anyway, I think a crucial part of changing this situation would have to be higher Ed workers uniting through labor struggles, such as unionizing, labor actions, strikes, and fuck it, SEIZING THOSE MEANS OF INTELLECTUAL PRODUCTION.
Anyone who hasn't heard of it should look up the recent University of California graduate strike. They won some improvements in compensation.
Yaaas comrade. Yaaas.
Your strategy is about one hundred years old and won't work. The more likely scenario will be of bodies being stacked like firewood.
After attending college for years I've noticed that tenured professors, in my experience, are usually the worst professors.
I've had professors openly tell the class they don't care anymore because it's not like they can be fired. last semester one of em didn't start grading anything till the week before finals. And only then because the final consisted of reworking a paper based on feedback. Non tenured professors are still actually trying to do a good job.
It's almost like giving people lifetime appointments it's nearly impossible to dislodge them from makes people care less and be more likely to be openly terrible.
I also had amazing teachers in CC but every semester in university I get at least one professor so bad everyone in the class starts e-mailing dept heads.....
As someone who was always mesmerized by academia and was fully planning on getting a Ph.D, learning more and more about the job market as far as the amount of available tenure track positions and high probability of being an adjunct for several years after grad school made me switch to going for a master's for now and maybe down the road I would consider getting a Ph.D. but only if the current system is fixed. All this to say, I'm glad more people are bringing up these issues since they are almost never talked about in discussions of grad school with the universities, at least in the US.
We have a similar situation in the UK. It was so noticeable at my university how stressed and underappreciate the postdocs were. Talk about discouraging. It is beyond stupid to treat educators like this if we want to keep human society perpetuating itself.
Worker bees only! That is all that is wanted in this society.
As a former academic (did the PhD and the postdoc) I strongly encourage you to do more videos talking about the rot that is at the core of academia. It's driven by money and exploitation of labor at every level.
Meanwhile professional graduate students have to pay their own degree - amazing those getting paid complain
@@soonahero If you're talking about degrees like a MD or JD, look at the differences in earning potential. Also, PhD students have to actually work to earn that stipend and tuition waiver, not just take classes. Lastly, I'm sure the majority of viewers of this channel would accept the argument that all education is too damn expensive and wouldn't have a problem with changing the system so that the best predictor of whether a child earns a MD isn't household income.
@@soonahero It's not fair that a bricklayer should be forced to help pay for a Jane Goodall devotee. If one chooses to observe gorillas in the mist and the job requires a phd, that person needs to visit their parents in Greenwich, Connecticut and beg them for more money.
That means the class war waged on education starting in the 1960's has worked.
@@zephead843 Who tf is saying a brick layer should be paying for someone's research trip to Africa? The video and conversation is about teachers. Universities have LOTS of money---they're just not using it to pay their actual teachers.}
Maybe you brought up research trips because Empty was talking about graduate students and you think that's what graduate students do. No. Graduate students stay at home and teach. And in most cases get paid, but poorly.
Watching this made me realize my history professor that I had for a semester at my local community college was probably an adjunct. I was a pretty bad student (the final essay I did probably wouldn't have flown in a high school setting it was so bad) but I liked the guy. He was interesting to talk to and seemed to really care about history and teaching. I think he ended up leaving that semester since I never saw him in a classroom again. Only here and there on campus.
As someone who fits the "lawyer teaching law classes" bill, I wanted to chime in. I was an adjunct at a local undergraduate university teaching Legal Research for about 4 years. I enjoyed the teaching, but it felt like charity work, not a job. I'm fortunate that the extra income for the classes was nice, but not something that I relied upon to make ends meet. It became untenable as the number of students in the class rose and prep/grading time increased.
