TIDBIT: THE PLIGHT OF THE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR

Having suffered the indignities of once-per-semester (and oftentimes late...THANKS Jokelahoma!) paychecks as an adjunct professor, and seeing the fat paychecks of overpaid and under-talented administrators, and decline of the academy in this country, this one speaks volumes to me(thanks to our web developer for sharing this one):

What parents need to know about college faculty

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

12 Comments

  1. Reno on August 26, 2014 at 9:50 pm

    Let’s face it 99% of us have been permanently diverted or at least significantly side tracked from our real purpose in life by society in which education, a central part, sucks us up into the vacuum and we are still in the bag but hopefully still struggling to break free. Some of my formal education has been a good experience but there’s just to much of it. With kids you repeat the cycle homework, bad report cards, friction at home, SAT’s, tutors, depletion of family assets…



  2. Reno on August 26, 2014 at 9:30 pm

    To make 2500 I think it’d be easier to drive a cab for a month. To be teaching in the mainstream, with brilliant exceptions, requires one to still be in a state of mind control/hypnosis. Those adjuncts need to pack it in like Walter White. Maybe they can start a kindergarten without walls like in Vashon Island WA. These adjuncts are mostly smart, why the big problem finding something better? People just off the boat can show initiative and start businesses why not people with graduate degrees? We all should have PHD’s in sitting down by now; That’s the basic gift to us by the system; conditioning us like caged birds or aquarium fish. It will still continue as the silent majority keeps buying into keep up with the Joneses and will till armegeddon.



  3. Ekphrastic on August 22, 2014 at 6:49 pm

    Oh, man! Thanks for posting this! Ah, I keenly remember the days of teaching simultaneously at three separate colleges as an adjunct. The miles that I put on my car…

    I was actually downsized from my university last semester. I was a full-time faculty member, but the school is hiring more and more adjuncts, since they cost so little (low salary, no benefits) (in fact, at Dillard University–not my school, but similar–in New Orleans, the administration recently sacked the whole English Department, replacing them with adjuncts). At my last final exam–which, since I taught a general-education subject, was held in the university’s gymnasium with the other general-education classes in my discipline–my colleagues and I were constantly met by students who couldn’t find their professors. Where is my professor, they would ask; aren’t they here? I didn’t recognize any of their professors’ names, and I wondered what was happening.

    Eventually, we discovered what was going on: the university had hired a cadre of high school teachers to work as adjuncts. They weren’t at the final exam because they were at their primary job–the high school. Now, I don’t have anything against high school teachers, but I wonder if they were qualified to teach at the university-level; I’ll probably never know, since I’m not there, anymore.

    Of course, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise, being let go; the university administration was terribly corrupt. They’d skim 48% off the top of any grant that came into the university as “indirect costs.” Funny how the administration’s parking lot was full of Mercedes and BMWs…



  4. marcos toledo on August 22, 2014 at 11:19 am

    May recommend a book it’s not on education Michael Baigent Racing Towards Armageddon but it has a chapter in there titled Planet Rushdoony that touch on the education, political crisis in America that is relevant to todays post on education. Looks like it’s back to the future or always was our teachers are hired hands at best slaves in every way but name this is a long history going back to the Greeks and the Romans using educated slaves to teach their children.



  5. jedi on August 22, 2014 at 11:14 am

    The internet has given me whistle blowing wisdom of the shaman professors who lie, lie lie ….than any college ever would.

    Hell, for a couple of bucks I could just print up a PhD on several subjects if I was inclined too give stupids ego a boost.



  6. Robert Barricklow on August 22, 2014 at 10:15 am

    And don’t forget about those “star” administrators, who learn to “game” the university/college” system literally, as they play extremely sophisticated computer-designed games that mimic the “university/college systems” in total, whose objective is to gain not only control of the systems but their budgets from the faculty-decision-inputs side of the ledger – all to the admin side.
    No doubt these games have spread to other “profession”. All in the name of profit, and the individual can do no harm in his or hers self interest – of course!



    • jedi on August 22, 2014 at 10:56 am

      Wrong on the profit part, they print the money……it is genocide, the endgame……but who is behind it all?



      • Robert Barricklow on August 22, 2014 at 11:00 am

        Your right about the cancerous monopolized privatized sequential “money”. It’s a killer …(period).



        • jedi on August 22, 2014 at 11:25 am

          May be they are killing them self….



  7. LSM on August 22, 2014 at 8:42 am

    this hasn’t even escaped the world of “opera,” Dr. Farrell;

    a known “voice wrecker” (but rather famous past singer- that’s why she got the job to begin with) at a univ. in Arizona who has destroyed more voices than she has helped has just retired with a pension based on her 100k dollar salary at the end of her days at this univ.-

    but because she was previously “famous” people blindly trusted her and flocked to her studio only to be raked over the coals; she thrived on verbally running her non-successful students (like all of her students) into the ground because they gave her “lip” (her terminology) because they questioned her teaching abilities simply by asking her to explain herself in other terms which, of course, she couldn’t…

    Larry in Germany



  8. Analyz_lang on August 22, 2014 at 7:57 am

    Thank you for this article. I, unfortunately left adjunct work approximately 11 years ago for some of the same reasons. In particular, I was often scheduled to give instruction during the latest sections of the evening for the courses. I met some fantastic students, however, and they were the asset to my career, certainly not the “stipend”.



  9. Andronicus on August 22, 2014 at 6:18 am

    You mean I’m supposed to be getting a check? 🙂

    I’m trying to remember the word order of my ‘title’, but it goes something like this–“Adjunct assistant clinical professor of medicine and surgery”. (Oklahoma State University)

    From time to time I do participate in clinical (hands on patient) education with medical students, but there is no pay. Not even any glory.

    To be honest I hadn’t really thought about the plight of Adjuncts. I had NO CLUE Joseph.

    I just assumed they got a regular ‘fat’ monthly paycheck like all overpaid educators. I’m the son of two public school teachers, nephew of several and brother/brother-in-law to two, so I am aware of the opulence the lifestyle of an educator brings. (sarcasm off)



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