(Adjuncts: The Slave Labor of Higher Education -- continued)
Anonymous Complaints Factor into Retention Decisions
Even worse, in one school, happily in only one school where I taught, a student complaint to the chair would become the basis for a “fishing expedition” about what was going on in class. The presumption was obvious that the instructor had done something wrong and needed to defend himself against an anonymous student complaint. The student was not asked to discuss the concern with the instructor first. The student was not identified by name, supposedly to protect the student from retribution. I know of no adjunct faculty member, however, who would have been punitive.
Either faculty members care or they do not care, but there is no reason to be punitive. To the contrary, the student knew full well that he or she would have no accountability whatever for what he or she said but also knew that the faculty member would be in trouble. No judge would have allowed such injustice. Students talk. They knew they could do this. The results were a culture of complaint, a loss of respect and loyalty to the chair, and demoralized faculty.
It is not too difficult to set up a system where legitimate complaints can be made, evaluated, and resolved, on paper, with a fair hearing, and with protection for both the student and the faculty member. Not to do so is disrespectful to adjuncts and laziness on the part of the administration.
Labor Laws Violations
As if this were not enough! In the Maine Community College System, the administration has been resisting serious negotiation on a contract with adjuncts for more than two and a half years. At least at one of the colleges in the system, it is fair to conclude that the chair is pushing out a representative on the faculty bargaining team. Presumably the president knows or should know about this and stop it.
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Not bargaining in good faith and squeezing out a union representative are violations of the labor laws. Both of these actions are inherently disrespectful to adjuncts as professionals and as teachers. Such actions are also very short-sighted in terms of long-term results.
Administrators Unthinkingly Produce Mediocrity
What makes all this possible, of course, is that there are enough qualified teachers who need work and will accept such conditions. Only at one college where I taught, and where the pay was notably higher, did adjuncts have any leverage. They had the protections of a union representative to advocate for them.
It should be clear from all this that adjuncts do not have the serious respect of either system administrators, college administrators, or department chairs. It is easy to conclude that adjuncts are not valued, that they are considered as fungible as ears of corn, and that their names often simply fill boxes. “Well, if she doesn’t want to teach the course, there will be someone else.”
What neither the system administration nor the college administrations seem to understand is that such actions demoralize faculty, encourage half-hearted commitment, and provide ready rationalization for not doing more than what one thinks appropriate for wages received.
The Wiser Choice
By contrast if adjuncts were truly respected, then administrators would want to see adjuncts be well-paid, be fairly evaluated, be assigned courses responsibly, be fully qualified, and have high morale.
It follows that retention and graduation rates would go up. It follows for individual colleges that good students would not seek to go elsewhere, initially or as soon as they can.