Half A Person

According to this Associated Press article, American universities are producing too many Ph.Ds. No big surprise there. No doubt they are producing far too many Master's degrees, too. Graduate programs are a growth industry everywhere - including at 901 South National. For the university, graduate programs are a win-win situation. Graduate programs are a time honored yardstick for evaluating a university's intellectual clout. Graduate students are not only fun to teach because they tend to be the cream of the crop, but they also provide useful slave labor for big departments with multi-section General Education classes. And thus is the corporate approach satisfied.

The benefit to the students is rather less impressive. When I began graduate study more than a quarter century ago. Even then, my professors (while quite supportive overall) warned me that grad school was a crap shoot and had been even when they were college seniors. The road to the professoriate is even more parlous now: the odds of landing a job on successful completion of the Ph.D. are far worse, and the chances of racking up prodigious student loabs is far greater. I do what I can to impress my students with these unpleasant facts, but it would be hypocritical of me not to support those students who sincerely want to take a shot at grabbing the rubber ring.

The AP article also calls attention to the growing trend of hiring adjunct faculty to do the work of permanent (or tenure-track) faculty. I suppose you can't blame the universities for hiring cheap labor in a buyer's market. It's a very solid business decision. My department hires its fair share of adjuncts. Some homegrown, some Ph.D, some faculty spouses, some moonlighting secondary teachers, some retirees - whatever we can find. I feel very sorry for most of them. The pay isn't great, the benefits are nonexistent, and chances of landing a permanent job at 901 South National are miniscule. Basically, an adjunct is half a person. Even the really good adjuncts - and many are very good indeed - burn out or get fed up with the injustice of this virtual caste system. But the University doesn't really care, because adjuncts will always turn up. Do you have a vacancy for a back scrubber?

I also feel sorry for the students. Missouri State University supposedly exists to produce educated persons. Yet the intensified focus upon research and meaningful community service keeps dragging permanent faculty out of the classroom, to be replaced not with new faculty lines, but... more adjuncts. Some good, some not so good - you pay your tuition and take your chances. Our students deserve better than that. There is no reason why the University Administration can't come up with some funding to convert at least some perennial adjuncts to lectureships. No research or service duties - just fifteen hours of classroom time plus five office hours per week. Good for the adjuncts, good for the students, good for the University. But will it happen? I'm not holding my breath. It's not the sort of thing that looks sexy in a publicity release.