Road scholars

Adjunct profs are like academic serfs, handling more of the teaching load, getting little in return

April 30, 2002|By David Moberg. Special to the Tribune.

Glynis Kinnan was trying to make a point about taking risks and learning for its own sake to some two dozen University of Illinois at Chicago students in an English composition class.

With the students arrayed in a circle around her, she told a personal story about how, when she was in 5th grade, she insisted on writing about wolves, although the teacher had assigned her to do a report on health ("She didn't say human health," Kinnan explained).

The grade didn't matter to her, but despite flouting the rules, she still got a B. "I was working from love," she exclaimed, the passion still evident. "I had to write about wolves. ... What I hope you get out of this is: Work for love, and you won't care what the grade is, and there's no way you won't do well."

It was a deliciously subversive message from a teacher, since most students had clearly concluded long ago that the way to succeed in school was, first, follow directions and, second, figure out what the teacher wants. But despite the conviction in her message, Kinnan realized that the story of her own life might not be as persuasive to her students.

In pursuit of her own love of literature and teaching, Kinnan had gone to Grinnell College, then got her PhD in English, with an emphasis on creative writing, from UIC. But by some measures she has not received the rewards that such an education supposedly confers.

Since 1994, Kinnan, now 41 years old, has worked as an adjunct professor (called "lecturer" at UIC). An adjunct is an instructor who is typically hired semester-to-semester and paid by the course, with no job security or chance at tenure, not even any assurance about how many -- if any -- courses she might teach the next term. Once a position mainly filled by a practicing lawyer, doctor or other professional who might teach a single specialized course, the adjunct appointment has become increasingly common in higher education, especially in the humanities.

Gypsy academics

In 1970, 22 percent of all university faculty nationwide were adjuncts, according to the American Association of University Professors. Now more than 46 percent of college teachers are these "gypsy academics" or "road scholars," often piecing together classes from several different institutions into a low-paid, unpredictable career.

Kinnan is a veteran, with more stability than many adjuncts and better pay at UIC than at many other schools, but still sharing most of their grievances. Although she teaches literature and film courses, Kinnan mainly teaches writing classes, required of all UIC undergraduates, and often a key to students' success in other courses.

Each semester Kinnan teaches four courses at UIC plus one more as an adjunct at Roosevelt University and earns about $27,000 a year. By contrast, a full-time member of the UIC English department would start around $42,000 and rise to as much as $150,000, typically teaching two courses each semester.

The aggravation of the adjunct job is not just the extra work, lower pay and insecurity, Kinnan says, but the "many petty and absurd humiliations we're subjected to."

She shares a "wretched," tiny, and ill-equipped office (as a cost-saving measure, phone calls are blocked to the suburbs where many students live) with two other lecturers, making it difficult to meet with students (and at Roosevelt she doesn't even have a desk). Her small frame weighted down with two large black bags, she carries her office with her ("the classic adjunct look," she says).

Her evenings are often occupied with telephone and e-mail consultations with students, as well as the grading of student work, including more than 500 papers and tests each semester.

This life stands in contrast to her experience some years ago as a graduate student teaching assistant, when she felt nurtured and incorporated into departmental life. Teaching assistants, who are working on their advanced degrees, often receive a larger stipend and do less instruction than lecturers, although they have recently organized to protest that they too are exploited by the University of Illinois. But as a non-tenured lecturer, Kinnan said that she felt like she "stepped off a cliff," landing in an academic limbo between student and regular faculty status, "neither fish nor fowl."

Invisible instructors

Most full-time faculty "don't see us," Kinnan said. "We have a certain invisibility. We're either in the classroom or another university. There's also an unwillingness to see us. [People have] an assumption that you'll do this temporarily and get a real job, so there's an acceptance of exploitation because it's temporary."

English department chairman Lennard Davis acknowledges that "ideally it would be great if they were welcomed into the department" -- as he says he has tried to do -- "but to be truthful, they're always going to be the distant relative invited to the holiday dinner."