It was forcing me to choose between doing a good job for my students and doing a good job for my clients, since I was taking time out of my legal practice to teach. I had to choose between the two, and one of them pays poverty wages. It's a no-brainer. I know lots of attorneys who get into adjunct teaching for a little supplemental income (student loans!), but most bail after a year or two because the return on your time is just orders of magnitude higher when spent on your legal practice. Law schools and undergraduate pre-law or paralegal programs are constantly scrounging for professors because they are asking otherwise very well-paid and overworked professionals to devote a bunch of time working for less than you get working at Five Guys.
That's great insight. I had a local college approach me through an acquaintance about teaching classes. The colleges always frame these roles like you'll be a sage scholar shaping young minds. Your comment seems much closer to reality. Thank you.
This breaks my heart. I loved teaching and was thankfully at least at an institution where I was given a lot of freedom to teach how I wanted so I put a lot of passion into my classes and students. Lasted 4.5 years before I had to leave teaching due to burnout from a similar situation and wanting to have time to actually work in my field again (where I would also be paid much better). My former students still reach out and are always so sad to hear that I left, but I just couldn't keep the pace anymore and wasn't willing to become one like some of the other instructors who just did the bare minimum because they had learned that's what they had to do to stay sane (not that I can blame them). And the worst part is like you said - in the end it's the students who lose out.
I put all my eggs in the academia basket through undergrad but I realized all of this halfway through my MS before I applied for my PhD. I studied environmental science but ended up learning to code and becoming a software engineer. No regrets whatsoever. The only way this will get better is if educators start demanding better of themselves... by leaving.
You can relax. No one's leaving the teaching profession. In fact, depending on the school district, many newly minted teachers have to wait up to a year before they can even get contract teachers jobs.
THANK YOU. capitalism ensures that people are treated fairly because they can leave for somewhere else if exploited. The only way this doesn't hold true is if they're too many people in the industry in which case it's a good thing that we're not paying too many people.
@@allisthemoist2244 capitalism doesn't ensure that people are treated fairly at all lol. people being able to leave has nothing to do with capitalism. in fact, zoe has videos on capitalism. Remember that the role of for-profit organizations is to make profit and they will pay as little as possible as long as they can.
@@joshuah345 ok, so first off, I don't care about this label, but given that essentially every economist believes in the free market creating fair wages, believing in other things makes you anti science
Regardless, there is a process called opponent processing where two forces working opposite each other balance out. For example, a balloon will hover at a certain height because its lift gets counteracted by the downward force of gravity that gets stronger on it as it gets higher. In the same way, there is pressure from corporations to earn profit (duh), but there is also pressure from employees to get paid fairly. Employees won't work for nothing, and corporations can't pay everything. In addition, companies with better employees will outcompete ones with less competent ones. Any company that pays more will have their choice of more candidates in that field. This also contributes to the balance, as big corporations will steal competent employees from other big corporations if they aren't paying as well as they could. This (and other factors) creates a balance where companies pay employees most of their profit because the free market made it so.
(And no, one random science denying youtube channel saying so does not mean that capitalism doesn't automatically ensure fair treatment)
Complaining about how our economic system creates undesired outcomes is not the same as denying science. Why is economic theory presented as an unassailable topic when even fundamental physics is open to change, and our current understanding is merely our best current explanation for what we observe?
Also, economics places monetary values on things as a proxy for their value to our society. Societal value is a complex concept and I'm skeptical that assigned economic value can truly capture every aspect of a thing's value to our society. I think that alone deserves critical consideration.
Finally, I find it troubling that our economic system would place so little value on educators. I feel it's safe to assert that a designed economic system assigns value according to the wishes of those who control that system. A lack of value placed on education would, coincidentally (?) reduce the risk of the levers of that system changing hands.
Thanks for this video. I'm a former adjunct and I have many friends who live the adjunct lifestyle in NYC. Many of the points you made are doubly true in a city with a high cost of living like New York. I'd like to paint a picture of the average 'full time' adjunct here:
- Lives with 2-3 roommates (at least).
- Has a substantial student debt burden of their own.
