On Wednesday, many adjunct professors at colleges and universities across the country joined together for National Adjunct Walkout Day. The day was used to heighten awareness of adjunct professors’ working conditions.

“Some adjuncts have to do their office hours in their automobile,” said Matt Huber, a member of the Labor Studies Working Group at Syracuse University, and a professor of geography. Adjuncts are part-time professors hired on a contractual basis rather than receiving a permanent and tenured position.

While adjuncts at SU couldn’t strike due to contractual obligations, Huber said some part-time instructors organized to participate in the “Day of Conversation” that was held Wednesday to develop an Academic Strategic Plan.

Members of the adjunct community — as well as advocacy groups, such as the Labor Studies Working Group and Advocated United — say that the common goals are to either improve adjunct working conditions and compensation or simply revert back to more even ratios of adjuncts to tenured professors.

At SU, there are 544 part-time, non-tenure-track faculty as of this academic year, according to an SU FACTS brochure. However, Huber stressed that adjuncts cannot be the sole group concerned with the issues.

“It’s really important for tenure-track and tenure professors to speak up on this problem because they have the freedom to do so.”

Mark Grimm, an adjunct who teaches transmedia at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, said, “It’s just gotten worse and worse over the years as far as I’m concerned.”

Gretchen Purser, also a member of the Labor Studies Working Group, and professor of sociology at the Maxwell School, said that 40 years ago, over 75 percent of all university teaching was done by tenure or tenure-track professors. Now, over 70 percent is taught by adjuncts, she said.

“If the university took seriously education and teaching as the primary mission, you wouldn’t see that kind of labor practice being enacted,” Purser said.

Purser said the university is emulating the corporate sector by hiring cheap labor. “It reflects that the ever-growing percentage of the university’s budgets are going to things that have nothing to do with education,” she said.

Ryan Travis, an adjunct professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, said that the uncertainty adjuncts face reflects an imbalance that penetrates into nearly every aspect of life, and it’s an imbalance that stretches far beyond Syracuse.

Said Travis: “This is a national issue.”

Published on February 26, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Danny: dmantoot@syr.edu