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(Adjuncts: The Slave Labor of Higher Education -- continued)
No apology. In other schools, one would simply be sent an inquiry or a notice that one had been assigned a course. At one school, one had to check the course list for the next semester. No notice was given if one were not assigned a course.
In the same school that sent no notice, political favoritism in favor of friends of faculty members was obvious. “Well, I don’t know why you are not on the list this semester. You’ll have to ask.....” A friend of a faculty member was given both sections after I had been asked to show her the ropes the semester before.
Pay Is Not Based on Evaluation of Performance
In most schools, adjuncts are not observed by the chair or a senior faculty member while teaching. They do not have personal observation on which to evaluate a faculty member. The department chair evaluates adjuncts solely on the basis of chance encounters and student evaluations at the end of the semester.
Of the nine schools where I taught, an exception to this was Prince George’s Community College in Maryland. Adjuncts were observed by the chair or a senior tenured faculty member at least once every two years. Student evaluations were taken so seriously that a secretary was present to ensure that the process was taken seriously by students.
In my experience, however, except for Prince George’s, students do not take evaluations seriously. They complete them quickly, their written comments are cursory, they chat and joke around or go to the bathroom while they wait for others to finish, and they use the evaluation form for anonymous criticism with no explanation.

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They have no accountability for what is said. Seeking anonymous revenge is easy. When I asked about such complaints, I was told, “Oh, we never worry about those unless there is a pattern.”
In short, in virtually all cases, department chairs have little verifiable factual foundation on which to make judgments about who is doing a competent job. Probably most adjuncts do. Some adjuncts clearly don’t.
Adjunct Pay Is Below the Poverty Line
What is somewhat less obvious is that adjunct teachers are also being used in economic terms. The federal poverty line for a single person for 2013 is $958 a month. Generally adjuncts are not allowed to teach more than five courses a year, lest they claim full-time benefits. That means that the most they can make is roughly $9,375 a year, which is $2,125 below the federal poverty line for a single person. If, and this is a big “if,” an adjunct is assigned a summer course, that adds another $1800 or so, but the total is still at or below the poverty line.
Put another way, adjuncts are not paid enough to live on. It is fair to say that this is fundamental disrespect for adjuncts as individuals, for adjuncts as professional teachers, and for the students they teach. It is also “using” the people who are teaching the next generation. Not a single ethicist in Western civilization from Aristotle to Ayn Rand would find this treatment ethical.
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