-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Margaret Mary Vojtko, an adjunct professor who had taught French at Duquesne University for 25 years, died of a massive heart attack at the age of 83. Adjunct professors at Duquesne make between $3000 and $3500 per semester per course. In the best of times, Margaret Mary, teaching three course, wasn’t even clearing $25,000 a year with no benefits and no job security. After Duquesne reduced her to one course, Margaret Mary couldn’t afford to pay the electricity bill and her home became uninhabitable in the winter.
Ironically, Duquesne’s president, Charles J. Dougherty, is a nationally recognized scholar and expert in health care ethics. Since Margaret Mary didn’t have health care, I guess there was no health care ethics involved. Duquesne’s president makes over $700,000 a year with full benefits.
In 2005, adjunct professors make up about 48% of the faculty at colleges and universities. Today, that number is 75% as universities cut costs by reducing the number of more expensive tenured professors. The cost savings are not passed along to students. Duquesne, a private university, has increased tuition an average of 5.4% per year between 2006 and 2010. Higher tuition and lower costs via less qualified professors, the best of both worlds, for the universities.
A majority of the 130 adjunct faculty at Duquesne decided to organize as a chapter of the United Steelworkers and submitted a petition for an election to the National Labor Relations Board. Duquesne hired a Memphis lawyer known for his counseling organizations on how to remain union free. Duquesne filed a motion that since it was a “church-operated school,” it was exempt from NLRB jurisdiction. The motion was denied.
Although Duquesne was founded by, and is sponsored by, members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, it does not depend financially on the Catholic Church, does not require its faculty members to be Catholic, and does not require its student to study Catholicism.
As universities focus on increasing their endowments through cost cutting measures like hiring more adjunct professors, they lose sight of their raison d’être, to provide a quality education for their students.
Only a small part of the U.S. News & World Report rankings are based on the percentage of faculty who are full time. Even this small part is being gamed by the universities. The University of Nebraska interpreted the U.S. News question on the percentage of full time faculty to cover only those faculty who are tenured or on a tenure track and not to cover adjunct faculty. While U.S. News has since detailed that adjuncts should be counted, the low contribution to a school’s ranking, just 5%, is obscene.
The Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice has declared that “Union busting is a mortal sin.” Georgetown University, one of two Catholic universities to make the U.S. News top 25, just recognized its adjunct professors’ union, citing the Catholic Church’s social justice teachings.
H/T: Daniel Kovalik, Austin Cline, Mark Oppenheimer, Claudio Sanchez, Scott Jaschik, Moshe Z. Marvit.
nick,
So many things astonish you. You find so many things to be unbelievable. You must spend your days in a stupor of constant amazement. I’ve read about Trumka and his visits to the White House. I know there is concern among union leaders and members that some employers might cut workers’ hours in order not to have to provide them with health insurance–among other concerns. It’s a very complicated matter. Many people were not happy with Social Security and Medicare in the beginning. Yet, they are popular programs today.
Obamacare was modeled after Romneycare in my state–which has been considered to be a success. I believe Obamacare could have been much better. I don’t think we’ll know for sure if it is a good program for Americans until some years after all of its provisions go into effect.
The union members were lied to by Trumka and their leaders about Obamacare. Trumka is going to lose the seat given to him by John “The Lizard” Sweeney. So, w/ hat in hand, Trumka went to the WH asking for a special opt out. The WH told him to go shit in his hat. This Ponzi scheme of Obamacare can’t work unless the union members bend over, and bending over they are. Trumka will be gone, but there will be a new puppet of the Dem machine installed. And the fat cats will be taken care of while the members eat cake. Trumka will be taken care of however. In The Town, they take care of their own, lobbyists, union fat cats, corporate execs, they all feed off the trough. I am astonished @ your lack of knowledge on this considering your being so pro-union. But, denial is more powerful than truth.
Mike,
Would you agree that it’s a form of escapism in that so many feel powerless that the fantasy of doing in the bad guy has great appeal? I posit that possibility as an alternate to fear of crime.
“Would you agree that it’s a form of escapism in that so many feel powerless that the fantasy of doing in the bad guy has great appeal? I posit that possibility as an alternate to fear of crime.”
Blouise,
I have to positively agree because I’m well aware of my own feelings while watching such stories. I saw the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson twice within a week because I was so blown away by the plot. As a father of daughters it was a perfect escapist fantasy. The movie “Inglorious Basterds” left my wife and I speechless for about five minutes after it ended. We just stayed in our seats gaping at the credits rolling by, but still didn’t move for a bit after they ended. We both feel so strongly about our Jewish identity that the alternative ending of blowing up all the Nazi’s in a theater hit us hard on many levels.
Knowing how media affects my own feelings of helplessness, how can I deny that is does that for others? What may be at play though is that these shows both make people feel more powerful via the fantasy of revenge and yet more at risk as it paints the world as a more dangerous place? I can’t honestly develop a hierarchy of the effect, but I can infer the trends it engenders.
nick,
I think unions feel the same as many of us do about Obamacare. There are good provisions in Obamacare–and things that need to be changed. I was extremely disappointed when a public option was dropped by the Democrats.
