Bloody Fingernails, Shredded People: The True Ravages of Life in 21st C. Academia
As I wrote a response to each of their comments, and as I considered two other responses from those with full-time jobs in art academia (who said things like "I have a hard time accepting that I may be a success story considering the blood underneath my fingernails" and "This field shreds many people"), a more universal narrative emerged, reminding me of one of the founding goals of this blawwwg project: namely, to speak the truth about my own and others' baffling experiences as highly educated, arse-busting creative professionals running the adjunct, etc. gauntlet in pursuit of a career in a field that has oversold its goods and falsely represented its job prospects to unsuspecting graduate students. The goal was not to belly-ache and wallow in commisery. Rather, the goal was, and still is, to contribute to a conversation regarding one of the cruelest and most well-disguised elephants-in-the-room of the American economy and job market, and to bring exposure to this dirty secret in the interest of effecting change.
I will confess that I am not polemical by nature. I have little desire to stand on a soapbox and lecture passersby on how one side of things is all wrong while the other side is all right; that’s just not how I see the world, and I know that being on the receiving end of such vitriol immediately shuts me down. However, there is a larger conversation brewing in our culture, not just around the injustice of the use (and abuse) of adjuncts in higher ed, but around our effed up economy and the many forms of institutionalized poverty that destroy lives while plumping the coffers of the elite. People hear “poverty” and picture some grizzled man in rags on a street corner, a five-day stubble covering his gaunt, pock-marked face. But, as people like Bill Moyers are bringing eloquently to light, there is another face of poverty – the working poor – and many of these people, believe it or not, have advanced degrees, live under roofs, drive cars, bathe regularly, and don’t miss meals. And these people, like many on the street, are not poor for lack of effort.
Part of my own astonishment during my journey through graduate school and in pursuit of a job in academia, has been the growth of graduate programs and the growing numbers of students (myself among them) investing in Masters and Doctorate degrees. Schools are willing to sell these degrees to students like me even though many fields are rapidly changing, rendering these degrees increasingly risky investments. Moreover, colleges and universities profit outrageously by using underpaid adjuncts to staff their classrooms. This allows schools to hire fewer full-time instructors, to require existing faculty to do the work of 2-3 professors, and, most unethically of all, allows these institutions to pocket more of each student’s tuition while the majority of those who are actually educating these students live on the brink of bankruptcy.
Does it strike no one else as criminal that the very same institution that sold you a $40,000 (or more - likely much more) degree will turn around and pay you $1,000 a course (that’s $71 a week and between $2-$4 per hour depending on how much time you invest in planning, grading, answering emails, and contact hours with students) for the skills they sold you (and continue to sell your students) at a much higher cost? And, is it criminal that any adjunct will be expected to do all of this to the best of her abilities each semester without any guarantee of future classes, and without any benefits whatsoever?
Picture your alma mater’s white columns, its marble hallways, the glossy magazine it sends out each quarter touting the achievements of its esteemed students and faculty. Picture your school’s annual fundraising campaign, asking you to fork over your hard-earned dollars to improve the institution to which you surely feel great allegiance. Then, try to imagine where that institution’s money is going. Certainly not to the 40-75 percent or more of its instructors, who are adjunct and who make $2-$4 an hour to educate your beloved children, whose degrees will no doubt cost an arm and a leg.
Here’s a ball-busting quote from a BillMoyers.com interview with Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change:
“We need to stop talking about the economy in ways that make it seem like the weather. The economy is a result of the rules we create and the choices we make. The people who are struggling to make ends meet do so because we have built — through intentional choice — an economy that produces inadequate incomes for more than one-third of all Americans. So we need to have a real debate about what to do to build an economy that doesn’t produce such misery.”
When I read Bhargava's words, I picture myself standing across the mahogany desk of the Dean of XYZ College of Arts and Sciences, waving my neck and head like a pit viper, slinging my pointer finger in his or her face, and saying, “Hell YEAH, Dean So-And-So! And you KNOW this!” ...But of course, real change on this issue will require a constructive dialogue, intelligent research and ongoing works of high-profile journalism to draw attention to the reality of the situation, and to get people fired up enough to call “bullshit” on how these institutions do business, and at what expense. I want to be part of this conversation. Meanwhile, many driven, hard working people like me, who have invested years of professional development and tens of thousands of dollars in tuition on an academic career, will have to decide whether doing what it takes to stay in the running for a full-time teaching job is really worth the personal cost.
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If any of what you have read here has resonated with you, please consider:
1. Sharing this post.
2. Checking out one of the articles I have linked to in the text above. Here's a list:
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-latest/2014/2/6/adjuncts-fight-foralivingwage.html
http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/28/10-poverty-myths-busted/
http://billmoyers.com/2014/07/25/why-cant-make-ends-meet-trumps-poverty/