- Works more than 40 hours a week. May have a side hustle.
- May or may not have health insurance. Sometimes the cost just feels too high and it's easier not to think about it.
- Teaches at 3 or even 4 institutions at the same time. This makes it even harder to get to know your students/coworkers or form a community.
- Starts out excited, but will likely burn out after 3 or 4 years. Luckily for the schools, there is always a new crop of fresh-faced grad students to fill the vacancy.
I'm not trying to write a sob story. Obviously this situation is common for many people who live in cities and work in the service industry or gig economy, and it is bad in every case. We survive. However, what makes it feel particularly insane in the case of adjunct professors is that students are paying such comically absurd amounts of money to these institutions. In return, they get to learn from people who are burnt-out, stretched thin, and don't have the resources to put passion into their teaching. Community colleges may be the worst, but this also happens at well-known and expensive institutions like NYU, Pratt, SVA, and the New School. When you look at the big picture it starts to feel unsustainable.
Excellent video on higher education, and very eye opening. I was going to apply for a PHD program next year, but I'm turned off by the treatment of teachers and professors. Plus, there'd be no guarantee I'd get a full time position. Unfortunately, I have to give up my dream of being a university professor for now because it isn't conducive to a sustainable career or life. We're better off teaching K-12.
Just teach high school. You'll earn respectable money, your benefits package will be second to none, and you'll have the same work, holiday, and vacation schedule as a six year old. You won't need a PHD, but if you wanted one the taxpayer will pick up the tab for ya.
My father was a tenure track, assistant professor at multiple universities in two different countries (Mexico and Canada) for quite literally almost as long as i've been alive. 20 years. 5 years ago, he was nominated to be awarded his professorship in Mechanical Engineering at my university, and lost it against the Dean of Engineering's wife. He had his research cut and left academia. Even in tenure track, even with the decent salary, even with his decades of being a professor of Mechanical Engineering, he got screwed over. All because we were middle eastern. It infuriates me to this day. My last physics professor inherited his old office. I wept when I visited. I have a degree in Computer Science, and I couldn't have finished it without my dad being such a huge help. It is so unfair. Not even tenure protected him. He loved being a professor, despite the hellscape.
This was a great video. I also wanted to add that it gets even more complicated when you add research to the mix. Because at least in my country, all these adjunct positions are for teaching AND research, so the university expects you to still be putting out papers, while neither paying you properly nor giving you the time to, y'know, actually do any science. And then you go to apply for permanent positions, and they actually just don't care about how good of a teacher you are, all they look at is your research output. So if you want to get into academia, these positions can really become dead ends, ensuring that you are neither a good teacher to your students nor a productive researcher
Hi Zoe, I want to thank you so much for you're video! I was an adjunct professor for three years before I moved on to currently working on a PhD in sociology. Let me tell you, like you and many others, having to work more than one school was tough! Especially trying to schedule things around so you have enough time to drive to each school. I worked in a private university and I was shocked that all adjuncts get $2100 per course and only allowed 2 courses per semester! I stood there for 3 years because many of my students were Latino like myself and we're amazed to actually see someone of our community actually teaching a college course. I was the only Latino in the social science department and one of only very few people of color who was teaching there. The two community colleges I work that or actually a much better experience and paid me fairly because we had a union. But as you described in the video it was hard making poverty-level wages and still trying to survive let alone take care of yourself. Even as I work on my PhD at a state school I'm so shocked and surprised that my professors who are full-time and tenure are making six figures or have now started to make six figures. Higher ed needs major reforms and we really need to start investing in public education.
The "reforms" were made decades ago. Specifically to protect the power of the ruling class from plebs like you that might try to teach budding minds how to effectively challenge the systems which rule them.
Read the Powell memo from 1971.
You are losing a class war because the rich haven't bothered to tell you they already opened fire on you years ago.
We have a very similar system here in Brazil. Online education is part of this equation too, because it's easier to make precarious. I know many people with PhDs that are unemployed.
