R.E.S.P.E.C.T. the A.D.J.U.N.C.T.
Does Ole Miss buck national trends on treatment of adjunct faculty?
by Bill DeJournett
Eunika Rogers hunches over a computer monitor in a dingy classroom in Meek Hall, one of the University of Mississippi’s older buildings. Built in the 1960s, it was one of the first buildings in which James Meredith attended classes in 1962. It now houses the art department. Rogers, an attractive woman whose towering six-foot height has the ability to intimidate, now 
is in a contemplative state as she advises an undergraduate coed dressed in a bright green T-shirt on her final graphic design project. Rogers is one of the University’s approximately 350 adjunct instructors. She teaches a full load of classes, advises students and serves on various committees in the art department. When not working at Ole Miss, she paints at her home in Memphis, sometimes earning extra income when one of her works sells. Rogers came to Ole Miss from a community college, taking a hefty pay cut, but she says the move was positive and she is happy to be working at Ole Miss.
Is Rogers the exception to a trend in higher education to abuse adjunct faculty, or is the exception the University of Mississippi itself? A sampling of various departments at the University of Mississippi revealed a definite disparity between the salary levels of full-time and adjunct faculty. In the Art Department, full-time salaries range from a low of $51,000 per annum for an Assistant Professor to a high of $91,000 for a full professor. Adjunct instructors range as low as $27,000 to $31,000. The median salary for a full-time tenured or tenure-track professor in that department is $41,000 higher than the median for an adjunct instructor. In the journalism school, the difference between median salaries of full-time and adjunct teachers is $24,500, according to public records.
Evidence suggests that there exists a trend among institutions of higher learning to rely increasingly upon non-tenured or adjunct instructors, specifically to cover lower-level academic courses. According to Maura Lerner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “only three in 10 professors are tenured today, down from six in 10 in the 1970s”. She also said that adjunct professors make $18,000 to $30,000 for a typical years’ work; compared to $68,000 to $116,000 (plus benefits) for tenure-track professors, according to the American Association of University Professors. Additionally, the American Association of University Professors states that “more than 50 percent of all faculty hold part-time appointments.”
Renowned scholar Richard Geertz, reflecting on the higher education climate in a 1999 address to the American Council of Learned Societies, described his career as “A charmed life, in a charmed time. An errant career, mercurial, various, free, instructive, and not all that badly paid. The question is: Is such a life and such a career available now? In the Age of Adjuncts? When graduate students refer to themselves as ‘the pre-unemployed?’”
In a commentary from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Milton Greenberg, emeritus professor at American University said “The fact is that nontenured and non-tenure-track faculty are toiling in undesirable positions at low pay and subsidizing the interests and security of tenured faculty members whose performance is not necessarily superior to nontenured faculty or even compatible with the needs and interests of students or the institutional mission.”
In a Huffington Post blog, David Loncle, studio art professor at the College of Staten Island, said “A single class each semester … has kept my head above water. During this time I have fought to orchestrate my schedule around no less than a dozen sources of income. While squeezing in time for my painting and writing, I have installed art shows and cabinets, baked cookies and managed theater performances, labored on a book and managed the organization and storage of an artist estate, grown my own food and donated time to the boards of a couple foundations, to note only a few examples. Moreover, my family is also affected by the volatile economy and has been in need of whatever assistance I have been able to provide, preventing me from accruing anything resembling savings. I am one of the successful ones.”
Some believe Ole Miss bucks this trend. Ron Vernon, former associate dean for the University of Mississippi’s College of Liberal Arts, says Ole Miss has been at the forefront of recognition of adjunct faculty’s role in higher education. “One of the things that I was involved with when I was in the Dean’s office is creating a career ladder for our instructional faculty- Instructors, Lecturers, Senior Lecturers, to offer some reward, some job security- not tenure- but some job security, some professional advancement for people in these roles….. It consisted of developing those three levels and having departments who used those positions, develop criteria that it could use to recognize excellence in teaching, and there are promotion raises associated with those, just as there are promotion raises for tenure-track faculty. When one becomes a lecturer, one receives at least twelve months’ notice before employment can be discontinued. It’s not tenure- it recognizes, in some way, their contribution to the department. And it challenges those faculty members to continue to develop as instructors. You don’t get promoted, just as you don’t get promoted on tenure-track faculty, just for putting in your time. We feel like if we are going to use these individuals with these kinds of skills, this kind of focus in their careers, we need to treat them decently as professionals.”
