Victims of Circumstance: Academic Freedom in a Contingent Academy

Major shifts within the profession signal fundamental challenges to the practice of academic freedom.

By Eric Marshall

Due process approaches to academic freedom may not adequately serve the new academic workforce. To survive, academic freedom needs to be more tightly linked to professional conditions of work.

The producers of Adjunct Survivor plan to hire a dozen (actually, make that five hundred) men and women aged twenty-two to seventy-five, all of whom either hold advanced academic degrees or are currently enrolled in graduate programs. Each will teach four undergraduate classes at no fewer than two different colleges, each no closer than thirty miles from the next. The producers will enroll thirty undergraduates in each class and mandate specific reading materials for the courses. The instructors will have to maintain at least one scheduled office hour each week for each course, and they can assign no fewer than fifty pages of written graded work for each student during the semester. The participants will be placed in a large urban setting with a crippling cost of living and be paid $15,000 a year. Each week, viewers will tune in to follow the routine day of selected adjuncts and learn which participants remain in the classroom, which have been let go midsemester, which have been able to pay rent and put food on the table, and which have not. At the end of the fifteen-week season, the producers will dismiss the entire cast and, if the show is picked up for a second season, recast immediately prior to the start of the new season. Former participants will be eligible to be recast on the same terms as everyone else.

For more than ten years, I participated in Adjunct Survivor, teaching English at the City and State Universities of New York (CUNY and SUNY). And yet, for all the struggles and tribulations (as well as the pleasures and rewards), I know I was one of the lucky ones—typically able to teach all of my courses at a single campus (Queens College, CUNY). I often cobbled together twelve credits in a semester (despite contractual limitations) by picking up some "nonunit" work available to adjuncts on campus, and I always received written notification of reappointment well enough in advance. I taught in an excellent department, which not only treated adjuncts well but supported them professionally and defended and advocated for them. The relations between full- and part-time faculty were, by and large, open and collegial.

I never felt restricted in what or how I could teach (within the limitations of departmental needs), nor in what I could say or do in class or off campus. Indeed, insofar as the conventional understanding of "academic freedom" is concerned, I felt (and still feel) I enjoyed it thoroughly and unconditionally. I actively organized for the union and advocated publicly at rallies and conferences and in published articles for adjunct rights and conditions and never, I believe, suffered retaliation of any kind. For six years, I held offices in the faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC). For ten years, my English composition courses occasionally engaged political topics, taking positions often at odds with the CUNY administration and board of trustees. And yet I never feared for my job—beyond, of course, the typical job insecurities sadly inherent in adjunct work.

As a CUNY adjunct, I had not thought much about academic freedom, or so I believed—although it was discussed within the PSC and around the university. When I did think about it, it was in the conventional sense: connected to what could be said in the classroom and what could be said, written, and done outside of it. It was about administrative intrusion into traditionally faculty-controlled domains. It was about censorship, distance education, sponsored research, and administrative involvement in curricular matters. In other words, it was about liberties, as commonly conceived, which could be accorded or withheld at the discretion of some administration.

But the usual and customary understanding of academic freedom has also long wedded it inseparably to tenure, thereby greatly diminishing its relevance for adjuncts and largely excluding them from the conversation. The major professional associations, including the AAUP, and the academic labor unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), have all issued statements defending academic freedom and linking it to tenure. And the lively debate that began in the late 1990s over the future of tenure has drawn much attention from scholars and critics and dominated discussion of academic freedom for years.

Academic freedom, however, is concerned with (and concerns) much more than the present and future state of tenure. It is fundamentally connected to the conditions of professional work in the academy. For adjuncts and other contingent faculty, in particular, labor conditions-and economics especially—significantly restrict academic freedom in its deepest and most practical sense: the freedom to provide and facilitate the best possible education for students. But even where this relationship is recognized, there is consistently an underestimation in the scope of the analysis of academic freedom and its limitations.

Due Process Protection

To be sure, the academic freedom debate over the past several years has generated much food for thought. In his frequently cited article, "Academic Freedom of Part-Time Faculty," published in the winter 2001 issue of the Journal of College and University Law, legal scholar J. Peter Byrne, for example, aims "to clarify the nuances of difference in the academic freedom properly available to part-time faculty and to suggest procedures for its protection commensurate with the scope of that freedom and the practical realities for adjuncts." Byrne argues for the defense of academic freedom by linking it intrinsically to peer review, and, by extension, disassociating it from tenure. He concludes that adjuncts cannot enjoy academic freedom protections comparable to those accorded to full-time faculty, because they lack the rigorous processes of peer review to which tenure-track faculty are subject. Perhaps. But Byrne seems to miss the distinction between active restrictions on academic freedom and the circumstantial limitations to it experienced by most of the nation's adjuncts. Not surprisingly, this omission has been perpetuated throughout the ensuing national debate over academic freedom.

