Are adjunct professors who live in poverty stuck in cycle of learned helplessness? (apply, foreclosure)
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these are the bulk of people doing the actual teaching and yeah, they are largely getting bent over.
They are? Why don't they just quit, then?
Maybe because being an adjunct professor is not a career, but something that someone does to "give back"?
Or, some are trying to get to tenure. And like any other profession, there are dues to pay before you get the shiny coin. Why not a series of videos about how professional trades are getting "bent over" in apprenticeships before they get their license or whatnot?
I was a political science major for a time. I thought the professors had such cool lives, and who wouldn't want to do it?
That was fifteen years ago, and most were at least 50 then. Totally different market. Almost everyone I know who went the full PhD track has struggled, unless that PhD was in STEM.
The problem is people are associating college degrees with making money. Many college degrees are solely for personal enrichment, and not necessarily enriching your pocket book.
I don't know about now, but as an adjuct you never used to get tenure, no matter how long you did it.
Bu I haven't taught since the 90's. I did it cause it opened me to learning about different industries my students came from.
I taught at night and most of my students were working full time. And trying to get their BA's and MBA's. (Could only teach the beginning MBA classes, not the advanced.) And I found it to be fun. It kept me 'with it.'
More evidence that the American system rewards “being at the top of the food chain” instead of “doing hard work.”
We are looking at the decades-long pursuit of making higher education “more like business”. University Boards have been stacked with advocates of market based systems which have been imposed on institutions which formerly served their students and the public. Students are no longer viewed as students but as revenue streams. Public funding for higher education has similarly declined as the cult of the marketplace including that institutions serving a public purpose needed to be more self funding.
For decades, political contributions bought politicians who in turn mandated that federal student loans had to be administered by banks, thereby siphoning off billions -- if not tens of billions -- of dollars that could have otherwise gone to students and universities. The politicians also permit these banks to gouge students on interest rates, to pass laws making it harder or impossible to discharge loan debt through bankruptcy, or to refinance their loans. None of these abuses of students served a public interest. All of these abuses exemplify our current model for how to apply business practices to higher education.
It depends on where. There was a brouhaha going on in WVa a couple weeks ago. Something about the pay scale.
My friend teaches AP math. She had aa masters and 30 years. The most she can make is 65K a year.
Tell me where an elementary teacher can pull down 105 a year so i can send my grandson there.
My relative teaches in the Inland Empire here in CA. That $105k also includes medical/dental, however she will retire on about 80k. A full retirement package requires 30 years I believe. She started teaching in her forties and is just now retiring at 75.
If he were to apply in more affluent areas of LA (Palos Verdes, Beach Cities, Belmont Shores, or south to La Jolla..etc.) the pay would probably be even higher.
Do a search for adjunct professor on youtube to get more videos like that.
I've been watching those video documentaries on adjunct professors who live in poverty because they get paid less than custodians. Worse, they do not have any benefits or job security.
So, apparently, a phd does not necessarily get a person the high pay and job security like what we have all been told.
While I was watching these videos, here are the thoughts that came up in my head.
My full time job is an engineering manager. My husband just graduated college and started working for a temp agency at $12/hr while he looks for a full time job that utilizes his degree with good pay. In the mean time, we own a business flipping houses. Instead of hiring contractors to do the work, we do ALL the work ourselves, including plumbing, electrical, etc. Because we are using sweat equity to flip the houses, the profits we make from flipping houses are considerably higher than normal flippers per house. We are saving every penny we get from these houses to expand our real estates business in the long run.
In other words, aside from our full time jobs, we also do other things to better our financial future.
Aren't phd people suppose to be smarter than the rest of us? If they can't find a tenure position, why not attack their financial situation from multiple fronts? A lot of these adjunct professors say teaching is their passion. Well, ok, find something that is profitable and do that in addition to teaching. My husband and I both work full time and we also flip houses in addition to our full time jobs. Trust me, when you have the will you will find the time.
If these adjunct professors can't make ends meet at the end of the day, why not be creative and do other things to subsidize their passion? Complaining about it does absolutely nothing to better their situation. In fact, that's what low skilled minimum wage workers do, complain about it instead of actually doing something to better their situation.
I'm sure there are many adjunct professors who work second jobs. Why do a few people in a video represent all adjunct professors?
Learned helplessness really is more applicable to someone who grows up in generational poverty cycles, those who grow up in poverty around other people who grew up in poverty who grew up around other people who grew up in poverty.....
This is the same old tune of teachers wanting to be portrayed as being underpaid. This was once true in the not too recent past. The thing is that as all memes, it has carried over beyond the time when it became not so true.
I've shared this before: I have a relative who is a 1st grade teacher in a public school. She earns $105k year and has a TA who earns $53k a year. Her class is only 16 children which is nearly $10k per child per year just to pay the two teachers. This is not an isolated gig either, in fact she teaches in what is supposedly one of the more lower middle class areas in the Inland Empire.
When I was a contractor I had dozens of customers who were PSS teachers. NONE of them were even remotely poor or lower middle class. Many lived in million $ homes and all lived in upper middle class areas.
With that said... adjunct professors are basically part time instructors. Depending on where they teach they can be paid per course or a salary. My understanding is they are all mostly part time teachers who earn somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30k a year. There's nothing keeping them from either taking on a tutoring gigs or ?
It's pretty hard to make the case that you are a poor instructor if you're only working 16-24 hours a week.
Maybe they should apply to be an over qualified grade school teacher and pull down a 6 figure income for 8 hours a day 44 weeks a year. If they teach Summer school they get an additional 12-15k.
Also, my relative is retiring with 80% of her full income. <<<isn't public work great?
This is half true and half not. California (partially due to higher cost of living) tends to have the highest public schools education salaries in the nation. Even subs often get $125-150 per day.
Where I live, in the NY metropolitan area, is probably the 2nd highest public school education salaries. Many teachers, both elementary and beyond, often make with some experience close to $100K, in some cases even more. However, TA's vary. Some places in the area only pay them in the $20s, maybe $30K at most. Some others, especially if you are dealing with autism or other disorders, will pay $40K+. But I have never heard of $53K for a TA here. NYC itself pays subs $155/day, but you have to get a principal to "sponsor" you and it's very hard to become a substitute teacher in NY City itself, it involves an enormous amount of paperwork and to some extent is something you get from "patronage". In the rest of the area, they usually get from about $90-110/day, more than most areas outside of California (I know some parts of upstate NY and non-metropolitan CT that pay subs more like $60-75/day), but still less than there.
But in a lot of the rest of the country, especially the South. This is not true. There are many areas where a first year teacher gets only around $30K (in the NY area they usually start in the $40s to low $50s, I believe that's true in Cali as well) and TA's often get less than $20K and rarely more than $25K. That is where a lot of the "teachers are underpaid" comes from. It is less true in higher COL areas, but very true in most of the country.
As for adjuncts, it depending on whether they really have 20-25 hours/week of work or not. My sister is a f/t college professor and knows some adjuncts, I know some as well in my p/t tutoring job who do that in addition to their adjunct job. Now unlike F/T professors, adjuncts don't have to do research and publish, but many of them have to do the paper grading and other things outside of their "standard" 20 hour or so week. So if that makes it a f/t job, then yes, they are underpaid and don't really have the option of doing more work. But if they are really only working 20-25 hours/week at it, then I would agree they need to find a 2nd or even 3rd job.
Question for you. If I were to go out and dig ditches with a shovel, should I get paid 6 figures for it because it is very hard work?
I've been a professional engineer for a while now. Actually, I manage a group of engineers nowadays. Trust me, working smart beats working hard every time.
I should have read a little further along. . .
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