An educational crisis from its origins to present-day experiences In the United States today, almost three-quarters of the people teaching in two- and four-year colleges and universities work as contingent faculty. They share the hardships endemic in the gig economy: lack of job security and health care, professional disrespect, and poverty wages that require them to juggle multiple jobs. This collection draws on a wide range of perspectives to examine the realities of the contingent faculty system through the lens of labor history. Essayists investigate structural changes that have caused the use of contingent faculty to skyrocket and illuminate how precarity shapes day-to-day experiences in the academic workplace. Other essays delve into the ways contingent faculty engage in collective action and other means to resist austerity measures, improve their working conditions, and instigate reforms in higher education. By challenging contingency, this volume issues a clear call to reclaim higher education’s public purpose. Interdisciplinary in approach and multifaceted in perspective, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education surveys the adjunct system and its costs. Contributors: Gwendolyn Alker, Diane Angell, Joe Berry, Sue Doe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Claire Goldstene, Trevor Griffey, Erin Hatton, William A. Herbert, Elizabeth Hohl, Miguel Juárez, Aimee Loiselle, Maria C. Maisto, Anne McLeer, Steven Parfitt, Jiyoon Park, Claire Raymond, Gary Rhoades, Jeff Schuhrke, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Steven Shulman, Joseph van der Naald, Anne Wiegard, Naomi R Williams, and Helena Worthen

An educational crisis from its origins to present-day experiences In the United States today, almost three-quarters of the people teaching in two- and four-year colleges and universities work as contingent faculty. They share the hardships endemic in the gig economy: lack of job security and health care, professional disrespect, and poverty wages that require them to juggle multiple jobs. This collection draws on a wide range of perspectives to examine the realities of the contingent faculty system through the lens of labor history. Essayists investigate structural changes that have caused the use of contingent faculty to skyrocket and illuminate how precarity shapes day-to-day experiences in the academic workplace. Other essays delve into the ways contingent faculty engage in collective action and other means to resist austerity measures, improve their working conditions, and instigate reforms in higher education. By challenging contingency, this volume issues a clear call to reclaim higher education's public purpose. Interdisciplinary in approach and multifaceted in perspective, Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education surveys the adjunct system and its costs. Contributors: Gwendolyn Alker, Diane Angell, Joe Berry, Sue Doe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Claire Goldstene, Trevor Griffey, Erin Hatton, William A. Herbert, Elizabeth Hohl, Miguel Juárez, Aimee Loiselle, Maria C. Maisto, Anne McLeer, Steven Parfitt, Jiyoon Park, Claire Raymond, Gary Rhoades, Jeff Schuhrke, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Steven Shulman, Joseph van der Naald, Anne Wiegard, Naomi R Williams, and Helena Worthen

This book addresses the counterproductive conditions in which part-time and non-tenure-track composition faculty must teach, using case studies, local narratives, and models for ethical employment practices. It presents and evaluates a range of proactive strategies for change, both for local conditions and broader considerations. Section 1, Transforming the Cultural and Material Conditions of Contingent Writing Faculty: The Personal and the Institutional, includes the following 5 chapters: (1) "Shadows of the Mountain" (Chris M. Anson and Richard Jewell); (2) "Non-Tenure-Track Instructors at UALR: Breaking Rules, Splitting Departments" (Barry M. Maid); (3) "The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: One Version of the 'Humane' Lectureship" (Eva Brumberger); (4) "The Material and the Cultural as Interconnected Texts: Revising Material Conditions for Part-Time Faculty at Syracuse University" (Carol Lipson and Molly Voorheis); and (5) "Trafficking in Freeway Flyers: (Re)Viewing Literacy, Working Conditions, and Quality Instruction" (Helen O'Grady). Section 2, Collectivity and Change in Non-Tenure-Track Employment: Collective Bargaining, Coalition Building, and Community Organizing, contains the following 6 chapters: (6) "The Real Scandal in Higher Education" (Walter Jacobsohn); (7) "Faculty at the Crossroads: Making the Part-Time Problem a Full-Time Focus" (Karen Thompson); (8) "How Did We Get in This Fix? A Personal Account of the Shift to a Part-Time Faculty in a Leading Two-Year College District" (John C. Lovas); (9) "A Place to Stand: The Role of Unions in the Development of Writing Programs" (Nicholas Tingle and Judy Kirscht); (10) "Same Struggle, Same Fight: A Case Study of University Students and Faculty United in Labor Activism" (Elana Peled, Diana Hines, Michael John Martin, Anne Stafford, Brian Strang, Mary Winegarden, and Melanie Wise); and (11) "Climbing a Mountain: An Adjunct Steering Committee Brings Change to Bowling Green State University's English Department" (Debra A. Benko). Section 3, Rethinking Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Roles and Rewards, contains the following 3 chapters: (12) "Distance Education: Political and Professional Agency for Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty, and GTAs" (Danielle DeVoss, Dawn Hayden, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Richard J. Selfe, Jr.); (13) "The Scholarship of Teaching: Contributions from Contingent Faculty" (Patricia Lambert Stock, Amanda Brown, David Franke, and John Starkweather); and (14) "What's the Bottom-Line? Literacy and Quality Education in the Twenty-First Century" (Eileen E. Schell). Contains over 800 references, including the appendix: "Select Bibliography: Contingent Labor Issues in Composition Studies and Higher Education" (Margaret M. Cunniffe and Eileen E. Schell), which consists of approximately 600 items. (EF)

