Adminstrative Math

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Here’s some good news: an Illinois college is going to offer some adjuncts health insurance next year under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Most schools seem to be busily cutting hours in order to avoid the new law’s requirements. (The ACA requires that schools provide health insurance for full-time employees, defined as anyone working more than 30 hours a week.) The bad news is that the proposal is more hat than cattle.

Robert Breuder, president of DuPage, said the arrangement was a “perfect compromise,” one that allows the college to comply with the law, honor the adjuncts who make up the majority of its teaching force and still retain the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of a majority-adjunct work force. He estimated that the move would cost the college about $550,000 annually, or 0.3 percent of its operating budget, made possible by prudent college management during the past five years. But extending health care to more adjuncts would be financially “cataclysmic” to the institution, he said, particularly due to Illinois’s fiscal woes and consequent decreases in state funding. Breuder said he didn’t know how many adjuncts’ typical course loads would be cut by the new, 27-credit-hour ceiling for non-lecturers, but that the college has been trending toward hiring more adjuncts to teach lighter course loads for some time.

“Bucking the Trend” Colleen Flaherty

This coverage will “honor” 45 adjuncts. Du Paul could provide health care for 90 adjuncts for less than 1% of its budget (.9%); or 180 for less than 2% (1.8%), and so on. These hardly seem like cataclysmic figures, even in the face of our state’s budget problems. I’m happy that some adjuncts’ working conditions are improving, but this is a “compromise” that is all about looking good while skirting the law so that you can continue to exploit college teachers.

Posted in: Professional, Writing

Academic Nadir

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I am not sure why I believe this, but I think that academia has to reach some final bottom– like a drug addict– before it can even begin to address its own recent history, particularly the steady destruction of full-time faculty positions. At some point– 50% or 75% part-time?– the problem will become so self-evident that it can no longer be ignored. I sometimes wonder if it will become evident to the public before it is self-evident to academics.

It’s hyperbole, of course, to equate American teachers with an Indian caste, but this piece (“When Adjunct Faculty are the Tenure-Track’s Untouchables”) suggests that full-time faculty complicity may be one important reason change can seem so distant:

Truth is that ladder-rank faculty are growing old and we are not prepared to pick this important fight with our administrations or UCOP. We are edging towards retirement, counting our beans in our pension funds, and just holding on until we escape amidst encircling doom. Safe in retirement, many of us will tut-tut and speak of the halcyon days when ladder rank faculty were little gods with real rights.

“When Adjunct Faculty are the Tenure-Track’s Untouchables” Chris Newfield

Newfield is referring to California universities; as goes California, the saying goes, so goes the United States. The article is worth reading, although it does little more than repeat the obvious: in recent years: our fight is increasingly not simply against an administrative culture overly concerned with markets and business models but also with status-bound, complacent full-time faculty. Maybe that last complaint signals that rock bottom is closer than ever.

Posted in: Economics, Professional, Writing

Educational Futures

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Almost half of recent college graduates did not get jobs in their field of choice. The majority of these underemployed appear to work in the retail or restaurant industries. Among those working in the retail industry, 78 percent had desired to enter a different industry prior to graduating. Similarly, 81 percent of those graduates working in the restaurant industry had wanted to enter a different industry. This study once again showed that many of our recent graduates are currently underutilized.

“McKinsey on Young College Graduates,” Will Kimball

When I worked at a public university I was always surprised to find so many professors in favor of raising tuition. Not all of them would admit it, but the consensus seemed to be that the more expensive an education becomes, the better the students. Many professors would rather send off the difficult students to the community colleges– or to a poorly paid job– than have to deal with trying to teach them.

Some students, it was commonly said, are simply not college material. The real issue isn’t about who can or cannot learn; it’s about money and time. The less well-prepared students are more expensive in every way. They need more personal attention, which means smaller class sizes, and it can be a challenge to convince them that learning is worth the time and effort. Too many people think it’s just not worth it.

This CEPR report worries me because some people will use it to argue that too many people are going to college; that college is too expensive given that we don’t need as many graduates as we already have, and so on. It’s the classic reactionary push against social progress. Maybe (now that the debt crisis is over) we ought to be expanding those fields– research, science, education itself– that require a college degree.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Professional, Writing