Higher Ed Won't Practice What It Preaches

IN the U.S., part-time and adjunct professors are daily abused as cheap worker pawns by colleges and universities--institutions which expect these part-timers to meet the same course and classroom standards that full tenured professors meet, and expect part-timers to be subject to regular (quarterly or semesterly) student and teacher evaluations. Adjuncts now make up about half of all teachers in higher education.

So why does Higher Ed continue to treat adjuncts so badly? More importantly, why can't Professor Higher Ed practice what he preaches for others when it comes to expecting higher standards for society and culture? Turn the mirror on thyself, Prof. Higher Ed. You shall never accuse Wal-Mart of cheap labor.

Today on the radio, we'll be talking with David Creel, an adjunct at Chattanooga State (which is a local public two-year college that strangely enough pledges to be business-friendly and community-oriented but practices the opposite as an employer to hundreds of teachers).

Could it be that Prof. Higher Ed is full of BS, lost in a dreamland of liberal ideology, out of touch with reality?

While Prof. Higher Ed demands professional standards of part-timers, many of whom are better qualified with stronger expertise than tenured professors, he never seems ready to include or to assist the part-timers at Chattanooga State.

As a result, Chattanooga State (and UTC) have become mere shells of political correctness and liberal puffery, empty of any real power, overcome by their own hypocrisy.

Isn't it time for these institutions to live up to their own ideals?

Or break up completely?

College Caste System: Adjunct Slavery

It is shameful. It is a double standard. It uses Wal-Mart style cheapness under the guise of academic eliteness. This increasingly troubling trend in American colleges and universities is simply named: Adjunct Nation. And so it goes. Adjuncts now form the lowest level of university and college caste systems (for even college custodians get benefits while adjuncts do not). A book worth reading on this subject is Ghosts in the Classroom: Stories of College Adjunct Faculty by Michael Dubson (see image at left).

In our national urge to outsource, it is hard for universities and colleges to compete, unless we send students to faroff places for learning under less educated mentors. Since that is unworkable, American higher ed has decided to hire adjunct instructors on the cheap. This negative trend has gone so far that adjuncts now represent 45% to 60% of any university or college faculty. Yet adjuncts work the lion's share of courses (anywhere from 40% to 55%).

And this is happening here, in Chattanooga. Worse, adjuncts locally get paid a meager 35 cents or so on the dollar that full-timers receive. At Chattanooga State College, for instance, adjunct pay is one of the lowest in the country, a pay rate without any increase for over ten years.

This is not only a disgrace; this is a sin. It is morally reprehensible when university or college administrators and fulltime faculty members reject "equal pay for equal work" for their brothers and sisters doing the mule's work, passing nary a crumb along to those of us who keep their institutions open everyday. Without the adjuncts these days, no university or college would remain open. Nada.

Call this my "academic labor" dispute, but I am going to talk about it on the air today with an adjunct colleague of mine at Chattanooga State. His name is David Creel. David is an adjunct music instructor and a frequent violinist with the Chattanooga Symphony. To compensate for the absymally low adjunct pay, however, David began throwing a newspaper route.

Join me to talk with David about work and making it in America as an adjunct instructor.

Owning a Small Business ~ Ola Phipps of Lady Bug Exterminating, Inc.

Tune in tomorrow to WNOO (1260 AM) at 12:30 p.m. and listen to a conversation with a local business woman, Ola Phipps.

She is the owner and operator of Lady Bug Exterminating, Inc. If you don't know Ola Phipps by now, you can't miss her around Chattanooga. She drives a red Volkswagon Beetle with black polka dots, all of which suggest a mechanical ladybug. Ms. Phipps may be a ladybug of sorts herself, but she flies through Chattanooga ridding businesses and homes of those pesty bugs that could hurt our investments.

Ms. Phipps has 27 years experience in extermination and about 22 years running her own small exterminating business. We will talk about what exterminating is like and what it was like to go out on her own. I will ask Ms. Phipps to share her advice to anyone interested in starting a business. In Ola Phipps' case, she is an African-American woman who has been successful at business in the Chattanooga area (see her numerous awards and recognition HERE).