Paying adjuncts more and offering benefits is a short sighted solution. Noble? Needed? Very much so. Solves the problem? Absolutely not.
Something funny happens when we unionize and demand higher pay for the adjuncts. It doesn’t fix the problem of actually hiring well over 50 percent of university professors as adjuncts. I mention in my memo that adjuncts are, to be ultra blunt, easy. As mentioned in both articles these adjuncts still love to teach despite deplorable working conditions. I cannot argue against the need to pay these part time professors better with benefits and frankly I wont. But the question that will need to be asked is what happens in 5 years when there wages are treading the federal minimum line and they are relegated to a minimum wage job. What happens when the unions cant get the universities to agree to the terms needed to support these part time professors. Most importantly what will prevent administrators from continuing to hire more administrators.
Riederer calls it a path to corporatization. Students are becoming consumers and faculty are just another cost of doing business. She is correct. Then she assumes like other facets of minimum wage debates that more pay for the part time work will make the world better. While there is enough evidence setting a floor for adjunct pay will lead to a better environment, (5.85 min wage vs 7.25 min wage) the measure is only a plug. Even if a union can include benefits to this pay that leaves adjuncts slightly more off then before while still fighting it out for class time, better offices, and other streams of income.
The problem is how to make the adjunct valuable. I write in my memo that college used to be academics with perks. This included hearing many a great men and women speak and lecture, if only for a short time. Now its perks with academics. She correctly assumes universities see faculty as a cost of business. That’s due in large part to the lack of draw pure academics has anymore. How then in this world of job placement, online schooling,hundred thousand seat sport arenas, and free stuff do we again make the part time professor valuable again.
A first step is to have adjuncts function as more than just adjuncts. The strangest thing I find is that universities are content to hire more administrators when hiring an adjunct to handle multiple roles can work just as well. As a business person the lack of use of adjuncts in admin roles is shocking. Even is less intense humanities majors what prevents the universities from having these adjuncts conduct work during the day for more than the minimum wage and teach a class in the evening that’s too general to justify a tenured professor while leaving the specialty classes to the few tenured faculty
Even as a business person I can tell you established corporations and Not for Profits with more than one decision maker function as animals. Their goal is survival. Even the mom and pop shop displays this same basic instinct. So show the animal that adjuncts treated well are crucial to the survival of the organization. Do not simply demand more benefits but demand a larger role. Ideas such as sending adjuncts to high schools to recruit and teach college in high school courses generate much more value then teaching that same course 10 times on campus. How about sending them to community centers to teach the adult community or have them teach virtually which is a growing trend of education.
To surmise, throwing money at adjunct pay and benefits will not be a sustainable long term solution for either end. The real solution lies in making the adjunct more then a teacher but a contributor to the university. Justified in not just more benefits but a more stable environment. Universities, like corporations, are no more than animals. Their goal is to survive to next year and beyond. To keep the adjunct from falling to the depths of minimum wage, part time, experience building work. The position must be revamped to accommodate a wider range of roles. The tragedy of Mary Vojtko may have been prevented or prolonged with more benefits but what is to prevent Duquesne from hiring two more adjuncts, even at the higher rate, to replace her workload. If that isn’t addressed, then we will be discussing pay in incremental years to come as the inflation rate catches up to the predetermined minimum these adjuncts receive
Writing for the Public 
James, I think your post is very interesting. I understand your point about trying to make adjuncts more valuable to the university. But would giving them a variety of tasks just distract them from teaching, their most important job? Sometimes I feel some of my professors care a lot more about their research they’re conducting for the university than my class. I don’t necessarily blame them; I would probably find their research more interesting than my classes as well. But I believe that the main focus needs to continue to be preparing students for their future endeavors.
Adjuncts are already valuable to academia. I don’t believe that adjuncts do a worse job than full-time professors either. I’ve had a few adjunct professors at my time at Pitt, and I did not notice any difference in the quality of teaching than with the full-time tenured professors. Actually, I felt the adjunct professors were slightly more personable, and I developed closer bonds with them.
I believe that adjunct professors need to be able to walk away from the situation if they feel they’re being exploited. If educated and talented individuals are not willing to work for minimum wage, colleges will be forced to offer positions with better pay and benefits in order to lure faculty. It may not be the easiest choice for someone who loves teaching and is very good at it, but adjuncts need to show that they are already valuable to the university. Without adjuncts, there would certainly be a deficit of professors. Going off the animal metaphor you mentioned, colleges will offer adjunct professors only as much as they have to, even if it is unfair and unethical.
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