Why Are There So Many Underpaid Adjuncts in Higher Ed?
Megan McArdle’s piece at the Atlantic, which is a response to a piece on the rough lot for adjuncts at Inside Higher Ed asks a good question: If academics are supposedly liberal and pro-labor, why do underpaid adjuncts make up so much of the higher ed workforce?
Here are a few possible answers, plus my evaluation of those answers from the Hamster World perspective:
Tenured faculty members don’t pull their weight when it comes to teaching.
Response: I’m sure there are some tenured faculty who don’t carry their load and give everyone else a bad rap, but those people should be treated as individuals. In the Hamster World, you wouldn’t fire an entire department if it is harboring one slacker. You’d put the slacker on notice and then fire the slacker (or at least give the slacker a hard time since you can’t fire someone with tenure).
That’s what Socialism gets you.
Response: McArdle warned her commenters not to make assumptions and claim the academy made its own bed. First of all, too many people assume that academics are liberals. Anyone who’s been in the academy for any amount of time will tell you that’s not so. The Socialism argument is a crock because the system is obviously broken, and pointing fingers isn’t going to fix it. In this kind of situation, one’s political leanings are irrelevant.
More after the jump! (more…)
Footnotes, publishing edition
The now more regularly recurring “Footnotes” feature covers some things we’ve found online pertaining to some of the topics we cover here on the blog. A lot of them are just funny tidbits that you may or may not be as interested in as we are. Since we’ve been discussing writing and publishing so much this week, we figured it would make sense to offer some “Footnotes”
1. Making lemonade: An Inside Higher Ed piece on the journal Weber: The Contemporary West outlines some of the choices that journals have before them in an age of shrinking budgets, thoughtfully detailed in an interview with the publication’s editor, Prof. Michael Wutz of Weber State in Utah. Instead of becoming an online journal, Weber downsized its schedule from 3 issues a year to 2, and changed its profile to one of a boutique publication that plays up, in Wutz’s words, “the material heft of print media.” What’s interesting, though, is that Wutz made the decision despite suspecting that digital formats are probably the irresistible wave of the future, arguing perhaps too wishfully that the online market will only make print more valued as a niche product.
2. On the other hand…: Self-proclaimed “thriller author” Joe Konrath offers a very different view about print media from Prof. Wutz, on his blog “A Newbies Guide to Publishing”. Imagining a gathering of “Obsolete Anonymous,” the print industry meets VHS tapes, video rental stores, cassette tapes, LPs, floppy disks, among other artifacts in the dustbin of cultural history. Hmm…maybe print could live on as a fetishized niche object, since people still do buy LPs! (h/t Scholarly Kitchen Twitter feed)
3. What it’s like to be a professional writer: In the latest in a series of posts on “Common Misperceptions About Publishing”, pro author Charlie Stross explores whether being a writer is a lifestyle or a job. He comes down on the side of the latter, but he explains how difficult being a writer is, whether you look at it as a lifestyle or a job. Here are some key points he makes about the myths of writing for a living:
“So here’s the truth about the writing lifestyle: it sucks. It is an unstable occupation for self-employed middle-aged entrepreneurs. Average age on entry is around 34, but you can’t get health insurance (if you’re American). You don’t have to be a complete loner, but it helps to have a solitary streak (or a bad talking-to-cats habit). It also helps to be an inveterate optimist, because you’ll probably need to supplement your income (about 70% of the mean for someone in a skilled trade, never mind a professional job) by taking on other work such as teaching, journalism, or consultancy. As a business, it’s a dead-end: you can’t generally expand by taking on employees, and the number of author start-ups where the founders have IPOd and cashed out can be counted on the fingers of a double-amputee’s hands.”
There are also some interesting stats about the incomes writers make, though the numbers Stross provides pertain to the UK. (h/t Scholarly Kitchen Twitter feed, too!)
Academic publishing: New media, new approaches
Coming up against decreasing budgets and a general neglect of the humanities, what options are available to journals that might be feeling the pinch even more than the institutions that host them? Since we’ve been speculating about the possibilities of online publishing as a more flexible and easily accessible format to facilitate research and distribute it, it’s probably time to walk the walk and provide some examples of journals that have gone digital. Some of our colleagues and friends have passed along tips about online-only journals that are trying to match quantity and quality, while using digital media to do things that might not be possible in print.
The three journals we’re looking at offer new approaches to the way research is done and promoted, as well as tapping formal innovations only supported by digital media.
Philosophers’ Imprint: “Edited by philosophers, Published by librarians, Free to readers of the Web,” Philosophers’ Imprint is proactive in its use of available technology and in meeting the challenges of the present/near future where libraries are unable to either foot the bill for journal subscriptions or house more and more bound copies. Despite its no-frills but clean layout, the journal really seems to be ahead of the curve in rethinking how scholarship is disseminated and appreciated, offering its contents for free online without sticking to a strict publication schedule to maximize flexibility. Because it’s free, it also makes the most of basic resources available to scholars while dispensing with a huge editing apparatus and licensing issues.
More on the publishing philosophy of Philosophers’ Imprint, after the jump…
Freelance follow-up: Shameless self-promotion
Since we’re on the freelancing tip already, I figured now would be a good time to follow up on my post last week regarding the process I’ve gone through in (re-)establishing myself as a freelance writer. I still wouldn’t call it a comeback yet, but my first review for the great online magazine PopMatters went up a few days ago. It’s on the band The Bundles, which includes Kimya Dawson, whom you might be familiar with from her contributions to the Juno soundtrack.
The post, though it might seem otherwise, has less to do with patting myself on the back or affirming my tips on how to freelance, and more to do with highlighting the innovative way PopMatters approaches online writing and publishing. More so than any publication I’ve worked with, PopMatters is very open to incorporating new voices and more voices–though, of course, some experience does help and might be expected–in its mission to provide interesting, relevant, and current criticism on pop culture. As an indication of this mindset, the submission guidelines and calls-for-papers on special topics are prominently displayed on the site, not buried somewhere in some link you can’t find in the masthead you can’t find. The way PopMatters operates by providing more and more different kinds of opportunities for its contributors in order to continually circulate fresh content might provide a strong model for thinking about how to revamp academic publishing in the humanities, a topic we’ll be getting back to in the very near future.