I think universities that hire people with PhDs to be adjuncts are stupid. Adjunct positions should be for those who have MAs. Anything else is exploitative and offensive to everybody. How do you even justify having at the same department people with the same qualifications but in wildly different positions? This is just ridiculous.
And the environment this creates must be absolutely horrible. How could I, for instance, come to the department and see a colleague who works in really miserable conditions while being in no way different from me? I would feel so much shame that I would hardly be able to work. It’s like a caste system that is absolutely unreasonable and offensive to human dignity.
We don’t have this idiotic practice where I work, fortunately. And if somebody tries to bring it to our department, we need to resist with all we have.
Clarissa's Blog 
I could be interested by an adjuct position even when I’ll have my Ph D.
LikeLike
“I think universities that hire people with PhDs to be adjuncts are stupid. Adjunct positions should be for those who have MAs. ”
So that many PhDs would have no job because adjuncts would be reserved to MAs…
I don’t like this over-qualification rhetoric.
LikeLike
What is happening now is exploitation. What’s next? Getting people with PhDs to clean toilets on campus?
LikeLike
Many PhDs are prostitutes or Wal-Mart workers. Do you want more PhDs to be prostitutes or Wal-Mart workers?
PhDs suffer for overcrowding in the work market. Why restrict their job opportunities?
LikeLike
I’m guessing you support the minimum wage being abolished, too, right?
LikeLike
“Getting people with PhDs to clean toilets on campus?”
Why not? This would be better than becoming prostitutes or Wal-Mart workers.
LikeLike
Oh, come on. Plenty of people with PhDs leave academia and nobody ends up in prostitution.
I really dislike this needless drama.
LikeLike
I continue to be at school because I don’t want to be a Wal-Mart or a McDonalds worker. I would have no problem to become an adjunct or even a CEGEP teacher.
LikeLike
“I’m guessing you support the minimum wage being abolished, too, right?”
Yes, but not with the “right to work” (sic) actual laws in many American states. Syndicalization should be an easy thing for private sector workers.
But again, many PhDs work actually at the minimum wage because there’s too much PhDs gradutaes, and we should restrict their job opportunities?
LikeLike
Well, this is our philosophical difference, I guess. I don’t think that it should be OK to exploit desperate people. Even if they agree to the exploitation.
LikeLike
“Plenty of people with PhDs leave academia and nobody ends up in prostitution.”
Those who leave academia yes, but how about those who are not in the academia?
Or replace prostitution by barmaids or “book publishind worker”, for example?
LikeLike
“Plenty of people with PhDs leave academia and nobody ends up in prostitution.”
Those who leave academia yes, but how about those who are not in the academia?
Or replace prostitution by barmaids or “book publishing workers”, for example.
LikeLike
“Those who leave academia yes, but how about those who are not in the academia?”
– I don’t understand the difference.
LikeLike
“Well, this is our philosophical difference, I guess. I don’t think that it should be OK to exploit desperate people. Even if they agree to the exploitation.”
No, it’s not OK, but there are not enough jobs for PhD graduates. So we should restrict their job opportunities? But becoming a CEGEP teacher is not really “exploiting people”. Restrict their job opportunities to obligate them to accept McJobs is exploitative.
LikeLike
Who is talking about CEGEPs? There are no CEGEPs in the US.
“No, it’s not OK, but there are not enough jobs for PhD graduates. So we should restrict their job opportunities? ”
– This is exactly the same argument that is being used to pay restaurant workers $3 an hour.
LikeLike
“Who is talking about CEGEPs? There are no CEGEPs in the US.”
This is as “exploitative” as becoming an adjunct for PhDs graduates.
LikeLike
If you think that we should have less adjuncts, say “we should have less adjuncts” But this is not what you say right now. You say that we should restrict adjuncts to non-PHD people when there not enough jobs for PHDs.
LikeLike
What is an alternative way of having less adjuncts? Do you have a practical suggestion?
LikeLike
Having less adjuncts and hire more professsors in tenure track. If you have said that, I would have nothing to criticize because this would be a way to reduce exploitation on PHDs people, even though I would not pretend that’s the only thing that we should do.
How about PHD graduates who can’t do a postdoc, for example?
LikeLike
“Having less adjuncts and hire more professsors in tenure track.”
– I asked for a practicable solution. If a department needs to teach 15 sections of Spanish 101 and 15 sections of Spanish 102 per semester, nobody will be opening 10 tenure-lines to service those courses. Nobody needs a PhD to teach them. And nobody will ever justify spending money this way. This would mean spending 500,000$ per year to teach these easy, lower-level courses. And that’s just one small department. Do you think anybody can be persuaded to do that?