Ole Miss may differ from other institutions in that if faculty members have a minimum of a 50 percent load, the equivalent of two classes, they are eligible for full benefits, including health insurance and retirement plans. According to Raquel Burgos Liles, senior human resources assistant with the University, “As far as benefits are concerned the only thing that is driven by is employment percentage. It makes no difference if they are tenure-track, non-tenure track, adjunct- it makes no difference. As long as they are employed at least fifty percent, they are eligible for most benefits at the University. There are a few fringe benefits that unless you are full time you aren’t eligible for….. Those would be, tuition benefit for children, athletic tickets discount, those are just a few. But as far as the major benefits- the health and the retirement, as long as you are employed at 50 percent, then you’re eligible.”
Liles spoke about a faculty member who teaches two online courses but actually lives in Colorado. Those two courses put her over the 50 percent threshold. Liles said the faculty member was shocked when she learned she would get a benefits package.
Eunika Rogers cites a feeling of relative equality and respect between adjunct and tenure-track employment. “In terms of my job here, it’s pretty much the same thing. I’m being treated like a tenured faculty in a way that I have a full load, an office… I advise a lot of students. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing a lot lately. I serve on BFA committees for fine arts students, I’m on a committee for my masters students. The students decide who they want on a committee, and they can pretty much choose anyone- tenured or adjunct- whoever is actually working here in the building. There have not been many differences except, I guess of the paycheck! ….. It’s been very positive.”
Before coming to Ole Miss, Rogers taught art at Northwest Community College in Senatobia. “ I actually took a huge pay cut. I had a very secure job. I was next in line to be director of the department upon retirement of my older colleague- I would have to commit crime to be fired over there. But it was just not rewarding from the quality of my students and the education that they wanted me to give my students. They wanted me to dumb it down…. So what happened was University of Mississippi Professor Chavis, who was the head of graphics, took the position of chair, and she needed someone to come over and teach for her. So that was my cue that it was time to leave Northwest. So it’s been rewarding in the sense that even though I’m an adjunct I’m teaching these upper level students, and it’s hugely rewarding. That’s what I’m looking for. Job satisfaction is huge.”
As for the downside to being adjunct, Rogers said,“Yeah, and just the fact that there is a contract every year. Like I never know if I’m going to have a job until- I guess when the course schedules come out- that’s when I know, ‘Oh, I’m here for another semester’”.
Of course ,adjunct instructors do aspire to full-time, tenure track jobs. “Yeah, I would do it. I would do it for security reasons. I would have to think about it in terms of how much time that would take me away from my paintings. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about lately because there was a position open here for graphic designer and I applied and didn’t get it. I don’t know why, I didn’t ask, I don’t want to know. So just talking to my friends and my family, the question was raised ‘do you really want it’ because it would take you away from that- like I would have to be here- I don’t know- five days a week, right now I just work four because of studio classes. So I don’t know- I’m not really sure what that would entail. But the security, of course, is attractive in this economy.”
