We Teach Laurier

…in ❝The white-collar jobs turning light blue❞ by Tony Featherstone @smh

Too many pharmacists, teachers and vets now work in sweatshop conditions. Where did it all go so wrong?….

Take university lecturing as an example. Once among the most revered white-collar jobs, it has become a production line, at least for sessional or part-time academics at some universities who are paid a pittance, despite the great responsibility of teaching young minds.

A sessional academic with two masters degrees might earn $320 for a two-hour lecture. That sounds great, until you realise the academic spent a day preparing the lecture. Do the math and they might be on $30 an hour – less than the local barista earns on a public holiday, or the water-truck driver at a remote mine.

Then they’re paid $40 an hour to mark assignments, a tedious, manual job if ever there was one, and less than the self-employed barber earns for doing a few haircuts in an hour. If the academic puts in a chuck of ‘discretionary’ time to do a good job on marking, or give students extra feedback, he or she could end up earning a bit more than the minimum wage.

Which other white-collar jobs are now hopelessly underpaid?

Which white-collar jobs look prestigious, but are little more than a sweatshop?

I am a great believer in the Program for Change, which is presently being used effectively at Vancouver Community College. All adjunct faculty can implement this program in as little or as long a time as needed to achieve equality. Hence, I am presenting Frank Cosco & Jack Longmate’s program, with an excellent exposé written by Jack Longmate.

This is not just theoretical. It is tried and true. Please read & share widely! And if you want equality at your university, do more than share: implement!

Thank you to Vanessa Vaile from Precarious Faculty for her technical assistance, always!  Ana M. Fores Tamayo, Adjunct Justice

Originally posted to adj-l, September 1, 2014

Thanks to Joe Berry and Helena Worthen for their report about COCAL, “COCAL - A Tri-National Contingent Workforce Self-Organizes to Abolish Contingency" at the Academe blog. First, I’m delighted to read the words “abolish contingency" that appear in both the title of their report and prominently in the text, "The goal: To abolish contingency itself.”  I hope this speaks for all those attending COCAL and the organizational groups supporting and in liaison with COCAL.  I hope we can all accept this as the goal; it does imply good things and a clear direction for the movement.

Universities in Canada - which threw open their doors this week to almost a million undergraduates - are propped up by a huge army of part-time teachers, who are highly qualified and poorly paid. They have no job security or pension, and little hope of ever getting a full-time position. They go by many titles: sessional lecturers, contract academic staff, adjunct faculty.

Today more than half of Canadian undergraduates are taught by these very precarious workers, not by the big-name  - and well-paid - academics that universities like to feature in their recruiting ads. The institutions simply couldn’t function without them. 

Higher education has a new business model. And it affects everyone on campus - the administration, the high-end “professoriate”, the lowly sessionals and the students.

What follows is a close approximation of how I am going to respond the next time that I sit in an administrative meeting and have to hear about how much of a burden adjunct faculty are to the university because they

Last month Tumblr took a decisive step toward transparency, and today we’re asking that our government do the same. We’re standing with our colleagues from across the web to demand transparency and accountability around laws concerning privacy.

These two photographs tell ‘more or less’ the same story (bottom one has become popular on the internet).

Both raise the question that begs clarification from Senior Administrators about claims that a university degree = a professional career that supports a middle-class lifestyle. 

The same people, i.e. senior administrators, who want you to pay ever increasing tuition fees (and don’t appear to be too worried if you are going to be saddled with a ‘mini-mortgage’ by the time you graduate) to get a degree for the supposed earning power it will bring you in your future career, are the same people who don’t want to pay a fair or decent wage for the faculty who teach upwards of half of your classes (maybe more) (some 52% of student spots in classes, tutorials, labs and seminars at Laurier). 

Now, doesn’t that seem to be contradictory? 

Consider the situation of Contract Academic Staff (CAS) or contract profs in Canada (aka adjuncts in the USA) who usually have studied for two or three degrees and not just one (some have two degrees and finished everything but their dissertation - i.e. they are considered ‘ABD’ or ‘all but dissertation’ which means they passed their comps [exams] which recognizes their expertise in 2 or 3 subject areas). 

Paul Davidson, of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), claimed in September 2012 that students will earn (on average) $1.3 million more over their lifetime than Canadians who have just a high-school diploma. That is just with one (1) degree (bachelor’s).

So, then why are so many people with 2 or 3 degrees (including PhD or MFA), not only nowhere near earning that amount of money, but also owe tens of thousands in student loans (many earn well below what Ontario university graduates are supposed to be earning in their first year after graduating from university)? 

Max Blouw, President of WLU and Chair of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), announced the average earnings for 87% of graduates at around $42,304, which is well above what CAS at Laurier would earn teaching four or five courses - and barely equal to what contract profs earn teaching six (6) courses (about $43,000+ if they have seniority in their courses). 