Thank you so much for talking about this topic with your sensible heart, Zoe.
Thanks for this. High school teacher by day, online adjunt by evening (for a community college of course!), and speech coach by weekend here.
I adjuncted for 10 years. Will never go back to it. Thanks for making this video!
What hit me particularly hard was hearing you mention students who ask what you're teaching next year so they can take another class with you. I HATE having to tell my students "I don't know if my contract will be renewed, but keep your fingers crossed and look for me on the course catalog."
I've done as much as I can in my classes this semester to try and open up the black box of how teaching in higher ed works, so hopefully my reasoning/decisions are less of a mystery to my students. We collaboratively designed our course during the first week, and I'm really transparent about what I'm required to include, the limitations we need to work within, and the few spots where we have some wiggle room to decide on our own. It's too early to see if that shared understanding will make a difference this semester, but it's worth a shot.
I'm not watching this yet because I know it'll made me sad as an aspiring academic (currently a grad student) but I definitely will when I'm ready
I can absolutely attest to this. I calculated my wages per hour the last time I taught in 2021, and I would have made more at the local McDonalds. I enjoy teaching, but I couldn't justify the time away from my family to do it.
I think videos like this are really valuable. The exploitation of adjuncts is a huge problem, not only for the reasons mentioned in the video but also. The video focused, rightly so, on the educational problems this gig University economy creates, but there is ofc also a huge epistemic cost to it as well. Not only do students run the risk of learning less, which means that the next Generation is less well equipped to do literally anything more advanced or complex, but also many academics and scientists in their best years, when they combine knowledge with, lets call it "youthful creativity", when they are most likely to come up with some of their best ideas or challenge old ideas, are destroyed in favour of capital. Not only can you not be a good educator under such conditions, you cannot be a good scientist, philosopher, mathematician or artist either. And the world, our knowledge, our societies are worse for it.
When I was in public school in the 90's we took computer classes and I thought those skills were going to be common knowledge going forward, but now I hear that the generations behind me don't know how to use technology any better than our grandparents did because everything's designed for maximum accessibility with minimum understanding. Which may be good in some respects but also contributes to the whole culture of automation where the acquisition of new skills just seems to be something capitalist society no longer incentivizes or values.
I learned about this the hard way when the instructor for my emphasis stopped working for the University I attended several years ago. She was a Ceramics instructor, did a phenomenal job, went the extra mile and got our students to a state show for the art medium, actually had an article in the school paper praising her work at the University -- and was denied promotions and raises. Constantly. Did I mention she was also the *ONLY* ceramics instructor at the University? Should I also mention that... when they finally decided to hire someone for a permanent position, that the University decided to... choose a complete outsider instead...? When the adjunct had connections within the University already, was a *CORNERSTONE* of that section of the department, *and* was highly knowledgeable with what was going on in the industry and kept up with updates while being extremely motivational and helpful to the students...?
The new full-time instructor was hired to "help improve the facilities" -- which the adjunct had already been trying to push for, but couldn't get any assistance with because she was an adjunct. Did you know that one of the things the adjunct was forced to work with to keep the ceramics studio was in fact a *HEALTH HAZARD* and probably a safety violation?! There was apparently a lack of ventilation for the glaze/chemical room that the new instructor had to fix -- which I am pretty sure the adjunct wanted to be dealt with, but they never did anything with that. I should probably mention that the adjunct *NEVER* spent class hours working on her own projects. The new full-time? Pfft. She ignored students and worked on her own stuff during class hours. How's that for a change? On top of that, poor resource management with making sure equipment was available to students by the new instructor with... letting students "claim" wheels, and allowed them to leave them uncleaned and unusable for others - when we didn't have enough wheels for everyone. Also demotivating as an instructor by shooting down projects immediately instead of looking how to get them to work. I *REALLY* want to drop names. I really do. The program director for the department at the time stepped down within a few semesters after I got pissed about the new instructor enough to send an email detailing several complaints about the new instructor, which I stated more or less that 'this is what the University deserves for not recognizing exactly what the adjunct did for it' and that it was what it was going to have to live with, since for all we knew... they could end up with worse next time they hired, and the current issues were "fixable." Sorta. Maybe. But they clearly weren't getting the old instructor back, who I felt was much better as an instructor
Obviously the adjuct was burnt out, which is why the last few semesters she taught there... I heard from the students that had her course that she didn't teach very well -- which, of course not. Not when you've already decided to leave the University and all of the lower division students were going to become protégé of the new instructor. So obviously the adjunct focused attention on all of her existing students that were going to graduate. Unfortunately, I took several semesters off for myself so I had to deal with the new instructor when I went back
The demeanor of everyone who wasn't an industry professional at my community college makes a lot more sense now.