Dr. Kerry Bowers, an adjunct instructor in the Office of Writing and Rhetoric since 2010, typically teaches six courses a semester on both the Oxford and Tupelo campuses. Leaving her home in Tupelo no later than six-thirty each morning, she commutes an hour each way. Despite this, Bowers has favorable things to say about Ole Miss: “I’ve had a very positive experience. I would probably take a pay cut if I got a real job here. At this point I’m willing, because, you know adjunct has that stamp of impermanence. However, this is a very exceptional place to work as an adjunct. I recently got an award to go to the Four C’s. (Author’s note- the “Four C’s” stands for the Conference on College Composition and Communication.) Adjuncts don’t get that in most places. Adjuncts don’t get twelve classes a year. Adjuncts don’t get offices- my office mate is a so-called ‘real’- she has a real title and a job and they give her cards. It’s very warm, very friendly, I’m on the curriculum committee for advanced compositionand I’m compensated for that- not a lot, but something. …… It’s a very supportive environment compared to what I heard from other adjuncts.” Bowers acknowledges the downside of adjunct teaching encountered by others outside of the University of Mississippi: “And there’s the ‘adjunct project’- it’s on the Chronicle. It’s essentially a huge collection of different gripes of adjuncts. I had to stop reading it- it was too depressing. Did you hear the story about that woman- that older woman, who was a French teacher, and she died- they would only give her two classes, she was eighty, and living in a house without electricity, and it really brought it to the fore, and my office mate actually printed this out and gave it to her class. Most people don’t know that a lot of the courses are taught by adjuncts. I’m fortunate- I’m treated like a human being. I’m not ostracized or anything….. So, it’s a really positive experience as an adjunct.”
Ole Miss might be the exception to the norm on a national level. While UM’s benefit package and overall treatment of adjuncts, not all is rosy on a national level. Ron Vernon said: “We have had a tendency, because those tenure-track faculty are not in touch with a lot of students, to try and compensate for that by the hiring of, whatever you call them, faculty members whose principal load is to teach, and to teach either a relatively large number of classes, and sometimes more than that, in other institutions, a semester, and we know that many of these faculty members in urban areas are teaching at more than one institution, and very often their cumulative workload might be six or seven sections of undergraduate courses.”
A hot-button issue in higher education today is the institution of tenure. Ron Vernon said, “Certainly among the critics of tenure in broader society, the focus is exclusively on the privileges of tenure, supposed privileges of tenure, and particularly the notion that once tenure is granted, it’s a gateway to semi-retirement. That’s very rarely the case. First of all, I think an individual does not develop the interests and abilities, knowledge and expertise that one needs to be tenured at particularly a flagship research institution like this without having a great deal of commitment, enthusiasm, passion for what it is that they do- it’s not going to go away just because they have tenure. The other thing, of course, is the promotion to the rank of full professor is still part of that picture. I think a very important factor is the high regard of our faculty colleagues. We don’t want our faculty colleagues to think we’re out of date, not pulling our load, that sort of thing. So I think there are a lot of reasons why the public perception may be a false impression. And I think the other thing that we don’t talk about very much in the broader sphere are the responsibilities of the tenured faculty members. The responsibility to shape and make sure that the curriculum of programs at every level remains current and relevant.”
Vernon sees no shift away from tenure here. “Not in institutions similar to ours. What we have seen is that we are beginning to see a recognition at least, that institutions of higher education in America are in fact many different kinds of institutions. For instance, in for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix, the vast majority of those faculty members- by the way most of those programs are professional programs- very little focus on the liberal arts at institutions like that- and most of those faculty are hired as adjuncts- that is they continue to be active in their profession, and teaching one or two classes and a few full time administrators- so tenure hardly ever comes up as an issue there. There have been some smaller institutions, especially private institutions, that have suffered severe financial pressures that have moved to do away with tenure to maintain a greater flexibility in the size and distribution of their faculty expertise. Now I have to tell you in the past five years I haven’t been keeping up with that to some degree, but I saw none of that movement in large, flagship state institutions.”
On the whole, the face of higher education is changing. Vernon said, “I think that the one thing that should not surprise us, is that our institutions of higher education are going to be changing, and they are going to be changing in ways that are going to surprise all of us. And so we should expect that change, we should, as members of the academy, work to actively influence that change to try to communicate what’s going on to the broader public so that we maintain the public trust. I think that is very important. Higher education has changed drastically just in the forty years that I’ve been in the profession, and I don’t see any reason for that change to slow down.”
Eunika Rogers plans to continue critiquing students as they work toward completing their final graphic design projects and to work on her paintings when she returns to her home in Memphis in the evenings. She may or may not ever get a tenure-track position at Ole Miss, but in the meantime, she’s glad to have the opportunity for advancement and full benefits.
About Bill DeJournett
Bill DeJournett is a musician and freelance journalist based in Oxford, Mississippi. He has contributed to numerous music, food and travel publications.