Vice President Joseph Biden has blamed tuition increases on the high salaries of college professors, seemingly unaware of the fact that there are now over one million faculty who earn poverty-level wages teaching off the tenure track. The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story entitled "From Graduate School to Welfare: The PhD Now Comes with Food Stamps." Today three-fourths of all faculty are characterized as "contingent instructional staff," a nearly tenfold increase from 1975. Equality for Contingent Faculty brings together eleven activists from the United States and Canada to describe the problem, share case histories, and offer concrete solutions. The book begins with three accounts of successful organizing efforts within the two-track system. The second part describes how the two-track system divides the faculty into haves and have-nots and leaves the majority without the benefit of academic freedom or the support of their institutions. The third part offers roadmaps for overcoming the deficiencies of the two-track system and providing equality for all professors, regardless of status or rank.

This book is a lively, passionate defence of contemporary work in the humanities, and, beyond that, of the university system that makes such work possible. The book's stark accounts of academic labour, and its proposals for reform of the tenure system, are novel, controversial, timely, and very necessary.

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of the growing ranks of contingent faculty in higher education from the perspective of the leaders of five elite adult and continuing education and professional studies institutions in the United States. Existing research reports two-thirds of all post-secondary instructors are now non-tenured or off-tenure track faculty, commonly referred to as contingent faculty. Yet, few colleges and universities have evolved their faculty work environments to respond to the challenges posed by the use of non-tenure track faculty. While there is significant literature about contingent faculty from the perspective of non-tenured faculty and their proponents, little or no literature explores this phenomenon from the perspective of the people most responsible for establishing contingent faculty work environments, the institutional leadership. Therefore, this qualitative research study applied interpretative phenomenological analysis focused on the beliefs of these institutional leaders about contingent faculty at their institutions to increase understanding of this phenomenon and give rise to questions that may help bridge the information gap to make greater meaning of this change. The primary question guiding this study asks what do institutional leaders believe about contingent faculty culture in higher education today? This study uses the theoretical framework of social constructionism to reveal the beliefs, understandings, insights, guidelines, and self-perceptions found in the social discourse of these institutional leaders to reveal how beliefs influence the establishment of contingent faculty identity, community, and culture at their institutions. Findings from this study suggest that by hiring discipline-specific professionals as scholar practitioners, by establishing relationships that are respectful and rewarding for faculty, and by embracing a culture that emphasizes teaching, discipline-specific professional relevance, and a community of scholar practitioners, it may possible to avoid the issues causing concern in the existing literature about the use of contingent faculty. These findings indicate that the leaders participating in this study embody a tangible allegiance to the core academic missions of their colleges by creating contingent faculty work environments from the context of what these leaders believe is necessary to meet the unique needs and expectations of their adult learning and professional studies students. Without such evidence, higher education may continue down the path of trial and error without the benefit of the lived experiences and experiential perspectives of expert leaders who have gone before them and are able to shed light on the intended and unintended consequences of the evolving contingent faculty phenomenon.

Class ends. Students pack up and head back to their dorms. The professor, meanwhile, goes to her car . . . to catch a little sleep, and then eat a cheeseburger in her lap before driving across the city to a different university to teach another, wholly different class. All for a paycheck that, once prep and grading are factored in, barely reaches minimum wage. Welcome to the life of the mind in the gig economy. Over the past few decades, the job of college professor has been utterly transformed—for the worse. America’s colleges and universities were designed to serve students and create knowledge through the teaching, research, and stability that come with the longevity of tenured faculty, but higher education today is dominated by adjuncts. In 1975, only thirty percent of faculty held temporary or part-time positions. By 2011, as universities faced both a decrease in public support and ballooning administrative costs, that number topped fifty percent. Now, some surveys suggest that as many as seventy percent of American professors are working course-to-course, with few benefits, little to no security, and extremely low pay. In The Adjunct Underclass, Herb Childress draws on his own firsthand experience and that of other adjuncts to tell the story of how higher education reached this sorry state. Pinpointing numerous forces within and beyond higher ed that have driven this shift, he shows us the damage wrought by contingency, not only on the adjunct faculty themselves, but also on students, the permanent faculty and administration, and the nation. How can we say that we value higher education when we treat educators like desperate day laborers? Measured but passionate, rooted in facts but sure to shock, The Adjunct Underclass reveals the conflicting values, strangled resources, and competing goals that have fundamentally changed our idea of what college should be. This book is a call to arms for anyone who believes that strong colleges are vital to society.