I know a liberal arts grad who spoke up in her undergrad business class to defend a living wage for fast food workers. The professor, a local businessman born with a silver spoon in his mouth, came over, lay a hand on her shoulder without her permission, and whispered in her ear, "I'm one percent, and I disagree with you." I'm absolutely livid every time I think about it, and how she was too scared to report him for invading her space, touching, and clearly threatening her like that.
@@gamewrit0058 Lol get rekt kid. She got a first hand taste of how class war actually functions.
You and acollierastro have really opened my eyes to this and changed my perspective of assuming every professor is a hoity-toity type, it's crazy the sheer percentage that are not thought of as permanent faculty!
Sad painful and true. I am a contingent faculty for many years. 100 percent true. Eventually, I left teaching in higher education. I am happier now.
Thank you so much for this video. I’m a lecturer at a public university, and I’ve always worked in academia - even my very first job as a tutor and supplemental instructor came about when I was an undergraduate student in our public university system here in CA. All of my lecturer colleagues are Black women - like me - or women and people of color; on the other hand, there are no Black tenure track faculty in our department and only one woman of color. Many of us are also younger than the tenured faculty (I am 32). My colleagues and I regularly talk about how much time (often unpaid) that we put into developing our skills, revising our curriculum and updating our assignments, and how difficult this is to maintain because we have to teach so many classes to stay afloat financially. We all want our students to have the best versions of us, but holding ourselves to that standard while also facing such financial stress is so difficult. All of this is doubly challenging when we face systemic bias in our institutions on a regular basis. Honestly, without my family and the benefit of us having roots here in California, I wouldn’t be able to survive - not just financially, but emotionally, too.
I love teaching with all my heart and come from a long line of teachers. At this rate, going into my sixth year as an adjunct, I don’t think that I can stay in the profession much longer. I hope that people outside of academia watch this video and understand that having a system like this stamps out voices that would enrich the educational system of this country in so many ways. If more of us are honest about what we face in academia, I think it will help, even just a little, to inspire an energy of change…
I don’t know, maybe I am being desperately hopeful at this point. I don’t know.
Thank you so much for this, I agree completely that this sucks. Thank you so much for the CTA at the end.
24:52
This Hit me hard I'm not a teacher but I'm also a skilled professional, I'm a automotive technician.
I loved working on machines growing up, and I like working with my hands, I like solving problems and figuring out how things go together and finding solutions, when I was in school getting certified I was excited to go out into the field and get to work on a bunch of different vehicles and get first-hand experience with a lot of the technology and tools of the trade...
Instead I got 10 hour days, 6 day weeks, pressure to upsell, credit card debt from buy overpriced tools, ambivalent coworkers, uncaring management, and low pay that was eventually cut so that they can hire more people whose job it was for me to train.
The industry has nearly ruined my love of cars, and killed any ambition I had to master my craft.
