The Article for the Chron that Didn't Get Printed

This is my article for the Chronicle of Higher Education.  It didn't get printed.  Does the Chronicle of Higher Ed know that Sweet Briar and fraternity scandels at Penn State aren't really the big issues in education right now?  Or are they purposefully ignoring the crisis in the hopes that it will go away?

Either way, it's a problem.  We need to speak to faculty.  They need to know what we have to say.  Please share this any way you can.

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Did your job search get cancelled?  Are you looking across the hall and noticing a new face in Bob’s old office?  I mean, seriously, Bob.  Bob was a top scholar in his field.  A damned giant.  He wrote that book.  After that book, well, things changed in the discipline and now, well, now Bob’s gone and there’s some new person there in his office, and he/she is always wearing the same damned sweater day after day.  You tell your department head and the rest of full time faculty you call your colleagues, “Hey, shouldn’t we replace Bob.  I mean who’s going to teach class X.”  The other two full timers in your department agree with you.  And your department head says, “nothing we can do.  They’ve cancelled our search.  Not enough money in the budget right now to hire a new professor.”

And then you do the math.  Bob’s gone, and Tracy.  Richard left two years ago right after Carol, and…  Well, if you look back over the last decade, you realize that your department has gone from 20 or so full time faculty, down to you four.  Amanda retires this year…  Will there then be only the three of you?

Well, no because your floor of the tower is still full of people, right?  They just don’t have, you know permanent positions.  They’re just stop gaps who remain on, year after year, stopping the gap.  “They got money to hire these people,” you try to argue, but it’s no use, because, as your department chair points out, “these people,” only cost about ten grand a piece as opposed to the $55,000 you’d have to give a new assistant professor.  “We can get 4 or 5 of them for the same money.  Don’t worry, we've got people to cover the classes.”

Classes, by the way, that you barely teach anymore.  Sure, you still get to talk to some of the grad students now and again, but as for the undergraduates in the major, they move like ghosts through the department.  Their teachers are all of these adjuncts.  Hard to even call them mentors, really.  No one can be sure if they’ll be around from semester to semester.  At any rate, they’re not required to take anyone under their wing, and you’d know because part of this adjunct thing is that you need to check in on them every now and again, as one of the few remaining full timers, to make sure that the contingent faculty is all teaching according to the department’s vision.  Those meetings are weird.   Everyone there has at least a decade’s worth of teaching experience, and there you are, trying to explain to them the importance of having the students all write at least 20 pages worth of essays for the classes.  Everyone there’s aware that it’s all for show, including yourself, but then you get release time for it.  At least that’s something,

“But if these adjuncts are always this affordable, when are we ever going to get a new hire?  When’s the President ever going to think it’s a good idea to invest in the department like that?  Eventually, the only people teaching will be the adjuncts.  The rest of us will be too bogged down in committee work to have any say in the shape of our own department. ”

Amanda consoles you.  “Don’t worry about it.  You’re retiring soon.  That’ll free up about $85,000.”  Eight more adjuncts, all of them working at three institutions apiece.  A whole department full of “professors” who don’t belong to the department, who don’t go the extra mile because there’s no chance they’ll ever be promoted, and who don’t take students under their wing because they have no incentive.  You’ve got a whole department of professors who don’t shape curriculum, who don’t have time to do anything but show up and teach, and who don’t think of your department as their home.  You will be replaced by 8 of them.

“Look, this meeting isn’t about replacing Amanda.  We got the call from the Dean.  In 5 years, they want to transition us into one department for all of the Humanities.  Our department is going to be absorbed.   We’re going to be a specialty within that system.  This will allow us to pool resources with the other specialties.”

“What?”

“They say we don’t have enough faculty to stand as our own independent department.  All of the specialties within the humanities are feeling the pinch right now.”

“But we’d have more faculty if they’d let us hire replacements for all the people we’ve lost!”

“Yeah, but everyone wants new faculty.  They just can’t afford it right now.”

The halls are filled with adjuncts.  The department won’t even trust them with the key to the copy room.  They have to get it from the secretary.  Six of them to an office and the office is filled with some retired professors books.  Faculty member after faculty member leaving.  No one ever replaced because they can get 8 adjuncts for each retiree.  The grad students who are yours: where do they think they’re going to end up?  The students you encourage in their scholarship.  The guy in Bob’s old office who always wears the same sweater.

“So, we’re being downsized and we’re not getting a new hire is what you’re saying.”

“Well, technically we are getting a new hire since we’ll be part of the Humanities.  They’re letting modern languages do a search for a position in Chinese language and literature.”

“Chinese.”

“Yeah, well the business department’s really pushing for their students to learn Chinese, so…”