By Jonathan Wynn

Whether you’re at a massive research university or a small, private liberal arts college, there
are good odds that you’ll come across a non-tenure track faculty member. That
person may or may not be a Doctor or a Professor, which can create a little
discomfort for you: How do you address your instructors? The easy answer is to
ask, and always to be respectful. But before we get to the interactional level,
I wanted to spend a few moments on the bigger, structural issues in education
today.

Few undergrads really
understand the behind the scenes gears that put an instructor in front of
classes.

According to the American
Association of University Professors’ Annual report,
there has been a 40-year trend of declining full-time, tenure-track faculty and
a sharp increase in part time, adjunct faculty.
These contingent, or non-tenure
track positions are almost 70 percent of all higher education faculty
appointments in U.S. (Here’s a breakdown of faculty ranks in the U.S.) How did it get this way?

One reason, particularly in
public schools, is that there is less funding to pay faculty, and it is cheaper
to pay part-time, non-tenure track faculty. My state, Massachusetts, has seen
one of the largest drops in state and local education funds per-student: a 30%
decline over the last five years. (Only two states increased education
funding.) That means that there’s less money to pay for instruction, and more
money needed from rising tuition costs. 

While the eastern side of my
state has its world-class private institutions, this defunding of higher
education greatly impacts my academic home: The University of Massachusetts –
Amherst. We have 22,000 undergrads and only 1,170 full-time faculty. That means
that we need graduate students and contingent faculty to teach our classes. As
the AAUP data indicates, non-tenure track jobs and graduate student instructors
are becoming the norm.

What does this matter for
you? Well, these teachers often teach more, get paid far less, work on
conducting research and publishing, and are constantly preoccupied with looking
for another (hopefully more stable) job. A smaller fraction of their time can
be spent on in-class instruction and out-of-class grading and preparation, but
it also squeezes out all of the extra stuff that makes a good teacher:
mentoring, advising, writing recommendation letters, etc. Would it surprise you
to know that your instructor might even, as the Chronicle of
Higher Education points out, be on welfare?(For a mind-blowingly tragic tale, please read “Death of an Adjunct.”) 

I should know. I was one of
these instructors, too. For six years I worked as a non-tenure track faculty
member, which meant that I taught a ton, still conducted research and published
articles, and sent out lots and lots of job applications. I always tried to
explain to my students: “I have a Ph.D, but I want you to know that the
education system at this college/university is such that we need to have
temporary non-tenure track faculty… Here’s what this means… You should know
what you (or your parents) are paying for…” It was always an awkward
conversation.

At my alma mater, the City
University of New York, an former classmate of mine named Karen Gregory caused a
stir by importing some text from The Adjunct Project into her syllabus that reads, in part: “CUNY’s reliance on adjuncts impairs the
conditions under which courses are taught and the quality of your education.”
“Adjuncts,” it continued, “are not regular members of the faculty; we are paid
an hourly rate for time spent in the classroom. We are not paid to advise
students, grade papers or prepare materials or lectures for class. We are paid
one office hour per week for all of the classes we teach.” 

She notes
that, “CUNY presently
employs 6,541 full-time faculty, counselors, and librarians. Despite record
breaking enrollment, that is 4,512 fewer of such positions that it provided in
1972.” (More here and here, from Karen’s blog. And also check out The New Faculty Majority.)

Karen’s comments should get
you to think about how these changes affect your education. And it brings us to
the micro-, or interactional-level: What should you call your instructors who
are not yet a Doctor or aren’t a Professor? A careful student should be respectful
of instructors’ authority and levels of expertise, regardless of their rank.

Now that I am on the other
side, as a new tenure track professor, I am in the curious position of
mentoring graduate student teachers with these conditions still fresh in my
mind. This week I had an advising meeting with one of my grad student mentees.
She is a Latina, and close to the age of the students. She talked about how she
tries to dress ”older” to create some barriers between her and her students,
and she mentioned that some male students address her in clearly inappropriate
ways. 

While adjunct and part-time
faculty are slightly more likely to
be men than women, gender and race add wrinkles to these dynamics. Students,
for example, sometimes slip into what they might even think is a term of
respect, referring to a young professor as “Miss.” This is, assuredly, not the
correct way to address your instructor. For many of my teaching friends, this
kind of salutation would make them feel they are teaching elementary school
students.

So, as we move into an era
where there are fewer tenure-track professors and more lecturers, visiting assistant professors, and graduate student teachers, the social structure shapes your learning environment in interesting ways, doesn’t it?