Obamacare is pretty much modeled on what we have here in Massachusetts. Healthcare reform was instituted in my state when Romney was our governor. My husband and I already had good healthcare coverage…so it didn’t really have any impact on us.
*****
Here’s an article you might find interesting:
Lessons For The Obamacare Rollout, Courtesy Of Massachusetts
by Richard Knox
October 01, 2013
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/01/227887992/lessons-for-the-obamacare-rollout-courtesy-of-massachusetts
Excerpt:
Today marks a milestone on the nation’s long march toward universal health coverage: the launch of online marketplaces, called exchanges, designed to help people find insurance they can afford.
It’s an idea by Massachusetts seven years ago. People here call their program a success, and say the state’s exchange was an indispensable factor.
Those involved since the beginning say the Massachusetts health insurance exchange, called the , was the brainchild of , a Republican.
Glen Shor, who once ran the Connector and is now the state’s secretary of administration and finance, is confident that the nation will follow Massachusetts’ lead.
“As the [federal] law begins to be implemented,” Shor says, “people will see and feel its positive effects. They’ll be able to see through some of the rhetoric and spin.”
When the Connector opened for business in late 2006, people signed up. Within a year there were 367,000 newly insured citizens.
“Enrollment was fast,” Shor says. “One of the clear lessons of the Massachusetts experience is that people want affordable health insurance.”
Today, 97 percent of the state’s 6.6 million people have it — the highest coverage rate of anywhere in America.
And Shor says Obamacare will bring another 45,000 new people into the fold — those working in low-wage jobs who will qualify for an expansion of MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program.
That group represents “roughly a quarter of the remaining uninsured,” says Shor. “A big deal.”
Thousands more will become eligible for premium subsidies because they make under $46,000 a year (for an individual) or $94,000 (for a family of four). That will bring Massachusetts pretty close to advocates’ longtime dream of universal coverage.
“It’s a fight that’s worth fighting, and I think ultimately it will be won,” Shor says.
But not everybody in Massachusetts is quite so optimistic. Rick Lord is president of , a prominent business group. He was also a leader in the broad bipartisan coalition of business, consumers, health care providers and insurers that resulted in what some here still call Romneycare.
“I think Massachusetts got health care reform right,” says Lord, adding that members of his group are proud that the state is committed to expanding health coverage.
But Lord points out that anything as complicated as health care reform is going to need some tinkering along the way. In Massachusetts, the Legislature passed without controversy three technical corrections after the law was passed. Lord doesn’t see how Congress could do that with Obamacare.
“No amendment to the Affordable Care Act will be passed for fear that the whole act will unravel,” he says. And that makes him more than a little worried.
“I’m feeling a little pessimistic about how it’s going to play out in Washington,” Lord says. “If it’s not successful at all, I worry that will doom the prospects for revisiting this in the short term, [or] even the medium.”
But for now, the fate of Obamacare depends on whether enough Americans vote with their feet in the coming three months, when those who want coverage under the law must choose a plan in order to be covered on Jan. 1.
On the pertinent subject of unions, what is your take on Trumka and Obamacare? Your take, not Aljazeera’s.
knickers riding up on your this morning?
nick,
I provide excerpts from and links to articles that are pertinent to the topic of Nal’s post. Don’t like the media source…don’t read the article.
We’re now going w/ Aljazeera references, can the North Korea Daily News be far behind? Our satellite just picked up the Aljazeera network. I’ve watched some. They better face mecca and thank Allah for out First Amendment daily.
The closing of American academia
The plight of adjunct professors highlights the end of higher education as a means to prosperity.
Last Modified: 20 Aug 2012.
By Sarah Kendzior
(Sarah Kendzior is an anthropologist who recently received her PhD from Washington University in St Louis.)
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/2012820102749246453.html
Excerpt:
Below poverty line
In most professions, salaries below the poverty line would be cause for alarm. In academia, they are treated as a source of gratitude. Volunteerism is par for the course – literally. Teaching is touted as a “calling”, with compensation an afterthought. One American research university offers its PhD students a salary of $1000 per semester for the “opportunity” to design and teach a course for undergraduates, who are each paying about $50,000 in tuition. The university calls this position “Senior Teaching Assistant” because paying an instructor so far below minimum wage is probably illegal.
In addition to teaching, academics conduct research and publish, but they are not paid for this work either. Instead, all proceeds go to for-profit academic publishers, who block academic articles from the public through exorbitant download and subscription fees, making millions for themselves in the process. If authors want to make their research public, they have to pay the publisher an average of $3000 per article. Without an institutional affiliation, an academic cannot access scholarly research without paying, even for articles written by the scholar itself.
