Which crucial American institution, our journalism or our education system, has deteriorated more?
This has become an ongoing inquiry at Ethics Alarms. My official participation in either has been sporadic and marginal—no, I don’t consider writing Ethics Alarms journalism—so I cherish commentary by genuine participants. Fortunately we have a lot of teachers, former and current, who weigh in here regularly. For a long time, one regular reader used EA as an assigned class resource. (If there are any journalists out there who visit this site, they haven’t revealed themselves).
As this Comment of the Day by jdkazoo123 demonstrates, insiders in a profession can identify problems with ethical implications that the rest of us on the outside looking in may never consider. Here it is, a reaction to the post, “Ethics Dunce: University of California at Santa Cruz.” ( I also recommend Ethics Alarms special correspondent Curmie’s response to the COTD at that link.)
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I agree it’s crazy, but there’s a deeper wrong embedded in the stupid wrong–the salary of adjuncts.
Adjuncts are now essential to the functioning of almost all large higher educational institutions, and most small and medium ones as well. The market is saturated with people with PhDs, and they won’t give up the dream of teaching college easily or quickly. This creates a surplus labor force that ostensibly leftwing admins exploit like robber barons. At the same time, a largely leftwing professoriate goes along with it, wringing their hands, gee what could we do?
The teaching load at most schools used to be 4/4 (that’s 4 in spring, 4 in fall) 100 years ago. It’s now 1/1 in truth for most professors at Harvard and similar schools, with buyouts with grants (at my school, you bring in 35K as part of a grant, I think, and you give that to the school so you don’t have to teach 1 course, and the granters get more of your undivided work for that semester) and admin reductions (I directed a program this year, and so my normal 2-2 load went to 2-1). So you might be paying a professor 100K (or whatever) and only covering 3-4 courses a year. Which means there’s a lot more need for adjuncts. And check out the profit on that buyout. You replace a full time faculty member with an adjunct making 5-8K per course! And of course, adjuncts often teach better than regular faculty, because if they suck in the classroom enough, they don’t get hired back, whereas profs who suck in the classroom, if they have tenure…well. However, I feel sorry for my students who have an adjunct prof as their favorite, because when its time for recommendations for law school or whatever, that prof may not be there…Meanwhile, the vast sums of money that kept swept into higher education are going to unbelievable amenities (food, gyms, dorms), supremely well paid coaches, stadiums, and a rapidly growing administrative class that pays itself astronomical salaries.
Republicans are going after left wing ideologies, safe spaces, crazy external speakers, BDS demonstrators, some of which may be important, some of which are rightwing moral panics, but they are missing the real problem–the administrative bloat and the misplaced priorities, plus a need to seriously revise tenure so that it protects the free inquiry of professors but not the slacking off in research and the classroom.
Rant ended.
Ethics Alarms 
Having worked in three different roles including support staff, professional technical and adjunct faculty in a community college I concur.
Administrative bloat is not limited to post secondary institutions. You will find it in public K-12 systems as well.
Absolutely. We have a number of current and retired grade school teachers in our circle, from early elementary to high school. The proliferation of useless administrators (Hello, “Dr. Jill”) is the top complaint from all of them. It seems that such people constantly try to justify their positions by burdening actual teachers with one faddish program or policy after another.
After our kids were mobile, my wife finally put her degrees to use teaching high school Latin. She truly enjoyed that work with the students, but ultimately retired early. She wanted to teach, not keep journals and do other unproductive busywork that took up time that could be used in preparation for actually educating children.
Jill Biden just teaches, she’s not an administrator. I think it’s admirable that she taught community college all through her husband’s VP term and his presidency. This is an example of someone giving back, when they don’t need the money. Rumor has it she’s pretty good in the classroom. And we needed to have a FLOTUS who didn’t work. Now let’s work to get rid of the staff and budget. Why should the spouse of the president have a staff, any more than the spouse of the Chief Justice or the Speaker of the House? It’s an affront to our republican heritage.
I meant to type “we needed to have a FLOTUS who didn’t STOP working” Howard Dean’s wife swore she would continue to see patients as a doctor if Dean became president, which is what she did when he was governor of Vermont. As she put it–politics is Howard’s thing, not mine. One of the things I liked about Melania is she didn’t do much as First Lady. She certainly didn’t involve herself in politics much, or pick a pet issue and work it. It’s creeping monarchism to make the family of the president powerful. They’re just citizens.
I remember reading an article years ago about how the guaranteed student loans meant more money was available for the taking. Universities compete for that money by offering the amenities that attract students. It just became a cycle that raised the cost of tuition so that most students couldn’t attend without loans and more loans meant more costly amenities.
It’s been my assumption since then that students are paying for things that only a minority of them will use or appreciate. Of course, all of that money coming in means the administration gets bigger. Some are create-work jobs for DEI purposes. Some positions are made so that the current admin person can feel more important by having staff. Even someone with barely enough work to keep them busy most days will want to have staff if only because another, much busier person, has staff.
As an adjunct myself, I entirely concur with the article. As someone who teaches at a design school, the funding goes inexorably to administrative positions, particularly DEI/SEI positions and multiple VPs and Asst VPs of this and that.
All that said, however, I don’t actually have it too bad — the pay could be better, but it’s not terrible, considering I only have to be in studio class 2 afternoons a week; I don’t advise; and I don’t have to be too involved in most departmental staff meetings. I can teach the next generation, and sometimes find potential interns. It also enables me enough time to focus on my own business. Parenthetically, I’m too old to consider wanting a full-time teaching position, but to even apply for one does require one to have an outside “practice”. How anyone does that, in addition to a full-time spot, is beyond me, though that is where once again adjuncts come in to carry the load!
As a former adjunct faculty member at two colleges (one public and one private), I readily concur. And yes, the growth in non-faculty administrative staff is astounding. In the last program in which I taught, the department head was the only tenure-track faculty member. All the rest of us were adjuncts. Many if not most had more than one job.