When I was in undergrad I had a professor who used their last lecture to criticize the adjunct system. 10 years later, still remember that. I was an adjunct at my uni last semester and.....nothings changed :o (I didn't do it again, because the pay wasn't worth the work, and I got my own academic stuff to do)
The best professors i’ve had have all been non tenured. In fact the absolut best learning experience i’ve had has been with a fairly young adjunct that also had further edjucation in teaching. I have never learned more in a class or felt more motivated. The weekly tasks were varied, he asked for feedback especially on the texts he’d give is to read, if anything he gave us took to long to read etc. It was amazing. What saddens me is that he probably didn’t make that much money teaching us despite me not studying in the states but in europe.
As someone who only has tenure-track professors, this explains a lot as to why many people report a university experience so much worse than mine. I was lucky in my country to have the chance to go to such a university without needing to be rich.
My parents were both profs, coming up in the older generation where it was a permanent dream job. And they are both livid at how new professors and students are getting screwed by this system. Also at ballooning admin costs, for a group of people who have no understanding or appreciation of the role of a university. As one example, a new clinical research lab that they'd been trying to get set up for years got turned into a VP's office wing. He already had an office wing, but he didn't like the vibe. So he got to take over the lab space instead (he liked that vibe), because admin comes first, always. No, they didn't get to set up the lab elsewhere, it was just gone. I also have close friends who are now looking for new careers, after the school was able to demote them to Per Course Instructor, thereby paying them about 1/3 the rate for the same work. The whole thing is a huge mess, and is likely to crash and burn soon, which would be *checks notes* bad.
Comment affirming that I would like to see you tear apart the college system with facts and logic.
I'm finishing my 2-year degree at a community college, and have very mixed feelings about it. I'm grateful for the opportunity, and the individual faculty and staff seemed to be well-meaning people, but... It has the same contingent faculty problem. Some of my courses were "taught" wholly online through essentially copy/pasted web tutorials -- something I would not have otherwise paid hundreds of dollars per course for, but I need the gosh darn degree unless I want to make sandwiches for soccer parents the rest of my life.
I have a 4.0 and I do not feel as though I really earned it. I am older and not unusually intelligent. These classes in particular felt phoned in. The ones from full-time faculty were more challenging, and for those at least, I felt like I earned my grade. I am completely certain this discrepancy is not a problem with the teachers but with the structure they're teaching in (capitalist hellscape).
I was also fortunate to work as a student assistant to help offset my tuition costs (whole different ball of wax there, possible topic for the series), and in that work I was able to peek a little deeper inside the system than most students would be able to, but still be removed enough from it as to have a critical eye. I agree that this extends from, and extends to, broader trends in the modern socio-economy.
As an English teacher, you're uniquely positioned to write excellent videos on this topic, and I think if you can, you should.
This is a lot of why I decided to not stay in academia. My adjuncts were overworked, underpaid, and stressed. Conditions aren't the best in my current industry (I'm actually making a video about that right now), but it's a little better. It's still mostly freelance work, though, and I was nodding along with most of your points about adjuncts.
Unionize or die in exploitation
When I was an undergrad I was seriously considering an academic career. My history lecturer warned me it was a scary, precarious existence and I should deeply consider my choice.
I didn't end up in academia but seeing people I know fight tooth and nail for their careers and watching this makes me feel I really dodged a bullet.
Thank you so much for this Zoe Bee! I worked as an Adjunct instructor for nursing and health care courses at a local technical college and you described my situation perfectly. I worked there six years before I had to step away for health reasons. Many schools also have noncompete clauses in your contract, I couldn't work for more than one school at a time.
Current adjunct here! There is an end to this cycle, but it's a grim one: higher education is on its way to collapse.
I've been more open about the adjunct situation with my students the last year or so, and aside from their shock at how low my pay is, a consistent response has been "wait, where is my tuition money going if its not to support the people teaching me and my education?"
