Outsourcing online adjuncts to other countries

We are already seeing low-end 'universities' that offer programs taught by an ever-changing lineup of domestic adjuncts. It won't be long before these schools realize that they can sign up adjuncts overseas to teach the classes and pay them peanuts.

Compare that to the academic model that emphasizes strong student-faculty relationships and to doctoral programs where graduate students and their professors work alongside each other on research projects. I don't see outsourcing impacting the better schools very much.

The result of relentless adjunctification is likely to be a growing dichotomy between the kind of schools that employ large numbers of them and those that don't, between strong academic degree programs and increasingly commoditized 'check-the-box' degrees.

Unfortunately, DL leans noticeably towards the low end. That's likely to only to get worse, because DL's telecommunications technology is so conducive to the remote adjunct trend. That's likely to increase DL's stigma and slow its acceptance at the elite end of higher education.

 

The question is whether RA online schools will be able to pull this off. Who knows?

 

If we are talking about adjuncts being more than just homework readers and test evaluators, it seems unlikely that major outsourcing will happen anytime soon.

Different countries have different learning cultures that would make it very difficult for a Chinese adjunct to be successful in an "American" online classroom without having has significant exposure to US culture - just like we couldn't just step into a Chinese university without going through various, sometimes painful, stages of cultural adaption before succeeding.

Just as an example: Someone educated in a country like China, where a good student shuts up and listens, would have a very hard time leading a discussion with a bunch of Americans who have been taught to challenge and discuss their brains out whenever they can.

 

And yet some RA schools explicitly deny applications from students outside of the USofA because the school does not feel the telecommunications services in other countries are up to their standards. So, if Western Governors University, for example, was to start off-shoring adjunct positions, the argument about disallowing foreign students would be hypocritical not to mention inconsistent.

 

You kind have point but you tend to forget that american culture is pretty present everywhere in the world so is not that difficult to get a foreign teacher that knows how to relate to an american student.

The chinese are a case apart because they tend to be too discipline-oriented and tend not to question, but that's not the case with latin-americans, indians, eastern-europeans, etc... And I'm not sure we can generalize that to all chinese )my classmates from Hong Kong tend to be pretty much like any american/european/latin-american)

In my University around 60% of the students are foreigners and we mostly relate to each other through our mutual knowledge of american culture. As a brazilian I don't know that much about mexican, indian and dutch culture - but some of my best friends here are from those countries and we most talk about american movies, media, books, etc...

So in this context I think that the outsourcing of adjuncts is very strong possibility and I don't think is something that is that far away in the future.

But I don't think that's totally bad too - it could be a way to make education cheaper here.





I

 

With the lower end schools, it will happen soon. I think (and hope) that it will take much longer for the top schools to outsource. Schools are very protective of their reputation and outsourcing has a bad reputation in the US. FP schools must operate like any other business and, in that context, marketing and public image reigns supreme. Marketing students know this axiom: "Perception is truth." (Even when it's a lie) Outsourcing is seen in the public eye as a way of putting the love of profit over any sense of loyalty to fellow Americans. Therefore, online universities, all of whom constantly grapple with the stigma of low quality, easy education, could not afford to be seen as organizations that farm out their teaching jobs to the lowest bidder.

This is not to say that only Americans are qualified to teach at a university. It's obvious that Americans do not have the corner on intelligence or talent, the issue is what it will always be in business; public perception.

This will all change as online education is finally accepted in main stream academic circles. When that happens, academic outsourcing is likely to be accepted.

 

Has anyone ever heard of this actually happening anywhere?

 

Would you mind defining the terms reputable and cheesy?

 

From the Capella University "Media Fact Sheet", dated 11/19/09:

So apparently Capella does hire international faculty. However, this does not necessarily mean that the international faculty are paid on a lower wage scale than American faculty.

In contrast, University of Phoenix requires faculty to be US residents, although not necessarily US citizens (non-citizens must have a work visa).