But this linkage of academic freedom and tenure is tenuous at best, and irrelevant as regards adjunct faculty. They must be viewed separately, but for reasons different from those typically articulated. Tenure may be a function of academic freedom, but it is not its factotum; in fact, as adjuncts well know, there are many. And for adjuncts, they are the products and consequences of circumstance.

Terms and Conditions of Employment

The working conditions of adjuncts vary widely from campus to campus, even from department to department. But the CAW report demonstrated that across disciplines and the country, adjuncts frequently labor without offices, compensated office hours, or access to photocopying and computer equipment. Many receive minimal meaningful professional evaluation and feedback, no institutional support for their research or scholarship, inadequate notification of reappointment or nonreappointment, and sublivable wages, with no health or retirement benefits—all of which have a markedly negative impact on professional performance.

The AAUP, the AFT, and the NEA have all addressed these conditions in various forums. In its recent Standards of Good Practice treatise, for example, the AFT called on faculty to be available, either in accessible offices or by e-mail, to answer student questions and offer advice, and advised that faculty be compensated for this time. "The grim reality, however, is that almost all part-time/adjunct faculty today are paid only on the basis of their time in the classroom and in effect 'donate' time with their students," notes the AFT. But absent any real job security, adjuncts are highly vulnerable to student (and colleague) complaints and demands. Indeed, if institutions are less laissez-faire in academic matters than Queens College was, adjuncts will often be reluctant to engage controversial subjects or positions, or to experiment with heterodox methodologies for fear of losing their meager livelihoods. Adjuncts frequently teach a heavier load than their full-time colleagues, and often must do so at multiple colleges that are great distances from one another, minimizing time available on campus to meet with students, prepare for class, work in the library, or simply become part of the college community.

All of which begs the question: what is being lost? Apart from the obvious—ideas, experimentation, free flow of information, challenges to orthodoxies, participation in campus life—inadequate compensation and other conditions of employment necessarily result in a lack of time available to adjuncts, which inevitably has a direct and deleterious impact on students. After all, "[h]ow much attention can students receive from someone teaching a dozen or more such courses a year?" asks English professor Cary Nelson, an active participant in AAUP efforts on behalf of contingent faculty. This question is particularly troubling, concedes the AFT, "in light of the fact that part-time faculty are often assigned to teach courses, such as developmental English and math, with large numbers of students who need the greatest help."

On the "question of exploitation," the AFT notes that, "[b]ecause financial considerations drive the employment process, it comes as no surprise that the compensation, benefits, and professional support accorded to part-time/adjunct faculty are woefully inadequate." It is also no surprise that these same faculty members lack the basic protections of academic freedom.

According to the CAW report, "the vast majority of part-time faculty members . . . are paid at a rate of less than $3,000 per course—in many institutions, it is below $2,000. As a result, the typical part-time or adjunct instructor receives annual earnings that put him or her on a par with fast-food workers." In "The Corporate University's Fast Food Discipline," published in 1998 in Against the Current, Cary Nelson is even less generous in calculating the effective hourly rate for adjuncts. "Assuming thirty to forty-five classroom hours, depending on the length of the term, assuming a rock-bottom minimum of two hours' preparation time for each hour of classroom teaching, two hours a week of office hours, and a minimum of seventy-five to one hundred hours of paper and exam grading per term, the hourly pay rate comes to under $4 per hour." Nelson admits his calculation makes two assumptions: "that preparation involves reviewing familiar materials, not reading and researching new topics, and that paper grading includes no extensive comments by the instructor [which would] cut the rate of compensation to $3 per hour or less."

Donald N. S. Unger, an adjunct writing in the NEA Higher Education Journal, relates that his "eight-course load—more than most tenured faculty teach—brings an annual salary of $12,000 before taxes, assuming course compensation at the median rate. That's take-home pay below the federal poverty level, less than what a grocery bagger makes, low enough to qualify for food stamps." Financially, my own experience in CUNY and SUNY was not much better.

Circumstantial Limits

The academic freedom I experienced, especially by its absence, was the direct consequence of the circumstances under which I labored. In fall 1998, for example, when I taught at both Queens College in Flushing, New York, and Purchase College in Purchase, about thirty miles away, my schedule left me less than one hour to "freeway crawl" (there is no such thing as freeway flying in and around New York City) from my classroom at Queens to my classroom at Purchase. I could neither linger at Queens nor arrive early at Purchase to meet with students. Moreover, by the time I finished at Purchase—the end of a very long day, with an hour's drive home—I was in no condition to remain there for long. At both Queens and Purchase, I was teaching required basic writing to students who really needed my help. One-on-one work with students in composition classes is imperative; successful composition instruction depends on regular contact between student and teacher and on focused feedback. My situation that semester precluded such necessary contact and thereby denied me the freedom to perform at optimal effectiveness. Furthermore, the hundred or so students I taught that semester generated a tremendous amount of writing to be critiqued and graded. Again, the economics that drove me to pick up the additional work further restricted the time and energy I had to devote to each individual writing assignment, and to each individual student. In addition, with limited time and other resources, I felt discouragingly compelled by necessity to go by the (text)book in these courses, rather than create more imaginative and engaging assignments.

