As we watch our financial system unravel before our eyes and ordinary working families start thinking about how this is all going to play out in their daily lives, it is good to know that there are still options out there. All you need is "a cheap laptop computer, a broadband internet connection and a Master degree, or at least 18 graduate hours" and you can earn considerable income teaching as an on-line adjunct instructor in the lucrative field of the humanities.

It has never been easier for a person with a Master degree in English, history, foreign language such as French or Spanish or art to pick up an extra thousand dollars or more each month by adding a couple of online classes to a teaching schedule.

Now before all you people who know what is really involved in teaching a course online and what you earn for that effort naysayers start talking about "reality," rest assured that this can not only work out, but also be advantageous.

While an adjunct online instructor does not earn as much as a full time faculty member, an adjunct instructor has the freedom to teach at a number of different educational institutions at the same time. Quite often, this freedom to teach for numerous schools can translate into a considerable sum of extra cash for the adjunct college instructor that specializes in online education

Ah, the freedom and all that extra cash--it's like a virtual paradise.

A couple weeks back, the New York Times Magazine included a story about Professor Anna Bean in its annual education issue of the magazine. Bean, who had been teaching on a one-year contract at Wesleyan, had been fired the way that so many contingent faculty members are fired -- by not being renewed at the end of her term. The story focused on course evaluations and how they are used, but many contingent faculty activists noted that the story amazingly didn't address the larger problem of contingency itself. Among them was Ruthi Erdman from Central Washington University, who let the NYT Magazine editors know what she thought about that omission.

Of course the editors have never met a letter that they didn't think ought to be, well, edited and so Ruthi's full letter doesn't appear on the NYT site. Unfortunately they cut much of Ruthi's own experience as a contingent faculty member. Well, we may not be the NYT, but we do have Ruthi's full letter. So head on over the jump and check out Ruthi's Response.

This is a story of two worlds, two realities on one campus.

An opinion piece in a local newspaper, The Yakima Herald published Sept 11, 2008, reported on our outgoing university president's new “president emerita” status, an outgoing pay of $160,000 plus a $3,500 monthly housing stipend. The reporting somehow left readers with an impression that faculty automatically gain emeritus status when they retire and that such status comes with a nice paycheck. However, those of us here on the factory floor/classroom have lives quite different than our CEOs/administration. And actually, emeritus status is granted by the board of trustees—we contingent faculty usually just don't get rehired—and it only means free parking if you are lucky. After all, our parking fees are now $200/year. (Yes, we pay to park at our place of employment.)

The start of the fall classes approaches and I am trying desperately to motivate myself to begin structuring my courses. I remember as a student that my professors walked in and sorted out the course week-by-week, announcing dates of exams and deadlines of papers as they went. No more. Now we are required to have the entire term mapped out in advance, not only the exam dates but each class day's reading coverage. This can be daunting. As a general education instructor at a 4-year school, I do not teach anything near my research area, but I have taught the gen. ed. classes for over 20 years and have a good sense of where students should be at the end of the term. At the same time, I have a sense of how far I can move them in 10 weeks while still keeping my student evaluations good, but not too good, and simultaneously avoiding grade inflation. This balancing act is necessary for rehiring.

Being a part-timer describes conditions of employment: It's not a statement of identity. I am, first and foremost, a teacher. When I was going to school to prepare for my career, my goal was to teach in a community college. The fact that, in order to do so and survive, I had to accept multiple part-time assignments should not have affected my understanding of who I was and what I wanted to accomplish.

Unfortunately, it did. I'm still discovering how big of an impact this has had on my self-image, but as I prepare for my first year of teaching as a full-time, tenure-track instructor, I'm already stunned by the change. Soon after I accepted the offer, one of my critics wrote, "This position could have gone to a part-timer instead," and I began to realize that there would be a change in the way others viewed me. I'm just beginning to understand how big of an impact that will have on how I view myself.

So you make $1,800 for teaching a university level course. Let's even say you teach three of those courses bringing your salary up to $5,400 for about four months of work. With earnings like that, you could surely wait seven weeks until you receive your first paycheck - after all, you must have quite a savings stored up, right? That appears to be what the case will be at Missouri Southern State University starting next semester. 

Why? Well, according to the VP of Academic Affairs, it is really hard to manage a payroll system that pays employee five times a term. Yes. It makes one wonder how any organization completes the task of paying employees every other week beginning with the second week after they start!

But seriously . . .

Hope everyone is enjoying the last days of summer, had a great Labor Day (by celebrating Labor!), and is ready for the new academic year. We took a few weeks off to regroup, but we are back. We have a good number of things lined up for this upcoming year that we are excited about, but first let's clear the decks of a few items of interest that happened during our short break.

• Contingent activists including a good number of AFT members got together in San Diego for the eighth meeting of COCAL (Coalition on Contingent Academic Labor). I wasn't able to make it, but everyone reports that it was a great success.
• A former University of Phoenix administrator started quite a stir by suggesting that contingent faculty ought to get themselves certified.
• The AAUP just added a great guy at the helm. There are a few articles out there on this, but to really get a sense of Gary Rhoades, listen to the podcast over at IHE.

Okay that is enough old news, now we can start focusing on the current goings-on.

The first week of August is a time when I can take a breath and try to figure what lies ahead for the coming academic year before my family drags me away from the computer. The youngest child is distracted with a series of craft activities in town right now, the oldest is preoccupied with his master's thesis, the spouse with his textbook, and the grandparent with a new pile of mysteries. Campus is quiet with the end of the first summer session and the graduate students have some time before the next deadline, which will bring another pile of graduate theses I have to read (my summer job). My co-editor is back from vacation and has taken on the task now of arguing with thesis committee chairs over the state of their students' theses.

Stephen Trachtenberg appears to have stepped into it with another fine suggestion for contingent faculty.

Oftentimes I have doubts about how important the use of contingent faculty really is in the larger social context. After all, the general public seems completely unaware of what is happening on our colleges and we are working in an environment that has been portrayed in our culture as monastic, isolated, and separated from the larger community. And then this past June, I read in my local newspaper (the Ellensburg Daily Record) a piece by a retiring professor of Communications, Corwin King, comparing the faculty make up today and 30 years ago. And this got me thinking about how much money the city and county might be losing as the use of contingent faculty increases. Losses that should make local politicians take notice.