Students are seeing more and more that the cost of an undergraduate degree isn't matching its value, and they aren't enrolling. At (one of) my universities, we're projecting a ~15% drop in student enrollment over the last few years (starting before the pandemic). It hasn't reached a fevered pitch quite yet, but they're in the beginning of a budget crisis. So far, their grand plan to address the problem has been to start pushing for even higher teaching loads and cutting / consolidating class sections to cut costs (i.e. paying teachers even less). Of course, that just means students get stuffed into classes that have way too many seats, where the already exhausted intructors are stretched even more thin, or they can't get classes they need and have to stay on for even more semesters to reach graduation. This leads to more and more adjuncts jumping ship, destabilizing the already broken system and making the student experience exponentially worse, while tuition keeps going up.
It's a death spiral.
Like you talked about, if the focus was on the broader good of public education we could fix the problem by doubling down on student learning and reducing their financial burden (cutting out the absurdly bloated administration costs), but universites are now strictly a business. The stake holders will cut and slash all the vital parts until there's nothing left and then jump ship to the next venture they can suck dry.
The bigger universities will be able to ride things out on the back of their reputation and alumni networks, but expect to start seeing the small and medium universites dying away over the next decade.
Thank you for this video.
In many architecture schools the adjunct faculty are individuals who also either work in or have their own high-profile private offices. They hand-pick their favorite students to do (poorly or completely unpaid) internships for them, during which the students are forced to work 10+ hour days. One of my classmates went to work for one of these guys after graduating. He was offered zero benefits (health insurance, retirement, ...) and paid too little to cover the expense of living in that city.This practice seems to be part of the business model of many offices, who could not stay in business without extracting hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime from their underpaid employees (which might just include the adjuncts who recruited the students).
Meanwhile, the full-time faculty at one of the schools I attended were mainly interested in forcing their own agendas on students and made it extremely difficult for us to pursue our own research interests for our *graduate* theses. Going through that made me realize that higher education, at least in the realm of design, is most likely corrupt and entirely about flooding the labor market with students who have been groomed into accepting exploitative working conditions in their university studios.
I hate it here.
As someone who grew up in a household supported primarily by my mother's pitiful salary as a Finance Lecturer in an Australian university, this hurt me to my core.
Thank you, Zoe, for calling attention to the plight of educators, in particular here, contingent faculty. Not only is this happening in post-secondary education, it’s also happening in primary and secondary education, and has been for quite some time.
I remember seeing this in secondary education with my dad during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. He taught cooking and baking for seniors (and occasionally for juniors) in public school. Dad and Mom were raising a young, growing family during a time of double-digit inflation combined with the energy crisis and, later, the first eight years of what is now forty-two years of trickle-down Reaganomics, while going fifteen rounds with the board of education on proper funding for improvements to his teaching kitchen. He taught five days per week and had to work three nights per week on a second job plus catering jobs on weekends in order to support himself and us. He absolutely loved teaching, but looking back, I don’t know how he did it under the circumstances. It was, of course, his dedication to helping his students, not only with regard to their class work, but also in life.
Without question, however, the stress of dealing with the obstacles while pursuing his life’s work at least contributed to his three heart attacks. Yes, it definitely took a physical toll on him. And, in retrospect, although we didn’t dare discuss such things at the time, I’m certain it also took a mental toll on him. How could it not lead to a degree of anxiety and even depression? For instance, his doctor wanted him to retire after his first heart attack. Dad, of course, being part of the “silent” generation (born in 1943), wouldn’t hear of it, although he agreed to a compromise and took the semester off and returned the following fall. After his second heart attack, five years to the day later, his doctor gave him the ultimatum: Either retire or I can’t be your doctor anymore. They had been friends since Dad arrived in town a quarter-century earlier, and he didn’t want to find another doctor. So, this time he agreed, although he continued to be involved in education, albeit in an advisory capacity, and he found ways of returning to his teaching kitchen from time to time to work on personal projects. That was just his way.
