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I'm faculty at a regional university in the U.S. Our enrollment is dropping by 5% a year, and short term positions are becoming the norm. Tenure track positions
by jimmar 11y ago
I'm faculty at a regional university in the U.S. Our enrollment is dropping by 5% a year, and short term positions are becoming the norm. Tenure track positions are risky in that once you've got somebody with tenure, it's difficult to get rid of them (intentionally). Short term positions give universities flexibility. We are not a Harvard or Yale with billions of dollars in endowments. Tuition is 80% of revenue, and our existence in 20 years is in no way guaranteed.
I don't know how many universities are flush with cash and are just being stingy by using adjuncts, but where I work (small regional university), we have intense budget pressure. We'd have to raise tuition a lot to cover the cost of converting adjust to tenure-track positions.
I don't like how adjuncts are treated, but seeing the problem from our administration's point of view, I know why we have so many adjuncts.
- bjd2385 11y agoThey're dropping for various reasons, I'm sure. But first and foremost because a bachelor's degree isn't worth anything anymore. Both my sister and my father have Bachelor's degrees and my dad's a janitor and my sister's a nurse. Granted, a nurse isn't that bad, but cleaning up people's feces on top of everyone in the practice being against her going to school to become a doctor (so she doesn't have to "ask permission" or clean up after people anymore) is a disgrace. And for my dad -- he's working with the lowest of the low. It's just awful that someone can bury themselves in 100k of debt to barely make more than minimum wage and clean up shit.
- blackguardx 11y agoNursing is a highly paid, respected profession. It is a different job than a doctor, just like a designer is different than a programmer.
- hueving 11y agoYour sister doesn't sound like a nurse to me. An RN doesn't clean up feces.
- Omniusaspirer 11y agoThey absolutely do in the US if the situation calls for it and more appropriate staff aren't immediately available. You can't leave someone sitting in their own feces for an hour just because the CNA's are currently busy with other patients and you're somehow too good to do the dirty work.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 11y agoNurses come in different levels, an LPN would probably be doing cleanup instead of an RN. A nurse practitioner would be even less likely.
- wheaties 11y agoAs a former adjunct I can understand how you feel. That said, I agree in many ways with the article, you're also not seeing the budgetary perspective with a structure of 1960's university and only the 1990+ structure which probably currently exists at your school. That is a pre ponderous amount of administrators that used to not exist are eating a significant amount of the total cost of operation. If employee pay is the biggest constraint, the first look should be towards the administrators and not the educators. The educators are and should be the focus.
- hoogleud 11y ago> I'm faculty That doesn't make any sense as a sentence. Faculty is a noun, not an adjective. Do you mean 'I'm part of the faculty' or 'I'm on the faculty'.
- chrisbennet 11y agoI didn't downvote you but the sentence does make sense. It's like saying "I'm staff, so I get benefits." vs "I'm on the staff, .."
- gergoerdi 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy