adjuncts
TagTenured & Tenure-Track Profs: Take the Summer Off from Teaching (guest post by Ted Shear)
In the following guest post*, Ted Shear, lecturer in philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, suggests a way that those with secure positions in academia can help out their more vulnerable colleagues during this time of increased economic insecurity. (more…)
AAUP Issues Report On Adjunct Philosophy Professor Allegedly Fired For High Standards
Nathaniel Bork was an adjunct philosophy professor at the Community College of Aurora (CCA) for six years when he was fired a few weeks into the Fall 2016 semester. As reported here last November, Bork claimed that he was fired for refusing to lower the educational standards in his courses and threatening to complain about curricular changes (the “Gateway to Success..
Winners of the APA’s Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2016 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize. The prize was created in 2013 and is funded by Routledge, which is part of the Taylor & Francis publishing group. The prize is awarded for the two best published articles in philosophy written by adjunct professors. The 2016 winners are: (more…)..
The Job Insecurity of Philosophy Instructors: A Case Study
“I love being a professor. I have been a professor my whole life. I don’t know what I am going to do.” That’s Pamela Ryan, who has been a philosophy instructor at Morehead State University for 15 years. This past Friday she was called into the office of the Dean of the Caudill College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Morehead, M. Scott McBride, and told t..
Winners of the APA’s Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize
The American Philosophical Association (APA) has announced the winners of the 2015 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Prize. The prize is for the two best published philosophy articles written by adjunct professors, and includes $1000.
This year’s winners are Ben Bramble (Lund University) for “Whole-Life Welfarism“, published in American Philosophical Quarterly, and Mar..
Academic Employment Numbers: A Closer Look
Articles about employment in higher education sometimes mention that 75% of today’s college instructors are adjuncts. That number—or at least the idea that there are very many adjuncts employed by universities—seems to inform various discussions about academic training and employment (such as whether there are too many philosophy PhDs — here and here, for examp..
Conference Fees and Non-TT Faculty (updated)
Many philosophy conferences charge fees, with one rate for faculty and a lower rate for students. A philosopher who is an adjunct at a state university, and who at this time would prefer to remain anonymous, is trying to get conferences to recognize a third category for adjuncts, visiting lecturers, postdocs, and the like, i.e., those who would like to participate i..
Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day
Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day (NAWD). There was some discussion of this here last week. Some information about the day and planned activities is at this Tumblr site, as well as on Facebook. The Chronicle of Higher Education interviews Ellen Schrecker (Yeshiva University), whose research includes academic labor and the broader labor movement, about the day. T..
Adjunct Walkout Day: What are you doing?
Adjuncts sometimes say they make up higher education’s invisible class. So an idea pitched on social media a few months ago struck a chord: What would happen if adjuncts across the country turned that invisibility on its head by all walking out on the same day? National Adjunct Walkout Day, proposed for Feb. 25, immediately gained support, and adjuncts continue to u..
Professors in Poverty
A few weeks ago Salon published “Professors on Food Stamps: The Shocking True Story of Academia in 2014.” The article shares the plight of adjunct instructors, a lot of whom teach many courses at multiple institutions for minimal compensation.
“The most shocking thing is that many of us don’t even earn the federal minimum wage,” said Miranda Merklein, an adjunct ..
Better To Not Create Lectureships?
An assistant professor who wishes to remain anonymous (“given the possibility that my department might proceed to hire a lecturer, I do not by any means want that individual to feel anything other than completely welcome in our department”) writes in with the following query:
“Say an institution is contemplating creating a new non-tenure-track lectureship positio..
Advertising Exploitative Positions
Derek Bowman, a recent philosophy PhD who is currently employed as a part-time lecturer, writes in with a suggestion for addressing the increasingly prevalent practice of hiring part-time or adjunct faculty to meet teaching needs. I present it here for your consideration and discussion.
In recent years, the philosophy blogosphere has done an admirable job mak..