The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate

[michaelt]

  Duquesne officials say there are no immediate plans to 
  allow adjunct professors to unionize, despite professors' 
  vote to do so.

I was under the impression unionisation usually happened against the wishes of employers?

It's hardly realistic to expect employers to act with their employees' best interests at heart.

[mathattack]

It's hardly realistic to expect employers to act with their employees' best interests at heart.

This is a little harsh. Many companies do put their employees first, so that they can keep the best ones. They just have to be in a position to capture some of the value from the added talent. Universities aren't always in a position to do that.

Unions can come with other problems such as reduced flexibility of the work force, which in today's high-change environment for schools could be crippling.

One should ask the deeper question - why are there so many underpaid adjuncts? The oversimplified answer is that we're subsidizing the production of too many Phds with non-transferable skills.

[eykanal]

The sad thing is that the article is correct; that is HIGH for an adjunct salary. When I finished my postdoc I applied to a few adjunct positions. The salary would have been $2100/class, which, after factoring in the time needed for preparing for the class, traveling, lecturing, being available for office hours, grading, etc, would have come out to well below minumum wage. No thank you very much.

[rayiner]

Here's my beef with the story. I feel bad for the lady and all. But why didn't she use any of the safety nets available to her? Medicare, social security, etc? Did she have kids she could turn to? At bottom, she was a lady who decided she should be able to live independently, turning away help apparently, teaching a few French classes a year. Why is that the employer's fault? Just because she was old?

I'm all for having a social safety net, but I think it should be a last ditch remedy. People should save up for retirement, have kids who can support them, and only if all that fails should the safety net kick in. I think the government should have done something for her here, but it's not the employer's fault.

Finally, I find the implication that we should care more because she was educated. I'm much more concerned about the uneducated person who works as a day laborer and doesn't have the opportunity to pursue a career that might result in a secure retirement.

[6d0debc071]

> People should save up for retirement, have kids who can support them, and only if all that fails should the safety net kick in.

Saving up for retirement's not really practical when you're on such a limited wage.

I can't agree with the kids thing either. People should have kids because they want to show them the world - as children they reasonably expect to love and cherish - not as some cynical insurance scheme.

> Why is that the employer's fault? Just because she was old?

It would be the employers fault whether or not she was old, exploiting people in that manner is pretty disgraceful. It's just that as she aged the probability of negative consequences increased.

[onebaddude]

>" I'm much more concerned about the uneducated person who works as a day laborer and doesn't have the opportunity to pursue a career that might result in a secure retirement."

She felt she was pursuing a career that might result in secure retirement. She was an educated person who was doing what we want educated people to do in our society: teach other people what they know.

>I feel bad for the lady and all.

No, It doesn't really sound like you do.

[aestra]

>have kids who can support them

Please tell me you aren't serious. That's not a good reason to have children...

[DanielBMarkham]

I always find it amusing when media outlets try to gin up controversy by pointing at other people arguing and saying something like "Hey, there's a big debate over here!"

Never mind that they have this huge megaphone, that they choose which stories to run or not, and that it's in their best interests to have as many people as possible arguing about it in public as possible while linking to their article -- the faux storyline is that some other people think some issue is important.

I think education in the U.S. is in bad enough shape already. The last thing it needs is more vested interests with political agendas involved.

[aestra]

75% of college instructors are adjunct professors? REALLY? That's the most surprising statistic I've read in a long time. We only had a couple in my school, and they were pretty temporary positions.

[finin]

It's ironic that the full name of the university is "Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit".

[amerika_blog]

It's worth reading the school's response before you let the Crowdist media whip you into a hive-mind:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/education/duquesne-...

[chrisro]

So they knew she was in a bad place financially and still terminated her contract? There's not much to their response that changes this story. They didn't dispute her lack of benefits or the amount of her wages and they confirmed that she was in financial distress (so much so that the priests invited her to live in campus housing but still later the university stopped employing her).

[rorrr2]

Why didn't she get a full time job?

I can't see how the school is responsible for her horrible career and long term financial planning.

If you're making $10,000/year is the US, while having an education, it's your own damn fault.

[wisty]

She was 80. For a woman born around 1930, getting a job as a French teacher was more than she'd be expected to do. Her circumstances have more to do with the US social safety net than her planning a poor career.

But it does highlight the fact that working in academia can be a worse career than working in retail.

[barking]

That's one way of looking at it.

If she was living in Western Europe she'd probably be retired 23 years already, have a pension and free healthcare.

[johnchristopher]

> If you're making $10,000/year is the US, while having an education, it's your own damn fault.

That is a bold and broad generalisation.

[AmVess]

Probably not a huge job market for someone in her 80's. There's not a large job market for someone 20 years her junior.

[bartwe]

What if they don't employ fulltime ? Also what is so special about parttime employment that it shouldn't also give (partial) pensions and health insurance.