“How about PHD graduates who can’t do a postdoc, for example?”
– Postdocs in the Humanities are exploitative.
LikeLike
on tenure track.
LikeLike
I agree with the exploitative character of postdocs but many professors did a postdoc before beginning their tenure track.
“This would mean spending 500,000$ per year to teach these easy, lower-level courses. And that’s just one small department.Do you think anybody can be persuaded to do that?”
No! So we should let other PHDs to have this opportunity to have a job instead of McJobs or food stamps.
LikeLike
“No! So we should let other PHDs to have this opportunity to have a job instead of McJobs or food stamps.:
– Once again: please suggest the alternative.
LikeLike
I agree with you that it’s impossible to have less adjuncts.
LikeLike
The institution of an MA in the US is dying, and that’s a shame. With the growing need for remedial learning, many people could be diverted from doing the PhDs that they don’t need and do MAs instead. If the MAs were in existence.
And the US practice of getting people with BAs straight into PhD programs is also ridiculous. Such people are grievously underprepared, suffer hugely, and don’t manage to get employed after graduating because a crucial step is missing in their education. In this sense, the Canadian system of a 2-year MA and a 4-Year PhD is a lot better.
LikeLike
“The institution of an MA in the US is dying, and that’s a shame. With the growing need for remedial learning, many people could be diverted from doing the PhDs that they don’t need and do MAs instead. If the MAs were in existence.
And the US practice of getting people with BAs straight into PhD programs is also ridiculous. Such people are grievously underprepared, suffer hugely, and don’t manage to get employed after graduating because a crucial step is missing in their education. In this sense, the Canadian system of a 2-year MA and a 4-Year PhD is a lot better.”
Now, that’s a beginning of a solution! 🙂 But even here in Québec, we have this job problem with PHDs. And CEGEP’s bureaucrats hate PHDs (except for women) and this oppurtunity seems to be non-existent even though this is officially avalaible. Maybe you should applaud those bureaucrats?
LikeLike
“I don’t understand the difference.”
I talk about those who have no jobs after their PhD.
LikeLike
You pretend that you want to end exploitation, but your “policy” would make more PHDs obligated to be exploited in McJobs or in food stamps. Good intentions do not always working.
LikeLike
work.
LikeLike
I am puzzled by this discussion. It seems to me that if a department has an unexpected huge increase in enrollemnt for a particular course and no time to hire a permanent faculty member, that it is better to hire a Ph. D. who has another job somewhere to teach a course on a part time basis than to hire a Master’s degree holder on the same basis. Typically we hire high school math teachers to teach in the evening if we have an unexpected sudden increase in enrollment in beginning calculus, for example. But it might well be better to hire a Ph. D. holder working in industry for the same situation.
LikeLike
And don’t forget that many Ph.Ds are in McJobs or without a job.
LikeLike
This is not about unexpected situations. There are now crowds of adjuncts who teach the same courses for many years at many institutions.
LikeLike
Maybe we should have more professors for these expected situations.
LikeLike
You already agreed that nobody will be opening dozens of tenure lines to teach 100-level courses.
LikeLike
So again, this should be open to PHDs.
LikeLike
The growing number of PhDs exploited in these adjunct position can either be accepted as a force of nature or challenged with the view of creating alternative solutions. I’m trying to look for alternative solutions.
Everybody complains endlessly about the situation of adjuncts, yet the only place where the issue is actually analyzed that I have been able to locate is my own blog. Everything else is helpless hand-flailing.
LikeLike
At least, you try but your first solution is even more exploitative for them. Your idea about the Canadian system of MA is better.
LikeLike
Terminology is being used too loosely. You´re talking about hiring someone for a temporary, emergency one-course fill-in, an old use of adjuncts although they are supposed to be people with jobs outside, e.g. lawyers or something, coming in to give one course in field of specialization. Nowadays, departments like English and Math hire adjuncts to do several courses, because they have not been authorized hard money lines for enough FTE instructors (with benefits, and not hired at last minute) to teach all the sections of the basic courses they need. So this emergency situation, with people hired on a piecework basis, without benefits or a real office etc., becomes semi-permanent because the soft money that is funding it keeps getting renewed while authorization of FTE keeps getting withheld.
LikeLike
Maybe we should have more professors for these expected situations.
Of course, we should. I think this is exactly Clarissa’s point.
LikeLike