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A short thread on adjunctification and why its hard to get tenured people to do much about it.
The hiring of faculty on temporary contracts might begin with genuine temporary teaching needs like tenured faculty taking unpaid leaves for various reasons, or recent retirements 1/9
The hiring of faculty on temporary contracts might begin with genuine temporary teaching needs like tenured faculty taking unpaid leaves for various reasons, or recent retirements 1/9
Whether such temporary needs become long-term needs is pretty clear early on. When they do, you ask for tenure-stream hires. But Deans don't supply them. Instead, they offer a temporary hire, and we wait out an offer of a tenure-stream hire year after year. 2/9
And Deans prefer cycles of incoming contingent people, because there are norms or rules about when such contracts must be turned into lecturer positions, or when certain expensive benefits kick in, after 3 years or 6 years on staff. 3/9
Meanwhile, every year, the tenured faculty within the department are asked to present staffing needs to Admin, and continue to request tenure-stream hires for long-term staffing needs, to no avail. 4/9
So here you are, with staffing needs to keep offering courses to students, with a desire to hire tenure-stream that keep getting denied, and contingent contract people within the department who don't want to be out of a job, who obviously prefer more secure contracts. 5/9
One option I've entertained and may still endorse, is to refuse to request and therefore staff long-term teaching needs with short-term people, and say to the Deans "you want to preside over the atrophy of this department on your watch? Be my guest" 6/9
But that would mean all the contingent contract people will be let go, and a drastic increase in student load for everyone else, an ongoing shrinking curriculum, because the Dean is likely to call your bluff. 7/9
So we keep asking for renewals of contingent positions, to protect what we can of the jobs of people on them, to protect the size of a department and course offerings, and collectively eudcation suffers. 8/9
If we can get our collective act together and every dept. cooperates by refusing to staff long-term needs with short term contracts, its solved. But insofar as Deans pit dept against dept in competition for lines of hiring, defecting is against individual interest. 9/9
