Ghosts in the Classroom : Stories of College Adjunct Faculty--and the Price We All Pay [Paperback]

Michael Dubson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2001

HIGHER EDUCATION'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET EXPOSED IN GHOSTS IN THE CLASSROOM

Corruption, exploitation and cruelty are the main ingredients in this book about college adjunct faculty, issues not usually associated with the grand manners and political correctness of higher education.

Ghosts in the Classroom is an anthology of essays written by college adjunct faculty about their experiences working in higher education. They are written by people who are now in the field, those have gotten permanent jobs, and those who have left the profession for a better life. The contributors have worked at expensive, private schools, Ivy League schools, public universities and community colleges. Adjunct faculty are paid on a course by course basis only and given few, if any, benefits and no job security. The essays in Ghosts in the Classroom show what happens in the classroom because of that.

*The gross discrepancy between full-time and adjunct pay, depsite the fact that adjunct faculty have the same degrees and do the same work;

*How teaching suffers when adjunct faculty teach on the side of a full-time job or career or string together a series of classes at different campuses;

*How adjuncts are often targets of abuse by administrators and scapegoats for full-time faculty;

*How adjunct faculty are expected to function despite the fact that few are given an office, a phone, computer facilities or even chalk, a grade book or photocopying services;

*Adjunct faculty are expected to commit to a college and professionally prepare for courses, even though the course may be canceled or reassigned at the last minute without any compensation provided;

*Adjunct faculty are used to teach the classes full-time faculty don't want to teach, at times they refuse to work;

*How students are negatively affected by demoralized, over-worked teachers who are out of the loop of the schools they serve.

Adjunct faculty teach approximately 50% of all courses offered in the colleges and universities in the United States. This invisible, unsupported and abused group has allowed the colleges to remain open and running at full-tilt. Ghosts in the Classroom exposes this phenomenon and many of the things it affects. You will never think about the higher educational system the same way again.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...adjunct professors will discover the resource necessary for overturning their common fate--their own colleagues and fellow workers." -- Gary Zabel/Co-Chair of Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor/Boston

"...the attempt to run higher education as a business is an utter failure and a national disaster in the making." -- Richard Moser/National Field Representative/American Association of University Professors

"The issues painfully recounted in Ghosts in the Classroom should concern--and involve--all faculty." Jerry Spindel/MTA Today -- Massachusetts Teachers' Association Today, March 2001

"These are the writings of actual professors. Read the book. Then begin to worry." -- Barbara Wolf/Producer & Director of the video Degrees of Shame

"This melange of musings may someday be viewed as a historic tract--like Luther's theses." Peter Flynn/MCCC News -- Massachusetts Community College Council News, March 2001

From the Publisher

At Camel's Back Books, we continue to hope that Ghosts in the Classroom will be one of the stones thrown into the sea of academia, and that the spray thrown up will wash away the corruption that now corrodes the entire system.

We hope this book becomes a powerful weapon in the hands of adjuncts all over the country, and indeed, the North American continent, who are now fighting for what should be the basics of their profession: Equal pay for equal work, a decent benefit package that includes the option of health insurance coverage and a decent retirement pension, respect and recognition, and promotion to full-time employment as openings arise. We hope this book makes cruel administrators and indifferent full-time faculty members very, very nervous, and that it energizes the adjuncts and the supportive full-time faculty to work for justice--because it's the right thing to do, and because the working conditions of college faculty are the learning conditions of their students.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 172 pages
• Publisher: Camels Back Books (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965897710
• ISBN-13: 978-0965897716
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #525,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A call for change!, June 5, 2001

By 

Duane Simolke "author, The Acorn Stories, Deg... (Lubbock, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ghosts in the Classroom : Stories of College Adjunct Faculty--and the Price We All Pay (Paperback)

Editor Michael Dubson has gathered an impressive collection of essays from adjunct college instructors across America. Those essays reveal a system in which half the teachers work for half the money that the other teachers receive. However, they do as much or more work, receive no benefits, and have no job security beyond the current semester. Colleges and universities routinely exclude these adjuncts from the privilege, protection, advancement, and recognition that their better-paid colleagues receive.

Aside from these conditions, the adjuncts also face bizarre situations, such as students who will bring law suits when caught cheating, or such as incomes created by piecing together teaching assignments from two-six different institutions at a time!

All the writers here illustrate how the current policies toward adjuncts hurt the students, the educational system, and America in general, as much as they hurt the adjuncts themselves. These teachers continue out of love for their students and their subject, but the current system works against such love. Not surprisingly, the book concludes with an essay titled "Farewell to Teaching."

9 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good overview, December 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Ghosts in the Classroom : Stories of College Adjunct Faculty--and the Price We All Pay (Paperback)

This book is a collection of essays by those who have experienced the appalling form of indentured servitude known as part-time teaching. It is an indictment of teaching in colleges and universities as well as of the complacency and self-service of the full-time faculty and of the administration. One is overwhelmingly left with the impression that there is little point in paying for or even wasting time on a college education, particularly in the so-called community colleges, which are obviously neither communal nor deserving of the title of college. You will either be taught by a lazy and smug tenured faculty member who is so fundamentally intellectually dishonest and so casually indifferent to the suffering required to fund his perquisites that he cannot possibly have credibility, or by a viciously mistreated, overworked and marginalized academic bracero.

The book would have been improved by essays from instructors in the sciences and mathematics, and from instructors who acknowledge the lack of quality inherent in part-time teaching. (Horribly that lack of quality also exists, with far less justification, among the tenured faculty). Only one writer, under the pseudonym "Andrew Guy" is honest enough to admit that when you carry two to three times the load of the full time faculty, when you commute fifteen hours a week and when you are constantly subjected to insult and denigration, you end up dropping your standards just to survive physically and psychologically. Amazingly, the introduction alludes to the presence of "villains," among the writers, as though Guy is evil for putting his own survival ahead of the quality of the educational experience of his students. Every single other writer claimed to maintain high standards (of course!) and work feverishly without regard to his own welfare to give students the best possible learning experience. Each was apparently rewarded by adoring students and high praise on teaching reviews. It's all too unbelievable. These aren't the part-time instructors I knew. The part-time instructors I knew definitely got good reviews and had adoring students. The reason wasn't difficult to see - they talked a great line about high standards, but gave all As and Bs. To do otherwise was to court termination. Again, full-time faculty did the same, often crudely boasting that such superb grades were proof of their own teaching prowess rather than of their utter failure to prepare their students for further studies or work.

It's a great book nonetheless. I wish it was more diverse in outlook and specialty. Next time perhaps the editor can put an advertisement in Science or Nature and get some different perspectives.