Perhaps I was irresponsible to accept such an onerous schedule that term, but I believed I had few options. I took the job because after years of teaching only at CUNY, I wanted the experience of teaching elsewhere. More important, however, because of CUNY's adjunct course-load limitations, I needed the income. It was either pick up the extra sections, or get another part-time job (I already had one, editing a trade journal in Manhattan), while also attempting to complete my dissertation. I always regretted not being able to give to those students the time and focus they deserved from their instructor. Were they harmed immeasurably and irreparably? Probably not. But they got less than they bargained for, and that is not fair.

I started teaching, of necessity, when I started graduate school. My first position was as an adjunct lecturer in English at CUNY's Kingsborough Community College. Despite a full load of doctoral courses in English, I "subway surfed" ninety minutes each way to Brooklyn from my Manhattan apartment three days a week to teach two sections of developmental writing. My classrooms (five different rooms each week) could barely contain the students enrolled. I shared a small office with so many other adjuncts that I never had the place to myself to meet privately with students—particularly awkward the day a young female student sought my advice on dealing with the perceived inappropriate behavior of another faculty member.

I had little contact with the department. When I deservedly failed one underachieving student (who, coincidentally, had been a thorn in my side all semester), the student complained, and the department, without any consultation with me, changed the student's grade. (I did, however, receive a memo apprising me of the change.) Near the end of the semester, I was offered a reappointment for a four-day-a-week schedule (what most in the department taught, I was informed). Determining that I could not possibly balance a four-day teaching schedule with a full-time, twelve-credit graduate course load, I declined. I could not do that to myself. But, perhaps more important, I could not do it to those students, among the neediest in the university. Instead, that next semester I worked full time for the trade journal.

In ten years of teaching between two and four courses a semester, and working throughout the summers, I never had a sabbatical nor the opportunity to rest and re-energize. I never made more than about $3,000 for a course, and often made much less. During my last few years as an adjunct, I did finally enjoy union-secured employer-provided health insurance, so at least the tremendous distraction of living in (and traveling throughout) New York City uninsured was eventually eliminated.

Ultimately, my ability to offer my students the best education possible, which they both deserved and paid for, and which, indeed, is arguably the fundamental aim of academic freedom, was significantly impaired by circumstances beyond my control. I was not actively or directly denied my (conventional) academic freedom in any meaningful way by anyone in CUNY or SUNY. And yet I was never accorded the unfettered opportunity to do my job. Like my fellow adjuncts around the country, I was a victim of circumstance, and, unfortunately, so were my students.

Professional Protection

It is time that we ask who, ultimately, are the intended (and actual) beneficiaries of academic freedom. If the answer is not the students (and, perhaps, by extension, society more generally), then something is wrong—either with the way we conceive of "academic freedom" or with the whole academic enterprise. Further, it is time that we re-evaluate what we mean by "academic freedom" in the context of the entire profession and in light of the realities of the adjunct condition. And, of course, it is time for something—much, in fact—to be done about that condition. The AAUP and the AFT recommend that adjuncts be fully compensated on a pro-rated basis with full-time faculty. Such compensation includes not only salaries, but also paid sick leave and holidays, paid office hours, and fringe benefits. Furthermore, the AFT calls for employment standards that provide job security, take into account seniority, and give adjuncts the right to order their own texts and design their own courses. In addition, adjuncts should be provided "suitable office space and should have paid office hours to meet with their students." And finally, they should be given the financial support for their scholarly activities and professional development.

Absent these measures, the future for adjuncts, as for the rest of the professoriate, looks bleak. "If we do not resist this exploitation," argues Nelson in the April 16, 1999, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, "[n]umerous other changes in the intellectual and professional environment of academia would soon follow. Tenure of course would disappear. Yearly or term contracts with very narrow and vulnerable definitions of academic freedom are one certainty." Indeed, we must all recognize what many have long asserted, that, in the end, we are all in this together. As Donald N. S. Unger wrote in 1995 in the NEA Higher Education Journal:

We [adjuncts] are your brothers and sisters. To the degree that this problem is generational, we are your children. We are suffering a slow and painful professional death. If you believe in education, if you believe in justice, it is essential that you stand up and say, "I will not participate in this process. I will not teach in a department which exploits my colleagues. I will not stand by and watch administrative budgets swallow up the marrow and blood of this instruction."

Unite. Educate. Activate. It's either that or arrive early at the next casting call for Adjunct Survivor.

Eric Marshall was an adjunct lecturer in English at the City University of New York from 1991 to 2002. He is the author of several essays on contingent academic labor, including one in the forthcoming volume Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the Managed University. He is a past vice president for part-time faculty of the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, and now works for the New York State United Teachers.

 Printer-Friendly Page