Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 06, 2015

Are all these professors legally permitted to work?

Don’t they get retirement?

Adjuncts? You’ve got to be kidding.

adjuncts barely get paid. I turned down two adjunct positions because I could make more money as an artist.

Think about that for a minute.

No one should teach as an adjunct. After all, if the university can hire a PhD for next to nothing, they will. That’s also one more TT job down the drain. Just say no to adjunct work. You’re better off as a barista.

The adjunct gets $1500 per hour for each 3 hour class and is not allowed to teach more than 3 such classes. Get out the calculator and do the math on that one. If he did 4 they would have to make him full time and pay full price. About 10% of the faculty are full time the rest are adjuncts. That’s how they justify the $100,000 per year tuition.

Google: adjunct faculty salaryThe average Adjunct Professor salary is $30,709 .Read the Huffington Post article. Source:BLS Refuse and Recyclable Material Collectors: $36,030

I have a Master’s (no doctorate) and I’m an adjunct doing music lessons at three local universities. Definitely not getting rich, but it’s only part of what I do. I also do performing and private studio lessons, I taught two to three classroom classes and made about $10K per year till I gave it up and went to doing music lessons only. The money wan’t the issue - it was the increasing requirement to use the classroom technology that I had no access to (to, say, learn how to use it!?!) except during class. Too much stress— not fun anymore.

Being an adjunct is ok as a hobby when you are retired like myself. At one school I found that really I was allowing the school to refuse to give the folks that one more class that would give them full time stability. Its not pretty our there.

The cartoon isn’t that far off. Supply and demand is such that you can fill these adjunct positions at the last minute — or you can get your classes cancelled at the last minute if enrollment is low.

Being an adjunct makes sense for some people — when I did it, I taught MBA courses in the field I worked in professionally, and it was more of a hobby (i.e. I didn’t need the money). But having to make a living off it is just brutal.

Whereas Coaches get 1.5 Million. Higher education my butt!

My last semester as an adjunct, I taught an overload (5 classes of freshman English, over 130 students) and made less than minimum wage because I had to put in so many hours.And that school year, both semesters, I made less than $18,000. 60 to 80 hours for the first semester, and 80 to 100 hours for the second semester, per week. If I hadn’t cared so much about doing a good job, I could have skated through like the TAs, some of whom would tell the students to work among themselves and then leave, or at least one of the tenured professors, who’d put the class to “group work” and then go sleep in her office.

The situation being depicted by GT today has nothing to do with the actions of Progressives. Progressives favor things like unions and regulation. According to Fortune, the SEIU has been aggressively recruiting academics, representing 18,000 adjunct profs, up from 14,000 5 years ago. The AFT has 70,000 adjuncts, up from 10,000 five years ago. Even if the numbers are not as great as they should be, it is not due to actions of Progressives, who favor unions. Something to think about this Labor Day weekend.

It is amusing to see such misplaced blame. Reminds me of those trying to say the woman jailed for not doing her job in Kentucky is like MLK. She is actually like George Wallace, not MLK. George Wallace didn’t want to follow federal law either. Wallace also wanted to do what bigots wanted him to do.

Come help us teach middle school, professor. We’d love to have you. If you can handle it.

@montessoriteacherThe Kansas legislators are jealous of higher education because most of them didn’t have any, and therefore want to slash it. Also, very few of them are smarter than a fifth grader, so they want to slash elementary education…….

Starting to worry about my son-in-law because of this type of situation. My daughter said he worked all summer, made about 10k, paid student loans with all of it, and now has his balance down around 100k. He’s about 1/2way thru his Doc work! Brilliant. But where is he going to get a job? It’s not progressives who have messed up the system. It’s military adventurism by conservatives whose appetite for guns over butter is psychotic.

30K a year as an adjunct? Where did they get those numbers. I’m an adjunct at a local CC. At best I can make about 15K/year GROSS. Not allowed to teach any more than that as they would have to pay benefits, which they won’t do. Not only that to fill the classes they actually double up on the courses so typically in a semester I’m teaching 2-3 and sometimes 4 classes in the same room at the same time…. which 2-3 times the lesson plans, 2-3 times the homework, 2-3 times the prep work and assistance….. all the time being paid for 1 CLASS. Oh… it’s a joy being an adjunct. I like teaching. I like the students. Adjuncts need to unionize and put an end to this abuse.

In his farewell address, Mr. Eisenhower said it would take an “informed and educated” electorate to stand up to the Military Industrial complex. It is said in his draft of that address, he wrote, Congressional, Military, Industrial complex. Some one took note, and ever since the early 60’s, there has been a concerted effort to dumb down the electorate by politicians and corporations alike. Only in the last decade have corporations begun to realize they actually need Americans who are educated enough to do technological jobs, but they still don’t want them to think for themselves. This is why we see so little investment in music and arts education and why we teach children to take tests instead of teaching them to think and use their imagination. Teachers and professors, like soldiers, police and firemen, are extraordinary people placed in untenable situations by politicians who don’t appreciate them and a populace that takes them for granted. My compliments to those who chose educating our fellow Americans as a career. And my apologies that so many of you have been treated so shabbily.