By the way, if there are not enough jobs for PhDs, it’s not the fault of contract profs. Senior administrators at Canadian universities have NOT been hiring enough full-time and tenure-track professors. Laurier, for example, has only hired 7% more FT faculty over four years despite a 23% increase in student enrolment.

But, they did increase their management by 44%.

Today I got an email from a wonderful friend who is an adjunct at a small Catholic university - not Duquesne, for those of you who have been following … She had received an email from her dean asking all the faculty to consider how the addition of more adjunct faculty could benefit the university. Ha. Why send that to the adjuncts? So she explained her work load to me (and plans to explain it to the dean …) this way…

…closing with this call to speak truth to power

If we all did - if all levels of faculty from fully tenured to barely hanging on - told the truth to the people who control our destinies, what would happen? Classes for one, or two, or ten adjuncts might disappear; tenure decisions could be delayed or go wrong; early retirement might be encouraged. But ultimately, administration will need someone to teach (I hope!).  If we stick together to demand decent working conditions, shouldn’t that do something? …remember the slogan of the 1960s: Suppose they gave a war and nobody came.

Pomona Campus Equity Week

CSU-Sacramento: Assembly member Richard Pan, who is a professor himself, addressed the crowd about the future of higher education.

…precarious academics by any other name…going major mainstream media via AP, also appearing on CBS News, NPR and a multitude of local outlets

Thousands of part-time college professors are joining labor unions, a growing trend in higher education that’s boosting the ranks of organized labor and giving voice to teachers who complain about low pay and a lack of job security at some of the nation’s top universities.

This photo taken Monday, Oct. 28, 2013, shows William Shimer, part-time lecturer in management and organizational development at Northeastern University, standing for a portrait on the school’s campus, in Boston.

'No to the Status Quo!' has a certain poetic rhythm to it, even as it expresses the sense with which Contract Academics (CAS) face the obvious contradictions between 'inspiring lives of leadership and purpose' (the marketing slogan of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario) in the classroom AND the poor compensation and lack of benefits provided by the Senior Administration. 

Of course, budgets are tight but that never stops them from hiring more senior administrators and managers and in syphoning off moneys from operations (where from salaries are paid) and putting them into capital and other funds and assets (such as property and buildings). 

Yet, it doesn’t explain why students are paying nearly 20% more tuition this year than four years ago nor why, in spite of such tuition increases, class sizes have increased, course offerings have been cut or program options have been restricted (or are about to be - and are likely to face further such changes)? 

The institutional per annum inflation of 5-8% is certainly not being caused by contract faculty teaching 52% of the students in classes, labs, tutorials and seminars. This is an increase from 38% in 2007. (Unless, they mean “institutional inflation” in terms of the numbers of students that CAS are responsible for?!) 

Since the Senior Administration continues to expect us to provide the education that they keep charging students (and their parents) more and more for, and they in turn do not want to offer us anything that recognizes our ubiquity, or how integral we’ve become, to delivering the kind of student experience that the Senior Administration markets to prospective students and donors. 

It is this ever increasing sense of responsibility of delivering the majority of Laurier students’ educational experience and engagement while having an ever diminishing paycheque (e.g. it’s being eaten away by parking fees, gas and food inflation, rising rents and so on). 

Despite being so integral to Laurier’s educational mission (more than 50% of CAS surveyed have taught at Laurier for more than 5 years and the Admin have started giving out ‘long service’ awards [not compensation of course] for 15 years service ['hard labour'?] - for CAS as well…), we never know if we are working from one semester to the next, we never know if we have the same courses as last year or have all new preps, which increase the amount of hours even before the first class takes place - and assuming that the class isn’t cancelled at the last minute - or being called in at the last minute to teach a class! 

We put out the fires - or the absences in course provision - and at a moment’s notice. None of this appears to count for anything, judging by the way Senior Administrators speak of us (we’ve not talked about some of their terms they use for us and about us…maybe a later post will offer you a choice selection of their ‘pet’ phrases….). 

We are passionate about teaching (as we have said in the previous post and in our posters and in the first cards in our series) and we merit respect (second series of cards), but surely you cannot expect contract faculty to keep on subsidizing the expansion of the university (why such inflated tuition fees for students, then?)? 

People often ask, especially given how poorly contract professors are compensated (never mind the lack of respect): ‘Why do you still do it?’ 

This poster was the result of several Contract Academic Staff (CAS) sitting around talking about why they still do it. 

You can see in this poster the reasons why contract faculty continue to teach in spite of the poor compensation and disrespect with which they are treated.

If you are a student, wouldn’t you want to be taught by faculty who think of what they do in these ways?

Would you not think that faculty who engage you in the classroom are deserving of more than 3.3% of the revenue universities earn? (Obviously, tuition fees do not need to increase. It’s a matter of re-allocating where the revenue goes. Unfortunately, this is left to the Senior Administration of universities not to students and faculty and staff to decide.)