Ground Operations

I recently took a class on the Vietnam War because I feared my favorite professor was at risk of losing her job. At the time I enrolled, the decision seemed a little bonkers, and I suppose I had good reason to question whether I was thinking straight. I was in quarantine at home over Christmas break after contracting COVID-19, likely the result of being a front-line worker. There I was in my pajamas, feeling congested and exhausted, obsessing over the list of available class options for the Winter Term and the depressing enrollment numbers at my college. I had watched the numbers for months and wondered to myself how the internal discussions among administrators and faculty were shaking out. Were classes being cut? Were professors being laid off?

History classes are electives for me—a luxury, really—that I take because I want to better understand the context of the world in which we live. My major is Urban and Public Affairs, and it’s chock-full of political science and public administration-type classes. I could earn my degree without ever taking a single history course. What would that make me, though? How can a person be involved in developing public policy and changing communities for the better without a solid understanding of how American society was shaped? I decided to devote a big chunk of my sophomore year to studying U.S. history, and out of sheer good fortune, I was guided by a professor—Dr. M., an Americanist with a PhD in History—who became something of a (virtual) mentor to me. But a class on Vietnam? That seemed like a stretch.

Yet I couldn’t shake what I was looking at on my computer screen that day in December. One of the most impactful and inspiring professors at my college was on the verge of unemployment, with seven students and a three-credit course on Vietnam separating her from delivering food for Grub Hub. *Click* Make that eight students. If I couldn’t be the one to give Dr. M. a shot at tenure, the least I could do is vote for her with my tuition.¹

Photo by Truflip99 (CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

I had already completed my freshman year when I first learned what an adjunct was. During one of our class Zooms involving the labor movement, I mentioned to Dr. M. that I work in ground operations for a major airline and that union membership and collective bargaining allow hundreds of thousands of airline workers—many of whom are considered “unskilled”—to have dignified pay and benefits.²  Dr. M. disclosed that she is also a union member, but that she works under a different set of rules than professors who have tenure. She explained that she is a part-time employee contracted to teach a limited number of classes at the college. She also mentioned having at least one other teaching job. Initially, I took all of this to mean that she was a new professor who was getting her foot in the door, but that she would eventually be given a fair opportunity to become a full-time instructor at one of the schools.³

However, something about the conversation nagged at me. Dr. M.’s references to being “part time” and “contract” were familiar. I have peers in the airline industry who work as contract workers, employed by third-party vendors or as part-time employees with their own sets of work rules.⁴ It’s complete and total fuckery. Contract workers have almost no job security, and their salaries are far behind (in some cases only half) the salaries of full-time union workers at major carriers. Part-time workers often don’t fare much better. At my company, part-timers are the first to be furloughed, regardless of seniority. Their hours can be dropped to as few as 16 hours per week, and the options for family health insurance coverage are outrageously unaffordable.

Airlines are constantly pressuring unions to allow greater percentages of contract and part-time workers. My union’s current CBA was held up for 4 ½ years because the members did not want to give in on the issue. In the end, after years without a pay raise—and after dozens of our workers in Southern California were fired for exercising their contractual rights to take unpaid personal days off work to attend a union meeting—we acquiesced to a very limited expansion of part-time and contract workers. Most of us still wonder if we should have even agreed to those concessions. After googling “what is an adjunct professor,” I started to realize that the exploitation of workers as “part timers” and “contract employees” exists in academia, as well.

Photo by Eric Friedebach (CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Slowly, I pieced together what adjunctification looks like in practice. I’m a student at a community college, and I noticed during registration periods that courses weren’t divided up equally amongst the professors. In most departments, one professor is assigned between five and seven courses, while a slew of other professors teach the remainder of the course offerings. They receive scraps—just one or two classes each—like pieces of bread tossed to hungry servants. I knew some of the professors’ names from previous classes I’d taken, and I recalled statements like, “I’m the only full-time member of the (blank) department” or “I also teach at (blank) college and (blank) university.” The situation was plain as day. My college was hiring one full-time instructor in each department (perhaps more in some of the larger departments) and then filling in the remaining classes with adjuncts—often three, four, or more in a single department. It was a carbon copy of the corporate work-around that I experienced in the airline industry, where businesses exploit labor to avoid paying dignified wages and benefits.

Several more months went by before something happened that helped me fully grasp the human impact of adjunctification. One of the interesting aspects of our pandemic Zoom culture is that it opens a window into our personal lives for others to view. We see each other’s homes. Our pets, families, kitchens, and bookshelves become a part of the virtual connection that we all share. During one of our classes, Dr. M.’s father joined the class as a guest. As she went to get him, my professor, who is 43, said “This is where my students learn that I live with my parents.” I doubt anyone else keyed in on that, but I did, and my heart sank. My professor, who devoted years of her life to her education and becoming an expert in her field, is poor.

But that’s not all this Zoom session made me realize. Dr M’s dad is a retired mechanic; she’s clearly from a working-class family. I realized then that she is likely sitting on tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. I understand what higher education costs in the U.S., and I know what it’s like to be in debt. I’m not 18; I’m 42—just a year younger than she is. And this means I know that the person who will forever be the most impactful instructor during my tenure as a community college student is underemployed, deeply in debt, unable to afford her own place to live, and on the cusp of being completely without a job. I was heartbroken for her. She did a hell of a job teaching that Vietnam class, too—perhaps because she was teaching for her very existence, but I think also because she’s just that good.

