• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Universities to Screw Adjunct Professors with Obamacare Loophole.

Guy Incognito said:
I don't see that as easy to misinterpret. A dandelion has enormous beauty by its value is nonexistent. No matter how wonderful that dandelion is you aren't going to get paid much for it when you take it to market.

Interesting observations. I am just looking at this objectively and dispassionately. The minuscule value of an adjunct compared to the enormous value of a Noam Chomsky is not good or bad, it just is. It's a fact. This fact leads to an imbalance in pay. If you want to change that imbalance in pay you are creating something artificial. It is unnatural to pay adjuncts well.
Click to expand...

(....actually they show up in salads at fancy restaurants who charge you a mint for their bowl of weeds. I just hope they washed the dog pee off them after their illegal immigrant busboy had to go to the park to pick them)
 
Fisher said:
I loved adjunct professors (hated TA's). Most of my adjuncts were people with tons of real world experience and note-worthy backgrounds who came in to teach a class, or a few per semester or a year, or whatever. Except for a couple, they were not nearly as insufferable as the tenured Phd. Of course, most of them got paid as well as or better than the tenured professors which they did not like so much.
Click to expand...

Without exception the best teacher I ever had we're adjuncts, and I have never met a tenured faculty member who knew how to teach worth a damn. But this isn't about what I like it's about what the market will bear.
 
Fisher said:
(....actually they show up in salads at fancy restaurants who charge you a mint for their bowl of weeds. I just hope they washed the dog pee off them after their illegal immigrant busboy had to go to the park to pick them)
Click to expand...

Well there you go. Just goes to show you can never tell what people will value. It doesn't make sense, but it doesn't NEED to make sense.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Value to the market at large. You might make the intelligent choice not to value Chomsky but you are in the minority.
Click to expand...

Who do you see as the "market" that values Chomsky?
 
Fisher said:
I loved adjunct professors (hated TA's). Most of my adjuncts were people with tons of real world experience and note-worthy backgrounds who came in to teach a class, or a few per semester or a year, or whatever. Except for a couple, they were not nearly as insufferable as the tenured Phd. Of course, most of them got paid as well as or better than the tenured professors which they did not like so much.
Click to expand...

I had a TA for a logic class who had this sign on his desk: "Of course not one of the proofs is valid, but taken together they constitute a body of evidence too considerable to disregard."

Over the past decades, I have had numerous occasions to recall that sign... :mrgreen:
 
Diogenes said:
Who do you see as the "market" that values Chomsky?
Click to expand...
This is really a comparison of apples and oranges.
A high profile professor, can bring a lot of name recondition and prestige to a university.
It may also bring in real research dollars. All good for the University.
Adjuncts on the other hand are a different leg of the stool holding up the university.
By keeping the cost of goods sold(credit hours taught) lower, they enable the
full time Faculty more time for research.
It works like this, Say a tenured professor makes $60K and is responsible for teaching
6 classes per year, (10K per class).
Said Prof. get a grant that buys a class release.
The University hires an adjunct for $2K per class, recouped funds $8K for the class.
Funds like these can be spent improving the labs, helping students, ect.
 
Or maybe the funds are spent less productively. I understand Elizabeth Warren (aka Fauxcahontas) was paid $350k for teaching one class.

Agreed that a high profile professor can bring name recognition and prestige to the university. Einstein comes to mind as one positive example, Bose is another. Chomsky and George Lincoln Rockwell do not.

Other than that, your description seems to be of a university as a capitalist entity exploiting adjunct labor for the benefit of a master class of tenured professors. Was that what you had in mind?
 
Diogenes said:
I meant other than George Soros and the anti-American left.
Click to expand...

I take back what I said earlier about you being anything like your namesake. You clearly have no interest in honesty. You are a deluded paranoiac. You are hereby dismissed with prejudice.
 
Guy Incognito said:
I take back what I said earlier about you being anything like your namesake. You clearly have no interest in honesty. You are a deluded paranoiac. You are hereby dismissed with prejudice.
Click to expand...

I accept your surrender on the issues.
 
Fiddytree said:
The only reason why I am backing out is because I cannot recall a fruitful conversation with you.
Click to expand...

The point is crudely made, but it is accurate. Subsidization of higher education has led to a glut of people who are over-educated in the humanities. Mind you, I"m one of them, and I had a blast and love learning.... but for many, it's sort of a trap. You get a degree in English, and what is there but to teach? (etc.)
 