Retirement, even for medical reasons, was not his way of life. He needed to be active and doing things. And, making sure we received as good an education as possible was a major concern of his. But, he personally needed to be teaching again. I’m convinced the fact that he had to give that up was a contributing factor to his third heart attack, which claimed him, at only fifty. In fact, as I type this, today is the twenty-ninth anniversary of that evening.
Admittedly, my dad’s experience is only one case. But, I’ve seen similar scenarios play out, to greater or lesser extents, in other educators I’ve known over the years. These, like my dad, went into teaching for the right reason: To help students. Yet, they’re regarded, not as essential, but as expendable, a mere human resource to be tapped and then discarded. As the son of a teacher, that pains me to no end! (I want to put that another way, but since this is a public forum, I’m trying to keep my language in check.)
I apologize for being long-winded here. But, this video brought my lives experience watching my dad to mind.
Thanks again, Zoe, for using your voice to draw attention to these matters.
I'm sorry for your loss. I'm from a teaching family too. My grandfather was driven to drink. So was my uncle. They both died young. My parents got chewed up and spit out.
I'm not a teacher, I'm university it support so I have it a bit better
@@BillyBasd I neglected to mention what I consider to be the crowning indignity Dad went through as he left the teaching profession. I had alluded to his back-and-forth with the board of education on the funding for necessary updates and improvements to his teaching kitchen. Well, as he was retiring, the board of education finally gave its approval for the refurbishments, and the project was completed by September 1989, eight months after he had to step aside. Dad spent years doing what he could with what he had, and, now, as a “thank you” for that, they get their act together and do what they needed to do years earlier. I remember during those years sitting with Dad and listening to the meetings and the topic would never be on the agenda. We always knew that the money was in the district’s coffers. But, until he was forced to retire, it always went to other things, not to the teachers or the classrooms, where it was actually needed.
To this day, when I hear or read similar reports or hear people denigrating public education and openly expressing their desire to turn that funding entirely over to private, for-profit “schools”, I admit that I take it very personally because of my dad’s experience as an instructor. To me, it’s as though they’re saying that he himself was the problem when he wasn’t at all. Those reports and comments tell me in no uncertain terms that we have our priorities completely wrong in this country when it comes to education. And, now, on the college and university level, we’re discussing branding, endorsements and outright pay for certain students (I think we know which students), which they should not have to worry about in the first place. And why are we having this discussion? Because while tuition has risen exponentially, financial aid and scholarships have concurrently declined. This, in spite of- or, rather, due to- the fact that colleges and universities have put boatloads of money into new buildings and raises for administration far outpacing inflation in an effort to attract the “best and brightest”. Quite frankly, that fosters a spirit of elitism. That, in turn, leads to a less democratic (with a small “d”) campus. Of course, as with so many problems, this can be directly attributed to Reagan and his shenanigans as governor of California in the ‘60’s. What he did there served as the template for what he began nationwide while in the Oval Office in the ‘80’s and continues on apace today.
i'm on college right now with the hope of teaching in higher education.... this video is killing me.
Become a high school teacher. You'll make a lot more money. Your benefits package will be second to none, and you'll have the same work, holiday, and vacation schedule as a six year. Cool beans.
My biggest problem with any of these discussions is that still, no one DOES anything about it. These are good and important subject matter, but the problem is that we all nod our heads and agree, then go back to doing things the same way, without any kind of critical thought into the fact that these kind of problems takes us to change. Activism takes action, not just agreeing with palatable takes.
I don't want to contribute to this system which is why I'd rather do other work, totally unrelated to my degree, than adjunct. This is also why I decided not to go on the tenure track job market. Not only are there no jobs, but I also don't want to be part of a system this broken and unethical (this last part related to the continued production of PhDs, especially in the humanities).
Anyway, I wish more students and more parents knew the true state of higher ed right now.
The poem at the end got me. I've been studying spider walks so I can program a procedural spider walk animation, and they are very intricate.