Non-traditional route to full-time professorship

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by chrisjm18, Feb 3, 2020.

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  1. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Thank you. It's amazing how many people don't realize this. It's the same with immigration.
     
    sideman likes this.
  2. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    It is the same with immigration. I speak with a bit of authority on that subject.
     
    SteveFoerster likes this.
  3. jonlevy

    jonlevy Active Member

    Tenured faculty, which are getting fewer and fewer, sit back and collect six figures while adjuncts get a pittance. Pure economic self interest, those hiring committees are motivated by preserving and extending their own benefits. No other industry would allow a system where where workers are paid at two vastly different rates for doing the same job with the same qualifications. Tenured faculty would argue they had to cough up a book or grant but adjuncts are not given the chance. Even worse emeritis faculty, often administrators, will take classes away from adjuncts who are just trying to survive.
     
  4. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    You must not be a woman.
     
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  5. jonlevy

    jonlevy Active Member

    Not a valid comparison. Men do not make something on the order of 2 to 3 times what women make for the same job. There is no EEOC for adjuncts.
     
  6. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Double post.
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2020
  7. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Outside of elite private institutions and major flagship state universities, six figure faculty positions are becoming increasingly uncommon. There are a number of major state universities that I work closely with, where very few tenured faculty members have salaries in the $100k range. Besides, it's not the 1980s, barely paying off social security each year shouldn't be a bragging point. Personally, I would completely disagree with your assessment of faculty hiring committees. Every hiring committee that I have ever been on, has diligently sought the person who would be most beneficial to the students and institution. Personally I have sacrificed my own benefits, to bring others on board, on multiple occasions. Yes, having workers being paid at two vastly different rates for the same work, is... common. Outside of Rich's poignant statement, it commonly occurs throughout industry for all sorts of people based on sex, race, religion, immigration status, seniority, employed through a temp agency, etc. Is it fair? Of course note. Is it legal? Sometimes yes. Hell, the last UAW strike was principally about this very issue. I am confused by the notion that you mention about professor emeritus programs. Adjunct work is inherently part-time work, anyone who attempts to survive off of part-time jobs will be inclined to face challenges. While I am sure it has happened on occasion, I have never encountered a department chair of dean who assigned an incompetent professor emeritus to teach a course section over a competent adjunct.

    ....you may be surprised. Although it generally is limited to the executive compensation packages.
     
  8. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I was making a point, not stating a fact. Geez.
     
  9. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I don’t want to get too hung up on defining our terms but in a world where people frequently struggle to pay their bills, a 20% difference could be considered to be a vast difference.
     
  10. ITJD

    ITJD Active Member

    Hi -

    I hear you, but you need to look at the causes of the problem if you are ever to have any hope of a better outcome.

    The reasons why tenured faculty are becoming fewer and fewer:
    1. Fewer donors establishing new chairs. Schools needing to adopt the costs which are considerable. (research colleges)
    2. A generation of schools that approached tenure like high schools instead of research facilities. (colleges generally)
    3. Unions at the secondary level abusing their power to institute tenure for high school and elementary faculty (everywhere else)
    4. We're coming up on a generation that will see the fewest enrollments in college in recent history because.
    a. Cost of living went up and folks around the turn of the century stopped having kids or only had a small number of kids. The four kid family is waning.

    Long winded way of saying that someone has to pay for it, the heads aren't there, and support for tenure is waning due to the quality of education argument coupled with the standardization of curriculum and Internet confluence. All pressures led to the adjunct market forming which allows schools to burst hire to meet demand and stay afloat when the heads aren't there.

    Last, it's not like having double the number of Ph.Ds in the market compared to 1990 is helping anyone get a gig. However, the biggest fallacy about tenure is that the path to it is through adjuncting. That may be true in secondary education where you spend time in a system, get hours, then eventually get hired and eventually get experience leading to tenure. The direct path to tenure in colleges is get your Ph.D, get a post-doc in a lab, go to conferences and apply for tenure-track positions, work full-time for a few years, maybe get tenure, maybe start the whole process over again - until you stick.

    Adjuncting at colleges leads to more adjunct work. Don't get on the wrong treadmill.

    Be well,
    ITJD
     
  11. ITJD

    ITJD Active Member

    .. also want to note that I'm aware of the irony in my post considering the original intent of the thread. The positions are not exclusive.

    It is entirely possible to get a doctorate online and do the networking necessary to get to a tenure-track position. I just call into question whether those success stories uniformly started as adjuncts.
     
  12. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Indeed, not everyone thinks about this stuff like we do. Though, I can't help but feel that Senator Durbin hasn't been heard running his mouth about for-profit schools being the death of all good things since Sen. Duckworth took office nearly as much as he did under the previous administration...

    My favorite example was a colleague at SHRM who led a presentation on how employers ought to ban "for-profit" degrees. I asked her if she included herself in that number since, according to her LinkedIn, she had a Masters from Walden. She was incredulous. Walden isn't for-profit, she insisted. She was talking about the evil for-profits out there like Phoenix. Completely oblivious to the fact that her degree was awarded by a for-profit school.

    All of us have reasonably well informed opinions on this sort of thing. We have a lot of collective experience as students and instructors. We know these schools. For everyone else? Their opinion is often based on how captivating the graphics were in the hard hitting expose they saw on whatever polarizing news network they enjoy most.
     
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  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Okay, that's pretty funny. Please tell me you did this during the session's Q&A and not afterwards.
     
  14. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

  15. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I wish I had the fortitude to make a move like that. Though I did it in a small group some time after so it wasn't just her hearing it.

    HR professionals, in my observation, were fairly early adopters of online education especially for Masters programs. So there are some of the funkiest combinations I've ever seen. Things like Cornell undergrad and Phoenix MBA. For our purposes I think it also goes to show how rarely people Google their own schools...
     
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  16. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    What I love about this one is how it violates all of the "nevers" that get thrown around, especially on this forum. All graduate education from for-profit schools. A DBA and not a PhD. And then, just to drive the point home, he previously was a Dean at a formerly for-profit school before landing at a perfectly respectable Catholic school.
     
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  17. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  18. ITJD

    ITJD Active Member

    Oddly, he has a faculty page but when you go to the list of folks that the department identifies as faculty of his school, he's not listed there.
    https://www.cabrini.edu/about/departments/academic-departments/school-of-business-arts-and-media/business/faculty
     
  19. ITJD

    ITJD Active Member

  20. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    If you go to the school's homepage, click on "About" then "Schools and Departments" then "Academic Departments and Schools" then "School of Business, Arts, and Media." You should see him listed on the right-hand side of the page.

    You probably didn't find him under faculty because he's perhaps not teaching any classes. Hence, he'd be considered staff.
     
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