This is the way which the so said “caporals” recruits daily the people from Africa and east Europe here in Italy for the various harvests in agricolture , and all this stuff is in the hands of the organised criminalities

Started with Reagan defunding California’s state university system.

Paid in cash at the end of the day.

Some nations actually value education, others, not so much.

I haven’t forgotten that George Wallace was a bigot too.

GT is a little late to this party – see The Job.

Of course Conservatives would simply outlaw education completely in favor of Fox News and BP commercials.

Here in Canada we have some universities where 3% of the budget goes to adjunct staff who teach over 50% of the students. Great value for money as far as the universities are concerned, but what is that doing to the education the students are getting? And when I help with my child’s fees for that university are we getting good value for money if my child is being taught by part timers as opposed to full time staff? But given the economics of the situation I don’t see it changing any time soon.

What?

The Republican party has continually slashed federal money for education. Remember all the Republican attack comments when the President increased the money for Pell grants? They were told by the education complex to shut it and did so. It’s just as bad at the state level. An educated electorate is likely to respond to issues on the merits instead of through emotion. Plus who wants all those plebs taking up space and (gasp!)) advancing into better pay.

Which is why I"m getting out of teaching altogether as soon as possible. I’ll jump mid semester if I have to. Fuck. Them.

It was so pathetic, reading today’s strip. When I burst upon the world as a new college graduate in 1958, I received English-teaching job offers from two colleges, Rollins in Georgia and St. Petersburg Junior College in St. Petersburg, FL. I chose St. Pete because my mom lived here. The position featured full-time work with tenure and benefits. Recently I attended Spanish classes at a downtown church taught by a fellow from Minnesota who had developed a burning desire to learn Spanish, and moved to Argentina and later Nicaragua. He later married a woman from, as I recall, Colombia. He was an excellent teacher. However, he is now trying to scratch out a living from St. Petersburg College (formerly SPJC) as an adjunct. Low pay, no tenure, no benefits. He and his wife have to scratch around and make do with what jobs they can find.In my perhaps flawed opinion, the root cause of the whole economic situation is that the rest of the world has been busy catching up with us. The developing nations want enough food, shelter, and clothing, as well as cars, air conditioning, good medical care, and all the other conveniences. Dire poverty is no longer doing it for them. So those who are able are competing, and using up resources, and polluting, just as we are. I don’t know what, other than catastrophe, will stop all this.

I’m an adjunct at a community college, where I teach one class. 16 weeks per semester for a total of about 90 hours. Contract payment is about $4400, which works out to about $48/hour. I spend less than an hour per week on grading, etc. outside of class, so that brings the rate down some. I don’t have time to teach more classes, but I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Adjunct hours are capped to make sure they don’t qualify for the teacher’s retirement fund. Fine with me, but I can see how others might have a problem with this system.

Tarred, If a progressive is defined as one trying to improve it and you also agree conservatives are trying to improve it, then by definition, conservatives are progressives. So, Ted Kennedy, with his Progressive NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND legislation was a? What?

So sad.

Come on Everybody knows BOWTIES ARE COOL.

@DavidHuieGreen“Sadly our military is just been the long arm of the corporate ".They have pledged their lives to protect us.Most of them meant it.They aren’t an arm of the corporations but are sometimes misused tools of the politicians.Several presidents have asked, “What good is a military if I can’t use them?” and sent them to their deaths in service of goals other than protecting the American people..Meanwhile, THEY remained faithful unto death.

@qodex You’re teaching a 3-credit class in about 100 hours, including class time, prep, grading, etc? Either you are extraordinarily gifted, or you are doing a very poor job. When do you find time to read and analyze the textbook and supplemental materials, develop assignments and exams, outline your lectures and prepare visual aids, grade with meaningful feedback and hold office hours?

There are classes that I’ve taught many times over the past 25 years, and most still require over 250 hours of my time, depending upon how long since I last taught it, how many students, whether there is a new textbook, etc. A new course or a graduate course (which require updating to be current) may require twice that.

Sounds like they should have gotten an education likely to get them a REAL job. My lodge brothers who went to community college have made good livings as electricians, plumbers, and HVAC. Who works on your car?

Wanna see the result of this wonderful education system? go to YouTube and look up “Nibiru”.

War Is A Racket – By Major General Smedley Butler – USMC – Ret – Deceased. Two Congressional Medals of Honor awarded..http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

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.War Is A Racket.WAR is a racket. It always has been..It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. …

meanwhile the school admin staff keeps growing and cannibalizing resources like a vampire in a blood bank!

Unfortunately absolutely true. Put your self deeply in debt and you too can live the liberal dream of being a college professor. Counselors need to have their bells rung, so they will stop pushing everyone into college. There are many skilled trades jobs going begging.