 

Reputable schools would be the institutions that have the highest reputation, charge the big bucks, have RA, supply the degrees that are most likely to be accepted at other institutions, have the most public recognition, and, consequently, show the most concern for their public image.

Cheesy schools would be diploma mills and similar institutions.

HOWEVER, CalDog just supplied some information that possibly disproves what I'm saying to some extent. Apparently, Capella, a reputable school, has 8 instructors that live in foreign countries. However, I don't think you could automatically label that to be the kind of cheap outsourcing I'm talking about. Those faculty members could very well be paid just as well as domestic faculty.

 

No, the "8" refers to the number of foreign countries where Capella instructors live -- not the number of foreign instructors that live in those countries. There could be dozens of Capella instructors living in those 8 unspecified foreign countries.

As previously acknowledged, that is quite possible. It wouldn't surprise me, for example, if many of Capella's foreign instructors are Canadians.

You can't. But if schools like Capella are prepared to hire foreign instructors -- and apparently they are -- then it may be only a matter of time before they realize that some foreign instructors can be hired at deeply discounted rates.

 

These are old news. Schools like Walden and TUI have international faculty. This is a selling point as many schools have the international focus and sell the global expertise.

If many of the students are international, why would you want to limit yourself to US faculty?

Most professors in disciplines like engineering are from India and China even at regular face to face schools so the outsourcing would actually be a good thing as many professors would rather stay home instead of immigrating to other countries.

 

Yes, I agree. That practice of using international faculty is "old news", but the idea of finding cheap academic labor, in the way that Nike uses sweatshops in 3rd world countries, is definitely a new issue. That's why, in a previous post, I referred to schools that might do that as "cheesy".

 

I don't think that the real issue is whether DL faculty live overseas. It's why they were hired in the first place.

I've watched professorial hiring at a conventional B&M university that wasn't particularly prestigious. They conducted a nationwide search. Shortlisted candidates flew out and delivered tryout lectures, which resulted in a great lecture series for us students. Our department was seeking somebody with the expertise to teach a particular set of classes and hopefully to raise the department's reputational profile in that area. The search committee was very interested in who candidates had studied with, what their dissertation topics were, and what their research experience and publications looked like. I'm sure that recommendations counted for a lot too.

Compare that to schools that employ a constantly changing lineup of temp-teachers and appear willing to hire just about anyone with 18 credits (six classes) in the subject that they propose to teach.

I think that's the real dichotomy.

It won't be long before the low-end DL schools (I almost wrote 'accredited mills') discover that they can hire their temp-teachers overseas in poor countries for far less than they are paying them here. The biggest operating expense for most universities is faculty salaries, after all.

I have no objection at all to a quality DL school hiring an extraordinary professor who lives outside the US. As has already been pointed out, that might even improve programs in some fields, international business for example, or perhaps foreign affairs. It certainly has merit in many humanities areas -- non-Western religions and philosophies, foreign histories and literatures and whatnot.

But foreigners should be hired for academic reasons, in the same way that good schools hire domestic professors. Foreign faculty need to be hired because they are the best candidates for the job, not just because they represent a pliable source of cheap labor.

 

Most online schools have only one pay table for all faculty regardless of place of residence or citizenship. However, some online schools pay so little that they mainly attract foreign faculty. The perfect example is tutoring services, most of them pay 10 bucks an hour so although they can hire American, most of their tutors come from India.

 

That's exactly it!

 

I imagine one of the measures of the outsourced professor (rather reknown international faculty member) would be a pay differential. If faculty in foreign countries are being paid less for teaching the same courses or providing the same services, then that is clearly an example of outsourcing / offshoring.

 

I totally agree, Dave. The utilization of highly qualified, well-paid offshore professors is perfectly acceptable. Nobody can argue with that practice. The danger lies in institutions engaging in cheap outsourcing using underpaid and possibly unqualified faculty.

 

It's scary that the Higher Learning Commission doesn't seem to know or care about the possibility of cheap outsourcing.