In reading through this thread, I am amazed at the minimal concern expressed
about the exploitation of our colleagues who are being used to keep the
school within a very tight budget. Does one, for example, see any adjunct
administrators. No. In fact, if your school is anything like mine, you have
seen an enormous increase over the last 10 years in the number of administra-
tors.
There seems to be a stereotype that adjunct faculty (the vast majority of them
anyway) are simply people who would not have been hired anyway. But, if that
is true, it may simply be due to the fact that so few full-time faculty are
being hired nowadays. When I was at the Univ of Missouri a few years back,
one of the faculty taking part in a job search mentioned that there was no way
he would get hired if he were looking for a job today. He had been hired only
15 years before!
The national disgrace is that we allow this exploitation to continue. And it
also reduces the power of full-time faculty since there are always a large
group of part-timers waiting in the wings.
I think I'll go into administration when I retire,
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