It may be hard to summon sympathy for people who walk willingly into such working conditions. “Bart, don’t make fun of grad students,” Marge told her son on an oft-quoted episode of The Simpsons. “They just made a terrible life choice.”
But all Americans should be concerned about adjuncts, and not only because adjuncts are the ones teaching our youth. The adjunct problem is emblematic of broader trends in American employment: the end of higher education as a means to prosperity, and the severing of opportunity to all but the most privileged.
In a searing commentary, political analyst Joshua Foust notes that the unpaid internships that were once limited to show business have now spread to nearly every industry. “It’s almost impossible to get a job working on policy in this town without an unpaid internship,” he writes from Washington DC, one of the most expensive cities in the country. Even law, once a safety net for American strivers, is now a profession where jobs pay as little as $10,000 a year – unfeasible for all but the wealthy, and devastating for those who have invested more than $100,000 into their degrees. One after another, the occupations that shape American society are becoming impossible for all but the most elite to enter.
The value of a degree
Academia is vaunted for being a meritocracy. Publications are judged on blind review, and good graduate programs offer free tuition and a decent stipend. But its reliance on adjuncts makes it no different than professions that cater to the elite through unpaid internships.
Anthropologists are known for their attentiveness to social inequality, but few have acknowledged the plight of their peers. When I expressed doubt about the job market to one colleague, she advised me, with total seriousness, to “re-evaluate what work means” and to consider “post-work imaginaries”. A popular video on post-graduate employment cuts to the chase: “Why don’t you tap into your trust fund?”
Blouise,
“I’m not talking conspiracy … I’m talking natural progression of the scariest kind enabled by that general malaise to which you just referred.”
Most certainly.
Bron, I have never responded to the Ayn Rand bait for 2 reasons. First, I have never read her. I take suggestions on fiction from my wife who has read her, saying while thought provoking she is VERY wordy. Knowing I’m a Hemingway guy, she knows I would hate Rand’s writing. Secondly, I am a Founding Father libertarian, w/ Jefferson being primary. And, w/ all the angst over the government shutdown, it is nice to have the NSA pared back a bit. This is the 17th government shutdown since my wife and I were married in 1977. She went through 15 of them. This histrionic hyperventilating is amusing to watch.
Ask union members about how Richard Trumka and other AFL-CIO fat cats sold them down the river w/ Obamacare. Now, they’re up shit creek, sans paddle. But, Trumka will have a great plan and keep getting fatter. So there’s that.
I am pretty sure most libertarians have given up on anarchy and are mostly limited government types.
I am also sure there are some who still cling to anarchy.
But to say that something like Nazi Germany will arise from Ron Paul or libertarianism is a stretch.
Gene,
sorry .. reins
Nal,
Thanks … I just added the Chronicle of Higher Education to my bookmarks as there appears to be many interesting articles to read.
” It concerns me that the general malaise might translate into what happened in Germany before the war when the Nazis came to power almost by default …” (Gene)
Legit concern which requires an immediate and in-depth understanding of history and an ability to remove emotionalism from the analysis so that the leader can be unmasked and exposed before the reigns of power are in his hands. (It’s possible it could be a her.)
I’m going to suggest, knowing that you will not take the suggestion personally, that the real hints lie within the culture in which you conduct your daily existence.
Take note of Nal’s post at 10:42am today for it illuminates yet another piece of the puzzle. When turning you mind to the threat of a modern day American/Germanfication remember that the Tea Party first struck out from deep within Ron Paul’s libertarian movement.
I’m not talking conspiracy … I’m talking natural progression of the scariest kind enabled by that general malaise to which you just referred.
“I’m going to suggest, knowing that you will not take the suggestion personally, that the real hints lie within the culture in which you conduct your daily existence.”
Blouise,
I couldn’t agree with you more. The signs of decay in this country do show clearly in the culture that has arisen. What’s ironic about that is that it was an ab-reaction to the 60’s that motivated the Conservative movement. Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan and others have frequently mourned the loss of the 1950’s sensibilities. One of the reason I watch the varied variety shows that I do is that they inform me about the culture I live in. Television itself provides great clues as to where people’s heads are at. The most popular “drama” series are variation on the police procedural theme. Is is any wonder then that there is so much fear of criminal violence in and era where the statistics show that violent crime has been decreasing? I could go on forever so I’ll stop here.
Nal,
Thanks for the link to that article.
nick,
My mother, her co-workers, all my teaching colleagues and I did not get the “short end.” We got better working conditions and better benefits than we had before we negotiated contracts with our school board with the help of union representatives. Prove me wrong that most workers don’t get better benefits and working conditions when they are represented by unions..
#13 Become a bastion of pc and speech codes, pleasing the insular ivory towers, but alienating the taxpayers asked to support them.
Nal,
Excellent article and certainly on point. That fits with the propaganda Gene has been writing about. If a student can get through college and grad school without monumental debt, they (and their parents) are somehow seditious and a threat.
However, if they started out as part of the 1% and can afford to write a check without breaking a sweat it, then that’s makes it OK.