I’m sad and worried for Dr. M. and my other adjunct professors, but I’m also angry. I already bear scars from my own experiences, first as a former contract employee in the airline industry and later working for a major carrier and watching corporations use contract and part-time employment practices as a means of dividing labor. Hey full-timers, we’ll give you that long-overdue raise if you just agree to a few “minor” work rule changes. Don’t worry!  They will only impact the new people! These practices are wrong. They are immoral. They are inhumane. Colleges and universities need to stop. Adjuncts are people with years of investment in their fields. They have families and lives. They need to fucking eat. Worse still, I’ve come to learn that many adjuncts don’t last long. The working opportunities become fewer and fewer as time goes along and new generations of younger adjuncts cycle in. Many adjuncts get just a few years, and then that’s it. Even the (part time) job opportunities dry up.

Photo by M.O. Stevens (CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

To every professor out there, regardless of your status as an adjunct or as a member of the faculty with tenure, your students need to be informed about the treatment of labor in your schools. First, we need to understand exactly what our tuition dollars are funding. I’m not in college for the workout facilities, swimming pools, and athletics. I’m there to get an education and learn from smart people, and I don’t take kindly to finding out that professors who so profoundly impact my life are getting absolutely screwed by schools.

Second, I realize part of a professor’s job is to inspire, but students need to hear the truth about the career prospects of becoming a professor, how risky that is right now, and what kind of uphill fight adjuncts face in acquiring tenure status. Students need to be able to make informed decisions, and if adjunctification is kept hush-hush out of fear of retribution, students will continue to not realize that the problem exists. You’re all just equal professors to us. Students don’t naturally differentiate between “part time” and “full time” or think about what those words mean. Were it not for my individual set of life experiences and a few hints, I would have no idea what Dr. M. and other adjuncts are going through. Tell people what you are. In your syllabuses, introductory material, email signatures, and class discussions, let your students know if you are an adjunct professor working three jobs. Explain what “adjunct” means. Instead of allowing the “A” to be your scarlet letter, let the institution be the one that wears that shame.

To professors with the job protection that tenure provides, you need to speak up—loudly. Mother Jones would have called you “cowards” for remaining quiet or for voting to sell out your adjunct peers during contract negotiations. I’ll stop there with the early 20th century labor analogies because Mother Jones also likely would have invoked your gender and whispered to the students to burn down campus buildings. Nevertheless, Mother Jones understood something important. The strength of labor exists in the spirit of unity and collectivism. Tenured faculty, out of their own self-interests, and either through their apathy or their contract votes (or both), allowed adjunctification to happen.

Photo by pfly (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s how contract and part-time labor practices took hold in my industry, too. I am as guilty as anyone for casting those same votes and failing to recognize the impact on future generations of workers. Management chips away a little at a time, and before you know it, full-time jobs are hard to find. The pendulum needs to swing back the other way—hard—especially at our public colleges and universities. For that to happen, tenured faculty need to start treating adjuncts like family by standing by them, as brothers and sisters. Say something! Do something! And most of all, fight the boss—not each other.

As for students, I think it’s past time that we get a radical. Administrators fear an agitated student body. Every working human being deserves dignified pay and dignified benefits. Our professors aren’t just there to be used for profit and then cast aside. Adjuncts deserve economic security in exchange for the invaluable work they do—for the positive impact that they have on our lives. If you’ve ever been inspired by an adjunct, you need to speak up because that person may be hurting. Every class evaluation is an opportunity to both lobby the college on behalf of the adjunct who taught you and to question why the college is exploiting so many part-time workers in the first place. Deans should get emails and petitions; campus newspapers need to write stories about adjuncts who are underemployed or become unemployed; and meetings and protests should be held to educate other students.

There is zero excuse, at institutions where people are so well educated about the labor movement and the importance of social progress, for such disgusting and despicable labor practices to be allowed to fester. I receive correspondence from my college all the time referencing inclusion and social justice. Explain to me how crapping on your workforce is just? How is that inclusive? It’s exploitative and corporatist, and as students, we can’t look the other way.

And to all the Dr. Ms out there who are literally hanging on for dear life: you deserve so much more—from me, from students, from your fellow professors, from administrators, from the institutions, and from the politicians who encourage these kinds of labor practices. To every adjunct out there who is living with her parents or struggling to pay for food or housing, do not be ashamed. The shame lies with the administrators and institutions who are willfully exploiting their workers and with the faculty and students who choose to look the other way while these practices continue. Enough is enough. End the fuckery. End adjunctification.

Photo by Angelo DeSantis (CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

1. It also turns out that the Vietnam War and the broader history of the Cold War offers plenty of worthwhile lessons for a student who is deeply interested in public policy and its human impact.
2. Our unions also successfully put collective pressure on political leaders to protect our jobs during the pandemic.
3. Learn more about the different kinds of kinds of college faculty here.
4. I was even one of these workers early in my career.