Fisher said:
The professors will still be able to get their insurance subsidized privately if they are truly low wage exploited down-trodden victims. Plus a lot of adjuncts do have other jobs.
Click to expand...

Not to mention a lot were not getting benefits anyway. You mostly have to be part of a union to be getting benefits.
 
cpwill said:
The point is crudely made, but it is accurate. Subsidization of higher education has led to a glut of people who are over-educated in the humanities. Mind you, I"m one of them, and I had a blast and love learning.... but for many, it's sort of a trap. You get a degree in English, and what is there but to teach? (etc.)
Click to expand...

You can write. GM last I heard stated how paying a write in the neighborhood of 60K a year.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Look, Diogenes, I agree with you. You're a lot like your namesake. But the truth is you can't find an honest man with a flashlight at the major universities. But that's what happens in a free market.

Chomsky is a fool but for good or ill he is famous. And that is a lot more valuable than all the brilliant and talented but obscure adjuncts in the world.
Click to expand...

Hitler was famous. Was that valuable?
 
cpwill said:
The point is crudely made, but it is accurate. Subsidization of higher education has led to a glut of people who are over-educated in the humanities. Mind you, I"m one of them, and I had a blast and love learning.... but for many, it's sort of a trap. You get a degree in English, and what is there but to teach? (etc.)
Click to expand...

English teachers should not have it difficult for them to teach. There is a great market for them globally who need to learn English so as to communicate in the internationally recognized language.
 
choiceone said:
Hitler was famous. Was that valuable?
Click to expand...

I somehow doubt that Hitler could command a high salary as tenured faculty at a major university. But way to godwin the thread for no reason:thumbs:
 
DDD said:
English teachers should not have it difficult for them to teach. There is a great market for them globally who need to learn English so as to communicate in the internationally recognized language.
Click to expand...

Training in ESL (English as a second language) is very often required, though.
 
Guy Incognito said:
What a ridiculous thing to say. PhDs are cheap and plentiful and easily replaceable. If universities rely on them in large numbers that is just good business. They don't have to pay them well because the ones who don't like what they are paid can easily be replaced. You obviously do not understand or do not care to understand basic principles of supply and demand. You are the one who has lost all reality.
Click to expand...

Depends on how you characterize the role and nature of employment in supply and demand, not that it matters. If employers colluded to pay low wages than a job otherwise merits (as often occurs in some degree, and through one mechanism or another) than it is going to create some kind of upheaval. In that direction, its worth noting your concept of value is far too limited. If wages become so low that capitalism itself becomes too dysfunctional to work or even a target of resistence, then clearly it had no value to people who come to oppose it.

Capitalism's value is not limited to its internal economic arrangements, but also how it justifies its existence to the people who are supposed to comply with its norms.
 
Last edited:
I'm not interested in joining into the value argument, as adjuncts do remarkable work and on the whole are not paid what they are worth.

That said, as we begin talks here with administration concerning next year, this issue came up. They expressed that it now might be cost effective to hire full time faculty with full benefits. Neither full time faculty nor adjuncts here think hat is a bad idea.
 
Boo Radley said:
I'm not interested in joining into the value argument, as adjuncts do remarkable work and on the whole are not paid what they are worth.
Click to expand...

That's bull. adjuncts as worth what the market will bear, that is what WORTH means. What you mean is that you feel that adjuncts are worth more than they are paid, which is a sentimentalist argument, not a rational one. Show some intellectual honesty for once.
 
Boo Radley said:
I'm not interested in joining into the value argument, as adjuncts do remarkable work and on the whole are not paid what they are worth.

That said, as we begin talks here with administration concerning next year, this issue came up. They expressed that it now might be cost effective to hire full time faculty with full benefits. Neither full time faculty nor adjuncts here think hat is a bad idea.
Click to expand...

Adjusts generally do the "real work" of their institutions that the public thinks the institutions are focused on--the teaching. I'd like to see a pathway for adjuncts to attain full-time status.

This would require even more of their time, though, because then they'd be required to fulfill the obligations of "service." Some adjuncts don't want to change their status because they enjoy their freedom. I know several who shuttle between institutions and dig the variety of experience (and generally have insurance through a spouse).

Some adjuncts do want the security of full-time contractual status, and there should be a pathway for those willing to do the service and professional development stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom